Speaker 1: Behind the scenes at Beyond Meat. What's going on. I'm
Speaker 1: rich Demiro. This is rich on Tech. Beyond Meat is
Speaker 1: a company that's recreating favorites like burgers and sausage, but
Speaker 1: from plants. The company sells their products at whole foods
Speaker 1: and other grocery stores, but they're often sold out because
Speaker 1: of demand. They just opened up a brand new twenty
Speaker 1: six thousand square foot research and development facility just south
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles International Airport. Recently, I got to take
Speaker 1: a tour and do a taste test of some of
Speaker 1: their items, including a brand new one, a breakfast patty.
Speaker 1: I had it in a sandwich that was basically a
Speaker 1: vegetarian sausage McMuffin. The breakfast patty has double the protein
Speaker 1: of pork sausage, lower fat, and no cholesterol, and it
Speaker 1: was amazing. I would gladly eat this on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: It's actually made from pea protein, mung beans, rice, and sunflower.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to find that soon, hopefully through a
Speaker 1: drive through. I talked to Beyond Meats founder and seat
Speaker 1: Ethan Brown, and I asked him, why is doing all this?
Speaker 2: So I looked at I think an important question, which
Speaker 2: was do you need animals to reduce a piece of meat?
Speaker 2: And after learning a lot about what meat is, I
Speaker 2: came to inclusion you really don't. And this effort here
Speaker 2: at the Matta Beats Project is a now ten year
Speaker 2: effort to try to prove that you can build a
Speaker 2: piece of meat directly from plants. And if you think
Speaker 2: about that, what the animal's doing is they're consuming a
Speaker 2: large amount of vegetative matter. They're using a digestive system,
Speaker 2: they're using their skeletal muscular system to then produce what
Speaker 2: we call meat in the form of muscle. And what
Speaker 2: we're doing is taking the same material plant material, and
Speaker 2: we're taking the amino acids from it, our protein, the
Speaker 2: lipids or the fat, we're taking trace minerals, and then
Speaker 2: we're taking a lot of water, because meats a lot
Speaker 2: of water, sixty to seventy five percent water, sixty to
Speaker 2: seventy percent water, and we're combining those in the architecture
Speaker 2: of meat. And we're doing that through a system of heating, cooling,
Speaker 2: and pressure that restitches the protein into the form of
Speaker 2: muscle or meat, and so we essentially bypassed the animal.
Speaker 2: The consumer is getting really clean protein directly from plants
Speaker 2: in the same emily an experience that they would if
Speaker 2: it came from an animal.
Speaker 1: The new facility is all about coming up with new
Speaker 1: products and perfecting their existing products. We saw engineers, scientists
Speaker 1: and food technologists all working with various machines like an
Speaker 1: electronic nose, a texture analyzer that sees how you chomp
Speaker 1: down on a burger, and we saw the way they
Speaker 1: make natural coloring from plants like beats.
Speaker 2: I think the general concepts, you know, sounds easy, but
Speaker 2: when you start to try to match molecules and you
Speaker 2: try to deliver the sensory experience of animal protein using
Speaker 2: all plants, it becomes more difficult. And so an example
Speaker 2: of that is there are thousands of molecules that make
Speaker 2: meat tastes like meat, So we have to find what
Speaker 2: those molecules are, and then we have to find analogous
Speaker 2: where the same ones in plants and match them and
Speaker 2: then try to get them to perform the same way
Speaker 2: that they overform underheating on a stove, and you know,
Speaker 2: as they cool down, have them look the same in
Speaker 2: terms of transition in the appearance. So you know, it
Speaker 2: gets more and more complex. Did you get closer and
Speaker 2: closer to the animal protein equivalent that you're trying to
Speaker 2: build directly from plants.
Speaker 1: While Brown himself is a vegan, he does not denounce meat.
Speaker 1: He sees beyond me as offering an alternative to what's
Speaker 1: already out there, something that even meat eaters like myself
Speaker 1: would want to eat.
