Collapse of the fake meat industry
Sounds like an interesting article, but itâs behind a paywall, and Iâm not a Bloomberg subscriber.
Iâve looked at the ingredients in quite a few âfake meatâ products. Danged if Iâd feel good putting them in my body.
âWhatâs for dinner, Mom?â
âThis, dear:â
Those are the Beyond Burger ingredients. The Impossible Burger is made of water, soy-protein concentrate, coconut oil, sunflower oil, natural flavors, potato protein, methylcellulose, yeast extract, cultured dextrose, food starch (modified), soy leghemoglobin, salt, soy-protein isolate, mixed tocopherols (vitamin E), zinc gluconate, thiamine hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), sodium ascorbate (vitamin C), niacin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin B12.
Features
â January 19, 2023, 12:01 AM EST
Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the worldâs $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop.
By Deena Shanker
Ever since founding Beyond Meat Inc. in 2009 with the then fantastical idea of making meat without animals, Ethan Brown has been giving the equivalent of one extremely long TED Talk. In 2013 he took the stage at the Wired Business conference, explaining that the world had a very real greenhouse gas-emitting meat problem and that venture capitalists could make a bigger impact investing in fake meat than in solar energy. At Torontoâs annual Ideacity gathering three years later, he said his goal was to replicate the âblueprint of meat.â By the time he appeared at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.âs Builders & Innovators Summit 2019, he explained that his mission demanded the urgency and scale the US mustered for World War II and that his products would simultaneously help solve heart disease, diabetes, cancer, climate change, natural resource depletion and animal welfare. Just like technology had rendered the horse-drawn carriage obsolete, he told the crowd at the New York Timesâ climate conference this past fall, so, too, would his system of breaking down plants transform the protein at the center of the plate. âThis,â he said, âis something that I feel is inevitable.â
Silicon Valley didnât need much convincing that a better veggie burger could become the next world-changing disruption. Whereas the quinoa-and-bean patties of yore were for the crunchy set, Brownâs beef facsimile, concocted in a lab to look and taste like the real thing, meant the vast majority of meat eaters could give up their burgers without having to give up anything at all. Along with the venture capitalists came investors from every corner of cultureâLeonardo DiCaprio, the Humane Society of the United States and former McDonaldâs Corp. Chief Executive Officer Don Thompson. Even Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest maker of real meat in the US, invested and then invested again, catapulting the young El Segundo, California-based startup to a $1.3 billion valuation by 2018.
Bill Gates wanted in, too, backing not one but two companies with veggie burgers that âbleedâ like real beefâBeyond, as well as its rival Impossible Foods Inc. Brown had licensed someone elseâs process, but Impossible was the brainchild of a Stanford University biochemist named Pat Brown (no relation to Ethan). When Pat founded Impossible in 2011, his big breakthrough was realizing that a molecule called heme was the key to meatâs meatiness. He made heme with genetically modified yeast and patented the use of what the company called its magic ingredient: soy leghemoglobin.
Before Impossible had sold even a single burger, the company managed to raise $183 million. Pat also worked the circuit, including an actual TED Talk (technically, it was TEDMed) in 2015. Speaking in slightly more apocalyptic terms than Ethan, Pat referred to the âongoing wildlife holocaustâ caused by the worldâs insatiable demand for meat, while an assistant sizzled an Impossible Burger onstage beside him. âI know it sounds insane to replace a deeply entrenched, trillion-dollar-a-year global industry,â he said, âbut it has to be done.â Four years later, when the New Yorker profiled Impossible, Pat predicted his company would âtake a double-digit portion of the beef marketâ by 2024 before sending it into a âdeath spiral.â Next he would target âthe pork industry and the chicken industry and say, âYouâre next!â and theyâll go bankrupt even faster.â
But Big Meat is still alive and well. After Beyond went public in 2019âat the time the most successful major initial public offering since the 2008 financial crisisâcompetitors rushed into the space, followed by a categorywide pandemic surge. Since then the industry has plunged. Supermarket sales of refrigerated plant-based meat plummeted 14% by volume for the 52 weeks ended Dec. 4, according to retail data company IRI. Orders of plant-based burgers at restaurants and other food-service outlets for the 12 months ended in November were down 9% from three years earlier, according to market researcher NPD Group.
