“Plant-based alternatives is chockers full,” the man tells his followers with a gleeful snigger, joking that shoppers would rather starve than eat them.
The humorous clip swiftly amassed hundreds of thousands of views, but perhaps didn’t paint an entirely accurate picture of demand for the products, which continue to rake in billions of dollars worldwide.
For overwhelmingly omnivorous countries like Australia and New Zealand, however, it highlighted a perception problem that meat-free meat continues to face.
Will the average Kiwi consumer ever come around to it?
When fake meat burst into headlines last decade, buoyed by soaring investor interest, there was giddy talk of disrupting the beef cow in a way the car had the horse.
Much of that hype swirled around Impossible Foods’ alternative protein hamburger patty, carefully crafted to smell, sizzle, and even bleed like the real thing.
Back in 2018, the California-based company’s founder, Patrick O. Brown, argued that animal-based production systems would ultimately become unsustainable in the face of climate change, global population growth, and pressure on resources and food security.
“Every time we sell 2000 burgers, that’s one less cow.”
But when it was served up on Air New Zealand flights, it drew grumbles from National and NZ First politicians about why the national carrier wasn’t instead promoting New Zealand’s own premium beef and lamb products.
Impossible Burgers pictured in the Business Premier cabin aboard Air New Zealand's NZ5 flight from Los Angeles in 2018. Photo / Jamie Morton
Our sector, which claims to have one of the lowest carbon footprints in the world, was quick to size up the implications, issuing a clear-eyed report warning a strategy was needed to adapt to this new world of alternative proteins.
Hell Pizza also tricked customers into trying that company’s meat – potentially in breach of food and trading laws – by selling a Burger Pizza with no mention of what was really on the topping.
Supermarkets hopped on the bandwagon, broadening their ranges with meat-free foods and new “flexitarian” mince and sausages mixed with ingredients like sweet potato, kale, and carrots.
But global momentum has stalled.
When Beyond Meat reported a 31% year-on-year drop in revenue last August, its share price – sitting at nearly US$235 ($399.50) just a few years earlier – plunged to US$7.30 ($12.41).
Plant-based meat sales eased back by 1% in the US in 2022, after a year of zero growth in 2021, although sales in Europe appear to be slowly creeping back up again.
Closer to home, Kiwi chicken-free chicken maker Sunfed Meats shut up shop this year, with founder Shama Sukul Lee acknowledging the plant-based bubble had “burst” amid a sector-wide reality check.
Shama Sukul Lee founded Sunfed Foods. Photo / File.
“Fuelled by easy venture capital money, the category became saturated with junk food masked as [being] healthy, and people now see through that.”
Another Kiwi plant-based food manufacturer, Sustainable Foods Ltd, whose shareholders included All Black TJ Perenara and media company Stuff, went into voluntary administration soon after, blaming tough market conditions.
And our main supermarkets report consumer slowdowns.
A Woolworths New Zealand spokesperson said its stores would keep stocking plant-based products, but the growth of past years had “moderated lately.”
Rival Foodstuffs put the trend down to price increases “and a reduced willingness among flexitarian consumers to spend more on plant-based options”.
A check of Woolworths’ website this week showed 340g of pre-packaged Impossible plant-based mince cost $13.95, while a two-pack of plant-based patties cost $12 (Impossible) and $13.40 (Beyond Meat).
That compared to $10.20 for 500g of grass-fed Woolworths brand mince, and $8 for a 300g six-pack of Woolworths beef patties.
A recent University of Auckland analysis estimated that 100g of meat-free burger cost about $2.70 – more than three times the price of the same quantity of legumes and much less healthy.
AgResearch senior research scientist Dr Scott Knowles said most modern alternatives were high-tech foods that required sophisticated industrial processing, making them expensive to produce.
“Consumers seem to baulk that something made of plants costs more than the perceived gold standard of a meat product.”
What do consumers really want?
