And the good old (not very tasty, I admit) cheap plant-burgers are being totally replaced by the delicious & expensive & very well-marketed “fake meat burgers” everywhere.
The last calculation I did indicated that the old plant-based burgers were lower price per mass, but actually higher price per calorie than the new ones. And the price for the new ones is falling rapidly.
I didn’t know that. On the one hand, that’s great: it implies something like, if you’re trying to feed your family, you’d be better off buying one fake-meat burger instead of six of the old ones.
But actually calories are pretty cheap—if you’re optimizing for that, you can just fry things in oil / fat, or buy more carbs, right? Maybe protein mass would be a better proxy for nutritional value in this case. That’s the food insecurity issue I’m currently worried about.
Plus, I’m not sure if optimizing for calories should be a concern when we think about replacing animal products in affluent societies—even when it comes to mildly poor people (who often replace their diet with cheaper but less healthy products). Actually, one of the usual reasons people offer for reducing or eliminating animal products is the corresponding decrease in kcal consumption—and I often avoid fake-meat burgers precisely because they’re too fatty (but I guess that’s the price of satisfaction).
… Or perhaps I just miss my old skinny hard dry soy burger :(
The last calculation I did indicated that the old plant-based burgers were lower price per mass, but actually higher price per calorie than the new ones. And the price for the new ones is falling rapidly.
I didn’t know that. On the one hand, that’s great: it implies something like, if you’re trying to feed your family, you’d be better off buying one fake-meat burger instead of six of the old ones.
But actually calories are pretty cheap—if you’re optimizing for that, you can just fry things in oil / fat, or buy more carbs, right? Maybe protein mass would be a better proxy for nutritional value in this case. That’s the food insecurity issue I’m currently worried about.
Plus, I’m not sure if optimizing for calories should be a concern when we think about replacing animal products in affluent societies—even when it comes to mildly poor people (who often replace their diet with cheaper but less healthy products). Actually, one of the usual reasons people offer for reducing or eliminating animal products is the corresponding decrease in kcal consumption—and I often avoid fake-meat burgers precisely because they’re too fatty (but I guess that’s the price of satisfaction).
… Or perhaps I just miss my old skinny hard dry soy burger :(