Comment The future of plant-based meat had to be cooked to perfection. In recent years, corporate and venture capital has poured into the space. Fast food giants such as KFC and Burger King scrambled to introduce offerings. The crowd of meme shares centered around Beyond Meat. Sales were increasing. Vegans missing the meat would love it! Even better, it would find fans with meat eaters who want to cut back! It is now clear that the hype has overtaken a sometimes less than palatable reality. Sales of plant-based meat in the United States are down more than 10 percent from this time last year. The point is basic: The problems fake meat was supposed to solve—from the climate impacts of industrial agriculture to the health effects of meat—are very real, but the solution it offers appeals to far fewer consumers than expected. . The truth is, of course, that we don’t just eat for nutrition, but for pleasure. The meat offers a dynamic, gamy, savory experience that is, to this day, impossible to replicate. When I asked around for weeks, I discovered few fans of processed meat substitutes. “Too chewy,” said a friend. “Masyle,” said another. My older son made a face. The only person I could find who claimed it tasted like the real thing admitted they hadn’t tasted the real thing in over 20 years. Some people on vegetarian diets told me they didn’t mind and were happy to have it as an option on fast food menus, and others told me they enjoyed it as a substitute for breakfast meats like sausage and bacon. But few people seemed to find plant-based meat actually enjoyable. Follow Helaine Olen’s viewsFollow Add On the experts’ side, everyone from Wall Street short sellers to market researchers said that, at least for now, many sales of fake meat appeared to be to people who test drove it. “I think there was a lot of demand for people to give it a try,” said noted short seller Jim Chanos, when I called him to ask how the once-promising Beyond Meat ended up as one of the most popular shorts out there. He stressed that the company is “unprofitable”. When I asked him what he thought of the deals, he replied, “Put me in the category of people who tried it once.” And health-wise, yes, these “meats” are significantly lower in saturated fat than the real thing – but they’re also higher in sodium. It’s a highly crafted offering. “These are not your mother’s veggie burgers made with beans and other whole plant ingredients,” warns a report issued this year by the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. The food industry is a huge player, with companies like Tyson Foods and Cargill dominating the space. These facts mean that many health-conscious people have remained skeptical about adding these artificial meats to their diets. “It has the same feel as in the industrial landscape, where we think we can outsmart nature,” says Kristin Lawless, author of Formerly Known as Food. The data shows the new offer doesn’t appear to be leading to big meat cuts – it’s more of a supermarket add-on. As a study published this year in the journal Nature noted, “Interestingly, after a household’s first PBMA [plant-based meat alternatives] market, consumption of minced meat did not decrease.” At a time of rising food costs, such innovations become all too easy to brush aside. Of the people who told me they both enjoyed plant-based meat and ate it regularly (often as a substitute for breakfast meats), several said they would cut back when inflation rose. This points to a major problem – artificial meat is often more expensive than at least the budget version of the real thing. In other words, people want to do right by the environment and their health — but not at a significant cost to their taste or wallet. It’s hard not to think about margarine. Back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, margarine quickly replaced butter in cooking. One ad said the stuff was so good it could “fool mother nature.” This was not true and consumers knew it. They just thought it was a healthier option. When it became clear in the 1990s that this was not the case, sales melted away. That’s not to say margarine isn’t still with us, but few are talking about it as a substitute for butter. It may be that what we are seeing is a brief lull and the imitation meat market will rebound as the product and the economy improve. One reason for optimism: plant-based meat consumers are, on the whole, younger than other shoppers, which means there’s more room for growth. But there is already a viable protein option for those who want to maintain a vegan diet or cut back on meat. Like the doctor said, eat your peas… and other legumes like lentils and beans. It’s true that they don’t taste like sausage or chicken. Then again, if you ask me, neither do the imitators.
