Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | We've Got Beef | 5

Summary

Podcast Summary: Business Wars – Beyond Meat vs Impossible Burger | "We've Got Beef" | Episode 5

Release Date: January 8, 2026
Host: David Brown (A)
Guests: Dina Shanker, Bloomberg Businessweek (B); Clint Rainey, Fast Company (C)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the rise and fall of plant-based meat giants Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, two companies once at the forefront of a food tech revolution. Host David Brown investigates why the buzz dimmed, how financial turbulence, marketing missteps, and online attacks contributed to their struggles, and whether there’s a place for these brands on the future table. Featured reporters Dina Shanker and Clint Rainey offer insider perspectives on Wall Street mania, meme stock volatility, industry smear campaigns, and the complex cultural moment for “fake meat.”

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. The Early Hype: From Novelty to Mainstream (02:10–06:28)

• Dina Shanker recalls the buzz around early Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger launches, describing "a hopin’ party in the East Village" just to try a sample (02:37).
  • Classic veggie burgers were "soy mush...sometimes crispy, sometimes you could see the vegetables in it," but never truly rivaled beef in taste or texture (03:17).
• The intent to mimic beef was strategic: “It really comes down to the total addressable market…if you’re looking to replace a garden burger, it’s a much smaller market than beef” (05:03–05:39).

Notable Quote:
“It was all like, up until this point, every veggie burger had been kind of like a soy mush patty...there was nothing that really felt like it was really competing with a beef burger.”
—Dina Shanker (03:14)

2. Who’s Really Buying These Burgers? (08:54–10:35)

• Despite aspirations to attract meat eaters, real buyers turned out to be “people that don't eat meat...but not all of them, because some vegetarians don’t even want something that tastes like meat” (09:19).
• Both brands struggled to define their market; at restaurants, veggie burgers “are often just the only thing non-meat eaters can order” (10:29).

3. Messaging, Marketing, and Missed Opportunities (11:02–13:36)

• Beyond Meat: Focused its pitch on health, using athletes and wellness messaging—only for consumers to later realize “these are not healthy products in the way that we tend to think of healthy.”
• Impossible Foods: Emphasized climate impact instead of personal health.
• Key Issue: As ultra-processed foods, both products eventually faced skepticism from consumers seeking “clean” and “natural” options.

Notable Quote:
“Beyond really leaned into the health messaging…But what became clear was that Beyond Meat and Impossible are what we now are very familiar with as ultra-processed foods.”
—Dina Shanker (11:03, 12:22)

4. Business Struggles and Meme Stock Mania (14:52–18:58)

• Beyond Meat’s 2019 IPO was a sensation, peaking near $240/share, but by 2026 is trading near $1.
  • October 2025: Temporary spike as a “meme stock,” detached from fundamentals, left latecomer investors burnt (15:31–16:23).
  • Persistent rumors of bankruptcy, offset by financial maneuvers (diluted shares, debt swaps), but revenue remains stagnant.
  • Public denial of bankruptcy rumors—“Recent media stories suggesting that Beyond Meat filed for bankruptcy are unequivocally false...” (17:34)

Notable Quote:
“It was like watching this, like, funny thing happen and knowing it was pretty much irrelevant to the future of the company. The company has to make products that people want to buy.”
—Dina Shanker (16:37)

5. Comparing Corporate Trajectories: Beyond Meat vs. Impossible Foods (18:58–24:30)

• Impossible Foods remains private—possibly a “smart move,” as going public amidst Beyond’s woes could be financially risky.
• Impossible has better retained crucial restaurant partnerships (e.g., Impossible Whopper at Burger King, Starbucks), while Beyond has lost major accounts (Carl’s Jr., Del Taco, McDonald’s U.S.).
• On ingredients: Impossible doubled down on GMO soy and heme, accepting the “tech food” mantle. Beyond chose non-GMO pea protein, but “pea protein…has a much earthier taste,” and the non-GMO appeal may not have helped.
• Both companies’ attempts at “cleaner” ingredient lists vs. public perception.

Notable Quote:
“The problem with that is that a lot of the time the same people that are looking for a non-GMO product are also the same people that are looking for a non-ultra processed food product...so maybe all of this together has contributed to Impossible doing better than Beyond.”
—Dina Shanker (23:07)

6. Running a Food Company Like a Tech Startup: Overpromising and Underdelivering (24:30–26:11)

• Ethan Brown’s (Beyond Meat CEO) vision was perhaps too ambitious for rapid food innovation: “You have to be honest with yourself and realistic about what is achievable...he absolutely overpromised and underdelivered.”
• Early hype and promises of health benefits could not be matched in practice, eroding consumer trust.

7. The Real-World Experience: The Niche Market Reality (26:43–28:15)

• Even ideal consumers (“the kind of person that Beyond and Impossible would have hoped they could win over”) often don’t eat these products regularly—due to ultra-processing and limited “healthy” appeal.
• Personal anecdote: “...I got one [Impossible Whopper] on the road...and it was delicious...then I was like, oh my god, I feel terrible.” (27:43–28:11)

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The Online Backlash: Disinformation & Culture Wars

8. Smear Campaigns and Online Narratives (28:34–34:32)

• Investigative journalist Clint Rainey describes the growing “anti-fake meat” movement among online wellness influencers, often reciting “21 to 22” ingredients—suggesting coordinated messaging (31:13).

