The crap you do for love sometimes......

So my wife bought a couple of those "Beyond Burgers" (plant based burger) because she was curious to see what all of the commotion was about. I was goaded into trying one of them and while I admit the actual TASTE wasn't too bad, I didn't care for the odd smell and there was none of that savory and juicy texture that makes beef so good. So my bottom line is that it's just not worth it. If I'm going to eat a "burger" I'm going to eat one with beef simply because it's a far superior experience. Has anyone here tried one?

No. I understand that they're more expensive, too.

Yes, they are a bit pricier but then again the target demographic for these "Beyond Burgers" is used to paying higher prices for trendy foods. It's basically the "Whole Foods" demographic.

Daughter at Uni, and lots of peer pressure to go vegie, after a couple of months when she was coming back home I got a text message " I want a thick juicy steak with mashed potatoes for dinner"

God I have missed that was her comment at the dinner table

Her older sister had gone on a vegie kick a few years ago and when her kids visited us they raided the fridge and ate all the meat that was in there

Humans are omnivores. And the consensus among anthropologists is that it was our mastery of fire and using it to cook meat, making the protein easier to be absorbed, that allowed our brains to evolve and develop the way they did.

My wife and I looked at them in the grocery store but the amount of coconut oil and sodium it contained offset any health benefits. We're sticking with meat for the time being. If they ever develop a meatless substitute that is actually healthy I would have no issue paying a little more for it.

I have eaten, and enjoyed, a few black bean based burgers but these new ones do not sound good at all. I will stick to beef.

Options are good, so I'm all for these being offered and also that the popularity may get people to think some about what they eat.
I'm sure I'll try it sometime, probably getting one and a "regular" hamburger to split with my wife just to compare. Maybe not until a good restaurant burger comes around, not fast food.
As mentioned, the salt concerns me due to my diet, but I'm all for people eating better and even cutting back on meats. You have to have your protein, but it's ok to get it from sources other than meat if you want.
The problem is most won't substitute something healthy for meat but will just eat more packaged and processed carb/sugar junk instead of real food.
From what I've seen tracking my food for the last couple of years is that the worst things in fast food isn't so much the hamburger, it's the stuff people tend to get WITH the hamburger that's so bad, and they have no meat. LOL
The fries are terrible for you, the soft drinks are the worlds cocaine and the extra salt on EVERYTHING (including these veggie-burgers) gives you a heart attack.
I'll have a cheat meal and get the biggest burger I want, I just won't get the other stuff and I may still hit my macros for the day.

Think of it as the early stages of Soylent Green. Eventually they'll be getting there.


And from there, to this:

No matter the type of burger, they are not meant to be an every-day kind of food, so I eat the burger as a treat. And as long as I am going to treat myself, it will be with beef. And yes, I've tried the impossible whopper and it was tasty, but not better. It was more expensive and the difference in calories wasn't enough to warrant the use of the word "impossible." So up to this point, the impossible beef is for PETA-minded people.

That's funny. Myself and some friends were discussing these 'burgers' the other day and one of them brought up Soylent Green.

the world can not sustain a meat diet anymore, they are slowly phasing us to acept fake meat, only the 1% will eat real meat. There is already a fake meat going through FDA for aproval.

My wife recently cooked ribs, a rarity in our house.
While I was eating them my eight year old daughter asked me where they came from and I said "From cows."
My daughter was horrified and informed me she was turning vegetarian.
I then convinced her to try one and she immediately told me, "Daddy, I'm turning vegetarian TOMORROW."

You know, our grandparents (somewhere in the 1870s...1920s) largely had a meat-free diet with a big piece of meat, maybe, once a week, on Sundays. To that extent I'm not entirely mortified by the thought to reduce meat consumption. Also, I don't think that only the richest people will still afford meat in the future but it may well be that we all eat our steaks on fewer occasions. As long as we get to eat other delicacies, that's fine, why not? My happiness isn't glued to one specific type of food ingredient.

Just don't try and put me on an all-Tofu diet, and tell me that this is a perfectly adequate substitute and that I can't tell the difference - because I can. Rather than faking meat from soybeans, make something that actually tastes good and has a good texture. You wouldn't try to make icecream from hamburger patties either, they simply are different things, accept it. I agree that from a global perspective, a meat-heavy diet for 8 BN people won't work; it already doesn't work for 2 BN (just look at what it does to the Amazonas rainforest). There's just no way to pull that off without ruining biodiversity (the biggest threat to our global existence (nature will survive very well without us)).
Vat grown meat might contribute to this if it can be made to actually feel good in your mouth. And the only way to cut back meat consumption is by raising the price. Globally, pretty much everybody who has the spare time to post in a simulation game oriented forum, belongs to the 1% (because you can afford a gaming PC, and you have the time for debating people on the internet). To that extent we will all be able to afford meat for the rest of our lives, even if its price were to increase four, or even tenfold. We wouldn't eat it all the time, but we'd still eat it.

We can't on the one hand acknowledge that our lifestyle doesn't scale to the size of the world population and at the same time assume that change will happen without change for us. The longer we wait changing our habits, the harder we'll hit the wall in about fifty years. To that extent I will laud and support every effort to reduce the negative effects on the environment (because we need it), even if the current first steps are about as crude as the very first automobiles. It'll take some time to get the formula right, .... Soylent Green puns not entirely unintended.

So everyone's gonna ignore that PM's big sacrifice for love was eating an unsatisfying burger, lol

"meat" and "red meat" are not the same thing however.

If I want vegetables I'll eat a salad with my steak..

The doc told me to cut way back on my red meat intake...bad for the kidneys.

