Beyond Meat is Building Burgers, Sausage from Plants

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Behind the scenes at Beyond Meat. What's going on. I'm
rich Demiro. This is rich on Tech. Beyond Meat is
a company that's recreating favorites like burgers and sausage, but
from plants. The company sells their products at whole foods
and other grocery stores, but they're often sold out because
of demand. They just opened up a brand new twenty
six thousand square foot research and development facility just south

(00:27):
of Los Angeles International Airport. Recently, I got to take
a tour and do a taste test of some of
their items, including a brand new one, a breakfast patty.
I had it in a sandwich that was basically a
vegetarian sausage McMuffin. The breakfast patty has double the protein
of pork sausage, lower fat, and no cholesterol, and it
was amazing. I would gladly eat this on a regular basis.

(00:50):
It's actually made from pea protein, mung beans, rice, and sunflower.
You'll be able to find that soon, hopefully through a
drive through. I talked to Beyond Meats founder and seat
Ethan Brown, and I asked him, why is doing all this?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
So I looked at I think an important question, which
was do you need animals to reduce a piece of meat?
And after learning a lot about what meat is, I
came to inclusion you really don't. And this effort here
at the Matta Beats Project is a now ten year
effort to try to prove that you can build a
piece of meat directly from plants. And if you think
about that, what the animal's doing is they're consuming a

(01:23):
large amount of vegetative matter. They're using a digestive system,
they're using their skeletal muscular system to then produce what
we call meat in the form of muscle. And what
we're doing is taking the same material plant material, and
we're taking the amino acids from it, our protein, the
lipids or the fat, we're taking trace minerals, and then
we're taking a lot of water, because meats a lot
of water, sixty to seventy five percent water, sixty to

(01:44):
seventy percent water, and we're combining those in the architecture
of meat. And we're doing that through a system of heating, cooling,
and pressure that restitches the protein into the form of
muscle or meat, and so we essentially bypassed the animal.
The consumer is getting really clean protein directly from plants
in the same emily an experience that they would if
it came from an animal.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
The new facility is all about coming up with new
products and perfecting their existing products. We saw engineers, scientists
and food technologists all working with various machines like an
electronic nose, a texture analyzer that sees how you chomp
down on a burger, and we saw the way they
make natural coloring from plants like beats.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
I think the general concepts, you know, sounds easy, but
when you start to try to match molecules and you
try to deliver the sensory experience of animal protein using
all plants, it becomes more difficult. And so an example
of that is there are thousands of molecules that make
meat tastes like meat, So we have to find what
those molecules are, and then we have to find analogous

(02:45):
where the same ones in plants and match them and
then try to get them to perform the same way
that they overform underheating on a stove, and you know,
as they cool down, have them look the same in
terms of transition in the appearance. So you know, it
gets more and more complex. Did you get closer and
closer to the animal protein equivalent that you're trying to
build directly from plants.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
While Brown himself is a vegan, he does not denounce meat.
He sees beyond me as offering an alternative to what's
already out there, something that even meat eaters like myself
would want to eat.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
The only thing that I know is that you know,
throughout human history and even before human history, when we
were evolving about two and a half million years ago,
we made a decision that we're going to become more
rather than less carnivorous, and that's become part of who
we are. You know, the animal protein consumption is a
big part of our tradition, our religion, our own cultural experience.
And so to advocate that people don't eat meat, I

(03:39):
think is a really bad idea. I think to present
a new form of meat that provides all the upside
of meat in terms of the protein, the satiating experience,
but it's simply made for plants is the right idea.
The analogy I use most frequently is to think about
this like the mobile phone to the landline. No one's
out there defending the landline people, just like the new

(03:59):
mobile phone, and we have to create products for so
compelling that people are drawn to ours and not necessarily
even debating it.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
One thing to know about beyond me. They're doing all
this science, but this is not frankin food.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
They have to use all natural ingredients. They can't use
genetic modification, which by the way, they would love to
use to make things easier. Sure, but we believe that
we need to really respectful that. You know, Mom's going
to be feeding us through our kids. I feed it
to my own children. So we need to understand everything
that's in there. We need a consumer we they'll understand
it and feel very comfortable. So we use ingredients that

(04:31):
people are very familiar with. You know, our protein right
now comes from peas, it comes from sunflower seeds, It
comes from recognizable sources. Same with our fats, and so
you have to be careful. You can apply cutting edge
science to this, but you have to remember that at
the end of the day, food is very intimate and
people want to eat things that are familiar to them.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
So back to my taste test, I tried some brought
worse that could fool anyone at a backyard picnic. It
even had the same texture and snap as the real thing.
The burger was good, but I could tell it wasn't
the real thing, But I do want to try this
one again. It had a bit of a smokier note
than your typical burger. Plus I ate it at the
end when I was really full. The breakfast patty, like
I said earlier, was the first thing I ate, and

(05:13):
there's no other way to describe it except delicious. I
really want to be able to get that through a
drive through so I can eat it on a regular basis.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
So I set a goal for myself, which is now
I'm running out of time on so I got to
hurry up what I said by the time my kids
can drive, and I set this goal years ago that
they'd be able to go to a McDonald's or a
Wendy's or a Burger King or any major of fast
food place and be able to get a Beyondburger or
it's you know whatever we're calling it at the time,

(05:41):
and it wouldn't be an event. It'd be like, you know,
someone who orders a fish file at someone was a
Byonburger and it's kind of just normal. So they're thirteen
and fourteen now, so I got a couple more years.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
One thing I tried it Beyond Meat that I wish
they would sell was this vegan cheesecake they had. It
was unbelievable, but they told me it was just a
test kitchen item because they have a really good chef there.
But they have no plans to bring it to market.
But I think they should make a decision to do
some beyond meat desserts. Thanks so much for listening. If
you want to see my TV segment on Beyond Meat,
just go to my website. It's richon tech dot TV.

(06:13):
I'm Richdemiro. I'll talk to you real soon.

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