Beyond Meat is struggling, and the plant-based meat industry worries
I married a vegan, and I eat a lot of vegetarian food. (I also still eat plenty of meat, just not every day.)<p>One <i>extremely</i> frustrating aspect of plant meat is that they tried to aggressively push out traditional veggie burgers on restaurant menus. A familiar refrain I've heard in restaurants in the last few years is "we used to have a nice veggie patty, but they replaced it with the beyond/incredible/whatever patty."<p>The thing is, vegetarian food is incredible without needing to taste like meat. When I've had these products, I've always walked away feeling like they taste inferior to traditional vegetarian burgers / sausages that don't try to taste like meat.<p>> Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat.<p>Normally vegetarian food costs less than meat. It's because the animals need to eat (surprise surprise) vegetables! When you eat the vegetables directly instead of having the animal eat the vegetable for your, it's cheaper.<p>IMO, I think the "meat in a vat" system where animal tissue is grown in some kind of factory setting is a much better approach. When I want to eat meat, I want to eat meat.