Beyond Meat, Inc. is one of the fastest growing food companies in the United States offering a portfolio of plant-based meats. Beyond Meat products are designed to have the same taste and texture as animal-based meat while being better for people and the planet – no genetically modified organisms (GMOs), bioengineered ingredients, hormones, antibiotics, or cholesterol are included.
As of December 31, 2020, Beyond Meat had products available at approximately 122,000 retail and foodservice outlets in over 80 countries worldwide. Today the company announced that the new version of its iconic Beyond Burger® will arrive in grocery stores nationwide beginning the week of May 3rd.
The latest Beyond Burger, which offers advancements in taste and nutrition, will be sold in a 2-pack, the brand’s first-ever value 4-pack (MSRP: $9.99) and a 1lb Beyond Beef® pack. Beyond Burger mobile pop-ups in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Miami and Atlanta will offer consumers an exclusive first taste before it officially hits store shelves.
“We are continuously working on understanding beef flavour at a deeper level to ensure our plant-based beef platform delivers a delicious and satisfying sensory experience. The new Beyond Burger’s rich flavour profile resembles that of ground beef, and extensive testing with our consumers validated this new flavour direction with likeability scoring on-par with 80/20 ground beef burgers,” said Dariush Ajami, Chief Innovation Officer, Beyond Meat.
The new Beyond Burger delivers nutritional benefits such as:
- Fewer calories and no cholesterol compared to 80/20 ground beef
- 35% less fat or saturated fat than 80/20 ground beef
- B vitamins and minerals comparable to the micronutrient profile of beef
“The launch of the latest Beyond Burger iteration is another strong step forward in providing consumers with absolutely delicious plant-based meat that is better for people and the planet, no sacrifice required,” said Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat Founder and CEO. “It is my hope that these meaningful advances in taste and nutrition, using only non-GMO plant-based ingredients, will delight existing consumers and invite others to join us in Going Beyond.”
A lighter environmental footprint
In addition to the proven health benefits of plant-based meat, the University of Michigan’s 2018 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) showed that the original Beyond Burger, compared to producing a ¼lb standard 80/20 beef burger, has 99% less impact on water scarcity, 93% less impact on land use, requires 46% less energy and generates 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Beyond Meat’s Plant-Based Diet Initiative Fund
Beyond Meat recently announced the establishment of the Plant-Based Diet Initiative Fund at the Stanford University School of Medicine to create a repository of cutting-edge research that will help drive and inform additional breakthrough product innovation to advance human health.
The Plant-Based Diet Initiative Fund will sustain a variety of programs including:
- Exploring how plant-based meat and diets can have a positive health impact, including on the reduction of risk factors for chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer
- Unearthing new plant proteins and ingredients to help inform game-changing product development
- Producing an overarching repository of globally accessible resources and data on the health impacts of plant-based proteins
In a previous clinical study that was conducted at Stanford University and published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers evaluated the impact of replacing animal-based meat with Beyond Meat’s plant-based meat over an 8-week period on cholesterol levels (including LDL), heart disease risk factors including TMAO levels, and body weight, and found improvement in key health metrics when participants replaced animal-based meat with Beyond Meat’s plant-based meat.
