![]() "If you look at movies like Game Changers, etc.," he told Bloomberg Television in 2019, "you can affect even individual day performance, from a student-athlete, for example, through the consumption of our products over animal protein." He said Beyond's own athlete ambassadors, including NBA stars Kyrie Irving and Chris Paul-also investors in the startup-were "adopting our products in their training regimes, and they're seeing great results."Ĭhris PaulPhotographer: Christian Petersen/Getty Images The Game Changers followed world-class vegan athletes, with cameos by doctors, scientists and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, before he became mostly vegan, once told Sylvester Stallone that he "hit like a vegetarian." Veganism, according to the film, would make a person not only healthier but also stronger, with better endurance and even longer, harder erections.Įthan added the film to his arsenal. ![]() (Whenever asked, Pat defended the health cred of Impossible's product against beef, though he preferred to talk about replacing animal agriculture by 2035.) But nothing preached the virtues of plant-based eating to the masses like The Game Changers, a James Cameron-produced documentary that hit Netflix in 2019. When Ethan introduced the frozen patty in 2015, the company called it a "protein shake on a bun." Although he ended up ditching it, the Beast's health claims, such as high levels of protein and zero gluten or soy, remained front and center on Beyond Burger's packaging. "The opportunity for this category," he says now, "is more murky."īefore Beyond Meat unveiled the Beyond Burger, there was the Beast. But when you lose that momentum, you lose your certainty around how big plant-based meats can be," says Thomas George, portfolio manager at investment research company Grizzle, who in 2019 predicted plant-based meat could overtake 10% of the meat industry in 10 years if it could match meat's prices. "Before we were seeing this incredible growth rate. Meatless meat, it turns out, seems less a world-changing innovation than another food trend whose novelty is wearing thin. Were they eating these burgers to curb carbon emissions or lower their blood pressure? Was it a healthier alternative or a sodium-filled, overprocessed substitute? Plant meat still costs more than the real thing, and with inflation pushing up prices across the supermarket, many grocery shoppers have swapped the expensive imitation for chicken or, in some cases, beans and lentils. Many meat eaters initially excited by fake meat, who didn't mind the not-quite-there taste or texture, eventually took a closer look at the ingredient list and couldn't figure out whether they were actually trading up. Like fat-free Snackwell's cookies or Lay's olestra-laden WOW Chips-or any other glut-without-the-guilt food trend that periodically cycles in and out of the zeitgeist-the incremental benefits are eventually offset by concerns over what else might be in there. Whatever critiques the meat industry is lobbing are the same ones plenty of consumers are figuring out for themselves. "This," he said, "is something that I feel is inevitable." Just like technology had rendered the horse-drawn carriage obsolete, he told the crowd at the New York Times' climate conference this past fall, so, too, would his system of breaking down plants transform the protein at the center of the plate. At Toronto's annual Ideacity gathering three years later, he said his goal was to replicate the "blueprint of meat." By the time he appeared at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Builders & Innovators Summit 2019, he explained that his mission demanded the urgency and scale the US mustered for World War II and that his products would simultaneously help solve heart disease, diabetes, cancer, climate change, natural resource depletion and animal welfare. In 2013 he took the stage at the Wired Business conference, explaining that the world had a very real greenhouse gas-emitting meat problem and that venture capitalists could make a bigger impact investing in fake meat than in solar energy. Ever since founding Beyond Meat Inc. in 2009 with the then fantastical idea of making meat without animals, Ethan Brown has been giving the equivalent of one extremely long TED Talk.
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