Plant-Based Mince Now 29% Cheaper Than Beef at Tesco as Meat Prices Climb
2026-04-30 19:56 UTC
Replies (32)
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@StarvingMartist@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-30 20:14
Honestly as long as it doesn’t taste weird or have a strange texture I don’t mind plant based meats
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@Olap@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 20:19
Quorn bolognese for me this week then!
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@saltnotsugar@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 20:29
After the various price hikes stuff like Chinese takeout food just stopped making sense for me. Now I just use plant based “nuggets” and use a sweet-and-sour sauce. A lot cheaper and tastes better.
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@ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 2026-04-30 20:40
Instead of trying to switch over to highly processed vegan product that tries to emulate beef or chicken using tons of additives and scientifically engineered flavours and textures … why not just start eating actual wholesome vegetables and legumes with high protein content like lentils or beans. If the cost of meat products is starting to match the cost of expensive meat substitutes … it probably matches the cost of just eating expensive raw vegetables and beans too. Humans have been eating high protein vegetables for centuries and it is way more healthier for you than whatever factory produced vegetable mash.
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@Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 2026-04-30 20:46
When the reverse was true it really rubbed me the wrong way. Soybeans are dirt cheap and soybean meal (the defatted version) even more so. On agricultural markets soybean meal is around 300-400 dollars per metric ton. That means it’s traded for less than a dollar per kg. Yet soy based vegan products were for years more expensive than the meat alternative, and lots of these animals would have eaten more than 1kg of soy containing feed to produce each kg of meat. It makes no sense to me. Yes processing the soy meal into a tasty meat alternative is not cheap, obviously, but are you telling me the soy meal to meat conversion is cheaper than the soy meal to faux meat conversion? Really put me off from vegan products. Same is true for things like oat milk. Oats in bulk cost pretty much nothing yet they managed to sell it for more than cow milk. What am I paying for? Marketing? Corporate profits? And don’t bring up the whole “animal proteins are subsidized” bit. I don’t know about the US but in the EU the subsidies are based on agricultural area. 1 hectare of soy plantation gets the same amount of subsidies as 1 hectare of any other animal feed crop. That’s not the explanation. I see this as a huge improvement and if plant based products are to really take off they have to be an affordable alternative even to the non vegan.
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@yenahmik@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 21:46
Unfortunately, I’m allergic to nickel and most vegetarian protein sources give me issues. I don’t eat beef very often anyways, but as someone who was a lite-vegetarian for a while, it bums me out that I had to change my diet to eat more meat/animal products.
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@CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 22:00
The beyond burgers I just bougjt are still 15% more expensive than premium chicken or beef burgers. I’m still waiting for the alternative I was promised.
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@vatlark@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 22:10
I like that as the meat industry pushed to prevent plant based food from using certain meat words like “sausage” and “burger” there will always be other slightly less common words, like “mince” and “hash”
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@grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2026-04-30 22:17
I’ve been using another “veggie Ground Round” product for ages and ages, or just shredding up and seasoning tofu or other veg protein myself. Always curious to try some new alt, though. :9
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@drsilverworm@midwest.social 2026-04-30 22:46
This is the way… if it takes so many thousands of gallons more water to make real beef, then why should it be cheaper. And if plant based meat is significantly cheaper, and tastes at least almost as good, I’ll want to go for it just for budget reasons.
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@thal3s@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-30 22:57
In the states, you can buy 4 big blocks of tofu for next to nothing at Costco. It’s super easy to make (throw some soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice vinegar on small pieces in the toaster oven) and delicious.
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@FrowingFostek@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 00:38
Fine, I’ll try it if I see it on the shelf.
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@caboose2006@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 00:39
And here in the US it seems the prices are going up to keep pace with beef prices. I’d love to have plant based be cheeper. As it is rn I basically never eat meat. Both are too expensive
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@nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 02:23
I like cheap and accessible plant-based alternatives. But this doesn’t really sound like that. It’s much closer to “now the poor people have to eat weeds lol”
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@kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 03:25
Genuinely I might end up going vegan for mostly financial reasons
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@Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 03:35
Omg we need this in Argentina
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@jtrek@startrek.website 2026-04-30 22:05
I don't have an emotional attachment to meat. I'd like non-meat stuff to be cheaper, and the real costs of meat to be accounted for.
