On 29 June 2026, Beyond Meat put its whole-cut Beyond Steak Filet into Wegmans and H-E-B, its first retail listing after a direct-to-consumer launch in October 2025. Founder and CEO Ethan Brown described it as “our most compelling center-of-the-plate innovation since the Beyond Burger” and said the product “marks the introduction of the powerhouse ingredient mycelium into our portfolio”.
There is one number the release does not contain, and it is the only one that would let a formulator evaluate the claim: how much mycelium is in the filet.
That absence would be unremarkable in most product launches. It is worth attention here for a specific reason. In March 2026 a regulator published an illustrative threshold for exactly this question — around 5% inclusion for a techno-functional role, around 12% for a protein source — and Beyond has published nothing that would let anyone place mycelium on either side of it.
What the company does publish
The nutrition panel on Beyond’s own product page is precise, and it is the strongest primary data available on this product.
| Per serving (1 filet, 127g) | Amount | % Daily Value |
|---|---|---|
| Calories | 230 | |
| Total fat | 9g | 11% |
| Saturated fat | 1g | 5% |
| Trans fat | 0g | |
| Cholesterol | 0mg | 0% |
| Sodium | 450mg | 20% |
| Total carbohydrate | 8g | 3% |
| Dietary fibre | 3g | 11% |
| Total sugars | 1g | |
| Added sugars | 0g | 0% |
| Protein | 28g | 32% |
| Vitamin D | 0mcg | 0% |
| Calcium | 50mg | 2% |
| Iron | 8.6mg | 45% |
| Potassium | 420mg | 8% |
Servings per container: 2. The pack is sold as two filets. The product is frozen, cooked from thawed, and the instructions call for 4 to 4½ minutes per side to a minimum internal temperature of 165°F.
Two figures deserve a second look.
Protein density is 22.0% by weight. That is 28g divided by 127g, our arithmetic on Beyond’s numbers. For a hydrated, ready-to-cook whole cut, that is a high figure, and it is what makes the “28g of protein” headline work — the serving is large, and the product is dense.
Iron is 8.6mg, or 45% of the daily value, per filet. That is a high figure for a single serving of anything, and Beyond does not state where it comes from. Fortification, the mycelium, the faba bean protein and processing contact are all plausible contributors; the label does not distinguish between them, and we are not going to guess.
The FAQ on the product’s own page is about a different product
Below the nutrition panel, the Beyond Steak Filet product page carries a block of frequently asked questions. Every one of them is about Beyond Steak — the sliced tips product — not the filet. It is repeated five times on the page, and it says:
“Beyond Steak is a revolutionary, plant-based innovation designed to deliver the juicy, tender and delicious bite of sliced steak tips. With 21 grams of protein per serving and no GMOs…”
and, under “What is Beyond Steak made of?”:
“The protein comes from wheat gluten and faba beans, a nutrient-packed legume crop.”
Mycelium is not mentioned anywhere in that block. Nor is it mentioned in the “How It’s Made” copy on the same page, which describes gathering “protein, fat, minerals, carbs and water – but from plants” and applying “heat, cooling and pressure to the proteins”.
This is almost certainly a content-management artefact rather than a statement of intent — the FAQ module appears to inherit from the Beyond Steak product family. But the effect is that the page selling the mycelium filet answers “what is this made of?” with wheat gluten and faba beans, and a consumer or buyer reading it would take exactly that away. The same page also renders the serving size as “1 filtes (127g)”.
Practical consequence: if you are a category buyer or a competitor benchmarking this product, do not treat the marketing description as a specification. The only Beyond-published facts about composition are the nutrition panel and the phrase “made with mycelium and heart-healthy avocado oil”. Everything else circulating about the formulation comes from third parties.
Where the ingredient list actually comes from
Beyond’s product page presents its ingredient statement behind an expandable tab that our fetch did not return, and neither press release lists ingredients. The ordered lists in circulation are therefore third-party renderings, and they do not fully agree with each other.
Green Queen’s account, which we did read in full, describes the filet as “comprised of a base of wheat gluten, fava bean protein, avocado oil and mycelium, with a small amount of brown rice powder, oat bran and fibre, malted barley flour, apple extract, beet juice colour, spices, vinegar, starter culture, and salt.”
Other renderings we encountered include garlic powder and onion powder and omit malted barley flour and starter culture. We are not going to print a definitive ordered ingredient statement we could not read from the manufacturer, and we flag the discrepancy rather than picking a version.
What the versions we saw do agree on is the relative ordering of the major components: wheat gluten first, then faba bean protein and avocado oil, then mycelium, then the minor ingredients. One rendering also places water at the head of the list; Green Queen’s does not mention water at all, so we treat that as unconfirmed.
If the ordering is correct, mycelium is present at less than the avocado oil and more than any individual minor ingredient — which brackets it somewhere in the low single digits to low teens as a percentage, and is exactly as much precision as the public record supports.
That bracket is the problem. It straddles the line that now matters.
The line that now matters
In March 2026 Britain’s Food Standards Agency published supplementary guidance for novel foods produced by precision or biomass fermentation. In setting out when a protein digestibility assay is required, it offered two illustrative benchmarks:
- Low-inclusion techno-functional uses: around 5% or less of the final product.
- Use as a source of protein: around 12% or more.
The FSA is explicit that these are illustrative and that the real test is the ingredient’s actual role and the resulting exposure. We wrote about what that guidance requires in full separately today.
