No real beef with fake meat

Whilst her research is all about food, Linsay Ketelings is much more than a nutritional scientist. Her multidisciplinary approach encompasses food legislation, health promotion, nutrition information and consumer behaviour.

Meat replacement products are, according to Ketelings, anything that replaces meat in a dish whilst being, ideally, more sustainable and just as nutritious. For this study however, she has limited herself to products seeking to imitate the taste or texture of meat products customers are familiar with. Tempeh or tofu, while vegan products which can be used instead of meat, do not fall in this category. “I’ve included products that try to imitate meat products like sausages and mince in both packaging in product design.”

Why are those like-for-like replacements a thing at all? “It makes it easier for the consumer to understand how to use the product.” Marketing-wise these products need to straddle the fence of promoting themselves as both soothingly like meat but also decidedly not meat – the USP is after all ‘meat alternative’, with the stress on both words.

Ketelings also points out the target group isn’t vegans, of whom there are too few to matter, but people trying to reduce their meat consumption for a variety of reasons. “It’s multifaceted, but sustainability plays a big role, people are becoming more aware of how animals are raised and slaughtered and food safety concerns increased also during the pandemic.”

Environmental impact analyses show that plant-based meat production uses 72-99% less water and 47-99% less land, causing 51-91% less water pollution and emitting 30-90% less greenhouse gas. It’s worth noting that the vast majority of soy grown around the world is fed to livestock, so, bizarrely, eating soy instead of meat reduces the demand for soy. “By transitioning to plant-based meat and other alternative proteins, we can use far fewer natural resources and enable entire ecosystems — and the biodiversity those systems support — to recover, function, and thrive.”

About half of the Dutch population classifies as flexitarian, that is to say they eat meat no more than four days a week. Around a third of people in the Netherlands started eating less meat over the past three years. Ketelings adds that this transition might have been helped along by inflation making animal products now as expensive as plant alternatives.

EU-wide, more than half of consumers say that sustainability concerns have some influence on their eating habits. Price, lack of information and availability as well as difficulty identifying sustainable food options are cited as the main barriers to sustainable eating.

In 2022, the plant-based meat and seafood retail industry generated $6.1 billion in global sales; combined plant-based milk, cheese, and yogurt hit $21.6 billion globally. Both are growing. Before you celebrate the sustainable revolution, note that both meat and dairy sales came in at around $1.300 billion each and grow at roughly the same rate. Also, sales of meat alternatives have seen a recent downturn.

Are there any health benefit to replacing the bits of an animal you’d have to eat on an edgy game show with hydrated soy protein, plant oils, emulsifiers and what can best be described as miscellaneous ingredients, all hardened into strategic lumps? “There’s no extensive research on this but replacing meat products with meat alternatives can improve e.g. cholesterol levels. Especially processed meats aren’t healthy, so reducing or replacing those might have overall health benefits.”