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Comment by Xcelerate | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think most people will have a problem switching to plant based burgers as long as they taste good, but I think that’s still the sticking point at the moment. I’ve had an Impossible burger a few times and could always taste a strong difference (I even did a few blind taste tests). I don’t think it’s close to actual meat yet. Supposedly the second version of the burger has improved; I haven’t tried it yet.

Cheap meat, like ground beef, will be replaced first, but I think it will be much more difficult to replace specialty meats: Iberian ham or Wagyu for instance. Good luck making something plant-based that tastes like that (not saying it can’t be done though).

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I think the second version of the Impossible meat is pretty good and tastewise is a decent substitute. I've had it as a burger and also in a burrito (Qdoba has the impossible meat now). For the burger you can still tell a difference but I don't think if you handed me two burritos, one with ground beef and one with Impossible meat, I would be able to tell a difference.

I think the next sticking point will be price. Impossible burgers still cost more at the moment. But if the price of Impossible burgers comes down or if the price of beef goes up I think you would see a change from a novelty item to a true alternative.

Even with Wagyu and Kobe, the whole cow isn't getting turned into premium cuts of meat. Burger and sausage are going to be a byproduct of the parts that aren't high margin proportional to the demand for the rest of it. Kind of like how eggs are so cheap because they are a natural byproduct of the chicken meat industry and the insatiable American lust for all white meat breast. I wouldn't be surprised to see an effective advertising campaign to make burger et al more "premium" as plant based substitutes take off and the price go up as a result of that. Kind of how Angus cows got to be big in the first place.

"Kind of like how eggs are so cheap because they are a natural byproduct of the chicken meat industry [...]"

That has nothing to do with why eggs are cheap. Completely separate breeds are raised for eggs vs meat. The birds used for meat are killed at only 6-7 weeks typically. They never rarely if ever lay a single egg. Eggs are cheap because layer hens have been bred to produce several times their natural number off eggs combined with other practices like forced molting that increase production. And those hens are killed after a couple of years to be used for cheap meat. You have the subsidizing relationship backwards.

Egg-laying hens and chicken breast hens are usually different breeds, each bred to maximize egg laying capacity and breast size respectively.

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