The popularity of meat alternatives is not what it once was. After a brief boom earlier in the decade, consumer interest is fast falling away.
This can be seen in a number of ways. Sales have been declining for some time, and major plant-based meat companies are diversifying – most recently, Beyond Meat, now renamed Beyond, announced it had moved into high-protein drinks.
Meanwhile, restaurants are pulling vegan dishes from menus. McDonalds, for example, recently removed its plant-based burger from restaurants in Austria. Vegan-only initiatives, such as the Lewis Hamilton and Leonardo DiCaprio-founded restaurant Neat Burger, are shutting down.
It is clear that meat alternatives serve a niche. It is looking more unlikely than ever that such products will shoot into the mainstream and overtake real meat. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that there are not opportunities for plant-based food.
Why meat alternatives are struggling
Meat alternatives have long laboured under a disadvantage – they are not what they describe themselves as. A plant-based burger is not what most consumers think of when they hear the word ‘burger’. Plant-based chicken nuggets do not contain chicken. In a plant-based sausage, there is no pork to be found.
In some ways, this is setting up consumers for disappointment. These products are only an imitation, rather than the real thing, and must forever labour under this comparison. Indeed, taste and texture continues to be a key reason why consumers are not embracing these foods.
On the flipside, many vegetarians and vegans do not want products to taste like meat. These consumers, especially those that have been following their diets for a long time, are not always looking for a product that tastes like something they may only have distant memories of eating.
Meat alternative products, therefore, essentially target a niche – those who enjoy the taste of meat, but want to reduce or cut out their consumption for other reasons, such as health, sustainability or animal welfare. There are more of these consumers than there once were, for sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a minority.
And anyway, it’s no longer as trendy as it once was. The uptake of veganism is beginning to plateau, and consumer interest in sustainability has actually declined.
Meanwhile, there’s the issue of transparency. Trust in the food system is rapidly declining, and many consumers feel they don’t know enough about what goes into their food.
With a meat substitute, this might be a problem: the typical consumer may understand what it’s trying to be, but not what it actually is – that is, until they glance at the ingredients list. And in many cases, such a list would make them none the wiser, unless they had a degree in biochemistry.
There will always be a cohort of former meat lovers who want a way of replicating the pleasure of eating it whilst sparing the lives of the animals involved – this journalist is among them. Yet these consumers do not constitute the majority.
Prophecies about a ‘protein transition’, where the food system rapidly moves away from animal agriculture and the world is saved as a result, are common. Yet if policy makers rely on meat mimicry to bring this eventuality about, they will forever be disappointed. By serving a niche, growth is inherently limited.
Why plant-based food still has opportunities
Meanwhile, other plant-based foods do not have any of these problems.
Consumers are increasingly drawn to natural and unprocessed products, turning away from processing and complex formulations. Many traditional plant-based products do not have the associations with processing, and particularly the phenomenon of ultra-processed foods, that meat alternatives carry.
Meanwhile, many traditional plant-based foods, such as tofu, tempeh and falafel, are hundreds or even thousands of years old. They’re already embedded in cultures, and have been widely consumed by generations upon generations of people.
This does not, of course, mean that all consumers love them. It doesn’t mean that tomorrow, the world’s meat eaters will collectively decide to replace beef burgers with falafel or substitute their kebab meat with fried tofu.
But it does mean that their existence does not need to be justified in the same way – very few question the ‘need’ for falafel in the same way they may do for plant-based or cultivated meat.
While meat alternatives struggle, many markets for plant-based food have clear growth potential. According to Mordor Intelligence, the tofu market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.63% between 2026 and 2031.
Meanwhile, many of the key players in meat alternatives are diversifying from purely relying on mimicry – UK plant-based brand This, for example, has recently released a superfood product, whilst Moving Mountains have unveiled its own falafel. This is clearly something the market is already starting to embrace.
Traditional plant-based foods can be taken on their own terms. They’re not trying to mimic anything, so consumers will not be making comparisons in their mind. There is no benchmark of the ‘real thing’ for them to fall short of. This, in many ways, gives them an edge over substitutes that many believe will always be inferior to the real thing.
Meat alternatives still have a market, and can continue serving their niche. But to really convince consumers to reduce meat intake in a widespread, transformative way, the food industry should focus on traditional plant-based options which already have mainstream acceptance.
