Talk:Beyond Meat/Archive 1

"Selling alongside" meat

I see that the article says: "In May 2016, Beyond Meat released the first plant-based burger to be sold alongside beef, poultry and pork in the meat section of the grocery store."

It's true that the Beyond Meat marketing materials indicate that they would like this to happen, and certainly it would be interesting if it were, but I have bought and tested Beyond Meat products thus far from three grocery stores, and I have yet to see this happen. Does anyone know of a store that actually does it? Given that (I believe) Whole Foods is the largest distributor of the product and as far as I can tell they don't, and neither do any of the smaller grocery stores that I've seen, I think we'd need evidence that this is happening in order to preserve this line. Otherwise it sounds like the wishes of a marketing department that haven't held up anyway. --Cwebber (talk) 17:17, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it seems like a marketing message more than any real indication of some milestone of product development, and plan to remove it. —BarrelProof (talk) 03:20, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Correcting reference to study

A reference to a useful study was added in this commit, but weirdly did not accurately represent the results of the study and just said "A significant net energy loss. It is not a sustainable food choice." However in reading the actual study's comparison to cattle production, the opposite result is extracted. I think this was probably not an NPOV contribution, since I think may be the same Samkin Pommers as this cattle farmer, but at any rate I think it was worth extracting what the study actually said, so I provided a quote from the abstract. However I think it's important to note that the study *was* commissioned by Beyond Meat, and even though I don't see any evidence that the university didn't provide due diligence, I noted that in the article because that seems like important information to know. If a study becomes available that isn't commissioned by a stakeholding interest, it would also be useful to reference.

I will also note that in the preceding paragraph, "one dietician" is quoted; it would be useful to have a better sampling of research than quoting the subjective opinion than one dietician, but I did not remove it myself. --Cwebber (talk) 17:08, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Price

The article tells us about the general availability of “Beyond Meat” products in the US, so it should be possible – and interesting – to know whether and how much they’re cheaper or more expensive (to buy and possibly produce) than the products they aim to replace (either mass-produced or “organic” meat). — Christoph Päper 20:53, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I recently used Beyond Meat in an exam for my graduate students and did a price check of the products on the Internet. While my sample size was small, the products appear to be significantly more expensive than their meat alternatives. For example, the Beyond Burger was almost $19 per pound. Hamburger is much less expensive. The company does not disclose production figures and was still losing money in 2020 and in 1Q:21. However, that includes all costs except financing the firm. Gross margin was 30.2% in 1Q:21 so the price at wholesale more than covers the production costs but does not cover marketing, overhead, or research & development. You could get an estimate on average cost-to-produce by finding out what the retail mark-up is and backing into the cost of production from figuring out wholesale price/pound (average). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.34.113.165 (talk) 17:58, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Beyond Meat. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140711065115/http://beyondmeat.com/beef-free-crumbles-beefy/ to http://beyondmeat.com/beef-free-crumbles-beefy/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:02, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Recent edit

Preserving here by providing this link; my rationale was: "WP:CATALOG: excessive and promotional detail; aspirational quotes; origins story, etc." --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:12, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Tags still necessary?

The article seems encyclopedic enough. Any specific issues we need to tackle or can I remove the maintenance tags? @K.e.coffman: AdA&D ★ 16:37, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

The page still reads like an advertisement and it still contains paid contributions. --K.e.coffman (talk) 02:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see how this reads like and advertisement, please provide some examples. Maybe there were paid contributors, but let's judge the article on its merits, not who wrote it. AdA&D ★ 15:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

The entire section #Products is a sales brochure. --K.e.coffman (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm obviously too thickheaded to understand what you're getting at... What specifically in that section seems promotional to you? It seems like a pretty straight-forward listing of Beyond Meat's products, what they're made of, and where they're sold. AdA&D ★ 00:50, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree - not sure what's unencyclopedic or promotional about that section. The whole article seems to be relatively balanced between the negative and positive stuff, without much bias. Jokullmusic 17:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't really see why the promotional tag and the COI tag are at the top of this article. I don't see any bare promotion in the article as it stands. Maintenance tags should not remain on articles indefinitely. If someone was paid to edit it in the past, any promotional or non neutral content the taggers have issues with should be removed and the tags deleted. ♟♙ (talk) 14:55, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't think those tags are still necessary either, and per what appears to be the consensus of the people who have commented above, I have removed them. If someone disagrees and thinks they are still necessary, please feel free to restore them, and to comment here as to why you think they are necessary. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:07, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Promotional content Beyond Meat

