Research report: adding a plant-based option (or two) doesn&#x27;t change behavior

Would it be a fair quick take to say that this provides evidence that the veg sofritas and "chicknitas" were simply not something that this audience tended to find attractive (in the hypothetical setting at least) ... But perhaps this was not well powered to detect small proportional substitution effect on the animal products?

The extension one might draw. If that's the case is that if One were to have introduced a more more popular set of plant-based products it remains possible that these indeed would have substituted for the animal products. But we need more data to make this determination.

The fact that the sofritas if I read it right, seem to particularly substitute for chicken is particularly interesting, although I suspect we are underpowered to meaningfully determine whether it substituted more for the beef or the chicken.

Is that a fair quick take? If not, I'll try to revise it and change this comment to avoid distracting people.

1mo*

Hi David,

It's true that we aren't powered to detect very small changes on any test. We did a fair bit of background work to target 5 pp. as our SESOI based on our understanding of what we could plausibly take to restaurants as an argument that they should add a chicken-based PMA to their menus.

if One were to have introduced a more more popular set of plant-based products it remains possible that these indeed would have substituted for the animal products.

Yes, that is possible. Our paper does not address what some other, more appealing thing would have done. However, taste parity is an open problem. My personal belief -- out of scope of the data -- is that we can think of consumers as extrapolating, when they see an item like "chickn'itas," that it'll basically be the category average, or on par with the other PMAs currently available at Chipotle, and making a choice based on that belief. Unfortunately, PMAs account for a small fraction of all sales (3% per this out-of-date article but I couldn't find anything more up to date and official. However, based on 1-on-1 conversations, I think this number is still approximately right). Chipotle has tried many times to introduce more plant-based options. If a more popular and appealing option existed at the kind of margins that Chipotle looks for, we can assume they would have already made it available.

Regarding the chicken-vs-everything else split: the difference-in-difference CI ([−12.58, 0.73]) is wide, and we say in the paper that we can't resolve which meat the displacement came from, alas.

david_reinstein

It's true that we aren't powered to detect very small changes on any test. We did a fair bit of background work to target 5 pp. as our SESOI based on our understanding of what we could plausibly take to restaurants as an argument that they should add a chicken-based PMA to their menus.

5 pp on the direct effect on total sales or some such? That does seem reasonable to me? That said, a Bayesian approach to decisionmaking and power analysis seems perhaps more relevant for taking to Chipotle etc. If you can tell them "given a range of reasonable priors, the posterior this has an 75% chance of increasing your revenue by 5%" that seems potentially likely to be convincing? @Jamie E probably has something to say on this.

> However, taste parity is an open problem.
Paywalled link, but ChatGPT excerpts say

> "plant-based meat and dairy are finally getting close to animal products on taste in some categories, but taste alone probably won’t make most Americans switch" ... " the real missing ingredient is culture"
> The author says meat and dairy have deep cultural meanings in the U.S.—masculinity, tradition, family rituals, comfort, identity
> Nectar found only about 16% of 122 plant-based meat products tested in 2025 and about 25% of 98 dairy-free products tested in 2026 cleared the “same as or better than animal product”

To me the 16% actually seems pretty good (we reported on the same thing here) the best of these products will command an overwhelming share, and the products are only getting better. My personal, unevidence take is that "the culture of meat thing" might fade away, or at least only be relevant to say half the population .

> My personal belief -- out of scope of the data -- is that we can think of consumers as extrapolating, when they see an item like "chickn'itas," that it'll basically be the category average, or on par with the other PMAs currently available at Chipotle, and making a choice based on that belief.

That seems reasonable to me.

> Unfortunately, PMAs account for a small fraction of all sales (3% per this out-of-date article but I couldn't find anything more up to date and official. However, based on 1-on-1 conversations, I think this number is still approximately right). Chipotle has tried many times to introduce more plant-based options. If a more popular and appealing option existed at the kind of margins that Chipotle looks for, we can assume they would have already made it available.

