254. Animal-plant hybrid products: compromise or demise?

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Christophe Pelletier

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The issue of food and climate is ongoing. There are many different views about what is perceived as damaging and what is perceived as sensible. The debate tends to be polarized, mostly by both extremes. I discussed that topic a long time ago in a chapter of my second book (We Will Reap What We Sow, 2012) and all I can say is that the answer is far from simple. Of course, some people think it is, and their answer aligns with their dogma. That is not necessarily helpful. Food is a complex issue. First, food choices are rarely rational and nutrition usually does not play a prominent role, even though everybody does a great job of rationalizing their choices. The thing is that people choose what they eat mostly based on emotional and psychological aspects. It can be societal issues. It can be what they have been used to eat since childhood. It can be cultural. It can even be a political statement or the expression of their belonging to a particular socioeconomic group. Every possible reason is out there.

Protein hype

The debate around animal versus plant is really mostly focused on protein. In my opinion, this is already the first flaw. Both animal products and plant products contain much more nutrients than just protein. Even within the protein category, different animal products and plant products present rather different profiles of amino acids, and essential amino acids in particular. Yet, the essential amino acid profile is what defines the quality of a protein. Unfortunately, the quality aspect of protein is often overlooked, which is quite a serious mistake. The focus is on quantity, hence the current protein hype that brings food suppliers come with all sorts of high-protein products. It is just marketing and has little to do with rational nutrition. If the focus was on rationality, it would be clear that, at least in developed countries, people eat on average already enough protein, generally speaking. They do not need more. They might need better protein, though. The best diet is one that provides the needed amount of protein, no more and no less. Eating more protein results in two drawbacks. One is that the excess calories (because people from developed countries already consume more calories than they really need) from protein end up adding to body fat, so it might not be such a healthy strategy after all. The second drawback is that the excess nitrogen (protein is the only nutrient group providing nitrogen) provided by a diet too rich in protein is going to be excreted through the kidneys in the urine, so basically eating too much protein leads to pee your wallet away in the toilet, so to speak.

Plant or animal: a misplaced feud?

All the surveys that I read show the same: the overwhelming majority of people consider animal products an essential part of a healthy nutrition. Only a couple of percents of the population from developed countries consider that people should not eat meat. That is their choice. Such a point of view is not based on biology. It is a doctrine, not a diet. The question is how much protein a person should eat, and how much from animal origin. This is a much healthier debate. There are different opinions about that one, but accepting the obvious -it is not either/or but and/and- allows for more constructive conversations.

Another absurdity of the polarization on the type of protein is that often the debate is presented as if there were only two categories of people: pure carnivores and vegans, and nothing in between. Wrong! Even meat lovers eat some foods of plant origin, too. Regular people, aka the overwhelming silent majority of consumers, eat a mix of animal products and plant products. This special blend has a name. It is called a meal! Here is the interesting part of a healthy diet: it combines all sorts of ingredients that all bring their share of nutrients to the body. They complement each other. Some bring essential amino acids, others bring essential fatty acids, others bring fiber, others bring minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and other micronutrients.

The entire human digestive tract -including teeth- shows that we have evolved into omnivores. Like it or not, this is the biological reality. Humans eat a bit of everything. The term flexitarian is just a hollow neologism created purely for marketing purposes to make believe there is another category and lure people. It did not get much traction for the simple reason that it is just hot air. People are not stupid. Omnivore is what counts for more than 95% of the population in developed countries. I may insist much on the developed country distinction in this article. The reason is simple: there are many people on Earth who unfortunately eat only what they can afford, not what would be best for them. They do not have that luxury. If and when, thanks to better economic prospects, they can afford more choice, be assured that they will increase their consumption of animal products. That has been the same pattern everywhere in the world before.

