Most new vegetarians and vegans start using some meat substitutes as they become used to their new diets. Unfortunately these tend to be not very tasty and are very expensive (Morningstar Farmes products are better tasting than most, but often cost more than $8 a pound). Making your own meat substitues costs much less, but frankly is often not very successful. Fortunately, at least for those of us who know how to cook, you quickly learn there are many new interesting foods to investigate and meat substitutes become less important.
Meat is a very inefficient use of resources - it taakes a lot of energy to make meat ... frequently ten times as much as an equivalent amount of plant based nutrition. With many cutting back on meat for health and or environemntal reasons there is a growing market for meat substitutes.
I've been very interested in Beyond Meat, which several good sources claim is good enough for foods where meat is part of the mix rather than the main focus. It may be a good enough substitute and, in theory, it will cost less than meat. Currently it is being trialed in Northern California Whole Food markets.
To make this work they need scale - it turns out they have an important investor who may be able to provide just that.
Beyond Meat's intitial product is only semi-interesting to me, but their future plans are very interesting and may end up making an impact on a piece of the environment and even health. I hope they can pull it off.
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