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@veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 2026-05-01 11:14
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@But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 11:30
lol fucking where??? Im in a major city in Canada and a lb of beyond or impossible is like $10. An impossible whopper has come down in price but it’s still more expensive than a regular,m. Thats always been the issue with plant based beef, even though it’s made of soy, it costs me double what beef does, so I don’t blame poor people avoiding it
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@HubertManne@piefed.social 2026-04-30 21:45
Problem is beef got to expensive to eat anyway. Made it way easier to cut out of the diet. I need this as cheap as chicken and pork.
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@melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2026-05-01 12:24
A plant should have been way cheaper than meat to begin with. Who do they think they’re fooling?
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@echodot@feddit.uk 2026-05-01 12:28
It’s always been cheaper than the actual meat. It’d be weird if it wasn’t.
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@krull_krull@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 13:18
Ew, plant based meat If you want to go vegan/vegetarian just do yourself a favor and learn how to cook vegetables South asia and southeast asia have a lot of really good vegetarian recipes Certainly better than these “meat” at least
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@texture@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 13:30
only 29% more expensive is still criminally cheap for meat prices. meat and dairy subsidies have made a western world where i typically need to pay the same or more for a vegggie burger than a meat one. 29% should be more like 70%.
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@Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 2026-05-01 12:23
When Beyond Beef switched from v2 to the v3 (w/ avocado oil), my wife and I tried it and were like, “THERE IT IS! They finally fucked up a good thing, as predicted…” But after eating v3 for several months and look lucking my way back into a box of v2 at Costco, I can firmly say that v2 was kind of shit. You just have to season your Beyond Burgers now, is all. You didn’t have to before. At least we never did.
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@zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 14:07
I predicted this a few years ago while at the same time saying “I hope I am being a pessimist”. I really didn’t want this to be how plant based meat alternatives became more popular.
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@brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 14:40
Briefly, Beyond Burger burger patties were cheaper in a (U.S.) Costco than the equivalent Morton’s patties. It got me to try their v3 forumula… and its actually really good. You have to grill the snot out of it, but it’s good.
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@Blackmist@feddit.uk 2026-05-01 15:47
I think Quorn has been cheaper than meat for ages. But then it doesn’t taste as good, so I stopped buying it years ago. The Beyond stuff is way more than beef costs. £4 for 250g vs £2.69 for the same amount of meat. And that’s the 5% fat beef as well. The bolognese sauce costs me more than the meat in any case, not to mention the gargantuan amount of cheese we put on lasagne.
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@Kirk@startrek.website 2026-04-30 21:17
"Beyond" products taste good, and they're meat-like but don't really taste like anything that currently exists, whereas everything I've tried from Impossible is pretty much indistinguishable from meat, it's actually kind of wild. I'm not even vegetarian (one day) but I was able to cut out red meat entirely thanks to these brands.
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@sunbeam60@feddit.uk 2026-05-01 20:14
What’s the carbon footprint of BM? I remember being told it was very high, but hard to find numbers.
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@ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 2026-05-01 21:49
I mean beyond meat production process is famously industrial and complex; there’s even South Park episode on it where Cartman agrees to eat it because it’s the same unhealthy factory made slop that he’s used to. Now, for the beyond meat oil use. They apparently dropped refined coconut and canola oil in favour of avocado oil. And oh boy, avocado oil production is almost as bad as if Nestle owned all of it, but at least it should be healthier than coconut/canola mix, right? And then most avocado oil is fraudulent soybean/sunflower/other mixes. And then there’s also avocado oil deforestation/water use etc. My points are: Beyond Meat is slop; let’s not switch processed cold cuts for a sludge. you’re better off (health-wise and climate wise) making different bean patties (chop 'em, freeze 'em, shape 'em, cook 'em) and lowering your red meat intake than switching to beyond meat.
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@Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 21:55
I thought the MAGA clowns were going to import Argentinian beef to lower the prices in the USA? Oh the fuck well. Zero sympathy, you voted for the BS.