My guess is that it's substantially higher than 3% as it's taking up a pretty large portion of their counter space, so why would they do that for 3%? (Unless the directors of Chipotle themselves have an altruistic motive.) Based on products we've all eaten, I guess it's safe to say that they could come up with something plant-based that's tastier than the sofritas (which are OK), but it may not be profitable.

"a Bayesian approach to decisionmaking and power analysis seems perhaps more relevant for taking to Chipotle etc. If you can tell them "given a range of reasonable priors, the posterior this has an 75% chance of increasing your revenue by 5%" that seems potentially likely to be convincing? @Jamie E probably has something to say on this."

Yes you could do that in principle, though I think the frequentist way they've done things in the publication is reasonable. I don't think this study speaks directly to the idea of increasing revenue (I guess there could be an implication for profit if the shifts the menu option causes result in more or less costly ingredients being chosen) - but for increasing revenue I think an alternative sort of experiment might be needed where you'd see if people were more or less likely to select the whole restaurant as opposed to other options depending on the presence of plant-based options. I suspect that would be more interesting to Chipotle than an altrustic motivation of reducing the amount of chicken eaten

Thanks for sharing the data for the paper. Based on a fairly quick re-analysis, it appears that a decline in selection of chicken can be detected - but as you note, choice of alternative red meats tends to increase slightly, and some of the increase in selecting the new plant-based meat is driven by fewer people selecting the other veg-based options.

A few considerations as a result:

Could it still be good to reduce purchasing of chicken, given the relatively poorer conditions of chickens and greater animals per kg of meat slughtered to get chicken vs. beef?
Given some people who seemingly would have eaten the chicken switch to beef when a chicken alternative is on the menu, might some moral self deception be at play? People say they'll eat veggie if only there is a replacement for X. When there is a replacement for X, they can't continue eating X in good conscience but switch to Y, for which they can then say they would eat plant-based if only there were a plant-based Y alternative
- I wonder if one could see if chicken increases when an explicit replacement for beef and steak were made (or is sofritas already explicitly intended as a replacement for one of these?)
- I wonder if meat might ultimately decline if there were yet more plant-based explicit alternatives - what do you think?
It would be particularly interesting to know the 'readiness to change' or 'intention/sympathy' towards vegetarianism - I might expect more sympathetic/genuinely ready to change people really would try the alternative out as opposed to just switching to beef

Finally, what are your thoughts on the ecological validity of the experiment? Naturally, people can't see or smell the options, as you note in the paper, but the experiment also takes place in the absence of repeat visits, advertising, and hearsay about how X or Y tastes really good, has to be tried etc. I'm not totally surprised that just adding an option to the end of a virtual menu doesn't greatly shift behavior, but that also seems a slightly reductionistic model of what plant-based advocates might expect would happen in such a situation, which might be more to do with norm shifting, decreasing difficulty enabling people to switch over time etc. I hope that does not come across as overly critical, because I'm also really pleased to see a rigorous attempt to put ideas to the test and challenge assumptions. [edit: I haven't thoroughly read you paper, so apologies if you already discuss this]

Hi James, neat visualizations, and very validating that you were able to extend our work like this! We worked hard to make our materials legible but you don't really know how well that went until someone actually tries to use them 😃 So this is great to see.

Yes, a switch away from chicken meat towards beef could be good under some circumstances/assumptions. But the goal of our experiment was to come up with an effect size large enough to take to Chipotle, and we don't think we found one. My guess is that the interspecies tradeoffs also would not be very persuasive to a fast casual chain relative to beef's larger climate impact.
I'm not sure. Sofritas are more or less an analogue to ground beef, but I'm not sure people make that connection. Our thinking for this experiment was that chicken typically has the fewest analogues widely available, so we should try to focus on that. But I am no longer sure that I have a good sense of how introducing PMAs would impact meat consumption. Yes, we find some evidence that chickn'itas absorbs demand from chicken specifically, but it's not a slam dunk by any means. Maybe another PMA or two would have larger effects. I doubt it.
I agree that proto-vegetarians might be more actiely exploring alternatives...but how many people are in this category? I'd venture less than 1% of people are seriously considering it. Probably a much larger category are looking to "cut back" in some sense, but that might mean many things to them.
I think our experiment has high ecological validity for the thing we are testing, which is the introduction of PMAs to an online, Chipotle-like menu. That's a real environment in which people encounter PMAs, and because it's online, IMHO it may lack promotion, buzz, etc. Perhaps a more elaborate test of a more fleshed out, multi-component theory would find different effects. On the other hand, our intervention is easily scaled up.
1. For tests of "hearsay about how X or Y tastes really good, has to be tried etc" see, Sparkman et al. (2020, e.g. figure 2) and Piester et al. (2020). We review some of those studies here. I think broadly speaking you are talking about norms-based approaches, see here for a general review and here for a review specific to eating meat.

