Meat From Plants

Lars Obendorfer says he was “badly insulted” after he first began offering vegan sausage at his stands, dubbed “Best Worscht in Town.” He even found himself mediating between customers arguing on social media about what to him was just another menu item.

“There was downright hostility between the meat eaters and the vegans,” he said. “And I just couldn’t understand it, and I said, ‘knock off the arguing.’”

That was six years ago.

According to one University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road.

An explosion of new types of plant-based “meat” — the burgers, nuggets, sausages and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting customers all over the world. Even in Germany, where cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt have given their names to iconic meat dishes, plant-based meat is becoming more popular.

But sales aren’t growing nearly fast enough in nearly enough places to reverse the global boom in meat consumption. To many customers it still is a novelty — maybe they’ll try plant-based meat or eat it once in a while, but that’s all.

Between 2018 and 2022, global retail sales of plant-based meat and seafood more than doubled to $6 billion, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm. That is dwarfed by global retail sales of packaged animal meat and seafood, which grew 29% in the same period to $302 billion.

In the U.S., there was a boom in plant-based meat sales between 2017 and 2020 and then sales plateaued, inching up just 2% between 2020 and 2022, according to Euromonitor. At the same time, U.S. animal meat and seafood sales rose 13%. Americans ate more than 128 kilograms (282 pounds) of meat per person in 2020, according to the United Nations. That compares to the world average of 43 kilograms (95 pounds) per person.

Contrast that with Germany, where plant-based meat sales continue to see steady growth while meat consumption is falling. Last year, Germany’s annual meat consumption slipped to a 33-year low of 52 kilograms (114 pounds) per person. At the same time, plant-based meat sales rose 22%, according to Euromonitor, and they have tripled since 2018.

Concerns about animal welfare and the environment are top reasons Germans give for switching to plant-based meat, according to a recent McKinsey survey. Americans are more likely to cite their own health and nutrition.

In Germany, “there is clearly the desire to do something meaningful about climate,” said Ethan Brown, the founder and CEO of plant-based meat company Beyond Meat. “Here in the United States, it’s unfortunately become politicized, and that burden does not weigh on the market in the same way.”

Plant-based meat has come a long way since 1975, when Morningstar Farms, a division of Kellogg Co., introduced soy-based breakfast sausage. Sales started to take off about 10 years ago, when startups like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat began selling burgers that more closely resembled meat and were aimed at meat eaters, not just vegetarians and vegans. Beyond Meat’s burgers, made with pea protein, even “bleed” with the help of beet juice.

But it’s not so easy to beat the real thing — especially since generations upon generations of people have been raised on it.

Peter McGuinness, the chief executive of Impossible Foods, says the issue is simple: Plant-based meats still just aren’t “good enough.”

“What is the number one thing people want in food?” he asks. “Taste.”

A recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research of U.S. consumers found that about 8 in 10 U.S. adults said taste was an extremely or very important factor when buying food, with its cost and nutritional value following close behind. Americans are much less likely to prioritize the food’s effect on the environment (34%) or its effect on animal welfare (30%).

Questions about the healthiness of plant-based meat, sometimes sowed by the meat industry, have also weighed on sales.

The Center for Consumer Freedom — which says it’s funded by restaurants and food companies but won’t say which ones — has run Super Bowl and newspaper ads criticizing plant-based meat, saying it has “chemicals and ultra-processed ingredients that you can’t pronounce.”

Nutrition experts broadly agree that healthy diets should include more plants — especially whole grains, beans, fruits and most vegetables — and less meat, especially red meat. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that plant-based foods are healthy. While they may have less fat, no cholesterol and more fiber than meat, they can also be high in sodium and they don’t always have as much protein.

Plant-based meat makers are working on new recipes and techniques they believe will win people over. Impossible Foods is trying to attract consumers with new packaging and updated products, including lean and “indulgent” versions of its soy-based burgers.

Others are trying totally different approaches.

Eventually, the company expects to produce more than 40 million pounds of meat annually at its 100,000-square-foot Mega Ranch in Thornton, Colorado. That’s about 160 million 4-ounce servings, or half the amount of steak served each year at Chipotle, one of Meati’s biggest investors.

Tyler Huggins, the co-founder and CEO of Meati, comes from a family of bison ranchers and occasionally eats meat. But he says weaning Americans from their meat-heavy diet is imperative because the country is already using most of its arable land.

Globally, two-thirds of agricultural land is used for livestock grazing, according to the United Nations. And that has a huge environmental cost: Animal agriculture accounts for 14.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“How are you going to continue to feed a growing population and an increased demand in meat?” Huggins said. “We have to get more efficient in the way we produce things.”

Concern for the environment convinced Adrienne Stevson to make the switch to plant-based meat.

A graphic designer from Johnson, Vermont, Stevson was a heavy meat-eater for most of her life. She has a family cookbook filled with meaty recipes and even worked for a time as a prep cook preparing meat.

When her partner became a vegan she was skeptical, but the more she learned about the benefits to the climate, the more she warmed to plant-based meat.

Stevson still uses her family cookbook, but she swaps out the meat for Beyond Meat ground beef, Impossible sausage and other products, like tofu. In an ideal world, she says, she wouldn’t have to do that.

“I think in an ideal world we could live with eating dairy products and meat products,” Stevson says. “But there’s way too many people on the earth and we haven’t solved the problem of animal agriculture for that many people in a sustainable way.”