Beyond lost sales in almost every channel last quarter. Over the past year it laid off more than 20% of its workforce, lost more than half of its C-suite and halted projects including vegan hot dogs and the next alt-protein frontier of cell-cultured meat, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named discussing private information about the company. None of the biggest fast-food chains that had announced partnerships with BeyondâKFC, Pizza Hut and, most important, McDonaldâsâhave put a single permanent item on their US menus. While an index of packaged-food companies on the S&P 500 was up about 4% from a year ago, as of Jan. 17, Beyondâs stock price is now hovering around $16, down about 76% from a year earlier and roughly 93% from its peak in the summer of 2019.
Impossible, meanwhile, is faring betterâbut Pat is out at the company. Last April he stepped down to chief visionary officer, replaced as CEO by a Chobani Inc. executive, before taking a leave of absence. Under new CEO Peter McGuinness, Impossible has spun up new products such as animal-shaped faux chicken nuggets and blitzed supermarkets, leading to more than 50% retail sales growth in the US in 2022. While it has added restaurant partners, some of its long-standing ones are finding consumer excitement has either hit a wall or is declining. Shares of Impossible, a private company, are currently trading at around $12, says Prab Rattan, head of capital markets at Hiive, a marketplace for private stock trading. Thatâs about half the price during its last fundraising round, based on PitchBook data.
Plant-based meatâs most reliable enthusiasts at this point are those original veggie burger stans, vegans and vegetarians. The all-important meat eaters do partake, but at a much lower frequency. âTheyâre just not that into it,â says Chris DuBois, head of IRIâs protein practice.
How did an industry with so much riding on itâbacked by so much moneyâsuddenly fizzle out? The companies declined to make Ethan Brown and Pat Brown available to talk to Bloomberg Businessweek, but at that New York Times climate conference in October, Ethan pointed his finger at the actual meat industry for fake meatâs headwinds. âThey are doing their very best today to suggest that our process is somehow unhealthy or that our products are full of chemicals,â he said. âThese things are not true.â
Whatever critiques the meat industry is lobbing are the same ones plenty of consumers are figuring out for themselves. Like fat-free Snackwellâs cookies or Layâs olestra-laden WOW Chipsâor any other glut-without-the-guilt food trend that periodically cycles in and out of the zeitgeistâthe incremental benefits are eventually offset by concerns over what else might be in there. Many meat eaters initially excited by fake meat, who didnât mind the not-quite-there taste or texture, eventually took a closer look at the ingredient list and couldnât figure out whether they were actually trading up. Were they eating these burgers to curb carbon emissions or lower their blood pressure? Was it a healthier alternative or a sodium-filled, overprocessed substitute? Plant meat still costs more than the real thing, and with inflation pushing up prices across the supermarket, many grocery shoppers have swapped the expensive imitation for chicken or, in some cases, beans and lentils.
Meatless meat, it turns out, seems less a world-changing innovation than another food trend whose novelty is wearing thin. âBefore we were seeing this incredible growth rate. But when you lose that momentum, you lose your certainty around how big plant-based meats can be,â says Thomas George, portfolio manager at investment research company Grizzle, who in 2019 predicted plant-based meat could overtake 10% of the meat industry in 10 years if it could match meatâs prices. âThe opportunity for this category,â he says now, âis more murky.â
Before Beyond Meat unveiled the Beyond Burger, there was the Beast. When Ethan introduced the frozen patty in 2015, the company called it a âprotein shake on a bun.â Although he ended up ditching it, the Beastâs health claims, such as high levels of protein and zero gluten or soy, remained front and center on Beyond Burgerâs packaging. (Whenever asked, Pat defended the health cred of Impossibleâs product against beef, though he preferred to talk about replacing animal agriculture by 2035.) But nothing preached the virtues of plant-based eating to the masses like The Game Changers, a James Cameron-produced documentary that hit Netflix in 2019.
