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Welcome to Delicious or Distressing, where we rate recent food memes, videos, and other entertainment news. Last week we discussed Trader Joe’s hot new mini totes. Lauren Sánchez, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée, announced Tuesday that the fund would commit $60 million to establish Bezos Centers for Sustainable Protein. These centers plan to research and create new fake meats that ostensibly taste better, are better for us, and cost less to manufacture. The commitment is part of the $10 billion pledge that Bezos made in 2020 through the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate...

Beef burgers are back on the menu as demand for vegan food plunges.Veganism is being edged out and meat is back on the menu with the latest craze among foodies being ‘smashed burgers’, new data suggests.Plant-based brand Beyond Meat last week revealed its revenue had dropped by 9 per cent as demand for its animal alternatives stalled.

“Italy is the first nation to say no to synthetic food, to so-called ‘synthetic meat’. It does so with a formal and official act,” Health Minister Orazio Schillaci announced. “The resolution calls for a commitment to ban the production, marketing, and import of synthetic foods within our territory. “These regulations aim to regulate situations where the environmental public health could be at risk, or when there is uncertainty regarding the effects of certain products that are being or will be introduced to the market or consumed,” Schillaci continued. “It is crucial to have measures in place to address these potential...

Plant-based meat substitute maker Beyond Meat said its revenue plunged 30.5% in the second quarter as consumer demand for its burgers, sausages and other products fell despite price cuts. The El Segundo, California-based company lowered its full-year revenue forecast as a result. Beyond Meat now expects revenue between $360 million and $380 million for the year. That’s down from the $375 million to $415 million it forecast at the end of the first quarter. Beyond Meat’s shares fell 10% in after-hours trading Monday. In a conference call with investors, Beyond Meat President and CEO Ethan Brown said the company faced...

Shares of meat alternatives soared when Beyond Meat, the California-based producer that's come to epitomize the sector, went public four years ago, but a fall in stock prices suggests that venture capital investments may have gotten ahead of market realities. These types of investment cycles are not new to the agricultural and food markets, but meat alternatives have been widely covered in the media because they are part of the larger conversation about climate change and food insecurity. But existing meat substitutes are not as affordable as real meat and not similar enough in taste. And they have not been...

Most cultured meat companies still use fetal bovine serum as the growth medium, which is obtained from unborn calves that are cut out of the womb and drained of their blood while still alive.Story at a glance:• While the fake meat industry is being touted as an environmentally friendly and sustainable way to feed the world, the true intent is to recreate the kind of global control that Monsanto and others achieved through patented GMO (genetically modified organism) seed development. • Researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) warn there are major environmental downsides to lab-grown meat....

Lab-grown meat, touted as the “cruelty-free” food of the future by everyone from the World Economic Forum to Hollywood mega-celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio, may have a fatal problem, according to a new Bloomberg story. The problem is that the materials used to make the product – “immortalized cell lines” – replicate forever, just like cancer. Which means, in effect, that they are cancer. Although these cell lines are widely used in scientific research, they’ve never been used to produce food before. Industry types are “confident” that eating such products poses no risk – although there isn’t any hard data –...

PARIS — Beetleburgers could soon be helping to feed the world, according to new research. The creepy crawlers’ larvae — better known as mealworms — could act as a meat alternative to alleviate hunger worldwide. The process uses a fraction of the land and water and emits a smaller carbon footprint in comparison of traditional farming. To make this a reality, French biotech company Ynsect is planning a global network of insect farms, including nurseries and slaughterhouses. A pilot plant has already been been set up at Dole in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region of France. Unlike the livestock industry, where rearing...

3D-Printed Vegan Meat is Going to Conquer the Competition Ahsan Raza / 05 Jan 2023 / Tech 3D-Printed Vegan Meat If you were to have asked someone back in 2012, what market would have an estimated value of close to U.S. $8 billion in 2022? No one would have guessed that value would be placed on plant-based meat! But according to Business Wire, the global plant-based meat market is today worth a whopping U.S. $7.9 billion and is projected to hit U.S. $15.7 billion by 2027. Like any gold rush, there will be winners and losers in the struggle to...

Scientists have come up with an amazing new plant-based meat product that tastes exactly like the real thing! Our on-site reporter gets the scoop on exactly how they produce this incredible product.

...Its stock has slumped nearly 83% in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33% this year, are now likely to show only minor growth.... In late October, the company said it was laying off 200 people, or 19% of its workforce. And four top executives have departed in recent months, including the chief financial officer, the chief supply chain officer and the chief operating officer, whom Beyond Meat had suspended after his arrest on allegations that he bit another man’s nose in a parking garage altercation. What investors and others are debating...

