Imagine this: You are hungry. I have arrived in the Foods section of the grocery store, and you face two options: a package of chicken nuggets or a set of similar looks, but it is made without meat. How do you choose? Do you look at the price first or compare the ingredients lists? Or perhaps, after you do both, do you eventually go with your intestine? You are hungry, after all.
A New report It highlights the important role that the taste plays for consumers when considering whether the plant -based protein will be purchased. The nectar, an initiative based in Oakland, which is conducting research on fake meat, surveyed thousands of meat eaters in a series of blind taste tests to see how vegetable meat alternatives to the real thing-and have obtained some amazing results.
Four plant products got almost unpopular degrees from Real Meat-and nectar also found that vegetable products that were largely classified in terms of taste were the highest sales volume.
Abe Cyoil, director of companies ’participation in a good food institute, said that the report issued earlier this month,“ emphasizes a simple but decisive point: consumers want to eat delicious, complete food, ”which is the term industry for the alternatives to the plant -based meat. (The good food institute did not participate in the report and has no official relationship.)
The issue of how to increase sales is the one that has disturbed the plant industry in recent years. Vegetable meat The sales decreased from 2021 to 2023 witnessedAccording to the good food institute. In the past few years, the Ersatz brands have topped the headlines of the newspaper sharp Demobilization and Talking about possible acquisitions Or closure.
It is also a question of great effects on climate and environment. on 80 percent of the world’s agricultural lands are used to raise livestock (Taking into account the land used to grow crops to feed animals such as soybeans and corn). Animal protein disposal will lead Free agricultural lands and Reducing demands for water. The adoption of a plant -based diet would also greatly help in terms of emissions. Animal agriculture Responsible for 16.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Even if we stop using fossil fuels tomorrow, We still have to change the way we eat Specifically, we had to eat less meat – to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
Plant defenders often say that when fake meat products taste it as good and Little cost As traditional meat options, consumers will flow on them. But neutral information about whether it is very difficult to obtain vegetable protein brands in the strict standards of consumers. According to Caroline Coto, the manager of the factory-based meat companies usually performs taste tests only with its employees or investors-unbiased sources.
nectar
Samantha Derek, who leads an application educational program on plant foods at the University of California, Berkeley, said the third -party taste was “very important” for the development of the industry. Derrick and Cotto Nextar, a System Innovations initiative and funded by System Innovations, is a charitable organization, as unique in the plant industry. When companies taste tests internally, they usually do not make the results of these tests open publicly the way the nectar possesses.
This was the second time that the organization has performed blind taste tests with plant -based protection brands. On this tour, the nectar asked for more than 2000 participants who said they are eating some meat products at least once every month or two. They have chosen 122 vegetable products designed to look like real meat across 14 categories-including breakfast sausage, meat balls, dragged pork, meat slices-and prepare them alongside their animal-based counterparts. (Participants were not informed of the vegetarian products that contain meat.) The test was done in New York City restaurants and San Francisco restaurants instead of sterile white rooms because Coto wanted to repeat a familiar environment.
Nextar paint also products in traditional ways – hot dogs in the cakes, pulled pork in a sandwich – instead of serving each edition in its “naked” shape. If the participants are testing, for example, hot dogs, they can add spices – as long as they applied the same spices to each hot dog they tried.
The nectar found that 20 products based on the plant were classified on the same style or better than their animal counterparts in terms of total admiration of at least 50 percent of the participants. These included five unculated vegetable chicken slices, five vegetable burgers, and two vegetable chicken signs.
Four of these products have been performed well, as they almost reached equal taste, which nectar knows because there is no statistically significant difference in how the participants record the vegetarian product versus the animal in terms of comprehensive admiration. These four are not impossible chicken breasts of foods, chicken nuggets, and burgers, as well as the nuggets of the Morning Star Farms.
Coto said the results show that the plant -based chicken products lead the industry in terms of blocking the flavor gap. Chicken breast may basically help an empty fabric. She added: “From the perspective of flavor, I think the chicken has a more accurate flavor than it is actually easy to repeat.”
The plant products that the nectar found most of them to improve taste-such as bacon-one of the most difficult pieces of meat to imitate. Unlike chicken slices, chicken nuggets, or burgers, bacon slices are not generally homogeneous in texture and flavor. Simulating the fatty parts of bacon as well as striped meat is very difficult for fair plants. Cyoile, from the good food institute, said additional research and development can help. “The continuous investment in alternative research and development is necessary to accelerate innovation and ensure these products are achieved on flavor and the ability to afford costs to consumers.”
Of course, there is a difference between admiration for a vegetarian product in the taste test and actually choosing it to buy it in a grocery store, when there is no researcher. “Even if the parity is achieved in taste and prices, this is not certain,” said Coto. In the United States, meat is linked National identity and Masculinity; It will not be very easy to win every type of consumers.
However, DERICK, who has not participated in the NECTAR study, says that younger consumers “definitely” do not want to feel that they are given to taste in the grocery store – and that research like Cotto will help brands know how to satisfy it.
Derek said: “I think the blind test is done objectively as the best way to improve plant products,” Derek said. It will provide more tests “Road Map of what is possible, what is better.”