The Game Changers followed world-class vegan athletes, with cameos by doctors, scientists and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, before he became mostly vegan, once told Sylvester Stallone that he âhit like a vegetarian.â Veganism, according to the film, would make a person not only healthier but also stronger, with better endurance and even longer, harder erections.
Ethan added the film to his arsenal. âIf you look at movies like Game Changers, etc.,â he told Bloomberg Television in 2019, âyou can affect even individual day performance, from a student-athlete, for example, through the consumption of our products over animal protein.â He said Beyondâs own athlete ambassadors, including NBA stars Kyrie Irving and Chris Paulâalso investors in the startupâwere âadopting our products in their training regimes, and theyâre seeing great results.â
The Beyond Burger originally was sold in supermarkets, while Impossible went with celebrity chefs such as David Chang. By the end of 2019, Carlâs Jr., Dunkinâ and White Castle were all selling some Beyond or Impossible product or otherâand Burger King had launched the Impossible Whopper nationwide. The food giants didnât want to get left behind either. Tyson had shown an interest in buying Beyond, according to former Beyond board member Greg Bohlen. When that didnât pan out, the meat company announced plans for its own plant-based âbillion-dollar brand.â (Tyson declined to comment.) NestlĂ© SA introduced an Awesome Burger, and Conagra Brands Inc.âs CEO said it would create âthe next generation of beefless burger.â
At first, fake burgers and sausages seemed like a potential solution to Americansâ obsession with red and processed meats, which have been linked to cancer and other chronic diseases. But over the years, skepticism about their healthfulness grew. Within months of Beyondâs IPO, onetime fan and whole-foods maven Mark Bittman criticized the fake meat products for their âhyperprocessing.â Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.âs CEO said they didnât fit with the fast-casual chainâs âfood with integrityâ mantra. Even John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market Inc.âthe grocer that had been instrumental in introducing the categoryâwent on the record calling plant-based meat âsuper, highly processed foods.â (The Center for Consumer Freedom, a front group that represents tobacco, alcohol and meat companies, ran a Super Bowl ad in February 2020 attacking fake meatâs ingredients with a mock spelling bee that repeated long-held health advice: âIf you canât spell it or pronounce it, maybe you shouldnât be eating it.â)
Still, that criticism hadnât yet made its way to people such as Michelle Darby, a mother stuck at home with four kids, in Marlton, New Jersey, during the early days of the pandemic. She found The Game Changers on Netflix. âIt gave a very compelling argument,â she says. âAnd Iâm on the borderline of high cholesterol.â
Darby, like many others in lockdown, started buying faux meats. The real thing was scarce, and people had extra cash to try out this buzzy new product. Americans bought 5.3 million units of fresh-meat alternatives in the eight weeks ended April 25, 2020âthree times the amount from a year earlier, according to Nielsen Holdings Ltd. Suddenly, Beyondâs prediction in one of its investor pitch decks that fake meat was on track to become the new fake milk was looking increasingly plausible: Just as the alt-milk companies could claim to be 13% the size of the $16.1 billion dairy milk category with new products such as oat milk, alt-meat would similarly undercut the even bigger $270 billion US meat industry. (âThatâs the floor,â Ethan said at a 2019 Barclays Plc conference.)
As Darby stocked up, she noticed that she and her family were gobbling up the chickenless nuggets at a much faster pace and that the imitation hot dogs left her feeling uncomfortable. At a checkup with her doctor she mentioned the diet changes theyâd madeâthe fake chicken nuggets, the Impossible sausage sandwich at Starbucksâand their disappointment with the lack of results. The doctor had a simple explanation: âYou are eating processed foods.â
Darby went home and looked at the packaging, taking particular notice of the salt content. âIt should have been obvious to me the whole time,â she says. She stopped buying plant-based meats, except for an occasional purchase of Impossible ground beef. Meanwhile, sheâs doing what a lot of consumers are: going back to meat. âIf they [her family] want hamburgers, weâll occasionally buy ground meat or weâll make ground chicken, and they donât notice the difference,â she says.