The talk about hybrid products

During the past couple of decades Some people have put a lot of effort into trying to convince us to give up meat by making all sorts of bogus claims about replacing all cows by 2030. Reality begged to differ. The cows are not going away. There is no reason why they should. Production systems have changed and they work towards reducing the issues linked to animal production, but animal products are here to stay. Actually, all forecasts from serious sources show that consumption of animal products will increase globally, mostly as a result of the growing world population. People in developing countries also want access to meat, dairy and eggs. And let’s face it, in these countries, they do not have the money to buy the novel tech foods, so forget those. That category is for the affluent westerners. And it has not done well. Plant-based fake meat is a failure. Just look at Beyond Meat. Only a few plant-based foods companies are doing fine and they are not in the investor-led tech sector. Since the tech plant-based fake meat cannot survive on its own, a new strategy has arisen. The idea is to bring people to eat less meat by replacing a part of the meat by protein from legumes (soybean and pea mostly). If you look at it, it comes down to incorporate the fake meat into real meat. As such, why not?

The only regions where they are now trying to sell their products is the EU and the UK, not so much as 100% plant-based fake meat, but as hybrid products. The danger of this approach is that it tends to be sneaky and people are starting to notice. It is interesting to note that this approach is mostly a European one. Opposite to that, in North America, the fake meat market is dead. Period. To my knowledge, the EU is the only region that so skillfully sabotages its food security, in particular in the sector of animal production. They do it partly for political reasons under pressure of environmental organizations and also partly because, I hate to say, EU leaders suffer from some sort of a moral superiority complex that leads them to impose standards that undermine the future of farming in the EU while they seem to think that the rest of the world would adopt those standards because, well, Europe says so. Good luck with that! The thing is that the EU is not even self-sufficient in plant protein and their regulations on those productions also weaken their farmers’ competitive position.

So, the tech companies, after realizing that they could not beat meat, have chosen a different approach. Let’s join the meat and have hybrid products. I understand the thinking, but I wonder if this might not have the opposite effects of what the plant-based protein industry and some EU politicians trying to force onto people think it will achieve. Let’s have a look at potential problems.

First problem is that hybrid products are tricky to identify, as their labeling and packaging mimic the pure meat products they want to replace. This sneaky -if not weaselly- approach might become more difficult now that the EU has passed legislation on labeling of non-meat products trying to pretend to be meat. I have seen -and tasted- this deception first hand.

An unpleasant discovery

Last year, I was visiting my family in France. As usual when I visit, they ask me to do the cooking. One of the meals was beef patties they had bought at a local supermarket, or so I thought. It was a product from France’s leading beef producer, so I did not pay much attention but as I was preparing the meal, I felt something was wrong. The color was strange. It was an unusual beautiful red. I have never seen such red beef because beef is never that color. Anyway, since my parents had bought it, I thought it had to be the real thing and shrugged it off. Then, in the frying pan, those patties were not behaving like normal beef patties, either. They would not brown nicely like the way I am used to. Further, they were rather bouncy and rubbery in texture. I could not really press them. Then, I served them and I had the same weird feeling when I stated to bite and chew on them. The texture was odd. Anyway, we had our meal. I was not very happy because it did not taste great but we moved on. It is only later that I found a journalist’s report about that beef brand, explaining that they also sold hybrid patties nicely colored with beat juice, and I will bet my shirt that it is exactly what I ate that day. This year, I visited my family again and I went to the supermarket. What I saw really disturbed me. The supermarket’s was selling its own label “Haché de Boeuf” (best translation would be “ground beef”) next to trays of “Haché Pur Boeuf” (Ground pure beef). There it was! I grabbed one of each to look at the labels. The Haché de Boeuf was not just beef. It contained 25% (a quarter!) pea protein isolate, plus a lengthy list of all sorts of weird ingredients, the types used in the plant-based fake meat. The Haché Pur Boeuf was indeed all beef with nothing weird added. I do not have a problem with supermarkets selling any kind of product they want but I have a huge problem with them selling something under a name that does not give any indication of ingredients that do not belong in what the name of the product suggests. Put it anyway you want, but Haché de Boeuf translates as ground beef and nothing else. Haché means ground and boeuf means beef. Haché de Boeuf should be beef and nothing else. Actually, they have done the opposite and created a new name for the original real thing. Ground beef is not longer Haché de Boeuf. It has become Haché Pur Boeuf. Of course, the average shopper can’t tell the difference between ground beef and ground beef unless they would become suspicious of everything, which they clearly should do. If you do not pay close attention, there is a chance that you are taking home something that is not what you think. I would not trust that supermarket anymore. What else do they sell under misleading names? Should the shopper become a food inspector? Well, perhaps yes.

