Vegan meat alternatives are on the rise

Plant-based meat has gone mainstream. The Impossible Burger, which debuted at a single restaurant five years ago, is now on Burger King’s permanent menu. And McDonald’s is testing its McPlant burger, featuring a Beyond Meat patty, in select US locations. Both plant-based startups are now veterans in a product category that did $1.4 billion in sales and grew 27 percent in 2020.

Under the tagline “Eat Meat. Save the Planet,” Impossible Foods claims its soy-based burger uses 87 percent less water, takes 96 percent less land, and has 89 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions than a beef burger. Beyond Meat makes similar claims about its pea-based burgers.

If you’ve ever had a Beyond Burger or Impossible Burger, you know that plant-based food companies have figured out how to make fake beef that tastes pretty beefy. Their success is reflected in the fact that many foodies now consider their products not only tolerable but trendy.

Yet when it comes to chicken, plant-based meat companies have really struggled to make a convincing substitute. That’s largely because replicating the structure of chicken muscle — which has a fibrous quality, with strands that pull apart — is much harder than creating a ground meat lookalike. Beyond Meat has tried to mimic chicken in the past, releasing chicken strips back in 2012. But reviews were mixed, and the company pulled the product a few years later.

In the past few years, meatless meat products have taken off among consumers. But the meatless meat market is still only about 1 percent of the meat market. One of the biggest reasons: Plant-based meat products are considerably more expensive.

There are signs, though, that that’s changing. Impossible Foods products on grocery store shelves should get about 20 percent cheaper in upcoming weeks, the company announced Tuesday morning. The company will suggest to retailers that prices drop to $5.49 (from $6.99) for a two-patty package and $6.99 (from $8.99) for a 12-oz. package of ground Impossible beef in the US (actual prices will vary by location and by retailer).

Plant-based meat got another big corporate ally on Tuesday: Pepsi.

The soda giant announced that it was forming The PLANeT Partnership with Beyond Meat, one of the world’s largest plant-based meat manufacturers, to “develop, produce and market snacks and beverages made from plant-based protein — bringing together Beyond Meat’s innovation expertise with PepsiCo’s marketing and commercial capabilities.”

In a year of splashy news for plant-based meat — skyrocketing sales! the new McPlant! —one of the biggest developments in the field went oddly underreported.

In the last three months of 2020, some of the biggest companies in the world announced major moves into the plant-based meat space.

In 1989, the social psychologist Melanie Joy became a vegetarian almost by accident. She ate a hamburger contaminated with campylobacter and became so ill that she couldn’t stomach the idea of eating meat again. So she set about learning new ways to cook for a meatless diet, reading cookbooks and doing research.

In the process, she started to learn about the suffering of non-human animals, the suffering of workers on factory farms, and the environmental toll exacted by animal agriculture.

Plant-based food makers will still be able to sell products labeled “veggie burgers,” the European Parliament voted on Friday after a week of negotiations.

Why was this up for debate in the first place?

As of October 1, a new law in Louisiana bans grocery stores from calling veggie burgers “veggie burgers,” as well as many similar product labels like “plant-based sausages” or “seitan-based vegan bacon.”

The justification? That consumers might get confused about whether veggie burgers are made of beef. It’s the latest of a series of attempts by meat companies to ban their plant-based competitors from grocery store shelves — and many legal experts say it’s probably unconstitutional.

Plant-based meat is doing big business during the pandemic — and it’s about to get even bigger.

Beyond Meat has launched a new e-commerce site that allows you to order its meatless products, including the popular Beyond Burger, right to your door. Starting Thursday, you no longer have to get your faux-meat from a grocery store or restaurant. You can order it online directly from the company and let it come to you.

The last couple of years have been consequential ones for meatless meat, as we at Future Perfect have documented. For all meatless meat’s success, however, advocates shouldn’t feel complacent. After all, meatless meat still makes up less than 1 percent of the annual meat consumption in the US — hardly a dent in how we eat.

Perhaps one of the biggest obstacles to mass meatless meat consumption becomes apparent when you get to the checkout line at your local grocery store.

Taco Bell is known for many things: turning Doritos into taco shells, “diablo” sauce, Gidget the spokes-chihuahua. But its greatest achievement, in my humble opinion? Being the friendliest major fast food restaurant for vegetarians and vegans.

It’s an achievement that the chain is very proud of and touts vigorously to plant-eating audiences. But a new change to the menu, which is removing several of the most vegetarian and vegan-friendly options at the Bell, has prompted concern among grassroots Taco Bell aficionados.

The latest place where you can buy a plant-based burger? The Magic Kingdom.

Disney announced Tuesday that it has partnered with Impossible Foods to serve Impossible plant-based meat at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and on the Disney Cruise Line.

In recent years, fake meat products have gone from a niche vegan interest to a mainstream one.

In 2019, Impossible Foods announced partnerships with Burger King, Qdoba, and dozens of other restaurants and franchises. Beyond Meat started selling at restaurants, including Del Taco, Subway, and most recently KFC. Plant-based meat went from something very few Americans had heard of to something that 40 percent of us have tried.