In 2020 half of Americans thought faux meats were healthy; now 38% think so, a recent report from Citi Global Insights shows. Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale Universityâs Prevention Research Center, who appears in The Game Changers, says the Beyond Burger and its ilk are âultraprocessedââmade from processed ingredients such as pea protein, potato starch and potassium chloride. When comparing them with fast-food burgers, he cites the environmental and animal welfare advantages but says that any health benefits are still unclear. âAt worst,â he says, âitâs a lateral move.â A Beyond Meat spokesperson told Bloomberg Businessweek that there are âwell-accepted health benefits of plant-based meatâ and directed Businessweek to two health professionals: Stanfordâs Christopher Gardner, whoâs received funding from Beyond Meat, conducted a small study that pointed to improvements in weight and cholesterol. He says the health benefits he identified, however, have yet to be replicated. âYou canât answer a question with only one study,â Gardner says. And Dr. Michael Greger, author of How Not to Die, says that fake meat is a better choice than a fast-food burger, but that doesnât make it good for you. âNobody should be under the illusion that these are health foods,â he says.
Nowhere is this more obvious than when you discover that a key ingredient in Beyond Meat has its origins in Dippinâ Dots, the tiny âbeadsâ of ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen, available in flavors including banana split and cotton candy. Beyond started working with Dippinâ Dots LLC in 2019. The Dots business was sold in June 2022, but Beyond still works with Scott Fischer, its former CEO, through his company, Cryogenic Processors LLC. Beyond buys fats such as expeller-pressed canola oil and refined coconut oil, which Fischer processes into âlittle pellets or cryogenically frozen balls of fats,â he says. Cryogenic Processors sends the fatty balls back to Beyond to mix with water, rice protein, cocoa butter, methylcellulose and more than a dozen other ingredients found in the Beyond Burger.
The white globules are meant to give the burgers a meaty juiciness, but plant-based fats can also emit an off-putting smell when some of these products are cooked, says Tom Mastrobuoni, who led the second Tyson investment in Beyond and is now chief investment officer at the food-tech-focused Big Idea Ventures LLC. Commenters online have compared the odor of Beyondâs raw plant meat to that of cat food, and one message board poster said he had to ventilate his kitchen to clear the air after cooking it. âIf any other food smelled that way, I would throw it out,â says Jeremy Sklarsky, a former Beyond customer who tried the products out of health and environmental concerns before going back to beef.
In September, Beyond Meat Chief Operating Officer Doug Ramsey was arrested in Arkansas for allegedly biting someoneâs nose in an altercation after a college football game. Ramsey, a former Tyson executive, was one of the meat industry vets Ethan had wooed in 2021 to help Beyond expand. By mid-October, Ramsey, along with the companyâs chief financial officer, chief growth officer and chief supply chain officer, was gone.
The love affair between Beyond and the fast-food giants has faded, too. Dunkinââonce the companyâs biggest-name partnerâpulled the faux sausages in its breakfast sandwiches from almost all the menus nationally in 2021. Beyondâs delayed chicken tenders rollout had no big-name chains in sight. Taco Bell tested Beyondâs carne asada, but last month its CEO told Axios the reviews were âmixedâ and a national rollout isnât likely coming anytime soon. Meanwhile, photos and documents from Beyondâs plant in Pennsylvaniaâwhere both the KFC nuggets and Pizza Hut pepperoni were partially manufacturedârevealed that listeria and foreign materials such as wood and string had been showing up in products made there as late as May 2022. (A spokesperson for Beyond Meat said at the time that the companyâs food-safety protocols âgo above and beyond industry and regulatory standards.â) Yum! Brands Inc., which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, didnât respond to requests for comment.