Another example, also from France, of such a lack of transparency happens in bakeries. Due to the high price of butter, many bakers have switched to hybrid fat (butter mixed with fat of plant origin) products for croissants and other pastries simply because the production cost is lower than with only butter. In France, there are two categories of croissants: ” croissant au beurre” (croissant made with butter) and just “croissant” (made with fat of plant origin) which are the cheaper version. The problem is that the croissants made with the hybrid fat are labeled -and sold- in bakeries as “croissants au beurre”. It is perfectly legal but consumers are left to believe that the only fat source used is butter, and that is not the case. Almost all consumers are actually even unaware that these hybrid fat products exist. Those croissants are in between the two categories but sold for the price of the better croissant. Although legal, this feels like deception and that is not good for trust in food.

But, as I mentioned, the new EU legislation should prevent that in the future. Though, it is funny -and ironic- to see the reaction of the alt-protein sector to this new legislation. Of course, as you would expect, they find it unfair and unjustified. Everyone is a victim, and they in particular. They consider that fake imitations should be called meat or chicken or fish. When challenged, they reply by saying that people are not stupid (which I said earlier, too) and they claim that the people buying the fake products are well aware that it is not the real thing. So, if people know the difference, why wanting to call it like the real product it pretends to be? That does not make any sense, but there is a simple reason. The fake meat producers and their advocates know quite well that animal products have appeal and that theirs do not. Maybe, they should think about why that is. If people know the difference and it is not the same thing, why don’t they show real creativity and invent a brand new word for their products and fully differentiate themselves. The difference is what creates a loyal tribe. A few thousand years ago, the ones who developed tofu and tempeh created these very words, which did not exist before. Why can’t all those ego-inflated food tech people who were about to revolutionize food and agriculture and save the planet cannot think of something as simple as an original name, or is it because they could not really develop an original product, either, and cannot do any better than imitate something that has existed since the dawn of time instead? Frankly, that is their problem.

Hybrid products are not just in France. A few supermarket chains from The Netherlands and in Germany have also pledged to sell at least 60% of plant-based products. It has already been noticed that they also present confusing packaging that does not clearly inform the consumers about the true nature of the products. They are also already accused of green washing. From what I gather, the idea behind the claim of 60% (yes, why that magic number?) would be to meet GHG targets. I write this in the conditional and you should read it that way, too. I have not been able to find a reliable source to confirm this. Nonetheless, I do not think 60% is difficult to achieve considering all the products of plant origin they already sell. Here, think of fruit, vegetables, bread, legumes, rice, pasta and so on. I am sure you can also make up a list of plant-based products sold in supermarkets. That makes sense because the diet of the normal person I mentioned at the beginning of this article, being an omnivore, also eats at least 60% of foods that are of plant origin, next to the animal products. Further, having a product listed does not mean that it sells. The best example, especially with plant-based products in mind, is Beyond Meat. They were listed in all the restaurants, from global fast-food chains to independent eateries. They were listed in all supermarket chains, too. Yet, they masterfully flopped. Of course, the retailers do not present the 60% in that angle. They prefer to go along with the dogma of their politicians in power, and come with the usual meat-blaming rhetoric because it is risk-free and sounds so virtuous. So, will they label hybrid products clearly or will they deceive their customers? That is their choice. Trust has seriously eroded in about everything, and if they choose deception and misinformation, it will backfire on them. The winners in such a situation would be the specialized butcher shops, dairy shops and fishmongers. They are the ones with a quality-minded concept. That said, quality varies greatly and let’s face it, there are also products of animal origin that are of poor quality sold in stores. I could name quite a few that I would not touch with a 10-foot pole.