• Rick Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom emerge as arch-antagonists:

  • Previously worked to defend Big Tobacco and fast food companies, using playful or satirical ads to rally consumers against “nanny” groups.
  • Created the “Clean Food Facts” site and ran Super Bowl ads touting “chemical laxatives” in fake meat (35:00).

Notable Moment:
Super Bowl ad:
“Methylcellulose, it's a chemical laxative that is also used in synthetic meat…You probably need a PhD to even read the ingredient list.” (35:00–35:19)

9. Was It Really a Psyop? (35:42–36:51)

• Rainey concludes that Berman’s group laid “brilliant groundwork,” making it easy for influencers to pick up and spread their talking points.
• Plant-based companies and their supporters lacked punchy counters—“even vegans…would perhaps not know how to respond to that sort of a claim.” (36:29–36:51)

10. Fighting Back: The Media War Escalates (36:51–40:00)

• Impossible’s response: a satirical ad on YouTube about “poop” in ground beef—funny, but with less reach than the Super Bowl spots.
• Beyond Meat released a documentary ("Planting Change") highlighting their cleaner, avocado oil-laced products, but it “didn’t have the teeth” for viral impact.

11. The Culture Shift and Industry Future (40:00–43:05)

• New Impossible CEO Peter McGinnis claimed the sector became “too political, too woke” and lost mainstream appeal. The company is now testing a “hybrid burger” (half beef, half plant) to shift the narrative.
  • Quote: “Impossible is in the middle right now of looking into a hybrid burger that would be half beef, according to the way that Peter has described it.” (41:26)
• Rainey’s verdict: “In the end…the sort of question about who won at the end of this is no one.”
  • The online war may have slowed Beyond and Impossible, but Big Meat didn’t necessarily “win” either.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• "Every veggie burger had been kind of like a soy mush patty...there was nothing that really felt like it was really competing with a beef burger."
  —Dina Shanker (03:14)

• "Beyond really leaned into the health messaging...But what became clear was that Beyond Meat and Impossible are what we now are very familiar with as ultra-processed foods."
  —Dina Shanker (11:03, 12:22)

• "It was like watching this, like, funny thing happen and knowing it was pretty much irrelevant to the future of the company."
  —Dina Shanker, on the meme stock spike (16:37)

• "The problem with that is that a lot of the time the same people that are looking for a non-GMO product are also the same people that are looking for a non-ultra processed food product..."
  —Dina Shanker (23:07)

• “Rick Berman's past is a fascinating one... He's just a gun for hire. And the people who had hired him were the likes of Big Tobacco, ultimately Big Meat...”
  —Clint Rainey (32:34)

• "I guess I kind of feel like in the end the sort of question about who won at the end of this is no one."
  —Clint Rainey (43:02)

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Major Segments & Timestamps

• Origins & Initial Buzz (02:10–06:28)
• Consumer Base & Marketing (08:54–13:36)
• Biz Struggles and Meme Stock Moment (14:52–18:58)
• Corporate Strategies & Ingredients (18:58–24:30)
• Culture War & Disinformation (28:34–40:00)
• Cultural Shift, Future Outlook (40:00–43:05)

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Conclusion

This episode of Business Wars paints the saga of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as a microcosm of modern business: tech startup aspirations meet the gritty realities of food production, distribution, and cultural acceptance. Hopes of transforming the food landscape collided with Wall Street volatility, problematic marketing, and the power of coordinated online opposition. As the dust settles, both brands still face existential questions—while meat industry lobbyists and online influencers alter culture and business alike. Ultimately, the battle leaves no clear winner, only a cautionary tale for the next food revolution.

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For further reporting, visit:

• Dina Shanker’s stories at Bloomberg.com
• Clint Rainey’s articles at Fast Company

Transcript

[A]

I'm david brown and this is business wars. The food company Beyond Meat recently had a short lived spike in its stock, mostly thanks to Internet trolls. But now shares are back to where they have been for a while, hovering around just a dollar per share. Its biggest competitor, Impossible Foods, is privately held, but their financial outlook is allegedly not much better. Meat alternatives were once trendy. Now the top purveyors are struggling to stay afloat. Online wellness influencers have stepped up their attacks on the brands for being ultra processed, pointing to a long list of hard to pronounce ingredients. Beyond and Impossible have clapped back with videos and documentaries of their own, but those haven't seemed to generate quite as much buzz. So where does all this leave these brands at a time when the tides have shifted? Here to talk about it is Clint Rainey, an investigative journalist who's covered Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods since their beginnings. A few years ago, he was approached by these companies to investigate a social media disinformation campaign allegedly funded by big meat companies to eliminate beyond and Impossible from the competition. Clint will join us to explain where this beef with fake meat came from and whether these online rumors were true. But first, Dina Shanker of Bloomberg businessweek dives deeper into how beyond became a meme stock this fall and whether there's a place for it on Wall Street's table. Moving forward, stick around, because all that's coming up. Dina Shanker, welcome to Business Wars.

[B]

Thank you so much for having me.