The relevance here is not regulatory — Beyond Steak Filet is a US retail product, mycelium from cultivated fungi is not a novel food in the United States in the way it is in Great Britain, and nothing in the FSA document applies to it. The relevance is conceptual. A regulator has now put a number on the distinction between an ingredient that texturises and an ingredient that feeds you, and that distinction is precisely what “powerhouse ingredient” is doing rhetorical work to blur.
On the published evidence, the protein in this filet is overwhelmingly wheat gluten and faba bean protein. Mycelium is doing something — most plausibly contributing the fibrous, anisotropic structure that makes a whole cut behave like a whole cut, which is the formulation problem plant protein alone has never solved cleanly. That is a genuinely valuable function and a real technical achievement. It is not the same claim as being the protein.
Practical consequence: when evaluating any “mycelium” or “mycoprotein” whole cut, ask for the inclusion percentage and the protein contribution separately. The two are routinely conflated, and the conflation always runs in the same direction. This is the same basis problem we described in crude protein versus true protein in microbial biomass and in functionality data drawn from one organism and one process.
The commercial context
Beyond published its first-quarter 2026 results on 6 May 2026, for the quarter ended 28 March 2026. The figures are the reason this product exists in the form it does.
| Q1 2026 | Value | Prior-year period |
|---|---|---|
| Net revenues | $58.2m, down 15.3% | $68.7m |
| Volume of products sold | 11,831 thousand lb, down 19.5% | 14,706 thousand lb |
| Net revenue per pound | up 5.4% | |
| US retail net revenues | $26.6m, down 15.3% | $31.4m |
| US retail net revenue per pound | down 0.6% | |
| Gross profit | $2.0m, margin 3.4% | loss of $6.9m, margin -10.1% |
| Loss from operations | $41.1m | $64.4m |
| Cash and equivalents incl. restricted | $205.8m at 28 March 2026 | |
| Debt carrying value, net of discount | $411.6m at 28 March 2026 |
Dividing the two figures at the top gives a blended net revenue per pound of about $4.92 across the entire portfolio — our arithmetic, and a company-wide average across retail, foodservice, domestic and international, not a shelf price.
That number frames the strategy. Volume is falling faster than revenue, which means mix and price are carrying what growth there is: net revenue per pound rose 5.4% while volume fell 19.5%. A premium, centre-of-the-plate whole cut is precisely the kind of SKU that lifts revenue per pound without needing volume. Adding a differentiating ingredient with a story attached is how you justify that position on shelf.
None of that is a criticism. It is a coherent response to the numbers above, and gross margin turning positive from -10.1% to 3.4% suggests the broader cost work is landing. It does mean that “powerhouse ingredient” is doing commercial work as well as descriptive work, and it is reasonable to ask for the number behind it.
The counter-argument
The strongest defence is that inclusion percentages are trade secrets and nobody discloses them. That is true and normal. No meat analogue manufacturer publishes its formulation, and demanding one from Beyond specifically would be selective.
A second, better defence is that inclusion percentage is the wrong metric for a structuring ingredient. If mycelium’s contribution is fibrous architecture, its value is not proportional to how much of it there is — a few percent of the right structure can transform a whole cut, and the same is true of hydrocolloids and methylcellulose replacements nobody expects to be quantified on a press release. Judged as a texture technology, this product’s relevant evidence is sensory and structural, not compositional.
Both points land. The response is narrower than it looks: we are not asking Beyond to publish a recipe. We are observing that the company chose to name mycelium as the headline ingredient in the CEO’s own quote, and that having made it the story, the absence of any quantification makes the claim unfalsifiable. The hybrid meat suppliers now quoting a discount to beef are being more specific about their ingredients than this, and they are selling business to business.
What we could not establish
- The mycelium inclusion percentage. Not published anywhere we could find.
- The mycelium species, or its supplier. Neither press release names either, and the product page does not. We do not know whether Beyond produces it, buys it, or licenses it.
- The full ordered ingredient statement, from Beyond. The product page’s ingredients tab did not render in our fetch, and third-party renderings conflict on the minor ingredients.
- The retail price and pack weight at Wegmans and H-E-B. We saw a widely circulated figure of $10.99 for two 4.45-ounce filets, but could not verify it from Beyond or from either retailer, and the per-pound conversion attached to it in circulation is arithmetically wrong. We have left the price out rather than repeat it.
- The source of the 8.6mg of iron. Stated on the panel, unattributed on the label.
- Any DIAAS or protein-quality figure for the filet or for its mycelium component. None published.
- Whether the filet is manufactured in-house or by a co-manufacturer. Beyond’s Q1 filing discusses co-manufacturing arrangements generally; nothing ties this SKU to a facility.
What to watch
- Whether Beyond quantifies mycelium in any subsequent disclosure. A 10-Q or 10-K discussion of the ingredient, or a supplier agreement, would settle it. Marketing copy will not.
- Distribution breadth. On 7 July 2026, eight days after the Wegmans and H-E-B launch, Beyond announced that the filet “will begin rolling out to Meijer stores this month”. Three chains inside two weeks is a faster ramp than the June release implied. The number of retail doors by the end of 2026 is the real read on whether supply or demand was the binding constraint.
- Net revenue per pound in the US retail channel. It fell 0.6% in Q1 2026 while the company-wide figure rose 5.4%. If a premium whole cut is doing what it is meant to do, US retail revenue per pound should turn positive in subsequent quarters. That is a specific, dated, checkable claim.
- Whether any mycelium whole-cut producer publishes an inclusion percentage first. Whoever does it establishes the disclosure norm for the category, and on current evidence they would probably be doing it because their number is good.