Beyond also trialed its burger at about 600 US locations with McDonaldâs, its most important customer, with little to show for it. For a brief moment in April it looked like the McPlant meatless burger would stay for good. Fast Company misreported that the McPlant would become a permanent menu item, sending Beyondâs stock price up as much as 34%âuntil McDonaldâs disputed the news, causing shares to fall just as quickly. In July a JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst said heâd checked with 25 Mickey Dâs: None were offering the McPlant anymore. âNot surprisingly, the reason sometimes being cited is that the product did not sell well enough,â he said. Then came the nose-biting fiasco. âNegative PR around a senior member of management with key MCD relationships likely hurts whatever slim chances may have remained,â Piper Sandler Cos.â Michael Lavery wrote in a note. McDonaldâs still sells the McPlant internationally, but it hasnât confirmed results of the US test or future plans.
When Beyond hired the worldâs biggest influencer, Kim Kardashian, it managed to flub that, too. In the spring of 2022 the company announced its splashy new âchief taste consultant.â But it quickly led to viral mockery when online sleuths noticed she didnât seem to actually be eating the Beyond Burger in a commercial. (Kardashian later released footage from the set showing she had, in fact, swallowed the food.)
Impossible, meanwhile, is discovering that upending animal agriculture is difficult. Burger King has added another Impossible Burger to its mix, but after trying the companyâs faux chicken nuggets, a chicken sandwich and sausage patties, it didnât put any in its regular lineup. FAT Brands Inc. restaurants are selling a steady million Impossible Burgers a yearâwhich is good, but not as good as beef, whose sales are climbing. At Bareburger, also an Impossible early adopter, the burgerâs sales went from âastronomicalâ to about 6% of all burgers and sandwiches in 2021 to 4% in 2022, says Euripides Pelekanos, the chainâs CEO. âThe fanfare has definitely subsided,â he says. The price of the burgerâmore than that of the beef, elk and black bean versionsâdoesnât help.
Pat Brownâs replacement at Impossible, McGuinness, an ad industry veteran who left yogurt maker Chobani last year, says he has new growth plans for the Redwood City, California-based startup. âI donât want to talk about the category decliningâit doesnât exist,â he says, even though Impossible has been trying to lead it for the better part of the past decade.
This time, though, McGuinnessâs plan is to âoperate like a food company.â Instead of predicting the end of the meat industry, the new CEO talks about reaching carnivores by boosting total distribution points, doubling consumer awareness and bundling promotions for his faux chicken nuggets with faux pork products, so shoppers who like one will try the other. Just like a yogurt shelf grabs customer attention with variety, so, too, will Impossible products. In October he laid off 6% of the staff as part of a broader restructuring, telling employees the company was focused on its âR&D and innovation pipeline.â Pricing, which has already come down, could match beef as early as the end of the year, he says, as his costs continue to improve with increased efficiency. Then thereâs the burgerâs nutritional profile. âThe cake for us is to make a delicious product,â McGuinness says. âThe icingâitâs better for you, better for the planet.â
Three and a half years ago, New Yorkâs Javits Center hosted the first Plant Based World Expo. Amid hawkers of seitan corned beef, pea-and-tomato-based chorizo and mold-based dog treats, the real excitement was Beyond. Fresh off its IPO, the companyâs executive chair was a keynote speaker. âI wish I had invested in them,â Andy Levitt, founder of vegan meal-kit startup Purple Carrot, said at the time. When Levitt started his company in 2014, vegans were the âtattooed girl with Birkenstocks in Vermont,â he said. Beyondâs products had catapulted an entire generation of startups, becoming the âgateway drug to plant-based foods.â
