Fad

🥩 In case you were wondering, no, there’ve been no capitalization mistakes in this title! We’re not talking about those FADs, as in "Foreign animal diseases", but a fad, with lowercase letters, as in "a short-lived, widespread enthusiasm for something". And you wanna know what is a fad in the meat industry? Plant-based meats.

    • At least, according to Gregory Bloom – read his whole opinion piece here.

👀 This is why they’re a fad, and this is how they’ll fade: 

    • Since 2019, the number of plant-based brands found in the meat case next to real meats has declined. 

    • Alternative proteins are usually sold under the justification that meat is bad for the environment – which completely ignores the reality of cattle’s upcycling capacities and the fact that human transportation is far more harmful than pigs could ever be, for example.

    • Consumers don’t trust GMOs, so assuming they'll trust lab-grown fake meats is a far shot.

    • Vegetable-based meat substitutes don’t provide the nutritional benefits that real meat does. 

    • People are aware that the highly processed items found in vegetable-based meats aren’t better for their body than real meat. 

🚫 Whether plant-based options will vanish is debatable, but they’ll never fully replace real meat unless meat is regulated out of business by politicians.