[A]

Hey, tell us a little bit about your time on the packaged food beat at Bloomberg. When did Beyond Meat hit your radar? Were you, was it for work or were you just sort of at the grocery store one day and you stumbled upon something interesting?

[B]

So Beyond Meat came onto my radar before I even started at Bloomberg. Before Bloomberg, I was at Quartz, still covering food, and people were talking about these bleeding burgers. There was the Beyond Meat Burger and there was the Impossible Burger and they were kind of going head to head. And at the time it was really hard to get your hands on one to try one. I think I made it to a Beyond Meat Burger party and it was like a hop in party in the East Village and everybody wanted to try those burgers and like you could get like a quarter of a burger.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

There really wasn't a lot of it.

[A]

So you had some Beyond Meat at this little Beyond Meat party. What did it taste like to you?

[B]

So I should say that I'm not a meat eater. So I mean, I've eaten meat in the past for sure, but I'm not a regular meat eater. I stopped eating meat probably, like, 10 years ago, with some exceptions. While I was pregnant, I let myself eat meat because can't do a lot of other fun stuff. So at the time, you know, I was like, I think we all had kind of the same reaction, which was like, hey, that's pretty good. And I think there was the same reaction to the impossible burger. It was all like, up until this point, you know, every veggie burger had been kind of like a soy mush patty. Sometimes you get it crispy sometimes. Sometimes you could see like. Like a garden burger. Like, you could see the. The vegetables in it. But there was nothing that really felt like it was really competing with a beef burger. Certainly the only time meat eaters ever were interested in the veggie burgers I was bringing was when I brought a Beyond burger in those early days, and I brought a package, and people were like, ooh, I hear. So they were very buzzy. And I think that in the early days, they really did represent a huge leap in terms of what could be made for vegetarians to replace the beef in between the buns.

[A]

See, my wife doesn't eat meat either, and she's put off by, like, the red coloring of the burger and the fact that it sort of has the same texture, you know, and this is something that I know that both companies worked really hard on was getting the similarity. Right. And sometimes I've wondered, just looking back on it, was that really the right strategy to try to come up with something that emulated a burger so that people wouldn't miss out at the barbecue? I don't know. I don't know what the thinking was. Why emulate meat when you've got something that's unique unto itself and that tastes, as we've both said now, pretty good. Right.

[B]

Well, so it really comes down to the total addressable market. And if beyond me wants to say we're going to be huge, they want to show that they have a huge total addressable market. You might hear it referred to sometimes as tam. It's a term that's used by, you know, Wall street analysts and the like, and they will say, this is a product that you're only selling $100 million of this year, but there's a total addressable market of $6 billion.

[A]

Or is your potential for growth or something?

[B]

Yeah, it's the ability, like, how many plates do you think that this thing can land on?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so for. There was a time when they would actually compare themselves to Plant based dairy products, plant based milk. And what they would show there was that the amount of fluid milk that, and I'm using milk in quotation marks loosely because the amount of it that was actually vegan, that was made from soy or oats or whatever was actually pretty big. And something like 10 to 15 of milk sales were going to plant based milk. So there's this idea that if you could replicate that, maybe you could even get bigger than that. You have these potential, like blockbuster, like total game changing products. If you're looking to replace a garden burger, it's a much smaller total addressable market than if you're looking to replace a beef burger.

[A]

Got it, got it. Okay, now you've tried both. Was there one that was superior Impossible versus Beyond Meat?

[B]

Well, so it's interesting because first of all, these products have been iterated and improved upon and they also have a number of different products in their lines. And generally speaking, consumers often say that they like the Impossible Burger better than the Beyond Burger. But I've also heard that the Beyond Sausage is better than the Impossible Sausage. And I actually heard that from restaurant Bear Burger that was selling both Impossible and Beyond Burgers at once. And they eventually dropped the Beyond Burger because the Impossible Burger was outselling it so much. Before they dropped it, they were really talking up the Beyond Sausage and they said that was such a great product and people really loved it. But they ended up dropping that too. And it was just not the right product for that setting. You know, it's a sausage product. It kind of maybe would make more sense out of, you know, baseball game or something like that. But they ended up going with Impossible Burgers.

[A]

I wonder if that's part of their problem. Because you ask someone, hey, should I try beyond or should I try Impossible? And then you get an answer like, well, their sausage is kind of good, but you know, but that was two years ago and now they've got something else. I mean, in a way, it's kind of hard to know what you're asking about, right?

[B]

Very true. If I said I liked that Beyond Burger I had last year or two years ago, I'm going to go back and I'm going to get it and make it again. I'm probably buying a different product and maybe I like that product more or maybe I don't. But they do change. Their, their products are supposed to be getting better and better. And you know, I think part of, in retrospect, everything's much easier in hindsight, right? And in retrospect, when they really became such a big deal after they went public and their IPO was huge. And they, Ethan Brown, the CEO and the founder, would often say, listen, we know the product is not where we want it to be yet. We're getting closer, we're getting closer. And at the time it seemed like, honest, you know, okay, sure, enjoy. I think we think you'll enjoy this even though you might not like it as much as you like a beef burger. But now in hindsight you're like, maybe you shouldn't be telling everyone that your product isn't great.