Hell I agree with him KK excess of most things are bad But meat does have it's place in a balanced diet with fish and chicken AND fruits and vegetables..It's just that I have somewhat of an aversion to eating vegetables disguised as meat ..I eat a lot of vegetables with my meals and not a lot of red meat and make sure it's cooked thoroughly

Yes, but he wanted me to only have a small steak once a month if that.

I occasionally (usually during summer) go for a vegan "burger" at this one place, I think what makes it go down well with me is the fact that they're not even remotely trying to insinuate it as any form of meat replacement.

Or maybe just my similar attitude about it - I'm definitely not expecting a beef patty substitute when I eat something like this, I'm purposely going for something a bit on the lighter/refreshing side but not so far as just rolling with salad...

I feel doctors all have a lot of opinions Just because they have DR in front of their name doesn't make them infallible.but more or less opinionated...I've been through numerous doctors this summer and every one had a different opinion on what was wrong..Hey the Doc could be vegan I think he might eat more than one small steak a month I usually have one a week either steak or roast beef Just not to excess..Easy to search online and see all the differing opinions on what amount is more or less healthy and seems no one agrees

Beacause everyone is different. Best you can do is experiment, know your numbers and be aware of changes in your body. Personally, I need more red meat due to being fairly anemic.

I'd be curious to try a burger patty made of some form of ground up insects. Long as I can't visually recognize any of it as being insects I could do it. Seems to me that would probably approximate true meat better than anything plant based could...

I agree RK...I try to be a bit varied in my diet and get a bit of everything...Must be working I'm 70 and the same weight as in H.S. 6' 3" around the mid 170's..All this food talk makes me want to order a pizza with everything..Like I said i listen to DR's but don't treat them like their words came off the MT on stone tablets,,Heck I still remember the 50's and 60's when a doc might smoke while talking to you

"Trust but verify" applies to a lot of situations! Be your own advocate.

I like that RK..Mostly my body tells me whats right

You are exactly right about doctors. You could ask ten different doctors the same question, and get ten different answers. Before all my medical issues, I used to only eat meat once a week. In the winter, I would crave meat more often. I really miss it know.

Chemical bath crap. No way. Not eating that.

What about ... pizza, then?

Always works for me Ssnake best of both worlds veggies and meat so I don't have to decide

I find the Beyond Burger to be a fairly average imitation of a nice beef burger. There is something still mkssing like the texture for example even of the flavor is getting closer.

The Impossible Burger on the other hand, I was really impressed. This is coming from a guy that really loves meat. I will definitely try impossible burger again. May even opt for it occasionally instead of beef.

The free market will eventually determine that. If and when fast food burgers cost $15 and a simple sirloin steak costs $30 then we'll talk.

Both the texture and the lack of juicyness is really what killed it for me with the Beyond Burger.

I think the prices would need to climb higher. This is what you approximately pay for when visiting McD or a steakhouse restaurant in Germany - admittedly for the whole meal, not "just the burger", maybe 30% less than your suggested price target, and it doesn't have such a big effect on per-capita meat consumption in Germany (which is pretty high up there, per world standards). Now, Germany is certainly a rich country with a high per-capita income and similarly inflated costs of living, so looking at this one example is only of limited educational value. But then again, I eat maybe 20 burgers over the course of an entire year, and maybe an equal number or less of steaks, which probably ranks on the lower/middle part of the scale for non-vegetarians from Europe/North America even though it's undoubtedly well above world average.
So, 20 x $15 + 15 x $30.- = $750.- for "meat meals" per year is still not such a big fraction of your annual costs of living if you look at the total grocery bill (not counting costs of living, owning a car, temperature regulation, warm water, electricity, ...)

Of course, if a burger is the daily standard for five out of seven days, interrupted by steak days, then we're talking about 260 burgers and 105 steaks, or $7,000.- per year for meat consumption.

Yup, this is pretty much me. Just call me Cro Magnon man.


Excellent post by the way!

How big was it and where did it come from?
That's one reason I don't want to bother with it at BK. The videos I've seen of this and the other "meat" are always really thick but smallish burgers. I figured that was to maximize the juicy appearance. It's hard enough for real meat to be much good as a thin patty, seems like one of these would up the difficulty.

There's a reason they call it "practicing medicine."

That'll happen eventually via inflation alone. Now whether corporate greed makes it happen sooner is another question. I'm POSITIVE the reason so many local "Mom and Pop" places (at least in my city) are killing the big names in terms of price and quality is because they're not having to send so much money "to higher up".

I personally witnessed a particularly egregious example of this at a nursing home I worked at for 2 years (and left just this past June). Rooms going for 8 to 10 THOUSAND per month, yet "always short of money for anything".

Too many chiefs and not enough indians.

I'd guess almost half that money went straight to people who not only never set foot in the facility, but even in the STATE...

Of course people prefer to blame rising minimum wages instead though...

I'd say it was about the size of a single Whopper patty and it was bought at a local supermarket.

I still don't understand why someone would want to swallow something so chemically processed. This isn't food, this is science, so who knows what kind of compounds form as byproducts.

I agree with that thought Blastman anything disguised to be something else has to have a bunch of chemicals in it to make it seem like something else..If I want vegetables that's what I'll buy or make a salad

Read a label. If it comes in a wrapper it's not any better. Hasn't bothered the public in years.
That said, even "natural" doesn't mean safe either.

True RK,,might be folks are becoming more aware now days,and true slapping a label of organic/natural doesn't mean much..Just feeds a false sense of well being I'm lucky my landlord has a small farm and my meat usually comes from him along with my eggs..I'm not a "green" person but do take a bit of attention to what I'm chewing on