EU food producers and retailers must be careful about transparency. Consumers defense organizations are powerful in that part of the world. Messing around with the consumers will not do anyone any good. What a total violation of the idea of transparency and trust this is! It is actually ironic, as supermarkets over there are so keen to tell times and times over how transparent they are and how much they cherish creating trust. Generally speaking, if you go to France, my advice is to buy your meat at a butcher’s shop or on one of the many markets. The quality of many products I have seen in the supermarkets in France this past visit has disappointed me beyond my imagination. They really need to fix that situation.

Can hybrid products succeed?

Of course they can, but not with the same approach and attitude as the plant-based fake imitations used in the recent past. If they keep the same approach, the result will be the same. People are now well aware of tech foods and they associate them with ultraprocessed foods. So, my advice here would be, do not sell tech processed foods. Sell good old-fashioned wholesome foods. Sell healthy nutrition instead of tech “prowess”. It is cheaper, it requires less investment and no intellectual property for which all the failing food tech companies have been suing each other lately. In food, to succeed, short and long term, you have to offer nutritious foods.

When it comes to protein, legumes are in the spotlight. In their natural form,they offer protein but also carbohydrates, fats and fiber (which belongs to carbs), along with a whole range of micronutrients. Sooner or later, the question of whether building factories using energy to deconstruct the bean or the pea to extract just the 20-25% protein it contains is really worth it or sensible will arise. It is a good thing that farm animals are here to upcycle the by-products. Would it not make more sense to use the whole bean/pea as a wholesome unprocessed ingredient into a recipe with other wholesome ingredients? Be assured that this question will arise sooner or later, too. Ultraprocessed is out and ultraprocessed foods producers have a very hard time regaining trust from consumers, with one interesting exception: the meat-loving beefcakes on social media that hate fake meat products and yet love the protein powders that are probably made in the same plants as where the tech fake meat source their protein isolates. There are not that many companies producing those products, so just connect the dots!

At the beginning of the tech fake meat hype, a number of companies, mostly meat companies ventured in hybrid territory. It does not seem to have had much appeal. The question that producers need to ask themselves is: do people really want to that kind of blend? Do they want a highly processed product like a protein isolate invisibly mixed with a basic processed product like ground meat? When it comes to value for money, it is clear that quality will be a decisive criterion. Is hybrid the best or will it be the worst of both worlds? Success will depend on the consumers’ answer to that question. To succeed, the perceived quality of hybrid products will have to be at least the same as the perceived quality of the original animal product. If not, it will be an uphill battle. If the quality is perceived as at least equal, hybrid products will succeed, at least some will. And there might be some potential irony about this. If people like these products and want more of them, it might actually increase indirectly their consumption of animal products. I recently had a conversation with the CEO of a company that sells mushroom-based products that are used in hybrid products and he was claiming to be successful and mentioned that the growth of these hybrid infused meat products were actually strongly outpacing sales of pure plant-based category. It sounds that the main casualty of hybrid products might very well be the plant-based foods, not the animal products.

In 2019, I had posted two articles on this blog about what I saw ahead for both animal products and for plant-based products. I believe that my conclusions of then have materialized rather well. As far as hybrid products are concerned, I believe that quality will be key. I also believe that they will need to make ingredients recognizable to the eye. The impossibility for the consumer to see clearly what they eat will lead to failure. A long list of “mysterious” ingredients will do the same. Of course, the worst of the worst would be to keep trying to deceive consumers by not being transparent. The latter will kill your business in less time than it takes to flip a burger.

