How to get people to eat more veggies? Add meat

The hottest thing in meat, these days? Apparently, it’s vegetables. 

Nectar, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing alternative proteins, released findings last week from a large-scale blind taste test comparing hybrid meat-veggie products with traditional meat. The blended products, which they’re calling “balanced proteins,” are a hit with omnivores—so much so that testers actually preferred some of them to their all-meat counterparts.

“The irony is that a burger is a blended product,” says Andrew Arentowicz, CEO & Co-Founder of Both, one of the brands that taste testers in the Nectar survey rated as on-par with comparable all-meat products. “You got lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, ketchup, mayonnaise, pickles, that’s a burger. So this isn’t some like oh-my-god what a revolutionary concept; it’s actually very obvious, the whole thing.”

Perhaps Arentowicz is right that this is a no-brainer, but I do think the study results are impressive, and maybe even a little surprising, given that we aren’t exactly a nation of veggie lovers. Only about one in ten Americans eat the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables. That gap matters—not just for personal health, but for the planet and animals, too. Issues of access, cost, and culture are, of course, factors here, but it can’t be denied that taste is also a concern. No matter how convenient or inexpensive, if people don’t find the healthier and more eco-friendly option to be tasty, they’re going to have a hard time choosing it.

And for some people, the taste and texture of vegetables just aren’t appealing. That’s where the whole idea of plant-based meat like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods even came from: People like the taste of animal flesh, but aren’t okay with the health, environmental, and ethical drawbacks, so mission-driven entrepreneurs devised a sort of compromise. But so far, that compromise just hasn’t been good enough to win most people over.

“The market identified the right problem, that people want to eat less meat,” says Arentowicz. “But it picked the wrong solution. Nobody asked for more processed plant[-based meat], or more lab-grown meat. So we decided to give consumers what they say they want, which is meat, but less meat.”

As someone whose life’s work is devoted to empowering people to reduce their intake of factory farmed animal products, I remain enthusiastic about all forms of alternative protein. After all, it’s not as if any other strategy—including non-tech-food ones like policy and education—have shown great promise in achieving this goal (societal meat consumption is more or less up year over year). But I also welcome the trend of plant-forward products that are chock-full of vegetables, fungi, and/or legumes.

For example, DUO’s and Fable’s blended burgers are infused with mushrooms and Perdue’s blended nuggets contain chickpeas and cauliflower—all were rated as tasting better than comparable conventional products. While I wish more people were drawn to vegan options, less meat is less meat, and it could be a pathway to a more plant-forward lifestyle. 

Crafty parents have been doing it for generations: Trojan-horsing some veggies into their kid’s diet by hiding them in more preferable foods. Some might object to using this kind of “spoonful of sugar” strategy with full-grown human adults—a wife who stealthily buys blended meat for her husband, for example—calling it paternalistic or rolling their eyes at grown-ups who can’t “just eat a vegetable.” But frankly, I don’t see the problem. The reason people have been pulling this trick for ages is because it works—and that’s what matters.

Granted, it might not work as well when they know what’s inside. Food aversions can be severe and deeply psychological; for some individuals, just knowing that mushrooms are in a food—even if they’re not obvious—can spark disgust, or worse. And of course, some people are just picky eaters who won’t be sold on a partial-veggie burger. Still, it’s worth a shot, and as the Nectar study shows, taste is on the side of blended meat. 

The reality is most people aren’t going to hop on the all-kale-all-the-time train. Still, sans a few carnivore-diet shills, everyone knows they should be eating more vegetables. But if you’ve ever met a human being, you know we’re not entirely rational animals. Every smoker knows it would be healthier to quit, but that knowledge doesn’t make it any easier, let alone more enjoyable. A gentler approach, one centered around harm reduction, may be the best way to help some people change their habits. If adding some veggies into a beef patty or chicken nugget is what’s going to get people eating in a way that’s not only better for their own health, but for the climate and the well-being of animals, isn’t that ultimately worth it?

Perhaps there doesn’t need to be a binary that pits “alternative” and “traditional” meat as competing products in a zero-sum game for consumer favor. Perhaps embracing balanced proteins could be the solution for brands struggling from the perception of being unhealthy, in these supposedly hyper-“wellness”-conscious times. In fact, 61% of parents Nectar surveyed said they would visit a fast food restaurant more often if it served blended meat. It could be beneficial for people’s health, but it’s also just good business sense.

As a society, we probably should be taking a multipronged approach to major issues like public health, environmental protection, and animal welfare. Some people happily subsist on diets made up entirely of plant foods. I salute them. For everyone else, let’s meet them halfway, or even a quarter of the way, at least to start. If people are willing to cut their meat consumption, just by mixing it with some mushrooms, let’s welcome that. The world will be better for it.

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