The cleaned data set was very nice to have access to and clear - the only thing that wasn't clear to me was whether any exclusions were actually applied on the basis of the attention checks, and what the correct answers to the attention question were, but this may be in your documentation already, I just had a fairly quick look and downloaded the csv and got going.

Thanks for the thorough response -

indeed if the goal is about doing something to shift Chipotle/similar chains then the chicken reduction angle is unlikely to be persuasive.
1. Is there any way of finding out from real data whether people who literally wouldn't go to chipotle started doing so when sofritas became a thing?
Fair enough
Agree with this. I could imagine that over the scale of something like Chipotle, it could be that satisfying the 'every so often' plant-based purchase, as opposed to meat, of reducetarians could be impactful and affect how much meat gets purchased overall, but it's far from clear and not something we'd be powered to detect with all but the most elaborate experiments, most likely
That's a good point, I actually had not considered people ordering online somehow...to the extent that the study was intending to represent an online experience then yes I consider it more ecologically than I first perceived it to be
1. Those studies don't really convince me as I don't think it's possible to actually change what people perceive to be real norms (or basically their schemas of how the world is), or what their friends are saying and getting excited about, or the media is reporting on, which percolates organically and affects ones worldview, with small experimental manipulations, so to this extent I think the sorts of stuff I'm talking about are very hard experimentally. Even with an online menu I think people still arrive there having already been influenced by all sorts of things, I'm not referring to explicit advertising that would in the menu or in the store specifically. [edit: but I don't think it is necessary to discuss further]

LewisBollard

Thanks for doing and publishing this study! It's so helpful to get a clearer picture on this, even if we don't like the answers. As a validation of your findings, in 2015, Chipotle told Vox that sofritas were 3.5% of sales, very close to your 3.8%.

Interesting! I believe I missed that interview, although a rep told the Times that same year that "sofritas accounts for about 3 percent of fillings."

I recently learned that Steve Ellis (Chipotle founder) tried predominantly plant-based fast casual in 2024; apparently it didn't work out (although I'm still seeing a Yelp page?) and this winter he told Eater that “veganism...is very polarizing, I’ve learned.”

In a separate interview Ellis said “I think people will eat more plant-based diets and make that part of their life if there are better options,” [emphasis added], which I agree with. But I basically think that that no single effort is likely to change the game, in part because the most effective interventions are unusually challenging to scale.

(Also, Chipotle tried out free shipping on plant-based options in 2021, which is an intervention I'd love to formally evaluate! But I'd bet that appetite for that kind of thing is lower nowadays. The whole market is a long way from where it was then.)

1mo*

👋 we've updated this post to link to the now-published paper:

Hope, J. E., Green, S. A., Peacock, J. R., & Mathur, M. B. (2026). Effects of adding plant-based menu options on meat selection frequency: A randomized controlled experiment. Food Quality and Preference, 105931.

fish_in_a_firetruck

Interesting, but I'm not sure this captures the main potential benefit of adding plant-based meat options. These options improve the experience of being a vegan - thereby increasing takeup/retention of veganism - rather than being appealing to meat-eaters in the moment. I would be way more likely to be vegan if there were vegan meat alternatives everywhere I went (including meat-heavy experiences like Christmas, BBQs, holidays), as opposed to just salad and lentils. Even when they aren't that tasty, the fake meat makes me feel less "left out".

