Three Ways Questionable Claims Hurt The Plant-Based Foods Cause

If you were only paying attention to the headlines, you would have the distinct impression that plant-based foods are taking over.

For example, last month, USA Today reported that: “Restaurants saved 700K animals with plant-based offerings last year.” (This article was syndicated so appeared in numerous local papers.) More specifically, the outlet reported that 212,000 pigs, 92,000 cows and 405,000 chickens were saved in 2021.

Cue the celebrations on social media and other amplification. (Oddly, VegNews reported the statistic as 600,000 in their headline, but then in the body said the figure could be as high as 1 million animals saved, all based on the same report.)

Where does this claim come from?

According to USA Today, an organization called World Animal Protection conducted an analysis. The outlet explains that the group calculated how many units of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods’ plant-based meats “needed to be sold to represent the amount of meat provided by one animal, then applied a substitution effect to estimate the likelihood that the product was purchased by a meat-eating consumer.”

Because there is no other information available, it’s impossible to tell the accuracy of this claim but it’s highly suspicious. (I could not find the report on the group’s website and attempts to contact the organization via both social media and on their web portal went unanswered.)

There is no evidence that plant-based alternatives are displacing animal foods because we simply do not have the data to know how consumers are behaving.

In another example of dubious claims, VegNews also recently reported that: “Plant-based meat will be cheaper than animal meat sooner than you think”. The Beet similarly reported that: “Vegan Meat Alternatives On Track to Become Cheaper Than Meat”.

Where does this claim come from?

Both outlets reference a blog post from the Good Food Institute claiming that as “production scales up, economies of scale can translate into cost and price efficiencies.” That’s a pretty standard concept, but not exactly newsworthy.

VegNews also cites a report from last year by the investing group Blue Horizon, which commissioned the Boston Consulting Group to conduct an analysis. (The Good Food Institute blog post also referenced this same report.)

This report makes the optimistic prediction that “alternative proteins could claim as much as 22 percent of the overall protein market by 2035”. (The group includes cell-cultured meat along with plant-based in its prediction.) 

That report garnered a fair amount of media coverage, but without pointing out the obvious conflicts of interest in having an investor predicting future success of the very products they are invested in. Blue Horizon’s portfolio includes numerous plant-based and cell-cultured meat companies, so they are hardly an objective source.

Back to the price parity “news”. The investor report predicted that: “By 2035, after alternative proteins reach full parity in taste, texture, and price with conventional animal proteins.” This claim is apparently based on a “first-of-its-kind market model” and interviews of “more than 40 experts in the field”. At least one chart references the Good Food Institute as a data source, creating an echo chamber between the two entities.

Is this just quibbling over details? No, reality matters. Exaggeration and self-serving claims are not OK. Here are three ways such claims hurt the very cause they intend to advance.

1.    Encouraging unrealistic investments. As we have seen with Beyond Meat, what goes up must come down. While the company’s record-breaking IPO made a few people very rich, the more recent stock downturn runs the risk of scaring off new investors from other brands that may have more long-term success.

2.    Distracting from actual solutions. The only way to create long-lasting change is to fix the underlying structural problems that created the mess in the first place. Conventional meat production is not a consumer problem. It’s a political and economic problem. The marketplace does not solve political problems. It can play a role, but a limited one. The more we send a message that the marketplace is solving our food system mess, the less we will put resources and energy into more effective solutions. Which leads me to number three.

3.    Creating a sense of complacency. Real change takes hard work: Often grassroots organizing over many decades, depending on how entrenched the problem is. And conventional meat and dairy production is extremely entrenched in our agricultural, economic, and food systems. Spreading misinformation sends a signal that there is no need for activism, the marketplace has it covered.

The media must also take responsibility for amplifying unsubstantiated claims. While it may provide outlets temporary click-bait, in the long run it erodes trust. And if we cannot trust the information we receive, we cannot make informed choices about where to put our energy and limited resources.

And we don’t have time to waste.