[A]

This gets to something, I think has long been the issue with some of these meat replacements or protein replacements, I guess. And that is who. Who are you selling to? Are you selling to people who are trying to avoid meat? Are you selling to people who are put off by the taste or texture of meat? Are you selling to people who want to make a change and they want to wean themselves off of meat? Who's the buyer here? How would you answer that question?

[B]

Well, I'll tell you who I think the buyer is. And this might not be who Beyond Meat wants the buyer to be. Beyond Meat wants the buyer to be meat eaters, non meat eaters, anyone. But especially they really wanted those meat eaters. And I think for a while meat eaters were trying beyond or impossible burgers out of a lot of curiosity. And sometimes they like them and sometimes they bought them more than once. But what it turns out is that the real, like, committed buyers of these products tend to be people that don't eat meat. And they also, they're only a slice of that population because some people who don't eat meat don't want anything that resembles meat. Some people don't eat meat, really like meat. They just have chosen for a variety of reasons not to eat it. But a lot of people, they don't. They don't want something that replicates meat. They made a decision not to eat that. And so it's tough. It's tough to figure out who exactly the consumer is. I think very often who the consumer turns out to be is a vegetarian or non meat eater at a restaurant. And this is the only thing on the menu that they can eat.

[A]

It's tough for the company, at least on two levels. One is, what is it that you're selling to investors? And the other is what is the marketing message that you're putting out there? If I were marketing it, I wouldn't come head on with beef. I'd say, look, you know, burgers are boring and try Something different. This stuff tastes good. How did both companies approach this in terms of their marketing? What, what, what were they telling people they were selling them?

[B]

So for beyond, beyond really leaned into the health messaging. We are selling you something that is healthier than your burger. If you're trying to get healthy and strong, eat beyond meat products. I mean, they used a lot of athletes as spokespeople and ambassadors. Health, health, health was really their message. Impossible. Really didn't lean so much into that. They were much more focused on climate change because beef is a massive contributor to climate change. So that market directed that way. You know, what ended up happening for beyond was that as a lot of people were like, oh, well, I am trying to get healthier, so I will try this. And they might say, oh, you know, I don't love it as much as I love a beef burger, but I am trying to get healthier, so I'll do this even though it's more expensive and even though it doesn't taste as good. But then it started sort of becoming clear that these are not healthy products in the way that we tend to think about healthy. You might be able to say, depending on the product and what you're comparing it to, that it's maybe a little healthier than a fast food beef burger. But if you're putting like the mayo and the cheese and the sauces and the bun and all of that, like every layer of that, that, like the margin gets a little bit.

[A]

It's like a salad, isn't it? Right. I'm eating healthier. And then you get all this dressing and stuff on there.

[B]

And the truth is, is that for a lot of people, if you love burgers and you're trying to get healthier, you might be better off just eating chicken, because chicken is healthy. You know, it costs less than a beef burger. A Beyond Meat burger costs more. And for a lot of people, they might find that they enjoy the chicken more than they enjoy the Beyond Meat Burger. Now this is like super personal for every individual about what their preferences are. But what became clear was that Beyond Meat and Impossible are what we now are very familiar with as ultra processed foods. Meaning that they have a lot of ingredients in them that are really sub ingredients, meaning it's not corn. It's like a derivative of corn, something unpronounceable. Emulsifiers and preservatives, Right? Exactly. Now, beyond has gone really far in trying to clean up its ingredient list and to try to reduce certain kinds of fat levels, reduce sodium, and do all of these things. Try to replace this oil with that oil to meet different kinds of health metrics. I don't know that it's going to work in terms of changing what's in the minds of consumers.

[A]

That's what you think the bottom line is. It was just something that was okay, but people were okay doing without it and they didn't return.

[B]

Yes. I mean, listen, there's also been tremendous execution problems for this company where they were offering customers products that they had not yet figured out how to make at mass scale. And so when it became time to make them at mass scale, they just couldn't do it in a reliable way. This was not a company that was really holding up its end of the bargain in terms of meeting deliverables deadlines and just making everything happen.

[A]

Hey, it's time for a break. My guest is Dena Shanker, reporter for Bloomberg businessweek. When we come back, we'll talk more about Beyond's financial crisis and whether they'll make it through next year. Stay with us. Hey, welcome back to Business wars. My guest is Dina Schenker. She's a reporter with Bloomberg, where she covered Beyond Meat for several years. Dina, when did Wall street start taking notice and really worrying about the future of this segment?

[B]

If you look at their stock chart, it's pretty crazy to see the roller coaster from 2019 to 2022. In 2019, the stock price reaches a high of $239.71. But then starting in 2021, it starts going down, down, down, down, down. And by 2022, there's like a small tick up. But at this point, we're still under $50. And remember, I said that high was almost doll. When I checked the stock price around two o' clock today, it was a dollar and six cents.

[A]

But there was a weird period there. It was in October and Beyond stock had been tumbling for some time. All of a sudden, seemed like out of the blue, beyond stock rocketed something like more than 1,300% or something over the course of a week or what was going on.

