Plant-based meat has a problem. It may need more meat

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Dumplings in China. Empanadas in Latin America. Meatloaf in the United States.

If you’ve eaten food anywhere on the planet, you’ve probably indulged in some savoury blend of meat and vegetables. These recipes have been with us for as long as we’ve had the ingredients. They tend to be a side dish in many traditional cuisines. But as chefs and companies try to make plant-based foods more palatable, they are becoming the main dish.

Last month, I tried meatballs made by the Spare Food Company, which upcycles vegetables typically wasted on the farm. As I bit in, I braced for somewhat off-putting vegetal flavours to hit my tongue. Yet the meatballs were as mouthwatering as the ones my friend’s nona made during her epic four-hour Italian lunches. Maybe better.

I’m not alone in not being able to taste the difference.

Blind taste tests sponsored by climate philanthropy Food System Innovations show that several blended meats are outperforming conventional meat, in addition to 100 percent plant-based products.

These blended or “balanced” proteins – typically 30 to 70 percent plants – have begun making their way into buffet lines and freezer aisles across the country. Spare supplies food service companies with burgers that mix half a dozen veggies with beef in each juicy, umami-rich bite. Perdue’s Chicken PLUS line is convincing thousands of kids to eat their veggies, smuggled inside chicken nuggets. Soon, Mission Barns plans to release a plant-based bacon using lab-grown pork fat: “the biggest missing piece,” argued Eitan Fischer, the company’s CEO.

Since demand for novel plant-based meats has flatlined, blended meats look more and more like the hybrid cars of the food world – a bridge to a plant-based future. Blended offerings can cut emissions by about a third relative to conventional meat. But that doesn’t appear to be their primary appeal. Their greatest potential seems to be among meat eaters whose motivations centre on taste, nutrition and convenience.

So are blended meats a flash in the pan among America’s many food fads or a glimpse of “plant-based” food that’s just better? I tried some to get a taste of the future.

Going beyond the Beyond Burger

Meat remains as American as hot dogs at a baseball game.

Ninety-seven percent of U.S. households eat conventional meat, estimates the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit promoting alternatives to conventional meat. Even in households that purchase plant-based meats, the share consuming meat is virtually the same.

But many Americans would like to eat less animal protein. About a third of U.S. adults report wanting to cut down on their meat consumption. But, at the same time, they tend to want their protein alternatives to taste more like the original.

Plant-based products aren’t quite delivering on that promise. Last year, about 1 percent of all meat and seafood sales in the United States were fully plant-based. After a honeymoon period in the early 2020s that saw the ascent of Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and many imitators, sales have fallen and stocks have plummeted. Retail sales in the $8.1 billion plant-based food market were down 4 percent last year.

Jody Kirchner, who leads market research at GFI, says plant-based foods are unlikely to appeal to the 25 percent of Americans who consider eating meat a natural, entrenched part of their routine. But that leaves almost three-quarters of Americans open to embracing blended products for reasons such as taste, health, nutrition and convenience. Only 10 percent of them are primarily motivated by sustainability and animal welfare.

Blended meats could become a “powerful gateway” for people to add more plants in their diet, said Vincenzina Caputo, an applied economist at Michigan State University who runs the Food Choice Research Lab, a research effort studying the appeal of foods.

But suppliers will need to do more than lower prices or perfect the sensory experience. They will have to appeal to people’s psychology.

“U.S. consumers have a very strong attachment to meat,” Caputo said. “They identify themselves as meat lovers. That’s reality.”

That presents an opening for products like Spare’s if they can present vegetables as enhancing – rather than replacing – meat. “Blended-proteins today largely succeed at the surface level: taste, texture and even emotional fit in blind settings,” Caputo said. “But they repeatedly fall short once … branding features their non-beef origins.”

In her research published in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, she found that 100 percent plant-based options could not beat all-beef burgers on taste in a blind tasting. But beef blends with mushrooms rivaled pure beef for taste, juiciness and texture – at least until you told people about the ingredients. Once participants learned of the mushroom content, their willingness to pay for the product collapsed.

Her findings suggest that companies should avoid marketing blended protein as meat substitutes. “It just doesn’t work,” Caputo said, recommending brands capitalize on products’ carnivorous appeal as delicious, meat-forward products. “Market them as complementary, as a way to diversify diets, and you may have a way into the mainstream consumer segment.”

That’s how Spare Food sells its burgers. “‘Beef but better’ is our positioning,” said Jeremy Kaye, who co-founded the company with his brother, Adam Kaye, a chef. After spending more than two years developing a supply chain for surplus vegetables that would have otherwise been wasted, the company calibrated a mix to enhance the taste and texture of ground beef. A combination of cauliflower, onion, tomato, eggplant, zucchini, summer squash and carrots constitutes about 30 percent of its burger and the meatball I tried last month.

Kaye estimates major food service companies and universities serve thousands of their burgers each week, which are also available through retailers Misfits Markets and Imperfect Foods. While the scale is tiny – Americans eat tens of billions of burgers each year – Kaye attributes their growth to marketing a better-tasting product that just happens to be better for the planet.

“We do not use plant-based at all” in marketing, Kaye said. “It’s somewhat of an albatross for us.”

Taking the mystery out of ‘mystery meat’

“Mystery meat” can also prompt skepticism from American consumers. In the early 1900s, the meatpacking industry, as exposed by Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle,” was a stomach-churning business. Sawdust and rotten meat were routinely thrown into ground meat, a practice that paved the way to food regulations and the Food and Drug Administration. In the 1980s and ’90s, fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s and Burger King were adding fillers such as skin and bone slurry to chicken nuggets or beef trimmings treated with ammonia gas – what critics called “pink slime” – to burgers. Both practices have been largely discontinued (although the companies maintained their safety).

Today, food companies are leaning into clean-label ingredients: vegetables or grains that enhance health and sustainability without sacrificing taste.

Not all have succeeded. Early entrants Applegate and Tyson discontinued their blended lines in the past few years. “What came to market were rushed products not positioned in a way that’s appealing to consumers,” said Tim Dale, a former marketer at Impossible Foods who now works at Food System Innovations. “The products we’re seeing today are testing better than conventional products.”

NECTAR, the philanthropy’s nonprofit initiative, launched the Tasty Awards after seeing customers turned off by substandard plant-based foods. It conducts large, blind taste tests of alternative protein products, measuring flavour, texture, appearance, overall satisfaction and intent to purchase. The best are feted; the rest get insights to improve their R&D. Last year, the organization tested 22 balanced protein products with 1,192 omnivores from San Francisco and New York, who it says are representative of U.S. demographics.

Many products lost points for weird aftertastes, off-flavours and mushy textures. Others lacked the meaty, savoury and fatty flavours people craved. But three products in the blind taste tests were ranked superior to their all-animal counterparts: Perdue’s Chicken PLUS, Fable’s Shiitake-Infused Beef Burger and DUO’s Beef & Mushroom Burger. More than half a dozen others were judged to offer mass-market appeal, winning over at least half of the participants who rated the balanced protein the same as or better than the animal product.

Dale said there is a clear path from today’s meat and vegetable blends to a 100 percent plant-based future, as technology and taste improve sensory appeal, and economies of scale lower prices. Plant-based options could then become the default.

“At that point, we can expect these products will taste better than the conventional meat we have today and will be more affordable,” he said. “It won’t feel like we’re giving up anything, because we will be opting into the better option.”