The fact the fake meat options are displacing the pure vegetable options at all, is a sign that they are improving the experience of being vegan.

Obviously, this study does still tell us something about how appealing/unappealing vegan meat options are to people, and the results have updated me downwards a bit. But not by a huge amount. I very rarely see my meat-eater friends order vegan options (whether vegetables or fake meat); and I very rarely see my vegan friends break their veganism because there was only a vegetable option rather than a fake meat option. So I think I would have predicted broadly similar results.

It is possible that this will have transformative effects! Two pieces of counter-evidence worth considering:

The plant-based meat market grew rapidly in the 2010s -- beyond meat was introduced in 2009, Imposisble in 2016 -- and more or less peaked around 2021 and has been declining since. Meat is back on the menu, culturally and politically; Beyond Meat might go through bankruptcy in the next few years; and the percentage of vegetarians and vegans has remained constant over time at about 4-5% of the population. So to me, the story here is that plant-based meats hit a wall of market adoption, at least at their current point of price/taste/convenience. Basically they were starting to appear in more places but eventually demand didn't keep pace.
Some evidence that some people say they won't try lab-grown meats under any circumstances. Maybe they'll get used to it, maybe they won't. Maybe the issue gets polarized and some people love it and other people say it threatens core values.

P.S. on the subject of meat-heavy celebrations, I'm going to a pig roast tomorrow and expecting to eat nothing there...but I'm used to this dance 😃

fish_in_a_firetruck

Thanks that's really helpful. You're right it doesn't seem like increased prevalence of fake meat options is leading to any significant increase in % of vegans. I do find this quite hard to marry with my personal experience - I am way more vegan in my home city (where there are good, widespread vegan options) than when travelling abroad. And I'm fairly sure I would not choose to identify as vegan/veggie at all if I lived in a country where there were far fewer options. But the stats would suggest that veganism is in fact quite inelastic to this. Strange!

Hope your hog roast wasn't too difficult - sending solidarity! I had a jackfruit hog roast alternative once, I appreciated the effort but it wasn't very nice...I'm sure Beyond could have done a better job.

Chris Lonsberry

I'll share my view on this as a consumer. Almost every time I see a PMA on a menu, I expect to get the following things if I order that option:

- Smaller quantity
- Worse macros (That is, I expect that the PMA will have a higher fat/carb:protein ratio than chicken breast)
- Often, an upcharge to boot

This expectation might be irrational on my part; an aftereffect of being vegetarian in the 1990s before the current generation of PMAs was released. When I was a full-time vegetarian, I frequently observed restaurant meals for vegetarians contained both less calories and less (sometimes almost no) protein. I guess the upshot of the above is that I believe achieving price- and nutrition- parity would strongly influence me.

Finally, I think I tend to do better at making choices that align with my ethics at the supermarket rather than at restaurants.

Hi Chris, a few thoughts about this:

On the macro front, I sometimes wonder if the PMA companies shouldn't amp up the fiber content in their products and try to emphasize that as an under appreciated macro. (Personally I pay very little attention to my net macros so long as I'm generally eating healthy, real foods. When I'm thru-hiking it's a different story -- I tally my daily protein intake -- but also in that context I eat way, way more sugar.)
Upcharge was addressed by our study design because prices were kept constant (re: zero) but it's possible some folks held that assumption. This is an element of experimental realism because some people will also believe that if ordering online Chipotle for real.
Regarding nutrition parity, what if PMAs were more nutritious? I am guessing that this is a hard problem and also that we don't have clear, agreed-on metrics for healthy. But I'm also reminded of a friend saying like 15 years ago that legalization of weed would usher in a whole new era of genentically modified superstrains that could have all sorts of add-on effects, and that never materialized. It's easy to fantasize about the amazing potential of material sciences for those of us who don't actually work in it 😃
I agree with you about restaurants vs supermarkets; much easier to find animal welfare certifications on a tin than a restaurant's website, for instance. Which is why it's a downer that many conscientious reducetarians/flexitarians eat more meat out than at home. I think what's happening there is that convenience trumps abstract ethical reasoning when the two come into conflict. Byran Caplan would not find this surprising.

