Climate

Impossible, at least to me, is functionally indistinguishable from a ground beef patty. Back when I was vegetarian and before I was vegan, I went to Burger King on lunch to try the Impossible Whopper. I wasn't fond of Burger King, but I was mostly curious enough to see what an Impossible Burger tasted like having had Beyond at home once (where Beyond is pretty easily distinguished from ground beef by its flavor).

Walked in, walked out, took a bite in my car. Straight-up almost went back in and asked for a new one before realizing it wouldn't do any ethical good and that I didn't have the time. This was even after seeing that it was in the Impossible-branded wrapper. I decided to go there another time to "try the real one", and it was the same. I was dumbfounded; it was straight-up just a Whopper – having admittedly not eaten a BK burger in a few years at that point. (They also put mayo on it by default without telling you, so good job, BK.)

The greatly increased sodium content is a concern for my household, though.

Totally. I’m hoping they can get it real close and less expense. Then start the swap out

Soybeans as a commodity can be cheap, but that doesnt mean that an end product made out of soybeans will also inherently be cheap.

The market for soybean based meat alternatives is not that huge, so one of the more expensive aspects of trying to have an end product in an actual brick and mortar store is going to be getting space on the shelf in the first place. Packaging design and maybe some marketing, not to mention creating the actual product itself. All that stuff is expensive even if its mostly soybeans that the end product is made from

Laundry detergent is like 95% water, but it costs far more than if it was actually 100% water

Same. I feel like vegans are being taken advantage of. Soy and oat and other grain based replacements for animal products should be dirt cheap. They're marketing to hipsters and pricing accordingly. So all that shit about the economy and whatnot? Marketing trash. Make that shit cost what it should and way more people would buy it. Especially with everything going up.

This. I could go vegan today if the fake meat stuff was more affordable. Right now I'm maybe half of the way there.

If the meatless option is 29% cheaper, the meat option is .29/(1-.29) = 41% more expensive, not 29%. Meatballs in the article are .41/(1-.41) = 69% more expensive than plantballs, which is close to your target number.

I remember the days when a veggie cheeseburger was a grilled cheese sandwich. Progress.

A distinction without a difference. Let's subsidize legumes and plant-based products to the same level animal-based parts are subsidized and see which one is cheaper.

Extra form tofu.

taste may be great but for me it’s sometimes the “mouth feel” that gets me with tofu. wish i could fix that. (it’s a me thing)

Lentils, beans, tofu, chickpeas. Much healthier, cheaper.

There's some good vegan recipe communities here on lemmy if you want some inspiration

!veganhomecooks@lemmy.world

!veganrecipes@sh.itjust.works

Just of the top of my head here are some possible ideas to explain why not:

• Meat subsidies
• Meat substitutes require more processing and additional ingredients
• Meat sells a lot more than meat substitutes hence the whole chain benefits more from economies of scale
• Animals raised for meat can extract nutrition from plants and parts of plants which humans cannot (for example cattle can actually break up the fiber in food and extract nutrition from it, which humans cannot), plus they can eat plants which are far more hardy than most plants grown for human consumption. Some will also eat other animals which humans do not, such as insects.

I doubt it's just one of those things that is responsible and suspect it's a mix of those and maybe more.

This is correct, however:

You need to also take into account that plants are just the primary ingredients and it needs a lot of intermediary steps during manufacturing.

I say this not to say you're incorrect but just to be a more complete picture so it's unassailable

When vegans promote a whole food, plant based diet: "I will only switch when there are drop-in meat and dairy replacements"

Ok then I guess we'll develop drop-in meat replacements: "why emulate meat? So processed!"

It's amazing if you're into WFPB, it's one of the healthier diets out there. You're just not the target consumer of these meat replacements. But they're useful for some people to have a better choice. They're usually not unhealthier than the animal-based product they aim to replace (see meta analysis ).

Oh I know this one, it's pretty simple. Considering I at least try to give my meals some taste (by adding spices I feel like adding, theres no real skill or logic I use) I do realize that a lot of "western" people don't really know anything past salt and pepper, when it comes to meal preparation. At best maybe drown the food in some basic premade condiment like ketchup, mayo, etc.

So asking people to eat vegetables, just for them to turn around and say they taste bland and aren't worth it, and they don't know how to make it taste good or even try, is not going to get them to ditch meat.

Humans wanna eat stuff that satisfies more than just hunger now, you know that, unless they have absolutely no choice in what they eat. Nobody is gonna eat anything healthy when equally priced alternatives taste better and require less effort.

Most legumes have always been cheaper than meat