The 2022 Expo felt a lot more like a regular old trade show. There were no signs of Beyond, unless it was from an exhibitor answering a question to differentiate itself from the onetime star. Booth after booth showcased products such as Shark Tank-backed faux deli slices and textured soy protein âjerky,â but few were good enough to go back for seconds, many more so unpalatable that this meat-eschewing Bloomberg reporter spit them out. By far the best-tasting food at the event was in the Italian Pavilion, where chefs served cheeseless vegetable pizzas and pasta puttanesca sans the anchoviesâno imitation animal protein to be found. Asked what he was doing at the fake meat show, Italian chef and restaurateur Fabrizio Facchini was taken aback. âWe also have a lot of plant-based,â he said, relying on the literal meaning of the phrase more than on the marketing term. âWe donât use cheese on everything.â
When industry watchers were still figuring out whether plant-based meat might pull an alt-milk-size disruption, many missed two key differences: lactose-intolerant consumers and milkâs primary use as an ingredient, not a main course. Many soy, almond and oat milk drinkers add it to their coffee because real milk simply isnât an option. But theyâre mostly not drinking it by the glass. Even predictions of a sales rebound for plant-based meat are dwarfed by whatâs happening in dairy. Bloomberg Intelligenceâs Jennifer Bartashus wrote in November that in the second half of 2023, âwe expect plant-based dairy sales to rise 6-8% and meat alternatives 1-2%.â
Beyond Meatâs current market capitalization is about $1 billionâdown from its peak of more than $14 billion. Bringing costs down is the companyâs priority as it pledges to finally become cash-flow positive in the second half of this year and tries to keep up its dwindling cash reserves. In the companyâs November earnings call, Ethan Brown talked up another limited-time offer with Panda Express Inc. and the companyâs 2022 food award from People magazine. The analysts, though, peppered him with questions about high inventory levels and why Beyond was making only ingredients instead of prepared meals. Brown blamed inflation and shifting consumer tastes as blips in his long-term mission. âI am certain that as we hit price parity with that, as the products become indistinguishable, as the climate situation worsens, as people get a clear sense of what the real health benefits are,â he said, âthis conversion will happen.â
The big food companies have cooled on the category, too. Tyson scrapped its plant-ish burgerâa half-beef, half-pea-protein concoction that was supposed to launch its future âbillion-dollar brand.â Products from Kelloggâs Morningstar Farms, Conagra Brandsâ Gardein and NestlĂ©âs Sweet Earth are all still selling, some well, but none are breakout hits.
What remains looks more like a niche category than a meaningful displacement of an entrenched industry. After Beyond, Impossible and their copycats spent years trying to seduce everyone away from meat, it appears their best customers are, well, the 5% of the population who didnât eat meat in the first place. Kevin Lindgren, director of merchandising at food distributor Baldor Specialty Foods Inc. in New York, says more restaurants are ordering plant-based burgers simply to make sure they have something to serve vegetarians âthatâs not a salad or cauliflower.â Alt-burgersâ continued expansion into restaurants is largely being propped up by establishments protecting themselves against this âveto voteââthe lone nonmeat eater in a group of diners who can thwart a destination decision if thereâs not a suitable meatless entrĂ©e. âItâs frozen, throw it in the freezer,â Lindgren says, summarizing restaurantsâ enthusiasm. But even thatâs not a sure shot. Plenty of vegetarians would prefer a veggie burger made of actual vegetables, and definitely not one that âbleeds.â
Impossible is now venturing beyond the coasts, where many have already moved on from fake meat, hoping to jump-start interest in the rest of the country. (Lindgren says he recently spotted an Impossible Burger on a menu in a South Dakota sports bar.) But when Impossible sausage was added to the menus of more than 600 Cracker Barrels last summer, the company quickly got a taste of this new customer base. âYOU CAN TAKE MY PORK SAUSAGE WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS,â one of the thousands of angry commenters wrote when the Southern country-themed chain posted the new offering on Facebook.
