How close are plant-based proteins to beef?
By Lane Egger
Over the recent decade, modern Plant-Based Ground Beef Alternatives (GBAs) have started to create a growing niche in food sector markets. A push for healthy, environmentally friendly food production has sparked consumers interest into the plant-based meat movement.
However, while the popularity of these products has grown over recent times, the plant-based meat alternative market has been available to public for over 40 years.
Throughout the 1980s, the phase “veggie burger” began to establish itself in the food service industry. The initial focus of these early GBAs served to the vegetarian and vegan markets with those products primarily compromised of soy-based proteins.
The early generations of GBAs were not labeled to mimic Ground Beef (GB), nor could the drastic differences between those GBAs and GB warrant a similar advertising program. These products would lack market share viability to GB until the early 2010’s when the GBA advertising began to push as the “sustainable” option to GB production.
Since then, the present capabilities of GBA production to parallel GB has revitalized the plant-based markets. While traditional soy-based proteins are still incorporated in many GBAs, the introduction of various bean and pea-based proteins have allowed for GBAs to close the textural, taste and overall liking discrepancies with GB.
How far has the gap closed? In a study completed at Kansas State University last spring by Samuel Davis comparing consumer preferences between a trio of well-established GBAs and GB, GBAs struggled to resemble any textural, juiciness or likeable flavors compared to GB.
The results of this study suggest a vast difference between GB and GBAs, however, this study was a direct comparison between those products.
It’s rare for consumers to simply consume these products on their own and the next step was to investigate the usage of these products as an ingredient. In a recent study completed at Kansas State University, GBAs and GB were compared in a burger and taco scenario to replicate an eating experience similar to a foodservice establishment. Consumers were allowed to put toppings, such as lettuce, tomatoes and ketchup, onto their burgers or tacos to see if any flavors would be masked by such additions.
Toppings did not change the results; GB was still strongly preferred by consumers. Consumers showed that they enjoyed GB more than the GBAs when serving product and had a strong willingness to pay up to 50% more for GB.
A positive for beef producers indicating the gap between the products is still quite present.
Future for the fake The other main issue, outside of the flavor and palatability differences, amongst GBAs is cost compared to GB. At retail, plant-based products trying to resemble GB are consistently more costly. However, future production practices can certainly minimize the difference and flip cost effectiveness in favor of GBAs.
Soy leghemoglobin is another possibility to build on the plant-based resemblance to GB. Myoglobin is what gives beef a bright-red color when exposed to oxygen. While it may not necessarily affect the taste, leghemoglobin very well could help with the raw and cooked appearance of plant-based alternatives.
With all that said, flavor and likability are the mainstays for consumer preferences. Until the day comes where consumers can enjoy what the alternative protein markets offer, GB will continue to gain and control market favor.
Egger is a Meat Science Extension assistant/graduate research assistant in the Department of Animal Sciences and Industry at Kansas State University.
Meat industry not threatened by plant-based meat alternatives
New research, published in the journal of Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, show that while sales and market share of new-generation plant-based meat alternatives have grown in recent years, those gains haven't translated into reduced consumer spending on animal meat products.
For this study, the researchers obtained weekly Nielsen scanner data from the first week of January 2017 to the second week of July 2020 on fresh meat expenditures at grocery, drug, big-box, dollar and military stores across 40 U.S states. Study categories included plant-based meat alternatives, beef, chicken, turkey, pork, other meats (such as lamb and duck) and fresh fish.
Results showed that plant-based meat alternatives constituted only 0.1% of average total expenditures on fresh meat during the study period – but during that same time frame the market share increased four-fold, to 0.4%. Beef topped fresh meat sales at 46%, followed by chicken at 23%, pork and fish at about 12% each, and turkey and other meats accounting for less than 5% of fresh meat sales.
Beef and meat alternatives were the highest-priced options, with beef costing an average of $5.44 per unit and PBMAs averaging $4.84 per unit. Of all the choices studied, expenditures of the plant-based goods tended to increase the most when those products were on sale. Reduced prices on beef and chicken lowered demand for plant-based meats, but lower prices on imitation meat didn't have much of an effect on demand for animal protein sources.