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Not everyone is convinced that plant-based burgers are healthy. I was talking about Beyond Burger the other day and someone started talking about all the chemicals.
If you were to list the chemical composition of organic Kobe beef, it would be a very long list of really long, complex words that most of us can’t pronounce. All the amino acids, all the different lactic acids, all the components that make up a muscle part stay together in an animal’s body. We just don’t have the luxury of saying “plant-based beef”. So we have to list our ingredients. But if you mess up the chemistry, ours has no more ingredients than there is in real muscle.
We have a very large, established industry that knows this is a big deal for us. There was a full-page ad in The New York Times that took all the products in the category and listed the most disgusting ingredients and said, “Plant-based meat has this in it.” So it’s ginning. Competitive interests are getting a lot of attention around this issue.
Is the meat industry out to get you?
No. Tyson has been part of our company for a while. It’s a $1.4 trillion industry and I think they’re doing pretty well right now. If you look at our sales this year, they’re good, but they’re very small compared to the meat industry. So I think there are pockets that are kind of antagonistic but not as a whole.
How is Beyond Meat different from Impossible Foods?
It comes down to material choices. I believe that everything you need to make a perfect piece of meat from plants is already in nature and you have to search long enough to find it. Impossible takes a different approach. They genetically alter the content. And we will not do that.
How do you reconcile all your fast-food partnerships with your emphasis on health?
I love these customers and I think it’s about making incremental earnings. If it’s fried, it’s obviously fried. But if you look at the key features of the product – cholesterol levels, saturated fat levels – do you see a gain? And in many cases you are. This is progress.
An uncomfortable alliance for you though?
I value these relationships. I think there’s a changing of the guard happening in most of these companies, and these are people who really want to offer healthier products and bring the consumer along. There is a genuine desire to continue improving the health profile of their menu. I think it’s sincere.
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