Yet the research found the biggest barrier for consumers wasn’t price, but taste – something that also far trumped touted green benefits.
“This indicates that sustainability messaging alone is insufficient to influence consumer behaviour,” AgResearch senior scientist Dr Carolina Realini said.
When she and colleagues recently surveyed consumers, they found that while seven in 10 had heard of meat alternatives, just two in 10 had bothered to try them.
“This plays out in the market as curiosity-driven buying – but without repeat purchases.”
Over at Massey University, Professor Joanne Hort and fellow food science academics have been looking more closely at those taste preferences.
One of their recent studies suggested products that best mimicked meat – like beef-style patties, crumbed chicken patties, and bacon-style rashers – found the most favour, with flavour attributes like “smoky,” “caramelised,” and “juicy” particularly valued.
Beyond Meat is one of the world's leading plant-based meat companies. Photo / Sundry Photography
Participants gave poorer reviews for chicken and beef-style diced pieces – more often linked with terms like “stale” and “cardboard” – and those made from whole foods.
“The more meat-like these products are, the more the flexitarians, who are trying to replace meat in their diet, are liking the products,” Hort said.
She described most non-meat-like alternatives on the market as “way off the mark in terms of acceptability” for most consumers – including many vegetarians.
“That’s not to say that, if you could make a non-meat-like product that was sensorily acceptable, it would be disliked – I think it might be liked – it’s just that manufacturers haven’t yet been able to.”
She added that many of the products carried a “health halo” for consumers seeking more nutritious options, but in reality were often processed, high in salt, and lacking in key nutrients.
That’s no small issue, given health concerns have been a driving factor in Kiwis lowering their red meat intake over recent years.
At the same time, New Zealand remains a nation of omnivores – nine in 10 of us have some form of meat, most commonly chicken, in our weekly diet – with just a fraction of shoppers opting for plant-based alternatives.
Nine in 10 Kiwis eat animal meat in their weekly diet.
The Vegan Society of Aotearoa’s Claire Insley figured demand for these foods here was ultimately much lower than in Europe and the United Kingdom, where there was more choice on offer.
“There is a lot of support for animal farming in New Zealand and some people may view eating plant-based as being anti-Kiwi.”
She said the Government could do more by making plant-based alternatives more acceptable, updating dietary guidelines and supporting growers.
“There are huge health benefits to a plant-based diet that are simply ignored.”
For producers, Realini said the challenge remained to tick those three big boxes – taste, texture, and price – which ultimately made for a “high benchmark” in countries like New Zealand.
“Products that cannot deliver on these qualities struggle to gain traction within predominantly omnivorous markets, here and overseas.”
But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a huge market opportunity: protein consumption is out-pacing population growth globally, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation predicts a 135% increase by 2050.
Would we see more homegrown companies try to succeed where Sunfed failed?
We already have a burgeoning cultivated (lab-grown) meat sector in new local companies like Opo Bio and Daisy Lab, but Realini says start-up industries here are always going to be challenged by New Zealand’s size, resourcing and distance to markets.
“Where we could find opportunities is in deriving sought-after protein or ingredients from plants that are suited to growing in New Zealand conditions.”
Rolleston-based Leaft Foods, for instance, is proposing to extract rubisco - a protein found in leafy greens - in a form that’s highly digestible for people.
Broadly, Realini saw potential in food tech advancements, citing areas like fermentation, protein texturization, and novel ingredient sourcing as ways to bridge those sensory and nutritional gaps.
Looking to the future, Hort said producers should be thinking about how plant-based products could form part of meals or diets, rather than being stand-alone items.
She questioned why they’d ever been branded meat “alternatives” in the first place, when that implied they were inferior products.
“That lack of understanding by many food scientists and food technologists about even what they’re calling these things is a problem that we’ve got to overcome,” she said.
“The long-term view is about understanding consumer’s want and needs better – not just sitting in the lab dreaming up ideas.”
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
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