I also believe that if the conversation about animal and plant protein becomes more intelligent than during the last decade, people will think more about complementarity than opposing the two categories. In the UK, some organizations have recently launched a campaign to encourage people to eat more beans and other legumes. I believe that it is a good idea. However, beans may have a couple of inconveniences to overcome. If you use dry beans, it takes a bit of time to soak and cook them. It is not that complicated or particularly time consuming but I expect that to be a hindrance. The other possibility is to use canned beans. It is quite convenient. It is easy to store. It is already cooked and ready to use. The problem here is to make canned beans sexy again. It has an old-fashioned image and that might work against them. And then, there is the issue of flatulence. It is not the most exciting topic but it needs to be mentioned. There is a simple solution to this problem: add a little bit of baking soda in the beans.

Personally, next to meat, I am an avid consumer of beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils. Since I cook, I make a lot of dishes with beans, most of which also contain meat, but I also make salads, soups or dips with them. I love to cook and I enjoy making old traditional recipes from many parts of the world. From Chili con Carne to Snert (Dutch pea soup), Cassoulet (French bean and sausage, or even duck confit), Saucisses aux lentilles (sausages and lentilles), Couscous (welcome chickpeas!) or Feijoada (Brazilian dish pork and black beans), you name it and it comes on my table. Here you can see me with a big bag of beans on the thumbnail of a video I published in the past about meat consumption.

This is the beauty about cooking from scratch. You control what you put on your plate and then you eat simple, nutritious and wholesome foods. When you do that, there is a good chance that you will not suffer from micronutrient deficiency, which cannot be said of ultraprocessed products. Unfortunately, many people think that cooking is complicated and time-consuming. I know and understand the perception, but since I have been cooking since my student years about every day of my life -and I have had quite a busy one- I can assure you that it is a lot simpler and quicker than often believed. For instance, one of my household’s favorites is the veggie soup (yes, plants!) that I make with 6 to 8 different sorts of vegetables. I make a big pot at once and we have soup for almost a week. This shows that it doesn’t need to be a daily chore. Of course, convenience foods companies will not encourage people to cook, as it takes some of their business -and their nice margins- away. Convenience is not cheap.

And of course, last but not least, the price at the point of sale will be a decisive element of success or failure. The more processed the product will be, the cheaper it will have to be. Consumers will follow a simple thinking: plant foods and therefore hybrid products should be cheaper than meat. The value for money will be key. If consumers think that they are buying processed plants for the price of meat, they will not buy it. If in doubt, take a look at what it did to tech fake meat. People will not switch from pure meat if it is more expensive or even for the same price. If the price is the same, they will stick to the “real” or “pure” (pick you adjective) product. It is just simple psychology.

Next week: Communication: Humanity and Authenticity make for Effective Conversations

What’s ahead for plant-based foods?

Posted on November 27, 2019 by Christophe Pelletier

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Over the past year, there has been quite a bit of talk about alternative proteins and in particularly the so-called plant-based products. Let’s face it; the hype (which I already mentioned in my previous article about cow farts) has been very well organized to inflate what has been going on in the markets. Probably, it is part of the culture of “disruptive” tech start-ups. They are quite good at using social media, making the wildest claims about how they are all going to change the world. When it comes to food, what will happen before you know it is that there will be no need for farms anymore. Just take a look at Sci-Fi movies and it is there! Yeah, right. The problem, well one of the problems, I have with this is that I have heard it before. Actually, I heard similar things before today’s disruptors were even born. In the 1970s, after the Apollo programs, we would not eat traditional foods anymore. No, our meals were going to be contained in pills. Yeah, right. It did not happen. Around the turn of the century, we had the new economy, not just a new economy, but the new economy thanks to dotcoms and internet. The old economy was history, for ever. Yeah, remind me how the dotcom bubble burst and how a few years later the old economy demonstrated it was still alive and kicking through its Great Recession. More recently, we all heard that Amazon was going to “disrupt” retail so much that brick and mortar retailers were going to go down. Yes, Wal-Mart was finished. Not. Actually, Wal-Mart is doing quite fine and for a simple reason. Solid businesses follow what is happening in their markets and they make the proper changes. And that is exactly what happened with most retailers around the world. They went digital and they started to sell online and deliver to customers. Similarly, e-books were going to kill paper books and online diplomas were to mean the end of universities. Well, paper books and bookstores certainly have had difficult times but they did a nice comeback. And universities are still very much alive, while the MOOCs are the ones that seem to have left the building. There is more to life than digital versions of the original products and services. Silicon Valley and co suffer of a good dose of hubris. Maybe, they should attend to that before it might become their demise some day.