Meanwhile, a new meat alternative has found its way into the next hype cycle: cellular meat. Grown in giant tanks from cells harvested from living animals, lab-grown beef, chicken and fish are theoretically better for the environment than the real thing and should taste as good. Startups in this space have raked in $2.6 billion in funding from investors including, once again, Bill Gates and Leonardo DiCaprio. The category will have to overcome even bigger hurdles than plant-based meat, from the massive amount of energy required to make the products to exorbitant costs. But for boosters, its potential is already limitless. âThis,â Whole Foods co-founder Mackey said after investing in cellular startup Upside Foods Inc., âcould change the world.â âWith Agnieszka de Sousa and Michael Hirtzer
Read next: Silicon Valley Canât Quit Its Pizza Robot Obsession
To contact the author of this story:
Deena Shanker in New York at dshanker@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Danielle Sacks at dgerlach8@bloomberg.net
Jim Aley
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This is just classic halo marketing BS⊠how anyone can possibly think that this highly processed garbage can be healthy is beyond me. But then I am VERY biassed.
You couldnât pay me to eat this â â â â .
But the target market is vegans. Nuff said.
Having said all that, I would eat 2 of the ingredients⊠guess which ones⊠
Uh, refined coconut oil and salt?
Thanks for posting the whole article. Whew! You know your vegan product is in trouble when even David Katz and Michael Greger are criticising it, lol!
And speaking of ultra-processed, how does all the energy needed to make this stuff not raise quite a carbon footprint? Also, the soy and the rapeseed (for the canola oil) have to be intensively cultivated, which also uses a lot of fossil fuel, not to mention the soil depletion they cause.
Apparently, there is not enough cropland in the world to grow enough vegetables to feed everyone a vegan diet. There is considerably more agricultural land suitable for grazing, which takes a lot less in the way of inputs, especially when done regeneratively.
I just finished grilling up a batch of pork chops before they went bad. Guess I know whatâs for dinner the next few days!
Close⊠water and salt! Coconut = plant = bad for you. I am SUCH a carnivore! 
IMHO, the key argument against the vegan diet (and plant agriculture in general) is what the plant agriculture industry does to the land and soil that it uses: it kills everything in sight, then plants the plants, it sprays all sorts of poisons over the growing plants to kill any animal that was unfortunate enough to visit the site, it harvests the plants, packs them in plastic bags, and then ships them all over the world. The air miles of a lot of plants is astounding.
Thatâs very bold 
Oh they lost me at sunflower oil, I hate the taste (I ate a ton of it in my younger years and I calculated it once, of course with some guesswork but itâs probably true that I ate 1000kg of it. it was more than enough, thank you)⊠Okay, they lose me at the price, actually I am a curious one but I just canât bring myself to pay a lot of money for something I am very sure is bad Now that prices went up but the cheaper things went up more, vegan stuff is not sooo much more expensive but still donât worth it so I am so unaware of its taste⊠Maybe one day I will be more curious than health-conscious and there is the âgood dealâ thing I have, I have problems to do bad deals where I KNOW it wonât worth itâŠ
Oh the others arenât so bad, I donât know some of them though and it always fill me with uncertainty⊠My body would handle it once though. And why would I eat it often? I make wonderful seitan, at least I know what is in that. I had gluten-free years, nothing so I suppose gluten is fine. In moderation? But I can imagine eating seitan every day. Or month, actuallyâŠ
But I am a more proper Hungarian than in my vegetarian years so good luck to take away my fatty pork anyway. With its flavors and complete protein. I can complete gluten as legumes would be the only option for me but they are waaaaaaay too carby.
Okay, okay, I never was their target or if yes, they are super bold as my body declared its undying love towards extreme low plant carbs.
Potato protein Lol. Okay, it must exist but never saw it in an ingredient list 
Funny.
