Plan(e)t meat
Building on the slump in sales of Beyond Meat's plant-based non-meat products, Jemma Dempsey asks whether fake meat has passed its best before date.
She starts off with a dentist who questions a plant-based burger oozing red liquid which is meant to be blood
, and clarifies that he's referring to the beetroot juice used in Beyond Burgers to mimic blood
. Would it be pedantic to note that the blood
in meat is not blood—actually haemoglobin—but myoglobin, a component of muscle? Thought so. I guess dentists, much less journalists
, have no need for familiarity with this biology shit.
One vegan sausage producer, Jamie Keeble of Heck Food Ltd, observed that customers still wanted something that reminds them of meat
. Which seems like a strange desire for anyone eschewing meat, but here you go meat-missers: it's called meat. Fortunately for the company, Heck has a foot in both camps and its main product lines are based on meat meat, not plant meat
.
As Elizabeth Holmes is coming to appreciate, it pays to have a plan B.
For completely unfathomable reasons, the headline's been changed to Fake meat: As Beyond Meat sales fall, have we had our fill? I have no idea why; it's not as if it makes any real difference, or that the world's most trusted international news broadcaster
™ explains any of these editorial shenanigans.
Let's chalk it up to editors doing editing. (shrug)