What consumers think of vegetarian meat from Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and other startups — compared to real beef burgers and chicken nuggets.
is a senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat. From 2017 to 2020, meat-free sausages and veggie burgers had a moment. Sales of plant-based meat doubled thanks to new startups — like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods — which collectively took billions of dollars in venture capital investment and invented much more meaty vegetarian products than their predecessors. The emerging sector was hailed as a potential silver bullet solution to the ills of factory farming: animal suffering, climate change, deforestation, and more. This story was first featured in the Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect's biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this newsletter? Email us at futureperfect@vox.com! But in the years that followed, the sector's sales flatlined and then tumbled. What killed plant-based meat's growth spurt? According to consumer surveys, often the biggest reason people give for souring on plant-based meat is that the products don't taste good enough. But the results of a surprising recent experiment casts some doubt on that explanation — and suggests some of the distaste for plant-based meat might just be in our heads. In December and January, NECTAR — a nonprofit that conducts research on "alternative protein," such as plant-based meat — brought together nearly 2,700 people in a first- and largest-of-its-kind blind taste test. Without knowing which version they were tasting, the participants tried 122 plant-based meat products across 14 categories, like burgers, hot dogs, and bacon, alongside one animal meat "benchmark" product per category. Each product was tested by at least 100 participants, who then rated them on texture, flavor, appearance, and overall enjoyment on a 7-point scale from "dislike very much" to "like…