If you’re an omnivore, I’m going to guess you’ve never sat down with a plant-based meal and wished it tasted less meaty. And yet, that’s exactly what alternative protein company Beyond Meat is offering with its latest product, the Sun Sausage. Unlike their flagship burger, the sausages aren’t meant to simulate the taste or texture of animal meat. They’re packed with identifiable veggies like spinach and lentils, and are part of the company’s greater efforts—and a growing trend in the market—to put out healthier products.
While that might sound positive, I see it as a major cause for concern. Beyond Meat is moving away from what made its products so different from—and much more successful than—prior generations of plant-based meat.
When Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods debuted their meatless burgers in the mid-2010s, they were the hottest topic at any cookout. Veggie burgers have been on the market for decades, of course, but never before had a meat alternative captured the attention of the wider public. More than vegans and vegetarians, these new-wave plant-based burgers were of interest to typical meat-loving omnivores.
The not-so-secret sauce behind their initial success is plain to see. Never before had plant-based meat tasted so similar to animal flesh. Research shows that one of the biggest factors preventing people from going vegetarian or vegan is taste—the knowledge, or at least the belief, that their meals just won’t be as good. It turns out that when they’re not sacrificing taste, some people are actually quite willing to cut back on foods they know aren’t great for them, or for the world.
Veggie-laden alt-meats are hardly an innovation. For decades, supermarkets have sold burgers and other meatless meats by brands like Dr. Praeger, Boca, Tofurky, and Lightlife, many of which include noticeable bits of chopped vegetables and beans. Field Roast already makes a line of sausages that is, by all appearances, essentially the same idea as the new “sun sausages.” But despite chugging along to loyal customer bases for decades, these veggie-centric brands never broke the mainstream quite the same way. Those brands make some perfectly fine foods, but evidently, it’s not the kind of stuff that’s going to sell to the average consumer.
So why is Beyond Meat releasing such a product line?
“If the Achilles heel for meat was that it didn’t taste good enough, I’d be all over it,” Ethan Brown, the founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, told me. “But it’s not. The Achilles heel for meat is its negative implications on human health, so I’m going to go after that with everything I have with products that taste great. But the thing we won’t win on in my view is let’s just load something up with saturated fat, just make it taste exactly like it. I know enough about life and I’ve been doing this long enough that when I offer people a side-by-side choice and there’s no benefit to consuming the plant-based version and there’s questions about what it’s made from, you don’t win.”
I am a huge fan of Brown and am sympathetic to his viewpoint. However, I think there are some flaws in his logic.
Yes, it’s true there was a slew of articles and prominent voices questioning the healthfulness of these novel plant-based products shortly after they came to market. Many pointed out that Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods’ burgers are processed, and noted that the ingredient list is long and contains a number of unfamiliar, sciency-sounding ingredients. Even though these concerns are based on a shaky understanding of nutrition, Beyond Meat adopted a broader strategy to try to appease these critics and consumers who think like them, lowering the amount of salt and saturated fat in their products. Impossible Foods pulled a similar move, albeit to a lesser degree. (Though the company did eventually release an “indulgent” version, it still contains 40% less fat than a comparable beef burger).
But in reality, most people don’t actually care much about their health. Research consistently shows that taste is the top factor people use when deciding what to eat. Virtually everyone has heard that fast food is bad for you and not made with clean ingredients about a million times over, but despite this, we remain a fast food nation. McDonald’s is set to add 10,000 more stores by 2027. Can the same be said of any major salad chain?
Brown doesn’t dispute this, noting that “taste is king,” but he cites a poll that found most consumers want foods made with clean ingredients. He agrees the average consumer doesn’t want to live on “bananas and apples” and acknowledges that he isn’t going after the purity crowd. But he says that “because of where all the data is about where the consumer is, we are focused on clean, simple, healthy ingredients, and we are making our bed with that, and we’ll have to sleep in it.”
However, these mildly-healthy foods are ultimately a compromise that ends up satisfying almost no one. They’re not “clean” enough for health-conscious shoppers who are going to fill their carts with whole foods and they’re not as meaty as regular meat, so they’re not going to win over the average consumer, either.
This trend of making plant-based meat healthier is especially problematic given that the products on the market today still don’t taste good enough. Research published in June based on insights from 1,150 American meat-eaters who participated in sensory panels evaluating 15 taste attributes for 54 plant-based meat products across five categories found that most plant-based meats don’t even begin to compare to regular meat as far as flavor is concerned. The findings were clear: People want plant-based burgers to be “meatier,” which they define as spicier, smokier, saltier, sweeter, darker, and juicier.
This in part explains why the market had a boom at first, but has slumped since. Omnivores were excited about the messaging they were being sold, but the products didn’t deliver. To go in the opposite direction and prioritize health over taste, at this critical juncture, in which growth in the category is stalling, is a major blunder.
“Elevating health-forward marketing or formulations over better taste and lower costs will relegate products to specialty niches, where they will never reach the mainstream,” industry analyst Zak Weston says. “Only products and ingredients which are genuinely competitive on cost, sensory appeal, and functionality will have any chance of capturing significant shares of the mass market.”
Brown doesn’t disagree with Weston but thinks both superior taste and health can be achieved without compromising on either. “We have enough scientific expertise to be able to have our cake and eat it too… it’s just going to take time.” To support his point, he notes that the fourth generation of Beyond outperforms the third on taste in testing, despite being a healthier suite of products.
While this may be possible, it will not be enough to make us overcome our ingrained biological constraints. We evolved to like salt, fat, and sugar—something large multinational food companies have been exploiting for decades—and any significant departure from that is likely to lead to a trade-off on taste.
A near decade ago, when the next-gen meats began to hit stores, we got a taste of a tempting potential future where plant-based meat is so good, that people don’t feel like they’re giving anything up.
Several years on, that potential feels more distant. In trying to respond to criticism from every side of the room, and in assuming that people mean what they say about wanting to eat healthy food, alt-meat companies have strayed from their chance at finding the winning formula. If alt-meat companies can re-center their visions and start putting out more, new, and different foods that are mind-blowingly delicious, and for goodness sake, meaty, the category might stand a chance. And if they stay the course of developing healthier products, I sincerely hope they prove me wrong. A better, more plant-forward world depends on it.
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The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