The thing with so-called disruption is that the only businesses that actually get disrupted (in the true sense of the word, not the trendy sense) are the ones that are asleep and not paying attention. They would have died anyway. The businesses that are awake adapt. That is pretty basic business stuff. Since I got started about disruption, I would just say that I do not like that term because as I mentioned earlier, it is taken in its new trendy meaning, which really means nothing else than innovation and change, but those words are too mundane. I will agree that disruption sounds more dangerous. It makes you feel like a rebel and a threat. Yeah, isn’t it something that we all fantasize over when we are kids, being a tough rebel?

Let me be clear, I am all for innovation and for having implemented changes in a number of businesses; I know that it is a constant of life, but I am interested in change that is a natural evolution toward real improvement. I am much less interested in gadgets and made-up hypes that have as primary goal to fill the pockets of a few. I guess I am not easily impressed and it is not because something is the flavor of the month that I forget about my good old well rooted-in critical mind.

So let’s go back to the plant-based protein products. First, they are nothing new, even if the current business owners want to make us believe that their products are jewels of high-tech. If so, how come that so many companies are going in the very same market on such short notice? The answer is simple, those products are not difficult to replicate. Plant-based alternatives are not new and they have been around for a couple of millennia for some of them such as tofu, koftas and falafel. Soy burgers have been around since the 1930s, really becoming mainstream in the 1980s.

What makes the current ones so different? Honestly, not that much at all. So why the hype? For two reasons mostly. One is the use of social media which are great tools to inflate whatever message you have and that so many people are willing to relay for you without even knowing what they are talking about. But it makes them feel part of the tribe for as long as it lasts. The other one is that this time big money has been invested in those companies and wants to cash in big, so they are putting their resources and their relationships at work to reach that goal. When your product is the talk of the day every day in every media outlets, it sounds like it has taken over the world. It’s just good old-fashioned smoke and mirror tactics. Just find out which billionaires and venture capitalists have put money in these companies and you will realize that it is a beautiful exercise in investor-driven social-media-led push marketing for a production-driven commodity business. Here in Canada, we have seen the exact same pattern with cannabis stocks after the country legalized cannabis sales a year ago. A lot of hype was aimed at having money buying stocks so that the founders could make great capital gains. It almost sounded that because of the new legislation, every Canadian would splurge on pot, either breathing it or eating and drinking it. Yeah right. As if making something legal would inevitably turn people into addicts. Pot users could already find all they needed before the legalization, as is the case everywhere in the world. So, the market was already well defined. Nonetheless, cannabis stocks shoot up like rockets because when greed kicks in people get gullible. Actually, I suspect greed is as addictive as drugs. Early investors sold on time with big fat capital gains and one year later, the share price of cannabis stocks are stagnating to low levels again. I expect something similar to happen with plant-based protein stocks. It is already kind of happening already, especially with Mr. Big Bucks-who-blames-cows-for-farting-for personal-gain having sold his Beyond Meat stocks quite conveniently before they started to stumble.

What is ahead for plant-based meat alternatives?