[B]

So that was when beyond had its moment as a Meme stock. And a meme stock is a stock that is not being traded based on its financial fundamentals, but almost kind of like a Internet joke that there's a lot of people that are deciding that they're going to buy the shares to drive up the price. It's a super shorted stock, so that can make it a good target for Meme stalkers. And it briefly went up and then it just came Back down.

[A]

You say it's a joke. I know a lot of people who saw this stock rising probably thought, well, it's no joke to me. They bought in and they lost a lot of money. What was your take on the forces behind this meme stock thing?

[B]

I'm definitely not an expert in sort of like the meme stockification of Wall street, but what I can say is that these are not decisions based, like I said, on the financial fundamentals of a company. It wasn't like Beyond Meat just got a big deal with McDonald's and now we want to all buy this because that means it's going to be selling burgers, you know, in 14,000 restaurants. So I was hearing from some people that either are in the industry or used to be in the industry. It was like watching this, like, funny thing happen and knowing it was pretty much irrelevant to the future of the company. The company has to make products that people want to buy. Yeah, that was true in 2020. It was true in 2022 and it remains true today in 2025.

[A]

There have been rumors that Beyond Meat may not make it to 2027. What are the numbers showing?

[B]

Well, this company has been dodging bankruptcy rumors for a long time. They had a tremendous amount of debt that was really looming over them. They were able to convert that debt. They diluted their shares. So I think they've bought themselves some time. They are doing a lot of cutbacks to try to lower their operating expenses. That seems to be going well. At the same time, they're still having trouble with the basics like increasing their revenue. So in August they actually tweeted and this is, I think really highly unusual of a consumer facing brand to put out a tweet like this. They said recent media stories suggesting that Beyond Meat filed for bankruptcy are unequivocally false. We have not filed nor are we planning to file for bankruptcy. Go beyond. That was at night too. I mean, 10:16pm but that's on the east coast and they're a west coast company, so. But I mean, like, clearly the stories were out there and they felt the need to address them. I think Ethan is really committed to his company. I think he would do anything he possibly could to keep it operating. And we'll just have to wait and see what the future is for this company.

[A]

Let's shift gears to impossible now. Impossible remains private. Smart move. Why, by the way? Especially when there was a bit of buzz around this segment, why remain private? And I wonder what you make of that decision.

[B]

I can't say why they remain private. I can say that in the eyes of investors, one that we used to see a lot was that investors saw beyond and Impossible as like, proxies for each other because the companies are so similar, even though, of course, the companies would say they're very different. But, like, if there was good news for Impossible, Beyond Meat, stock would often rise. Which is funny, right? Because they're competitors and you might expect the opposite to happen, but because it was seen as more of, like, a proof of concept rather than proof of a particular company's success, we would see them rise. You know, you look at what going on with Beyond Meat stock and you wonder if that maybe makes it a bad time for Impossible to go public.

[A]

I guess that by the same token, it's difficult to know whether they're really in better shape than Beyond. Are there any signals or do you have any sense of it at all?

[B]

So it is hard to tell because they are private and they don't have to, you know, disclose their earnings and their revenue and any of that. But I will say one thing that we've seen from Beyond Meat that we have not seen in the same way for Impossible is that Beyond Meat has lost a lot of its big restaurant partner customers. Carl's Jr. Was one of the first big fast food chains to start offering Beyond Meat products. And it was a really big deal because I don't know if you remember those commercials with like, oh, I remember they were really into beef. So the fact that they were putting Beyond Meat on their menu was like this huge endorsement. And Carl's Jr dropped beyond, Del Taco dropped beyond. You know, McDonald's trialed beyond in the United States. Their burgers, it didn't go very far. They do still sell, actually, Beyond Meat chicken nuggets in Germany. And I think that's like, a real big win for Beyond. But here in the US they're still on some menus, but they've been dropped from. From a lot of menus. If you look at Impossible, it's not the same situation. So Impossible is still available as an Impossible Whopper at Burger King. Starbucks still sells Impossible Sausage. I was looking at Cracker Barrel because when Cracker Barrel added Impossible Sausage, they got a lot of backlash. It was bizarre. People were very upset that they were adding something to the menu.

[A]

The menu was tainted by it or something.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And, like, they weren't taking pork sausage off the menu. They were just adding something, and people just lost their minds. And so the fact that Impossible is to still on so many Menus to me says that they must be selling enough that it's worth it for these restaurant companies to keep them on the menu. And for what it's worth, when I go into Starbucks, I always ask, does anybody buy the Impossible sausage? And they always say, oh yeah, people buy it.

[A]

Huh? You know, it's interesting how the two companies have taken different directions when it comes to genetically modified ingredients. Impossible. They use genetically modified ingredients. Beyond doesn't. Is that a good play long term?

