A vegan horror story in 3 words or less

‘New improved recipe’

Very few things can strike fear into my heart the way these words can. Never, in all my experience, does this ‘new improved receipe’ actually improve a product. In my experience it tends to change the overall product so drastically that it is practically a new product, and it makes it worse than it initially was.

So I was very anxious when I ordered my usual burgers from Tesco and saw this nice, big, red label printed on the front of the Beyond Meat burgers.

These burgers have been a staple of my weekly food shop for months now. I very much stood by my decision that these burgers were the best options out there for a meat-free burger alternative, and whilst they were pricier than other options, they were worth the money. But now with their ‘new improved recipe’ I have to retract the statement entirely.

These are fine. The new recipe appears to have taken out a lot of what made these burgers so great and that was the very realistic meaty texture that they have. Now normally I am not a fan of this, so these burgers were the exception. But now the burgers have a much more ‘squishy’ texture and they feel far less dense than they used to. They have also lost 2 grams of protein per burger, so again the new improved receipe has resulted in a worse product being offered. But still for the same high price.

The burgers have also lost a lot of the smokey flavour they used to have. Beforehand, they had quite a smokey, meaty taste to them, but now they don’t really taste of anything. These are now very bland, which means even more effort needs to be made to make them taste of something, but the whole reason I enjoyed these so much is because they were a nice, quick, and easy dinner that I didn’t have to do much to and still have a tasty meal. They also don’t look anything like they do on the front – the patties are now very plain looking and very pale, and even cooked they still look very pale.

So another product ruined by a ‘new improved recipe’. These now taste like most other options out there, and yet still come with a very high price tag that I no longer think they can justify. Especially when they are not offering anything different to what most other products out there are offering. So it is very disappointing. And now means I am back on the hunt for the perfect burger replacement.

Overall: 7/10. These burgers are now fine, but they used to be great. They are also far too expensive for what they offer, when so many other products out there do the same thing for far less money.

T xxx