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 newsletterSign 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 very much.”NECTAR wanted to “truly know where things stand today and where we need to focus effort for improvement for the future,” said Caroline Cotto, the organization’s director. “We’re sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly.”First, the bad news for the plant-based meat industry: Animal meats got far higher scores on all metrics. On average, 68 percent of participants rated the animal meat products as “like very much” or “like,” while only 30 percent of plant-based meat, on average, received the same ratings. But among plant-based meat products, there’s a wide spectrum of quality. Some, as I’ve written about, are downright terrible, a fact reflected in the NECTAR results with some categories receiving especially low enjoyment ratings. But for 20 of the plant-based products, half or more of the participants rated them higher than the animal version or rated the two equally, meaning they had no preference. Of the 20 highest-rated plant-based products, six came from one company: Impossible Foods. Impossible Foods’ unbreaded chicken fillet performed best out of the 122 plant-based meat products, with 32 percent of participants rating it higher than a (real) unbreaded chicken fillet from Perdue Farms, while 28 percent rated them equally. Past blind plant-based meat taste tests have also found mixed results. A 2023 blind study with 175 participants found the Impossible burger performed better than a beef burger (though as some have pointed out, the plant-based burger had far more added salt than the beef version). In a 2021 blind study, meanwhile, participants rated real chicken considerably higher than five plant-based chicken products, though the study didn’t list which products were tested and the sector’s offerings have improved significantly since then.Given how many participants in NECTAR’s experiment rated some plant-based meats as equal to or better than animal meat, we might expect these meatless products to be much more popular than they actually are — especially in light of the many strong arguments in favor of reducing meat consumption, such as personal health, environmental sustainability, and animal welfare. Yet plant-based meat accounts for around just 1 percent of overall meat sales. To reach more consumers, plant-based meat companies will need to do something harder than improving the taste of their products or even lowering their prices. They’ll need to change how we think about meat.How our mind plays tricks on our stomach In the real world, “people don’t just taste food in an objective way,” Daniel Rosenfeld, a behavioral scientist at the University of California Los Angeles who researches consumer perceptions of animal-free foods, told me. They taste it, he said, with “a bias or a preconceived expectation.” For example, research has found that people who perceive healthy food to be less delicious will rate a food as less delicious if they’re told ahead of time that it’s healthy — even if it’s not. A blind taste test participant rates meatballs in a spaghetti dish. NECTAR/Palate InsightsIn 2023, Rosenfeld co-authored a study finding that people who more strongly believed in humans’ right to eat meat, milk, and eggs were more likely to expect vegan burgers and ice cream to taste bad.Not only do our beliefs shape how we perceive food, but what we eat can also shape our beliefs. In a seminal 2010 study, researchers assigned participants to two groups: one was given cashews and the other beef jerky, and both filled out surveys on what they thought of the snacks. Afterward, they were asked to fill out another survey about the moral status of 27 different animal species, with additional pointed questions about the cognitive capacity and moral status of what they thought was a randomly selected species from the list: cows. Those who had eaten the beef jerky rated cows as much less deserving of moral concern compared to those who ate the cashews.Some plant-based meat advocates argue the industry needs to focus on improving the price, taste, and convenience — commonly referred to as “PTC” — of meatless products to help them go mainstream. Rosenfeld doesn’t disagree that these are critical factors, but he also said psychological and social factors, such as societal norms and familiarity bias, also highly influence our food choices. That could explain some of the large gap between consumer preferences in blind taste tests and consumer purchasing behavior. “When social norms with a product get set in place, it’s pretty hard to change that default,” he said. “People like to just do whatever is a popular option. We’re very conformist by nature,” and animal meat is society’s current default protein source.One of the most powerful social norms that determine meat consumption turns out to be gender. “Compared to women, men report that they like meat more. They’re less likely to go vegetarian or vegan, and they also are less concerned about the effects of meat harming the environment or their health” or animal welfare, Rosenfeld said.The best plant-based meat productsThese are some of the 20 products that were rated higher or equal to their animal meat benchmarks:• Unbreaded chicken fillet: Impossible Foods, Meati, SWAP, The Vegetarian Butcher, Vivera• Chicken nugget: Impossible Foods, MorningStar Farms• Burger: Beyond Meat, Huera, Impossible Foods, MorningStar Farms, Redefine Meat• Breakfast sausage: Gardein, Impossible FoodsSee the full list here.In consumer surveys, people also cite price as an important factor in their decision to avoid buying plant-based meat, though it ranks slightly below taste. Surprisingly, however, NECTAR found that plant-based meat’s price tag — often much higher than animal meat — had a fairly small effect on whether or not participants said they’d later purchase the products. But that only tells us so much, as people behave differently at the grocery store than they do in a study. Humans are also evolutionarily hard-wired, Rosenfeld said, to opt for familiar foods and be wary of novel ones, like plant-based meats, even if they’re perfectly safe. This perhaps explains why a meat industry-funded group’s attacks against plant-based meat as unnatural and overly processed have seemed to stick with many consumers, even though today’s meat and dairy industries are highly industrialized, require significant processing, and are responsible for the vast majority of foodborne illness-related deaths.While most Americans eat a diet high in processed foods — including highly processed meats, like chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and bacon — many consumers say they’re concerned with the processed nature of plant-based meat, which Rosenfeld said could amount to motivated reasoning. “Maybe they already had other skepticisms, and they feel like this is a more rational-sounding explanation for their behavior,” he said.How to sell more plant-based meat in a biased worldThe NECTAR study results, to a degree, weaken the argument that plant-based products don’t taste good enough — at least the best ones. They also clarify the importance of investing in R&D to ensure that new products taste really good. Most of the companies with the highest-rated vegetarian meat products either invested a lot of time and money into R&D — like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat — or are more established, like Gardein, Tofurky, and MorningStar Farms, and therefore have had a long time and plenty of resources to develop good products and evaluate consumer response. Many plant-based meat companies need to have a higher bar for what they put out into the world, as rushing to market with a bad or mediocre product could turn consumers off the category for good. Conversely, companies that take the time to produce high-quality products will be financially rewarded: NECTAR found a correlation between products’ ratings in the study and real-world sales.The study found numerous other areas in need of improvement. For example, some plant-based meat categories are underdeveloped and received especially low ratings from participants, like plant-based bacon, bratwurst, steak fillets, and hot dogs. After consumers were shown the nutrition profiles of the plant-based products they tasted, their reported intent to purchase them at a later date generally slightly increased, though it was lower for products high in sodium or fat, or those that contained unrecognizable ingredients. That puts the plant-based meat industry in an especially difficult double bind: Consumers say they want plant-based meat to taste better but also want less of the ingredients that make it taste better.Though NECTAR’s study was designed to identify where plant-based meat needs to improve, it acknowledges the need to shift societal norms, too. Last year, its parent nonprofit, Food System Innovations, launched an organization focused on “addressing deep-seated cultural barriers” to wider adoption of plant-based foods. “We know these products still have some ways to go, and we want to provide support in getting there,” said Cotto. “But that starts with acknowledging that we’re not there yet.”You’ve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you — join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: