There’s no shortage of theories. For starters, the burgers are made by machines. While they’ve been fine-tuned to include less fat and cholesterol than real beef, early products were full of sodium and used additives for taste and texture, like sugar and carrageenan — an extract from seaweed that’s the subject of health concerns among some scientists and nutritionists. Companies like Beyond and Impossible have tinkered with recipes to get rid of additives and make fake meat more nutritious, but the fact remains that their burgers are lab creatures.
“The big problem with plant-based meats is they fall into the category of ultra-processed,” said Marion Nestle, a longtime food studies professor at New York University. Even though plant-based meat might be healthier than red meat on a nutritional basis, it’s still part of a broader class of processed foods, including cereal and sodas, that have been linked to poor health outcomes. “There’s just tons of evidence that these are the kinds of foods to avoid,” Nestle said. “The ingredient list is lengthy and very impressive, and that has been the basis of attack by the meat industry.”
Soon after Beyond and Impossible burgers took off, the Center for Consumer Freedom — a corporate-backed advocacy group perhaps best known for defending the tobacco industry — launched a campaign targeting plant-based meats. “Fake meat or dog food?” read a full-page ad the group placed in The Los Angeles Times in 2019. One of the organization’s main tactics has been to highlight that plant burgers come from factories, not farms.
(Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)
“The meat industry really made a concerted effort to make people think [plant-based meat] is not healthy,” Pillan said. “They do a great job. They’re good marketers. They’re good lobbyists.”
The industry’s push came at a convenient moment: Around the same time, a health movement promoting “clean” foods — meat and vegetables that aren’t processed — entered the mainstream. “The meat alternatives have run up against this other trend,” said Jayson Lusk, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. Lusk often hears the refrain: “If I wanted plants, I’d just eat plants.”
Plant-based meat now finds itself in a strange spot, simultaneously seen as healthy and unhealthy, with attitudes starting to tip toward the “junk food” designation. “Healthfulness” was the top reason people bought plant-based meat in 2021, according to an International Food Information Council survey. That same year, a Deloitte survey found that 68 percent of buyers thought the novel burgers were healthier than beef. In 2022, that figure slipped to 60 percent.
Even more than health perceptions, “Taste and price are the two main reasons people don’t buy” plant patties, said Tessa Hale, director of corporate engagement at the Good Food Institute, a think tank that promotes alternative meats. “They don’t want to try it because they just have this idea that it’s going to taste bad,” Hale said.
(Nadya Kubik/Shutterstock.com)
Or they simply can’t afford to shell out for a pricier product, made even more expensive by inflation. Plant-based meats often cost two or three times more than their cow-based counterparts at the grocery store. In 2019, the average retail price of meat alternatives was $9.87 per pound, while that of conventional meat was $3.53. Today, Walmart sells Beyond Burgers at $9.68 per pound and beef patties for as little as $3.94 per pound. Some compare the cost gap to that between electric and gas-powered vehicles: Until prices come down, the premium, climate-friendly option won’t be widely adopted.
For each of the top concerns — price, health and taste — proponents say there’s reason to be optimistic. They observe that inflation has been worse for real meat than for the products that imitate it. As production scales up and new technologies get perfected, the price curve for plant-based foods “is expected to keep on coming down,” said Chris Bryant, an alternative proteins researcher in the United Kingdom.
Impossible Foods cut sale prices by 20 percent in 2021, and Beyond Meat has said it plans to sell at least one of its products for less than the going price of meat by 2024. In the Netherlands, growing demand and government support for faux meat reportedly have helped fake burgers achieve price parity with real ones. “We seem to be at the tipping point,” Bryant said.
As for the health question, Pillan acknowledged that plant-based burgers aren’t always the healthiest option — next to, say, a salad or lentils. But he said what matters is that they’re healthier than beef. They have less cholesterol and fat, and some research suggests they lower the risk of heart disease compared to red meat.
A Beyond Meat spokesperson cited a similar case made by the company’s chief executive, Ethan Brown, on an earnings call in February. Brown criticized the “drummed-up misperception that our products are overly processed and utilize complex ingredients” and pointed to a study suggesting that eating Beyond’s products instead of animal meat could lead to lower cholesterol levels.
(Jeckman/CC BY-SA 2.0)
Veggie Grill, for its part, has closed several locations in recent months, but also plans to launch a franchise program. In the company’s early days, “The West Coast was really where we could put multiple Veggie Grills and make the concept work,” Pillan said. “Now we could put multiple Veggie Grills in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Miami.”
Meanwhile, producers aren’t done fiddling with the recipes for fake meat. Scientists are honing techniques like precision and biomass fermentation to reduce the number of ingredients needed to turn plants into meat. One company, Meati, is marketing steak and chicken products made almost entirely from mushrooms, touting it as being simultaneously low in fats and high in protein, vitamins and minerals.
All in all, the industry’s supporters aren’t that worried about the dire tone of the recent media coverage. “I still believe there is a lot of hype,” Hale said. “It’s a very nascent category, all things considered.” There remains a sense among proponents, much as there was 10 years ago, that meat made from plants could one day make a meaningful dent in the market for animal meat, living up to its many promises.
Consider the assurance that Brown, Impossible’s founder, offered to a group of kids four years ago when they toured his startup’s office to learn about his team’s invention: “I promise that by the time you are adults, the meat you eat will not come from dead animals,” Brown told the kids, who had donned white lab coats for the occasion. “You can come find me and beat me up if I’m wrong.”
