> 60% seems like a lot, but it actually isn't: there are a lot of consumers (like myself) who would be more than happy to eat nothing but plant-based burgers, now that they're within spitting distance of meat in terms of taste and feel.
Quantify "a lot."
> I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian...
Maybe so, but your food choices seem to be similarly driven by some kind ideological motivation.
> Not eating a burger frequently implies an idealogical motivation?
No, but seeking out one of these plant-burgers over real meat probably does.
It might be an ideology like "I care a lot about climate change," but I think it's unusual for people to make food choices ideologically like that; especially independently, outside of something like a religious group.
I think that puts a limit on the adoption of these substitutes. The vegetarians, vegans, and some other ideologicals will quickly jump on board. After that it will get a lot harder to sell these things.
>> Not eating a burger frequently implies an idealogical motivation?
>No, but seeking out one of these plant-burgers over real meat probably does.
I'm not the person you're replying to but I don't see how that follows - wouldn't you try something new on a menu and then keep ordering it if you liked it? To refuse to try something because it doesn't contain meat seems, to use your words, ideologically motivated.
Also let's get real here - we're talking about burger patties, the majority of which will be served by fast food joints like Burger King and McDonalds. Thin, made out of flavourless meat and cooked until they're choking hazard dry.
Idealogical motivation is such a deceptive phrase. We all have motivations. Motivations form a framework that we make decisions from. We like tastes, textures, new experiences (or not), etc, depending on who we are as a person.
Calling eating a plant meat "idealogical" like it's a bad thing is just pure deceptive rhetoric.
Right now beef is cheaper and better tasting. But vegan meat is tech. It's improving and getting cheaper. 3-5 years down the road it might be the more affordable option. Imagine burger chains offering you the same two burgers. You can't taste the difference but one is 50c cheaper and healthier.
How many people would choose the beef?
That's where the chasm will be crossed. Farming can't scale further but vegan beef is tech. There's a lot of efficiency that can be added to the process to reduce costs and improve taste/texture.
> But vegan meat is tech. 3-5 years down the road it might be the more affordable option.
Just like margarine.
> Imagine burger chains offering you the same two burgers. You can't taste the difference but one is 50c cheaper and healthier.
Key word: imagine, as in fantasy.
Honestly, I don't really see that happening, except at the very low end (e.g. swapping out a crap-quality McDonald's beef patty with some plant thing to save a nickle, but I'm not sure if even that would make any sense. IIRC, most of McDonald's beef comes from used-up diary cows (e.g. waste from other processes).
So far the price did go down and quality did improve but obviously it might hit a wall. I do feel that these are the type of processes that can be made more efficient at scale but that's a feeling from an external observer. Not an expert in the field.
OTOH the quality of meat is deteriorating due to industrial farming. Antibiotics, bad feed, etc. The quality vs. price problem goes both ways.
> No, but seeking out one of these plant-burgers over real meat probably does.
Where I am, they're roughly the same price as real meat, easier to keep frozen, and I don't appreciably notice the difference (they're definitely not meat, but they're much better than the previous generation of meat alternatives).
Separately, a lot of my friends are vegetarian or vegan, which makes them convenient when I'm having company. But I'm perfectly content with them myself, as someone who loves animal products otherwise.
You have to remember that you don't actually have to have 60% of people quit meat cold turkey to reach that number, you just have to get ~6/10 meals averaged over everyone meals that would have had meat to not be either by switching to something naturally meatless or using a subsitute. You can drastically reduce meat consumption across a population without anyone being vegetarian or vegan.
> ideological motivation
Maybe it's possible you don't literally mean "ideology" but the reasons people choose to consume less meat are typically epistemic:
* Because it reduces their carbon footprint and is better for the environment.
* Because, for them, cutting out meat improves their health. Usually related to cholesterol, blood pressure, heart disease, fiber, and sometimes osteoporosis.
* Because veggies and meat substitutes take longer to spoil.
* Because veggies and grains are less expensive.
* Because cutting out meat is associated with long term successful weight loss.
The only ideological reason to switch is animal suffering.
There are other ideological reasons, such as inefficiencies of meat production through grain, water shortage issues, meat factory working conditions, boycotting the importing of low quality foreign meat, possibly others.
And that's fine, the point isn't to make everyone go meatless. People with strong preferences are always going to exist. The point is to reduce meat consumption overall in absolute terms.
I just wonder if the market for meat substitutes is already about as big as it ever will be without an ecological disaster or government coercion to increase demand.
Probably not. Beyond and Impossible are considerably better than previous products and there are still many people that aren't aware of that. They are still scaling up because of high demand. As they open bigger factories they'll get cheaper than meat which will drive even more demand.
I think we should work against this point. Eating meat is a fundamental part of the human experience. We're losing our agricultural genomes that can never be replaced. We need to encourage people to eat a broader variety of meats from smaller producers, not eliminate meat consumption.
I don't know what you want quantified, since it's not a quantitative claim: it's a perceptual claim about how 60% of anything seems like a big number when it can actually be explained by relatively small changes in consumer behavior.
> Maybe so, but your food choices seem to be similarly driven by some kind ideological motivation.
No, not really. I like animal products a lot. I think the closest ideological interest I have here is broad environmentalism. My understanding is that that's a common interest, to say the least, and that I am not particularly stringent or earnest when it comes to it (at least in terms of my individual choices).
>>Maybe so, but your food choices seem to be similarly driven by some kind ideological motivation.<<
I'm not a conservative on most issues, but youthful (18-39) conservatives might be more ecologically bent than you would expect, so I'm not sure which ideology you were referring to. The "let it all burn" and "toss it into the ocean" attitude is a dinosaur and people are (finally) seeing the writing on the wall. The Boomers are retiring and starting to die off. Gen X and the generations after are starting to make decisions, and they've always been more ecologically sound on both sides of the isle.
OK, the animal welfare angle makes more sense to me than the environmental concern. I apologize if I spoke out of turn if I misunderstood. So many people are bringing politics into conversations, which it turns out I may have done, inadvertently =)
Though, honestly, I think they have a better chance at moving the needle with alternative meets like rabbits or even grasshoppers (eventually). Those veggie burgers are pretty bad for you, nutritionally.
Quantify "a lot."
> I'm not a vegan or even a vegetarian...
Maybe so, but your food choices seem to be similarly driven by some kind ideological motivation.