[B]

So Impossible's, you know, magic ingredient as they call it, it's called heme. And heme is a molecule that's in plants and animals. It's what gives meat its taste. Impossible has always said. And so they make their own heme using a genetically modified yeast. And so, and so they basically were like, the key to our product involves genetic modification. So that is what it is. We are not going to try to run away from that. And then they were like, well, the rest of the product is it's a soy based product. So we'll just use GMO soy because it's much more widely available, it's much less expensive than going non GMO soy. And they're already GMO because of their heme. So that made a lot of sense for them. And I think it was a smart move. Interestingly, Beyond Cho's pea Protein. But there's a reason soy is a popular ingredient for me, imitation products. It's because it doesn't have any of its own taste. It's very easy to manipulate taste wise. But beyond was using pea protein, which has a much earthier taste. I've tried plain pea protein, as it turns out, and the like, the yucky pea protein is really yucky. And so I think beyond sort of boxed itself into a corner by deciding to go non GMO because it was trying to appeal to people that weren't looking for GMOs. But the problem with that is that a lot of the time the same people that are looking for a non GMO product are also the same people that are looking for a non ultra processed food product. And so what do you end up with? You end up with a more expensive product because it's non gmo, that isn't even appealing to the people looking to buy your products. So maybe all of this together has contributed to Impossible doing better than Beyond. But I honestly, it probably has more to do with taste and potentially other factors as well.

[A]

The question on the table, no pun intended, is whether these two companies can survive long term. And I think of course since beyond is public, that seems to be the one getting all the attention. I wonder if there's a bigger lesson here on running a food company like a tech startup. What do you think?

[B]

Yeah, I think it's really important that when you are developing your vision for a company that you are honest with yourself and realistic about what is achievable. Because if you're not honest with yourself, you're going to end up selling something to investors that you can't deliver on. And I think that the aspirations that Ethan Brown sold to investors and many of the statements that he made, you know, about their health and all this stuff, they could not deliver on those. And by the time now where they're saying, oh, we have this really clean ingredient panel and the numbers on our nutrition facts panel are so much better than they used to be, my concern for the company would be that that ship has, has sailed and that you already tried to convince people that you had a healthy product. People kind of said, hold on, I just took a closer look or I spoke to my doctor about it. That's something I've certainly heard from people, and they're telling me it's not healthy. And so I think that Ethan Brown absolutely over promised and under delivered. From my reporting, I know that's what he did with the fast food chains. And I think he did that on a broader level just to the general public, including investors.

[A]

To me, Dina, this is so fascinating because I would think that you would be the kind of person that beyond and impossible would have hoped they could win over. And I guess the question, it's almost an existential question, why do these companies exist? I mean, they've had trouble finding an audience. They've fallen out of favor. And yet here you are, Dena, and it seems like you are the kind of person that they would want to have won over long time ago.

[B]

You know, I think that there is, these are niche products and there's a market for them. I just think it's much smaller than anybody was saying back in 2019. Even myself, I don't regularly eat these products. But I gotta tell you, so I work at Bloomberg and Bloomberg takes great care of its employees. So a couple weeks ago, they actually had egg and cheese biscuits and they had some with like a regular meat sausage and then some with a vegan sausage. And I got the one with the vegan sausage and I ate it. But I'll tell you this, I did not eat the whole thing because even though it was very good, I know it's not good. For me, not just the sausage, like the whole thing. It's an ultra processed food and you might not feel great after you eat it. You know, if I eat like a, a lentil salad, I'm not gonna, you know, slump over at my desk 20 minutes later.

[A]

Right? No, I get it.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But that's what would happen with a regular fast food burger. Or whether I had a Whopper from Burger King or an impossible Whopper from Burger King, I would not feel good. And that was actually the last time I had an impossible Whopper was I got one on a road like I was driving and I stopped at a Burger King and I got an impossible Whopper. Whopper. And it was delicious. I ate it. I ate like every last bite. And then I was like, oh my God, I feel terrible.

[A]

Been there.

[B]

It's like, I can't believe I have to drive for another hour and a half.

[A]

Dina Shanker, thank you so much for joining us on Business Wars.

[B]

Thank you for having me.

[A]

Dina Shanker is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek who previously covered packaged foods. And you can check out her [e-mail].

[C]

Coming up, by 2023, the plant based side, they had started to suspect that the culprit was at least in part, a smear campaign being backed by, frankly, the industry that stood to lose the most by their success, a disinformation campaign.

[A]

Funded by big Beef. What does that even mean? Stick around to find out. Welcome back to Business Wars. You know, over the past decade, a growing number of wellness influencers online are ditching processed food in favor of whole so called real food. So where does that leave beyond meat and impossible foods? True, they're selling highly processed products, but their goals also include improving climate change, saving the planet, and if you ask beyond meat and impossible where this online hate came from, they'll tell you it's big beef companies and that they're running a stealthy disinformation campaign to turn folks against meat alternatives. Clint Raney is an investigative journalist for Fast Company and he looked into these claims and he joins us now to talk about it. Clint, welcome to Business Wars.

[C]

Thanks for having me on.

[A]

How did you find out about this story?

[C]

The time the luster was starting to fade from alt meat and sales were starting to slide. By 2023, the plant based side, they had started to suspect that the culprit was at least in part a smear campaign being backed by frankly, the industry that stood to lose the most by their success. And it was clear that at least on the plant based side, they Needed a villain. Right. And so they were watching sales drop and going, we don't know how to deal with all of these claims coming out that our stuff is so ultra processed. The idea that it could be, in fact, because the products were by definition ultra processed, at least to an extent, wasn't really something that they were willing to entertain.

[A]

So how does this translate online? What sort of claims were you seeing?