The first thing to think about is what those products are. What do they mimic? They mimic beef burgers mostly and sausages to some extent. They do not look as much like fresh beef burgers as they do the basic sad frozen ones. My point here is that they look like cheap commodities. And the thing about looking like a commodity is that it makes your product a commodity. The fact that so many other companies can replicate similar product in such a short period of time just confirms that it is a commodity and certainly not a niche specialty. The first rule for a niche to resist competition is that the product/service is quite difficult to replicate and match. Clearly, that basic first rule does not apply here. The only product that escapes the commoditization risk is the plant-based shrimp. Shrimps are a commodity but there is such a shortage of seafood compared with demand, shrimp prices are high and should remain high for a while. Imitation shrimp profit margins should be more resilient.

The second thing that comes to mind is the price of plant-based protein products. I can give here only what I can see in the stores around where I live in Canada. The regular price for a half-pound package of plant-based burger is CAD7.99 (that’s CAD15.98 per lbs). That is about twice the regular price of a pound of ground beef, but I can buy ground beef on ad for CAD3.99 and even from time to time CAD2.99. The price gap is quite big, and that will have to change if the plant-based burgers want to gain substantial market share. I believe this is starting to happen with a Canadian brand of plant-based burgers advertising last week at CAD4.99 for half a pound (that’s down 40% from the regular price) and this week the American brand was for sale at CAD5.99 for half a pound (25% down from regular price). Price drop has to be compensated by additional volumes to achieve profit margin goals. Here a word of advice to the CEO of that American company who expressed not being interested in hearing about his competitors (weird statement but what the heck, who can you fear when you think you are God): pay attention to your competitors because they want to take a slice of the pie and possibly your entire pie with it; their growth will not be your growth. Prices start to show some action and the big meat companies who are about to enter have not made their mark yet. That is going to be fun, because the hype created this idea that the market potential is huge and they are ramping up to produce large volumes. The meat and poultry industry has a long history of overcapacity, oversupply and profit margin destruction. I suspect that they will bring some of that experience in the plant-based imitation meat. I think things are going to be interesting. Prices are going to go down and raw materials (soybeans and peas) probably will increase in price to match demand. Prices down plus costs up is the perfect equation for squeezed margins, both for plant-based and animal protein by the way. The ones who will benefit the most are the crop farmers to some extent, but mostly the producers of protein isolates (the raw material used to produce the imitation burgers), the highest margin will be in the health and wellness protein supplement sector, basic low-cost plant-based burgers should well because of attractive pricing, and perhaps the consumers to some extent.

But for consumers, a couple of other things will play a role. One of them is perception. Do they like the product? And with perception comes value. Will the perceived value be higher than the price gap between the imitation product and the original beef? Perception is not just about the product but also about the company. So far, producers are perceived as small start-ups, which is often translated by consumers as small, brave and pure. If they knew actually how much big money and Big Agriculture is behind, I wonder how that would affect perception, and this time will come because, after all, are we not in a transparent food system by now as all food corporation like to claim?

Plant-based burgers producers brag about the many places where they have their products offered to consumers, but being on the menu of a restaurant is not the same as having consumers actually buying it, but they present it as it were, and stock markets react accordingly. There has been a lot of buying out of curiosity because of the hefty social-media hype but the perception is a different story. I have read many reviews and I cannot see any significant trend one way or another. There are those who praise the product and there those who trash it. Online reviews are notorious for the amount of fake reviews and I am sure there are plenty of those on both sides for obvious hidden agenda reasons. Fact is however that only after a few weeks in the trial, the Canadian restaurant chain Tim Hortons removed the plant-based burgers from its locations except in British Columbia and Ontario. Plant-based burgers “opponents” mention a number of characteristics they do not like: high price, highly processed products, high sodium content, long list of ingredients and some ingredients they can hardly read and have no idea what they are. I will make a mention of sodium content here. In the stores around my place, I can find only one Canadian brand and one American brand. I compared the sodium content of their products with regular potato chips. Here are the numbers: potato chips 230 mg sodium for 50 g product, Canadian brand imitation burger 540 mg sodium for 113 g (that’s 239 mg Na per 50 g of product – slightly more than the potato chips!!); and American imitation burger 340 mg sodium for 113 g product (that’s 150 mg Na per 50 g of product – that’s two thirds of the potato chips sodium content). Why don’t they add sodium and let people decide how much salt they want to put on their burger? I know the answer to that question but I will let you figure it out. I rarely buy potato chips but when I do, I buy the half sodium ones, which are lower in sodium than even the American imitation burger. You can make the same comparison with what you find in your stores and draw your own conclusions.