This week, Bloomberg surfaced photos from Beyond Meat’s Pennsylvania plant allegedly showing evidence of mold, listeria, and other food safety issues. Products from the plant tested positive for listeria 11 times between the second half of last year and the first half of this year, according to Bloomberg, and internal reports from the company reveal that substances such as wood, metal, and plastic have been found in food from the plant. ("The most recent Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture inspections of the facility (in March and September 2022) found no instances of nonconformance with regulations, and we remain in good standing...

TEL AVIV/ZURICH - Israel's Redefine Meat has struck a partnership with importer Giraudi Meats to drive European distribution of its "New Meat" steak cuts produced on 3D printers, it said on Thursday. Early hype about plant-based meat alternatives, seen as better for animals and the environment, has ebbed as inflation and recession worries make some consumers return to cheaper animal meat products, while staffing shortages have hit fast-food chains, an important sales channel for plant-based burger patties. Redefine Meat, which makes its products from ingredients including soy and pea proteins, chickpeas, beetroot, nutritional yeasts and coconut fat, has ambitious plans....

McDonald’s McPlant experiment reveals how fake meat at fast food restaurants is, as a whole, a grift.It was early 2022 and the world’s most profitable burger chain was finally rolling out a patty made of vegetables in hundreds of its stores. The pea, rice, and potato mixture mimicked the flavor and texture of its beefy brethren. Chains like Burger King and White Castle had done it before, but McDonald’s was the biggest. The McPlant was yet another mass-produced fake-meat burger lionized as a savior to the impending climate disaster—and, of course, an offering that could potentially lure more customers to...

Beyond Meat’s sales have fizzled rather than sizzled after fast-food trials of its product had customers asking, “Where’s the beef?” McDonald’s is the latest fast-food giant to complete a trial of a Beyond Meat plant-based product (the McPlant burger). JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Ken Goldman released a market research note that indicated the product was being broadly discontinued in the U.S. last Thursday. The two companies signed a three-year global distribution deal in 2021. Mr. Goldman, who spoke with employees at 25 McDonald’s locations, wrote that “Not surprisingly, the reason sometimes being cited is that the product did not...

he National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 authorizes taxpayer funds for the U.S. Department of Defense to research and develop plant-based proteins for members of the military. The congressional legislation, H.R. 7900, establishes a “Pilot Program on Research and Development of Plant-based Protein for the Navy.” The bill stipulates that by March 1st, 2023, the Secretary of the Navy “shall establish and carry out a pilot program to offer plant-based protein options at forward operating bases for consumption by members of the Navy.” Plant-based protein options are defined as “edible vegan or vegetarian meat alternative products made using...

Swapping animal products for future foods such as insect protein or cultured milk could reduce global warming, water and land use by over 80 per cent, a new study suggests. Researchers used computer modelling to find the optimal diet combination to meet nutritional needs, while also minimising global warming potential, water and land use. They found that if people in Europe replaced meat and dairy with foods produced through new technologies, such as making fake steak out of bovine cells, it could significantly reduce all environmental impacts. Not only that, but it would be nutritionally adequate and meet the constraints...

Food producers are encouraging climate-conscious consumers to make the switch from plant-based alternatives to lab-grown exotic meats in a bid to preserve the planet. ‘Cultivated’ lion burgers, tiger steaks and zebra sushi rolls are among the products being pitched by a food-tech startup, that it hopes will eventually be made widely available for purchase. Once the products have passed regulatory approvals, Primeval Foods said Michelin-starred restaurants in London will be among the first to sample its dishes, with further plans to expand on a larger scale, even to local supermarkets. Cultivated meat is a production method that allows companies to...

April 01, 2022 > As part of "The Great Reset a recent decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will ban real meat and is slated to take effect April 1, 2024. > The FDA, the same group of government apparachiks that brought us that blockbuster series known as the PLANDEMIC, has manufactured a belief that beef production is a major factor of a manufactured crisis known as CLIMATE CHANGE. > University researchers believe measurements of methane composition comprise a statistically significant fraction in the form of bovine fartroxide. > Headed by acolytes of that government wunderkind known as...

KFC is the latest fast-food giant to claim that “plant-based” chicken can taste as good as the real thing — but the chain picked the wrong faux fowl to make its case. The chain’s supposedly long-awaited Beyond Nuggets (six for $7.99) are beyond awful — worse than KFC’s near-flavorless real-meat chicken tenders. The fake chicken from within KFC’s new offerings come from Beyond Meat, a rival to Impossible Foods, which created the famous Impossible Burger. The idea behind offering artificial chicken at KFC is to “democratize plant-based protein,” according to Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown.