EA - Positive trends on alternative proteins by LewisBollard

The Nonlinear Library

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Positive trends on alternative proteins, published by LewisBollard on September 6, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Despite the setbacks, I'm hopeful about the technology's future
It wasn't meant to go like this. Alternative protein startups that were once soaring are now struggling. Impact investors who were once everywhere are now absent. Banks that confidently predicted 31% annual growth (
UBS) and a 2030 global market worth $88-263B (
Credit Suisse) have quietly taken down their predictions.
This sucks. For many founders and staff this wasn't just a job, but a calling - an opportunity to work toward a world free of factory farming. For many investors, it wasn't just an investment, but a bet on a better future. It's easy to feel frustrated, disillusioned, and even hopeless.
It's also wrong. There's still plenty of hope for alternative proteins - just on a longer timeline than the unrealistic ones that were once touted. Here are three trends I'm particularly excited about.
Better products
People are eating less plant-based meat for many reasons, but the simplest one may just be that they don't like how they taste. "Taste/texture" was the top reason chosen by Brits for reducing their plant-based meat consumption in a recent
survey by Bryant Research. US consumers most disliked the "consistency and texture" of plant-based foods in a
survey of shoppers at retailer Kroger.
They've got a point. In 2018-21, every food giant, meat company, and two-person startup rushed new products to market with minimal product testing. Indeed, the meat companies' plant-based offerings were bad enough to inspire conspiracy theories that this was a case of the car companies
buying up the streetcars.
Consumers noticed. The Bryant Research
survey found that two thirds of Brits agreed with the statement "some plant based meat products or brands taste much worse than others." In a 2021
taste test, 100 consumers rated all five brands of plant-based nuggets as much worse than chicken-based nuggets on taste, texture, and "overall liking."
One silver lining of the plant-based bloodbath is that stores are culling poor products - US supermarkets now average about
10 plant-based meat offerings, down from
15 a few years ago. Only the most popular products have survived. And they're getting better:
73% of US plant-based meat consumers believe its taste has improved dramatically in recent years.
New
taste tests from NECTAR confirm this. Omnivores fed a range of meats from animals and plants still generally preferred the animal variety. But five brands of plant-based nuggets - Impossible, Morningstar, Quorn, Rebellyous, and Simulate - were liked roughly as much as the chicken nuggets, and at least one was liked better (see table below).
This is exciting. Over
80% of Americans consume chicken nuggets every month, spending
$2.3B on the frozen variety annually. All nuggets are processed, so the ultra-processed attacks on plant-based nuggets are weaker. The main remaining problem is that plant-based nuggets are much pricier than the animal kind. Which brings us to the role of retailers.
Better merchandising
It's not surprising that consumers have been slow to change their lifelong habit of buying factory-farmed meat. It's especially unsurprising when the alternative costs about
twice as much. (US plant-based meat eaters say they're only willing to pay
37% more, while retailers suspect they'll pay just
10% extra.)
So it's exciting to see European retailers cutting prices. Four giant German retailers - Lidl, Kaufland, Aldi, and Penny - recently
cut the price of their own-brand plant-based meats to match the price of meat. Lidl said vegan sales spiked
30% after the move, which coincided with moving plant-based products next to their animal analogs.
Dutch retailers are going further. Almost all have now
pl...