Why we’re giving up on vegan food

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As a science and health reporter, you might think that I’d be enthusiastic about the current trend for eating more plant-based foods.

The reasons to become vegetarian or vegan seem to keep mounting up. People have long been vegetarian for ethical or health reasons. These days, the climate has become a third motivation for either giving up or trying to limit how much meat and animal products we eat.

But I have a confession to make. If there’s one food I generally avoid, it’s a veggie burger. This may be because it feels like I have already eaten more than a lifetime’s worth.

I became vegetarian when I was 16. It lasted a couple of years, about as long as my Goth phase.

After increasingly craving meat, I used the opportunity of going to university to reinvent myself as an omnivore, as well as rethinking my clothing choices.

Vegan influencers

In my vegetarian days, veggie burgers and sausages were dry, bland and unappetising. So I have been fascinated to see the recent improvement in and expansion of such products on the supermarket shelves.

In fact, plant-based foods have become one of the fastest-growing food trends of the past decade.

Vegan influencers seem everywhere, and restaurant menus have a growing number of vegan options – so much so that some vegetarians complain vegan dishes are displacing veggie ones.

Innovative products have been developed like the Impossible Burger, which uses genetically modified yeast to give the burger a pink hue to resemble raw mince (although this is not yet available in the UK).

And the UK Government has this year put £15m into research on meat substitutes, such as lab-grown meat and foods made from farmed insects or fungal sources, through a new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre.

It can certainly seem that the future of food is plant-based. Scientists in both climate and nutrition fields sometimes refer to the concept of the “protein transition” – the idea that the world will inevitably shift to getting protein from plant sources instead of animal ones.

But perhaps they shouldn’t be quite so confident about that.

Since about three years ago, sales of meat substitutes in UK supermarkets have been falling. There are similar trends in Europe and the US.

In the UK, after rising for several years, they reached a peak in 2021. But since then, they have fallen three years running, by 7 per cent the first year, then 6 per cent, and then by 9 per cent, according to supermarket sales figures from Circana.

The big question is what has caused this shift.

Shift away from processed food

One often-proposed explanation is that it is being driven by the cost of living crisis of recent years, as some meat substitute foods can be pricier than just buying more ordinary fruit and vegetables.

But if that’s right, it’s puzzling that purchasing of meat, which can also be pricey, has not dropped too. UK sales of beef grew by 9 per cent between 2023 and 2024, for instance. “With inflation and cost of living, meat has been more resilient in that regard,” said Alex Lawrence, an analyst with Circana.

An idea I find more convincing is the growing interest in eating less processed kinds of food, which has happened in the past few years. “Consumers want more real food,” said Julian Mellentin, an analyst with New Nutrition Business. “Some burger or sausage that’s been made with soy isolates just doesn’t cut it. They have very long ingredient lists.”

There’s a bit of a paradox here, because presumably, people want to eat more whole foods because they believe it is healthier.

Yet, most official health advice is that red meat is unhealthy because of its saturated fat and that it raises the risk of bowel cancer.

On the other hand, there is a minority but very noisy group of doctors and scientists who argue that red meat is, in fact, really good for us, because of its high-quality protein and other nutrients like iron and vitamin B12.

This theory is championed by the current US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy but has been getting increasing exposure on social media for some time, leading to some people even adopting a carnivore diet.

Vegan food doesn’t appeal

A third possible explanation for the fall in meat substitute sales is that people may be happy to try out some of the new foods in supermarkets, for novelty, but they don’t become repeat customers because, for omnivores, most of these products disappoint on taste and texture. At BBQs, you could say they don’t cut the mustard.

“If something is exciting and new, people like to try it,” said Professor Frédéric Leroy, a food scientist at the Free University of Brussels. “But if they don’t give you the same satisfaction, the popularity will fade after a while.”

A lot is riding on which of these theories is right. Investors globally have put a great deal of money into meat substitutes.

But in 2023, a San Francisco firm called Hooray Foods developing “fake bacon”, closed down due to economic challenges. Last year, the UK sandwich chain Pret a Manger converted its last specialist outlets selling only vegetarian or vegan meals to regular stores. The firm said it was because every store has veggie options, but it did seem a sign of the times.

If the main driver is that the current appetite for less processed foods is outweighing the other trend for plant-based foods, then either trend might eventually triumph.

If it’s just that meat substitutes aren’t palatable enough yet, then better products may well emerge in future that can make people long-term converts. That is the hope of Professor Anwesha Sarkar, head of the UK’s new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre.

She says there are now ways to create better meat substitutes in the lab, and the only problem left is to work out how to make them cheaply at scale. “It’s not like it will be done in a year,” she said. “There are challenges to be solved.”

I hope that Professor Sarkar’s efforts are successful, not just for the climate but also for those people who really want to avoid eating meat, but just find current plant-based substitutes too unpalatable, like teenaged me.

I’ve also written

Eight “three-parent babies” have been born in the UK, who each have genetic material from three people, after an IVF procedure to prevent devastating disease.

The UK is the first country to legalise the technique, in order to help women with faulty mitochondria, the cell’s energy-producing structures.

I’ve been reading

I have just finished Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarty, best known for her first novel, Big Little Lies.

I only read it because it was my book club’s selection. The blurb says it is about an elderly woman who makes psychic predictions that start to come true, and I’m a sceptic about such stuff.

But against my wishes, I became absolutely engrossed. Moriarty is such a skillful writer that while I didn’t believe the plot, I absolutely believed in her characters. I will be giving it nine out of ten at my book club tonight.