Leghemoglobin. I feel small and unknowledgeable againâŠ
But I never understood why anyone would need fake meat. When I was a vegetarian for ages, I just ate honest plants (and probably way too much animal protein using eggs and dairy galore)⊠And those things canât resemble proper meat anyway. But thatâs why I am curious, I donât KNOW. Well they surely are different, I saw enough videos about people trying to guess and the proper meat eater never missed Believable. Not like it matters to me, my seitan is tasty even if it resembles bread more than meat (It isnât similar to bread at all but more than to meat.) Meat is nothing like that. And I donât need my special sausage mix and some other strong condiment to give it tasteâŠ
Very surprising
Erm sorry. I feel an unholy glee when people arenât into faux meat. Maybe I shouldnât but what can I do? I donât control my feelings.
Why would we need to eat sodium-filled, overprocessed meat? Okay, people do that but in small amounts, we donât live on deli meat or something. So it doesnât help with the meat eating problems they aim to reduce THAT much. Though I suppose their main goal is getting profitâŠ
But as I think back to a supermarket ad paper⊠Maybe the normal person is supposed to eat only a few slices of deli meat between wholemeal buns and tons of vegs.
And if I write my usual stuff here, again, for the zillionth time: GIMME cheap, available crickets! For now, expensive crickets will do, I never found them anywhere yet and people say they are tasty! (One said they arenât, more people said they are.)
Yep, this is a very important factor too and makes sense if we donât get the usual joy and satisfaction, satiation from the stuff.
It reminds me of the time when Mom bought a low-fat margarine by accident (we ate Margarine, the fanciest brand but still. poor me. at least Mom ate pork fat tissue galore too but almost never in rendered form). I ate WAY more of it, even fat wise, chasing the usual taste and I felt unsatisfied. I wondered why people thought it brings less fat into their life but maybe they are disciplined and donât have this instinct to eat fat like me.
Similarly, all the other low-cal processed things failed in my case⊠But it may be the same calorie density, lack of the desired taste easily interferes.
I think this is enough from me. Thanks, it was informative. I always thought they aim the vegans and vegetarians as others just eat meat. But considering how strongly people talk against meat eating (especially regarding fatty and red meat) nowadays, even here where they have no chances, not surprising that they wanted to catch originally meat eaters tooâŠ
@Alecmcq (the last comment): Yes yes yes. You wrote it right. Some vegans just arenât thinking about these.
Perhaps instead of fake meat, the world needs fake plants?
Oh yeah, thatâs what most of the âfoodâ aisles feature in the supermarket, 
they are already here 3 little letters. GMO
a plant really is not the original anymore in the plant food industry world. started long long long ago, making cross breeding of considered food industry plants to become âbetter plantsâ and now with âreal current GMO techâ in the mix. ohhhh boy. itâs frightening.
I didnât see that part, I wanted to cut my comment shorter I suppose Hungarians are pretty much the same. We see more and more advice against red meat and fat but our cute dry sausages with 45% fat (in weight) are still popular⊠And itâs adorable compared to pork belly and other really fatty pork items 
But they are tasty so good luck to turn people off them. I am still amazed the low-fat mission was successful elsewhere.
I appreciate my country more and more as the pressuring people into low-fat started to become noticeable. 10 years ago I saw nothing like this, maybe some dietitians and cooking shows mentioned it but now itâs in too many places. I know that people ate high-fat back then, I donât know new data.
(I found a newer one, only N=400 but I think itâs not bad. They were sad that most people have 2-3 meals a day⊠And itâs not a money thing, richer ones more often eat only twice
We do so many things wrong, little sport, too much sugar and treats but still, there are some good points.
They were super unhappy about Hungarians âstill eating meat with meatâ, itâs not even true⊠But it happens often, yep. Meat is satiating and tasty, deal with it.
There were nothing about fat intake though.)
That was my first thought too⊠And that animals get fed those bad plants and medicine too⊠I still consider it better but itâs not all good there either.
Then again, what weâre doing to humans is perhaps far more disruptive to the ânatural stateâ of things (whatever that might mean) than what we do to animals and plants.
But my life is too bad to think too deep about this now.
The operative words in that last sentence are âtheoreticallyâ and âshouldâ!
Was the link updated? Showing fine for me, I may/may not have a paywall breaker installed, gotta check.