'Only a flesh wound:' Plant-based meat's hot takeoff cools

Beyond Meat products at a grocery store in Mount Prospect,
Ill., in February. (Photo by Nam Y. Huh, Associated Press)

 

Eat your veggies; have a salad; five-a-day; pigs are friends, not food. Americans have heard the meta-mantra: eat less meat and more vegetables. In 2019, companies launched plant-based burgers in major grocery chains and sales were tremendous. "The promise of high-tech meat substitutes prompted a frenzy of celebrity investment and red-hot IPOs in 2019. The pandemic saw significant consumer curiosity and a stampede of newcomers in the category," reports Laura Reiley of The Washington Post.

Three years later, Americans have had time to go beyond the hype, review the 18 ingredients in the Beyond Burger compared to the one ingredient in the beef burger and decided (at least for now) that plant-based products aren't the default solution to their protein needs, Reiley reports: "Plant-based meat, heralded by many as the death knell to Big Meat, appears at this moment to have dealt only a flesh wound."

Reiley reports that Beyond Meat, "the Los Angeles-based purveyor of plant-based burgers, crumbles, nuggets and such saw its stock prices plunge nearly 80 percent from its peak, and last month the company announced it would lay off about 19 percent of its workforce. McDonald’s has tabled its idea to roll out the McPlant burger nationally."

Major meatpackers were nervous about plant-based meat, but it seems that for now Big Meat will get to stay on top of the main course of the food chain. Reiley gives five reasons plant-based meats are struggling for sales: price; fuzzy health benefits; too many players in the industry; restaurants are not buying in; and lack of versatility of plant-based products.

Reiley notes that despite the mounds of evidence evidence "about the ills of a meat-heavy diet for human health, for planetary health, for workers’ health and for the habitat of the planet’s animal species . . . global consumption of meat has more than doubled since 1990." But Big Meat's challenges will continue: "Hype is building with the likely introduction in the United States next year of cultivated meat, made from cell cultures from real animals that doesn’t necessitate slaughter. Sofía De La Parra, an analyst at the investor network FAIRR Initiative, anticipates cultivated meat will reignite interest in plant-based products."