[C]

So the posts that were coming out of this group of influencers, anti fake meat content, it revolved around beyond and Impossible's products primarily. Many of the posts also focused on the number of ingredients that were found in the beyond an Impossible burger. They love to read off the list of chemical sounding names.

[B]

Got methylcellulose. Hmm, what's that again? You're thinking it's all plants, but here the ingredients are so complex.

[C]

This is just a concoction of chemicals.

[A]

Nothing against plant based diets. Keep doing you if you're plant based, but this is crap.

[C]

But what made it feel like there could be some sort of campaign behind all of this was that the number of ingredients that was cited was often this weirdly specific number. All these people would say, like, oh, there's 21 to 22 artificial ingredients. 21 to 22.

[A]

That is really strangely specific and yet vaguely nonspecific too. And this was like appearing in what, Reddit Wellness influencers on TikTok, YouTube?

[C]

I think all of the above. The vast majority were maybe B list, let's call them influencers on TikTok and Instagram, people who had not a small set of followers, 30,000, 50,000, something like that. But you know, they weren't exactly these power players. You know, someone with a million followers can get paid to promote an ad. Right? But these people with only 30 or 50 were, you know, hunting for material that I think could increase their follower count and so maybe go viral in.

[A]

Some kind of online wellness group or something.

[C]

Exactly, exactly.

[A]

Now, in your reporting, you mentioned one man in particular who may have planted the seeds for these campaigns against plant based meats. His name is Rick Berman. Who is he exactly?

[C]

Rick Berman's past is a fascinating one in the sense that he's just a gun for hire. And the people who had hired him were the likes of Big Tobacco, ultimately Big Meat, Big Pharma to an extent. I was aware of him at the time and when I started talking to the plant based side about this, but I don't think I knew his name so much as I was aware of the fiction character supposedly based on him, which is the big tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart in thank youk for Smoking.

[B]

If your parents told you that chocolate.

[C]

Was dangerous, would you just take their word for it? No. Exactly. So perhaps instead of acting like sheep when it comes to cigarettes, you should find out for yourself.

[B]

Okay then.

[C]

60 Minutes profiled him once and gave him this moniker, Dr. Evil. So, you know, I was pretty hooked when they claimed they thought the guy who lobbied for Big Tobacco was now working to destroy plant based meats image on behalf of Big Beef.

[A]

Were you able to make a connection between some of these influencers online and Rick Berman?

[C]

The direct connection was strenuously denied by him and his Firm, Berman & Company. They said no. They said that we're not directly paying anyone to do that. But I think that they were too smart to have done that in the first place. They're expert at these kinds of tactics. They have this group called the center for Consumer Freedom. And in the 2000s, the center for Consumer Freedom was pretty adept at neutralizing attacks on fast food by consumer watchdog groups. They would scold those groups as being nannies or call them anti American. They once called the center for Science in the Public Interest, the group that was famous for railing on sodas being too sugary and trans fats. Like they called them the king of Killjoys for criticizing greasy fast food.

[A]

Breakfasts. Interesting.

[C]

Interesting. Yeah. You could see that their ads were effective because they felt lighthearted. And they also seemed to be this call out to regular everyday people saying, what do you think about these weirdly aggressive incursions into your freedoms as a.

[A]

Consumer? And as I understand it, they are also behind something called Clean Food Facts. Right? This was a site to warn about the dangers of fake meat as they would explain.

[C]

It. Yes, exactly. I think that became sort of the holding site for all of these different ads that they created starting in 2019 that ran in, you know, national papers, New York Times, LA Times, USA Today, the Super bowl.

[A]

Ad. Your word is.

[B]

Methylcellulose. Methyl. Can you please define.

[A]

That? Methylcellulose, it's a chemical laxative that is also used in synthetic.

[C]

Meat. And then the ad ends by saying something about like, oh, you probably need a PhD to be able to even read the ingredient.

[A]

List. Well, let's back up for just a minute. What about the claims themselves? Was there anything to what the influencers were touting that seemed to be connected with clean food facts? Do you see it as an intentional psyop? Or maybe they just got lucky that the online community started echoing Their claims. What was your assessment of.

[C]

This? To the extent that this amounted to a disinformation campaign, you had a sort of brilliant groundwork laid by the center for Consumer Freedom. And, you know, they were smart in how they went about doing that. You would be, I think, hard pressed to find someone who looked at the ingredient list for an Impossible burger and came back saying, yeah, that thing looks like it's not processed. It's not necessarily saying something that most people would be able to fight back, back against unless they really, really knew their stuff. Like, if you got Pat Brown or Ethan Brown on the phone, they could go 20 minutes explaining all of the false information contained in that. But the average, even vegan, I think, who was looking at these products would perhaps not know how to respond to that sort of a claim. And so you had these, like, clean eating zealots that were taking the pervasive ads that had appeared in newspapers, all over YouTube, on this new website the Berman's company had created, and just copy and pasting it into their own stuff, or even screenshotting it sometimes into.

[A]

Their own stuff as these claims started to spread. Those claims we were talking about just earlier, Beyond Meat and Impossible, they started fighting. Back. When Rick Berman, center for Consumer Freedom, dropped the super bowl ad, that which you mentioned earlier, claiming that fake meat contained chemical laxatives, Impossible responded with an ad of its own. Let's listen. And our first word is.