Hi @174.4.26.61: Your adding extraneous not encyclopaedic content that is promotional in nature. All of that was removed last week and is now being replaced by yourself, almost sentence by sentence. You say your not being paid, so why is the content that your adding reflect almost exactly the promotional content I removed last week? Dont add it back in. scope_creep^Talk 12:29, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Scope creep: Hi, I did not look too close at the history. So did not notice that you were already someone working with the article. All I have added is some criticisms and ingredients included, the interest piqued after having one. I believe you are mistaken with the claim of old content being replaced almost sentence by sentence. I also have rearranged whatever sentences where there to have some sort of coherence. To avoid misinterpretations, I request you to compare the content and the references are only one or two days old so it won't be related to a week before to match exactly with the promotional content's you removed last week. However, I strongly feel the criticisms in the name should be included. 174.4.26.61 (talk) 17:43, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Coolio. I'll check the content I removed against what you added. I'll do it tomorrow on here, line for line. scope_creep^Talk 17:57, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

👍174.4.26.61 (talk) 18:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Content comparison

[[Special:Contributions/174.4.26.61|174.4.26.61] added

ice protein, mung bean protein, coconut oil, and other ingredients like potato starch, apple extract, sunflower lecithin, pomegranate powder, etc. with a range of vitamins and minerals.

The ingredients are mixed and fed into a food extrusion machine that cooks the mixture while forcing it through a specially designed mechanism that uses steam, pressure, and cold water to form the product's chicken-like texture. However, an obesity expert at the University of Ottawa cautions the public to not allow fooling themselves into thinking these are just healthy, while the saturated fat content is be similar to beef burgers and with higher sodium levels.

As of 2014, the company's product offerings consisted of Beyond Chicken and Beyond Beef.

--Adding this content duplicates content already in the article. As wording is almost exactly the same as in the article already, means it is probably come a press release. Duplicated wording is used within Wikipedia as an indicator that the the information comes from that type of sources, and is not e.g coming from a newspaper or book article content.

promoted as vegan - promotional statement.

scope_creep^Talk 11:00, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Vegan and fetal bovine serum

The article often uses "vegan" to describe the products, which would mean that not animal products were used during production. However, as far as I understand most cultured meat is produced using fetal bovine serum, which comes from animals. Reseachers are working on non-animal alternatives, but I was not able to determine if beyond meat has developed any. (My sources: 1234) Is there any reference that goes into more detail than simply claiming it is vegan? If not I propose to remove the word "vegan" from the article until we have a good refernce for the claim.--Snipergang (talk) 16:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

I removed the "vegan" mentions. If there a references that show/explain which beyond meat products are vegan, I am happy to reintroduce the claims.--Snipergang (talk) 18:18, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Beyond Meat doesn't sell cultured meat products, and they are considered vegan by all, including the Vegan Society [1] and Tim Hortons [2]. If there were controversy surrounding the vegan designation, then that would deserve its own section within this article, but I can find no such controversy. RockingGeo (talk) 03:47, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, I actually thought Beyond meat sold cultured meat products.--Snipergang (talk) 06:50, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Why is there no professional ingredient list? Why is there no mention of the controversy surrounding the product? Is the entry written by company owners ???

212.29.206.129 (talk) 08:12, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Violations

Dear User:scope_creep I would like to ask you to assist in Beyond Meat article as the User:Atlantic306 violates the rules and puts COI template because of my minor recent edits in this article. The COI template says: "A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject". However if to look at my edits, it's obvious that I'm not a major contributor. the article has been for years in the mainspace with dozen of wikipedians who edited it. Thanks for the help!. --KressInsel (talk) 10:28, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@KressInsel: Can't remove. There is COI investigation started. scope_creep^Talk 10:36, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Scope creep: does this investigation has some deadline or is there someone who will decide when to remove COI? Just interesting. I'm not familiar with this so good as you are. Thanks! --KressInsel (talk) 11:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

The article is a spam target, so i'm sure somebody is looking at it. scope_creep^Talk 11:25, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Would it be worth talking about the Nutritional Value of beyond meat products?

It seems a comparison of the bioavailability of the proteins in beyond meat (eg, pea & soy protein) vs that of animal protein is a relevant addition to this article. It appears that animal proteins can have multiple times higher protein bioavailability than that of plant derived proteins. Understanding this would allow the reader to have a better classification of the beyond meat product, as opposed to a low resolution “meat analog”. Desync-o-tron (talk) 16:06, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems impossible to specify and source reliably for the mixed types and amounts of plant protein and nutrients used across products, which would all be formulated differently. Not likely a secret the manufacturer will reveal to competitors or the public. The Beyond Meat ingredients site remains vague - purposely, I believe. Zefr (talk) 16:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 June 2020

Please change 270 kilocalories to 270 calories Kash ok (talk) 02:43, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. --allthefoxes ^(Talk) 03:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done @Allthefoxes: Actually, I've checked the source provided at the end of the sentence, and it does use calorie (in the meaning as at that article), so I have implemented the change. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:27, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the sharp eyes!--allthefoxes ^(Talk) 04:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Environmental impacts

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/02/beyond-meat-uses-climate-change-to-market-fake-meat-substitutes-scientists-are-cautious.html has some info that should probably be included e.g. comparisons with chicken and bean burgers. Mainly just saving it here for now as I'm on my phone. SmartSE (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)