Mistakes With Plant-Based Meat: Too Much Focus On The Real?

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For a while, plant-based meats — those complex concoctions of soy, oils, yeast, and potatoes that look, feel, and even bleed exactly like meat — seemed unstoppable. In 2020, with everyone stuck at home, sales of plant-based meat brands like Impossible, Beyond Meat and Gardein skyrocketed, up 45 percent in a single year. The arrival of realistic-looking products amid rising concerns about climate change seemed to herald a new era in plant-based meat consumption. Soon, it seemed, everyone would be eating burgers, chicken fingers, and steaks—all veggies.

Then a burglary. Sales stagnated in 2021 and some of the plant-based meat favorites — including Beyond Meat and Impossible — began to decline. Beyond Meat’s stock price has fallen nearly 80 percent over the past year; Impossible conducted two rounds of layoffs in 2022, laying off 6 percent of its workforce alone in October. Even as emissions and temperatures continue to rise — driven in part by animal husbandry — and about a quarter of Americans claim to have reduced their meat consumption, plant-based meat isn’t having the expected success.

Some experts believe plant-based meat’s flaw may be exactly what was meant to make it popular: its attempt to be indistinguishable from meat.

Alternative “meat” is nothing new. In the early 20th century, the Kellogg family food company — the same family that brought corn flakes to America — sold a meat substitute called “Protose” made from a combination of soy, peanuts, and wheat gluten. (It doesn’t seem to have been very tasty.) “First generation” plant-based meat alternatives include tofu and tempeh — high-protein foods already popular in Asian cuisine that bear little resemblance to meat.

Plant-based “second generation” meats, on the other hand – like Beyond and Impossible – are designed to look, cook, and taste exactly like meat. Impossible even developed an ingredient called “heme,” a genetically engineered version of iron that allows the fake meat to “bleed” much like meat from a cow or pig.

The idea was to appeal to omnivores and so-called “flexitarians” – people who eat meat but want to limit their consumption for environmental or health reasons.

Is plant-based meat all hat, not beef?

The environmental benefits are obvious. Researchers estimate that 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from meat farming. For example, producing 100 grams of protein from beef releases around 25 kilograms of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; Tofu, on the other hand, weighs around 1.6 kg. Plant-based meat, on the other hand, has 40 to 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than regular meat.

But the focus is on appealing to meat eaters may have conflicted with human psychology. “Mimicking real meat leads to this comparison of authenticity,” said Steffen Jahn, a professor of marketing at the University of Oregon who studies consumer food choices. Jahn argues that by attempting to closely match plant-based meat to its cow- and pork-based counterparts, Beyond Meat once introduced packaging that read “Even Meatier Now!” – Companies have gone all-in on a category that many consumers don’t love: artificiality.

“They try to mimic it and say, ‘We’re almost real,'” Jahn said. “But then some people will say, ‘Yeah, but you’re not real.'”

Again, there is more psychological complexity. When consumers shop for groceries, they tend to simplify groceries into categories: healthy, “good” groceries on the one hand and less healthy, pleasurable groceries on the other. Consumer psychologists call these categories “virtue” and “vice” foods, and they determine how many products are marketed and sold. A Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar is sold for its delicious creaminess, not its fat content; A bag of spinach is seasoned for its rich mineral and nutrient content, not for its flavor.

“We always try to simplify things,” said Jahn. “We separate a lot of things, including food.”

But plant-based meat confuses these categories of “virtue” and “vices” in different ways. First, many alternative meats — especially those prepared to resemble burgers, sausage, or bacon — contain a long list of ingredients. “I was pretty shocked when I saw the ingredient lists,” said Marion Nestle, professor emeritus of nutrition and food studies at New York University. “I thought, ‘Oh dear.'”

These products fall under the category of “ultra-processed” foods, which many consumers associate with weight gain and health problems. This creates conflict for buyers. Those consumers who are most likely to want to be “virtuous” by avoiding harm to the environment or animals are also most likely to want “virtuous” foods in another sense – healthy foods with simple ingredients.

JP Frossard, vice president of consumer nutrition at investment firm Rabobank, says consumers often choose health over sustainability or health. “At the end of the day, we look at our bodies and how high our intake is,” he said.

And the taste is not yet ready for plant-based meat to become a “vice” food without further ado. Emma Ignaszewski, associate director of industry intelligence at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes meat alternatives, is skeptical that consumers pay close attention to lengthy ingredient lists. But, she says, research from the Good Food Institute shows that consumers put taste above all else when it comes to alternative meats. “From consumer studies, we see that 53 percent of consumers agree that plant-based meat products should taste just like meat,” Ignaszewski said.

Part of the problem is exactly who the customer is for the bleeding, pink-in-the-middle plant-based copy burger. It’s a bit like the all-electric Ford F-150 or the Hummer EV — a vehicle with environmental flair packaged in a form that might be palatable to a much broader group of Americans. But those consumers actually have to buy it. And while the electric 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning is selling out in the US, faux flesh is meeting more resistance.

It can only take time. The prejudices against alternative meats run deep and long-standing: according to a recent peer-reviewed study, consumers’ highest association with meat was ‘tasty’; the third highest association with plant-based meat was “disgusting”. (“Vegan” and “tofu” made it, too.) It’s impossible to overnight the perception of plant-based meats as bland or oddly textured. “Some of it could just take years,” said Jahn. “And that’s why it’s more than a single brand can do.”

The price can also play a role. According to the Good Food Institute, plant-based meat is still two to four times more expensive than regular meat. With inflation eating away at people’s paychecks, paying double for a similar experience isn’t an ideal choice for omnivores.

But there’s a broader question: whether the right way to move people away from meat is to offer highly processed imitations of burgers, sausages and steaks — or to lead them to other vegetarian and vegan options that are less like traditional “meat.” looks. (There’s a third option: some companies are pushing ahead with attempts to make meat from animal protein in the lab.)

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Frossard said of switching to a less meat-heavy diet. Referring to the ultra-processed plant-based meats, he added, “We’ll have to see if they double the bet that people want that.”