[B]

Poop. What are you supposed to.

[A]

Say? That poop. There's lots of poop in the places where pigs and cows and chickens are killed and chopped to bits to make meat. And there's poop in the ground beef we make from cows. Oh, boy. They're not holding back here. I gotta ask, what sort of response was there to that.

[C]

Ass? I think that that ad was hilarious and it drew a lot of coverage for the way that it was responding. But if we're being honest, it was in response to a Super bowl ad. This was posted on YouTube and it got some laughs. And I think it showed that Impossible could throw a punch back, but I don't know to what extent it made a difference in the direction that this war had, you know, like, the gravity of it so far.

[A]

Online. And I gather that Beyond Meat was trying to get involved in this sort of media game, at least on their own part. Is that.

[C]

Right? Well, Beyond Meat has traditionally kept its distance from this sort of stuff. Whereas Pat Brown from Impossible was always combative, perhaps. Yeah, combative for sure. And I mean, that's him in the poop spelling bee ad. That's him who asks the student to spell the word poop. You can see how he has a personality and he I think is not afraid to put it to.

[A]

Use. But beyond has been a bit more subtle or indirect. Didn't they drop a documentary or.

[C]

Something? Yeah, so that came recently. Beyond released planting change and they even adopted the words that were being used by the anti fake meat crowd, Clean, pure. And applied them to their own products. To stress how natural the beyond products could.

[A]

Be. Let's hear a little bit, a little clip from Beyond Meat's documentary planning.

[B]

Change. The new formulation of the Beyond Burger really impressed us in our evaluation. They're now putting in heart healthy avocado oil. It has a simple list of ingredients. It's 21 grams of protein. Their protein sources are extremely healthful food. Peas, lentils, brown rice, baba.

[A]

Beans. Now how many people saw that documentary do you think? Was this something that got much, much.

[C]

Exposure? I don't think that it got as much exposure as they hoped, that's for sure. I think that it was very well meaning and, and I know that they were working on it to really nail everything and, and present it in a way that they thought was approachable. And you know, it just doesn't have the teeth that like even YouTube quickly thrown together. YouTube ad that has like a poop joke and is about kids in a spelling bee has, you know, it's well meaning but it only can excite people so.

[A]

Much. You know, let's talk about what all this adds up to for the future of artificial meat products or plant based meat products. The narrative for these plant based protein companies seemed to be at first look what technology hath wrought. Isn't this a wonderful thing? And then it shifted. And so at least to some degree it seems the campaign against plant based proteins seems to have stuck or at least made an impact that caused them to look closer at what they were doing themselves. In fact, the CEO of Impossible, Peter McGinnis, didn't he say at some point that in a way the whole industry had somehow become aligned with the wrong kind of culture that had sort of built up initially around plant based.

[C]

Meat? Yeah, exactly. Peter McGinnis has sort of been on this tour for the past year where he has talked about the, that he believes the plant based meat industry became too political, focused too much on having their products make an environmental statement and using the words that they became too woke even to have like a real mass appeal. And for the record, Impossible is in the middle right now of looking into a hybrid burger that would be half beef according to the way that Peter has described.

[A]

It. Yeah. It's interesting the language that Peter's used. He said something along the lines of people want to eat tech food or climate food and sort of suggesting that there's a kind of idea of certain food being vogue or fashionable and that plant based protein was no longer fashionable and that something had to be done. Of course, how do you change a cultural.

[C]

Moment? Right, right. It's ultimately kind of a branding argument that he's making and you can ask the same questions that, that people were before about like how earnestly do these companies believe that there's some sort of psyop against them occurring online? How much do they believe this to be true? I guess I kind of feel like in the end the sort of question about who won at the end of this is no one. It's sort of like a. There's sort of a mutually, like a US Soviet style mutually assured destruction situation that resulted because like the actual disinformation campaign, to the extent that there was one, blew up in Big Beef's face. Altmeat didn't recover. I mean, maybe it was going to slide downward only from that point anyway. But they did win small victory in the sense that these brands came out looking like they had been victims of something unfair and perhaps even a bit nefarious. But there was no evidence that these meat companies had actually broken a law that they had actually done anything that they could be held accountable for. They don't care anyways. Right? I mean, they have decades of history doing this sort of stuff. And so it really was like, who came away with anything with like a victory from this, in the end, it seems like.

[A]

Nobody. Clint Raney is an investigative reporter contributing regularly to Fast Company. Clint, thanks so much for joining us on Business.

[C]

Wars. Thanks for having me.

[A]

David. Coming up, we'll be taking a ride into the future of robo taxis like Waymo. Is this the dawn of a trillion dollar industry or just another sparkly Silicon Valley mirage? That's coming up next on Business Wars. From Wondery, this is episode five of Beyond Meat versus Impossible. For Business Wars, I'm your host, David Brown. Kelly Kyle produced this episode. Our lead sound designer is Kyle Randall. Our producer is Tristan Donovan. Our audio engineer is Sergio Enriquez. Our managing producer is Desi Blaylock. Our senior producers are Jenny Bloom and Emily Frost. Karen Lowe is our producer emeritus. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louie. For.