The third thing to expect is the push back from the animal protein producers, and that has already started. There are many fights about definition of meat and dairy. Let’s face it, the producers of plant-based products know very well that if they advertise to carnivores with an herbivore undertone, it will not work very well, so they try to make their products look more carnivore-like. There are also fights about environmental claims about benefits of plant-based vs. animal protein, many of them unsubstantiated. Altogether, plant-based products keep many lawyers busy. The fact that there many legal battles does not bode well. In France, there is an old saying: “better a poor agreement than a good lawsuit”. It will be interesting to see how that will translate for the future of plant-based. Of course, bold statements such as the plant-based sector bring the US meat and dairy sectors to complete collapse by 2030 is not a great way to make friends. Plus, please refer to the beginning of my article for why existing businesses are much more resilient that newcomers tend to think, but hey they have to attract investors’ money after all so no claim is bold enough.

Regardless of all the fights and arguments, the market will decide and as usual markets will decide on price and value. The value will be about money but also about health and environmental aspects as well. The question, though, will be whether the price differential will be worth it. I indicated prices earlier. In terms of potential market share, from reliable sources I have found it sounds like plant-based might represent 2% of the protein market in 2020 and perhaps reach 10% in 2030 in the USA. To gain more market share, plant-based imitation meat products would probably need to be offered at half the price they are now at least, everything remaining equal, further. If they don’t adjust their pricing, they will be happy to amount to 5%. Also and because the market could be crowded, plant-based protein producers will have to differentiate themselves from the competition and the characteristics that I mentioned earlier will weigh more, and so will the use of GMO ingredients or not play a role. Of course, there is a good chance that, as usual with the food industry, they all will try to differentiate themselves the same way, thus shifting their universe a bit to the right but all offering more or less the same.

If going plant-based protein is more efficient than meat, and it is because it removes one layer in the food chain, then it would only be logical that plant-based be cheaper both in price and in cost, but it’s not because unfortunately most “future of food” products are not meant to cater the hungry poor. So, here is another price to keep in mind: the price for a pound of cooked beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils is around CAD0.99 per pound. If you wish to switch to vegetarian, using the wholesome grain in the first place without industrial processing is quite a financially attractive proposition and I believe that they will be winners for the future from a global perspective, not just the US market with its First World solutions for First World problems. The thing is that the First World does not seem to know about cooking anymore, in spite of trendy flashy kitchens. The market will also decide which businesses succeed and which ones fail. Start-ups little gods or not, the percentage of failure remains the same as ever: about 75% of businesses do not make it longer than 3 years. Often, the reason is ignoring competition and not understanding that it takes much more than production methods to win over customers. As for the animal protein sector, what will be the consequences? I have written a few articles about the subject (do a search on meat and protein in the search bar on the right hand side of this page to get the list of articles). I will simply finish with a chart that show past consumption and estimates of animal protein consumption for the future based on UN FAO data and you will see that animal protein are really not expected to suffer from competition of alternative protein sources.

There will be plenty of room for everybody: animal protein, plant protein, processed or wholesome, as well as traditional products and all sorts of innovative alternatives. There is no need for cockiness, belligerent statements and inexact claims. The markets and future economics will sort out the winners. In the end, we all have to work together and the key will be about producing and consuming sustainably. Production systems will change. That is normal. And it is going to take the efforts of all 10 billion people and their food choices, not just from food producers.