Analysis by the Food Foundation has sought to introduce some nuance to an often polarised debate over the benefits of eating plant-based meat alternatives. By Nick Hughes.
It’s been a turbulent period for plant-based meat alternatives. Following years of consistently strong growth, the retail market hit the buffers last year contributing to the failure of high-profile brands like Nestlé’s Garden Gourmet and Meatless Farms. Overall sales in the plant-based meat-free category fell by £38.4m in value and 4.2% in volume terms in 2023, according to The Grocer, fuelling a narrative from some sections of the media (enthusiastically amplified by parts of the meat industry) that the plant-based bubble had burst.
Meat alternatives have also came under growing scrutiny for their health credentials (or lack thereof) due to the ultra-processed nature of many new products. A recent study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe journal, linked consumption of plant-based ultra-processed foods with poor health outcomes, albeit meat alternatives only made up a tiny fraction of the foods analysed despite featuring prominently in media coverage of the study.
Dig a little deeper, however, and there is evidence that demand for meat alternatives has been rather more resilient than the raw retail data would suggest. As Footprint reported in January, the penetration of meat alternatives in the out-of-home sector continues to grow. Servings of plant-based meat replacements increased by 42% between 2019 and 2023 compared with a decline in all meat categories as caterers and restaurants increasingly look to reduce the traditional dominance of meat on menus and appeal to vegan and flexitarian eaters.
The trend is also driven by environmental considerations; plant-based foods consistently outperform meat and dairy products on carbon meaning a shift from one to the other can help deliver a reduction in scope 3 emissions.
Now, the Food Foundation has sought to answer the question of how plant-based meat alternatives compare to meat across a whole range of factors, including health, in an effort to bring some scientific rigour to an often polarised, emotive debate.
So what did it find and what are the implications for businesses designing healthy, sustainable menus or planning retail ranges?
Plant split
The charity devised a taxonomy for a range of plant-based alternatives to meat, looking at both nutrition and environmental indicators as well as price to assess how different categories and individual products compare. In total, 104 products sold in UK supermarkets were analysed, including a group of meat products for comparison purposes.
Plant-based meat alternatives were split into three different subcategories: processed (new generation) that includes products such as Beyond Meat, THIS branded products and Quorn; processed (traditional), consisting of products such as tofu, tempeh and seitan; and less processed alternatives like beans, pulses and grains. Insects and cultivated meat products were excluded from the analysis since neither is currently available for consumers to buy in the UK.
The analysis found the vast majority of plant-based meat alternatives perform better on environmental indicators, with significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions and water footprints compared to meat, a finding consistent with evidence previously published by expert bodies like the Climate Change Committee. (Proponents of more extensive or ‘better’ forms of meat production like organic and agroecological argue that such systems deliver a range of benefits, such as improved soil health and biodiversity, that are often not captured in conventional modelling exercises).
Nutrition nuance
On the question of healthiness, however, the findings were far more nuanced. Although the analysis did not find evidence that the nutritional profile of plant-based meat alternatives is on average notably worse than for meat products, it did identify specific issues with certain groups of product.
For instance, all of the products in the processed (new generation) category would be classified as ultra-processed under the NOVA classification (category 4) and even the traditional processed foods were evenly split between NOVA groups 3 (processed foods) and 4. (It should be noted that the NOVA classification has faced criticism from some nutrition experts for being too simplistic and ignoring specific nutritional profiles of products).
Products in the processed (new generation) category also contain the highest level of salt of all four categories, including meat, and three times as much salt as the processed (traditional) category. Meat products fare better too in containing more key macronutrients such as vitamin B12 and boasting a higher protein content on average than meat alternatives, although the report notes how the average UK adult already eats 35% more protein than is recommended.
On the flip side, processed (new generation) products contain far greater average fibre content than meat – this is significant since just 9% of UK adults currently hit the government recommendation for fibre intake.
Less processed alternatives to meat like beans and pulses, meanwhile, perform strongly on a number of different nutrition indicators, with notably lower amounts of saturated fat, calories and salt and the highest amount of fibre per 100g of all categories compared to both meat and other plant-based meat alternatives.
Beans and pulses are also the most affordable per 100g, however the two processed meat alternative categories are on average considerably more expensive than meat products which the Food Foundation suggests could prove a barrier to future growth.
‘Stepping stone’
What should we take from all this number crunching? That grouping all plant-based alternatives into a single category is an unhelpful strategy for encouraging a shift away from eating meat and towards more plant-rich diets as it hides a wide variety of plant-based meat alternative options with differing nutritional profiles. That’s arguably the most important takeaway from the report which suggests that, despite some negative press, processed plant-based meat alternatives can be a “useful stepping stone” for encouraging people to shift their diets, albeit less processed alternatives like beans, pulses and grains offer the greatest number of co-benefits.
“They are also the most affordable alternative to meat by quite some way,” says Rebecca Tobi, senior business and investor engagement manager at the Food Foundation. She adds that: “There is a huge opportunity in the UK to get people eating more beans, as an affordable, healthy and sustainable alternative protein source. They’re a win-win-win for environmental, health and equity outcomes.”
Business action
The charity is now calling on businesses to ensure that plant-based meat alternatives are priced at the same level, if not cheaper, than meat products. And where the nutrient profile of meat alternatives does not compare favourably to meat, it says businesses should reformulate products so that plant-based alternatives have equivalent, or better levels of nutrition. Businesses should increase the availability of plant-based alternatives on supermarket shelves and on menus and increase the ratio of plant-rich foods to meat-based dish alternatives. Brands should also bring more blended products to market and help make plant-based foods more appealing by, for example, directing promotional and advertising spend towards them and including plant-rich dishes in meal deals or set menus.
Positive outlook
The longer-term outlook for plant-based meat alternatives remains broadly positive with analysis undertaken by the Green Alliance think tank in 2023 predicting that, with the right combination of targeted investments and regulation, the UK industry could be worth up to £6.8bn annually and create 25,000 jobs by 2035.
Recent news that the UK government is investing £15m in an innovation hub to accelerate the commercialisation of plant-based, cultivated and fermentation-made foods, will come as a fillip to those banking on future market expansion. The National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre will be hosted by the University of Leeds with an additional £23m of funding coming from public and private sector partners. The aim is to develop innovative new plant-based products and ingredients, while investigating how people can integrate these foods into their diets.
It’s a welcome shot in the arm for a market that has suffered the growing pains that most new product categories go through once they start to reach maturity. And while we don’t yet know whether the meat alternatives market will ultimately fulfil its full potential, reports of its demise have surely been exaggerated.