Splashy deals involving plant-based food companies tend to make the biggest headlines when they’re with big-name companies — Burger King, McDonald’s, KFC. But we should also pay attention to more low-key agreements with less recognizable names that arguably have a bigger effect on our food system.

Case in point: Thursday’s announcement that Just, a leading producer of plant-based eggs, has partnered with massive international food service provider Sodexo to bring plant-based eggs to the schools, office buildings, hospitals, and other institutions Sodexo serves.

KFC is one of the most notorious American food brands in animal rights circles — but the latest KFC news is something animal welfare supporters should cheer.

The company is rolling out Beyond Fried Chicken, a vegan chicken nugget product made in conjunction with the company Beyond Meat, to almost 100 stores in and around Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. The nuggets will go on sale Monday, February 3, and will be available until February 23 or while supplies last. If the test is successful, the company says it hopes to push the product nationwide.

2019 was a great year for plant-based meats. The enthusiastic reception that Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and the new wave of meat substitutes has received in restaurants and stores suggests there’s a lot of consumers who love the products. But since convincingly meatlike plant-based meat is so new, we still have an incomplete picture of how many Americans are on board.

A new set of Gallup polls, released Monday and Tuesday, seeks to fill in some of that picture. The polls ask Americans about their meat consumption and, for the first time ever for Gallup, their consumption of plant-based meats. The overall takeaway? Plant-based meats are in fact getting pretty big — though there’s still a cohort of Americans who are unpersuaded.

There’s a rhythm to plant-based meat offerings at fast-food and casual dining restaurants. First, a new company announces a plant-based offering with much fanfare and, often, lines out the door. Then the new food leaves the headlines, the restaurant jealously guards its sales numbers, and it’s hard for outsiders to tell if the launch was a success — that is, until a nationwide expansion is announced.

That’s the pattern we saw with Burger King (initial launch, national launch), Qdoba (initial launch, national launch), Del Taco (first product launch, expanded product line) and Subway (initial launch, national launch).

Now that it tastes like (or close to) the real thing, meatless meat has become mega-popular. You no longer need to choose between your desire to enjoy a delicious burger and your desire to spare animals or the environment from harm. That’s thanks, in large part, to two companies.

Beyond Meat has been selling its plant-based meat products in restaurants like Subway and Denny’s and stores like Whole Foods and Costco. Its competitor, Impossible Foods, has snagged major deals with restaurant chains like Burger King, and it just debuted Impossible Pork and Impossible Sausage (the latter is now available at 139 Burger King restaurants). Impossible was long locked out of the retail market as one of its key ingredients awaited regulatory approval, but it’s finally hit select supermarkets.

One step forward, one step back for meatless meat.

On Wednesday, McDonald’s announced that it would expand its Canadian trial of plant-based Beyond Burgers, offering them at 52 more restaurants in Ontario for the next three months starting January 14. This is an expansion of their P.L.T. (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato) Canadian trial run this fall, though it’s a very conservative expansion, encompassing only a few dozen more restaurants.

First, Impossible Foods brought you a meatless burger. Now, it’s bringing you meatless pork.

The California-based startup announced that it’s created plant-based pork and offered samples at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday. The first taste testers said it tastes much like the real thing.

Denny’s is jumping on the plant-based meat bandwagon.

The restaurant chain has announced that it is launching the Denny’s Beyond Burger, starting in Los Angeles and expanding nationwide by 2020. (It’ll also be offering free-with-a-drink-purchase Beyond Burgers in Los Angeles on Halloween as part of a promotion for the new product.)

When the Impossible Burger launched quietly in upscale restaurants a few years ago, the coverage was mostly positive, with some reviewers even calling it the future of meat.

Now, Impossible products have hit Qdoba, Burger King, and supermarkets. Another plant-based meat company, Beyond Meat, is featured in Carl’s Jr, Subway, and now McDonald’s. It’s a sign that the new wave of meatless meat is approaching mainstream status — an encouraging development if you care about changing our meat-centric food system.

Over the last few months, most of the major fast food chains have taken the leap toward plant-based burgers. Burger King has the Impossible Whopper. White Castle has the Impossible Slider. Carl’s Jr. has the Beyond Burger. Qdoba has the Impossible taco, Subway has Beyond meatballs, and KFC has tried out Kentucky Fried Beyond Chicken.

But there’s been one conspicuous holdout — McDonald’s.

Part of Issue #6 of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

On April 21, 1977, National Food Day, microbiologist Michael Jacobson and his gang of provocateurs at the upstart Center for Science in the Public Interest scored a coup: hosting a vegetarian dinner at the White House. Their goal was to call attention to “the declining quality of the American diet and its effect on public health.”

If you’re a fan of the cutting-edge meatless burgers produced by Impossible Foods, this is your lucky week: You’ll soon be able to buy them in grocery stores and cook them at home. This Friday, they’re hitting all 27 Gelson’s Markets in Southern California, including in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Don’t live on the West Coast? Don’t worry: Impossible Foods will announce more retailers later this month when its burgers are slated to debut at East Coast grocery stores. And the company plans to make them available in supermarkets in every region nationwide by mid-2020.