Speaker 2: The only thing that I know is that you know,
Speaker 2: throughout human history and even before human history, when we
Speaker 2: were evolving about two and a half million years ago,
Speaker 2: we made a decision that we're going to become more
Speaker 2: rather than less carnivorous, and that's become part of who
Speaker 2: we are. You know, the animal protein consumption is a
Speaker 2: big part of our tradition, our religion, our own cultural experience.
Speaker 2: And so to advocate that people don't eat meat, I
Speaker 2: think is a really bad idea. I think to present
Speaker 2: a new form of meat that provides all the upside
Speaker 2: of meat in terms of the protein, the satiating experience,
Speaker 2: but it's simply made for plants is the right idea.
Speaker 2: The analogy I use most frequently is to think about
Speaker 2: this like the mobile phone to the landline. No one's
Speaker 2: out there defending the landline people, just like the new
Speaker 2: mobile phone, and we have to create products for so
Speaker 2: compelling that people are drawn to ours and not necessarily
Speaker 2: even debating it.
Speaker 1: One thing to know about beyond me. They're doing all
Speaker 1: this science, but this is not frankin food.
Speaker 2: They have to use all natural ingredients. They can't use
Speaker 2: genetic modification, which by the way, they would love to
Speaker 2: use to make things easier. Sure, but we believe that
Speaker 2: we need to really respectful that. You know, Mom's going
Speaker 2: to be feeding us through our kids. I feed it
Speaker 2: to my own children. So we need to understand everything
Speaker 2: that's in there. We need a consumer we they'll understand
Speaker 2: it and feel very comfortable. So we use ingredients that
Speaker 2: people are very familiar with. You know, our protein right
Speaker 2: now comes from peas, it comes from sunflower seeds, It
Speaker 2: comes from recognizable sources. Same with our fats, and so
Speaker 2: you have to be careful. You can apply cutting edge
Speaker 2: science to this, but you have to remember that at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, food is very intimate and
Speaker 2: people want to eat things that are familiar to them.
Speaker 1: So back to my taste test, I tried some brought
Speaker 1: worse that could fool anyone at a backyard picnic. It
Speaker 1: even had the same texture and snap as the real thing.
Speaker 1: The burger was good, but I could tell it wasn't
Speaker 1: the real thing, But I do want to try this
Speaker 1: one again. It had a bit of a smokier note
Speaker 1: than your typical burger. Plus I ate it at the
Speaker 1: end when I was really full. The breakfast patty, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, was the first thing I ate, and
Speaker 1: there's no other way to describe it except delicious. I
Speaker 1: really want to be able to get that through a
Speaker 1: drive through so I can eat it on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: So I set a goal for myself, which is now
Speaker 2: I'm running out of time on so I got to
Speaker 2: hurry up what I said by the time my kids
Speaker 2: can drive, and I set this goal years ago that
Speaker 2: they'd be able to go to a McDonald's or a
Speaker 2: Wendy's or a Burger King or any major of fast
Speaker 2: food place and be able to get a Beyondburger or
Speaker 2: it's you know whatever we're calling it at the time,
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't be an event. It'd be like, you know,
Speaker 2: someone who orders a fish file at someone was a
Speaker 2: Byonburger and it's kind of just normal. So they're thirteen
Speaker 2: and fourteen now, so I got a couple more years.
Speaker 1: One thing I tried it Beyond Meat that I wish
Speaker 1: they would sell was this vegan cheesecake they had. It
Speaker 1: was unbelievable, but they told me it was just a
Speaker 1: test kitchen item because they have a really good chef there.
Speaker 1: But they have no plans to bring it to market.
Speaker 1: But I think they should make a decision to do
Speaker 1: some beyond meat desserts. Thanks so much for listening. If
Speaker 1: you want to see my TV segment on Beyond Meat,
Speaker 1: just go to my website. It's richon tech dot TV.
Speaker 1: I'm Richdemiro. I'll talk to you real soon.