I agree with Chris's point here - I always go for sofritas but it's very frustrating, they literally give you less than what you can see them serving with the meat options.

The protein ratio is also very important. For me - and I am confident for other consumers too - the protein is not fungible with other macros or nutritional content. One is trying to add protein to the meal, not to generically be 'healthy'. I don't think that pointing out the good fiber content, or increasing it, helps at all in this dimension.

Totally, I did not mean to suggest that protein and fiber are fungible. Rather I wonder if plant-based options might do better to play to their strengths, one of which is fiber.

I would also say that I've never noticed if the Sofritas portion is smaller than the equivalent animal-based portion but if that were true on average across Chipotles, it would suggest some interesting follow-ups:

do servers implicitly believe that folks who order plant-based are more "health-conscious", whatever that means, and thus want smaller portions?
does Chipotle have some official guidance on different portion sizes?

As a side note, it seems that many people I talk to IRL have somewhat extreme beliefs about how much protein they need & don't have a good sense of how much protein is in grains and legumes, but that is a post for another time. (Update: a little research suggests, indeed, some confusions around this topic, but also generally low enthusiasm for PBAs)

Chris Lonsberry

Truly shocked by the research above. Another reminder of just how far one drifts from the norm when getting enthusiastic about a particular topic. I really thought (despite personal experience to the contrary) that everyone knows cottage cheese is high protein and peanut butter has some protein, but not great macros (high fat:protein ratio).

I think we've drifted well away from the habits of normal consumers now, but I will add say that there seems to be some agreement that protein intake up to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day (g/kg/day) tends to maximize resistance exercise-induced gains in muscle mass.

There's probably some room to lower that by looking for a point of decreasing marginal returns, but it seems to me that most weight lifters will target 1.6 + some safety margin that makes them feel good.

My main point here is that among weight lifters who are paying attention to science, there's a very clear answer to how much protein we need (or choose to consume for gains).

I wonder what the optimal protein intake is for trying to increase power to mass ratio, which is the core thing the sports I do (running, climbing, and hiking) ask for. I do not think that gaining mass is the average health/fitness goal, nor obviously the right thing for most people. I'd bet that most Americans would put losing weight and aerobic capacity a fair bit higher.

Sure, I'm not making a strong claim that they consistently actually are giving smaller portions across stores but in my experience they often do. It may also have to do with how sofritas does not heap well on the spoon, relative to mounds of chicken or beef bits. The sofritas tray is also often almost empty, and maybe they don't refill it so much due to not wanting it to end up going to waste - I've had multiple times where they just scrape some last bits out when they should refill it and get a proper spoonful. But apologies if this is turning into a chipotle review thread!

I agree that people have somewhat extreme beliefs about how much protein they need, but it's going to be hard to tip that trend. I think plant-based advocates are also often ignorant though with respect to the optimal amino acid profiles of protein for fitness/muscle building purposes. BCAAs, for example, are often much lower than in animal proteins, even if the protein number is high. When people wade in but don't know these things, it can invalidate their overall point.

[edit: The above relates to spaces in which I think the 'more protein = better' trend evolved from, but protein listed on everything has taken on a bit of a mind of its own. I'd be interested to know actually whether now there is just a generic perception that protein = healthy, in which case other healthiness factors could be somewhat fungible - just not for the sorts of people I was thinking of]

I'd be interested in research, or conducting research even, on people's perceptions of these kinds of things if there were interest in it.

Chris Lonsberry

To pile on: a local Mexican chain also consistently puts less of PMAs into their tacos than they do meat.

I'm generally a "hit the 1.6g/kg/day target" kind of guy and have been ignoring BCAAs. The effect of branched-chain amino acids supplementation in physical exercise: A systematic review of human randomized controlled trials - ScienceDirect suggests that's still a valid strategy, but I'm open to learning more.

I can't access to look at the specific studies but unfortunately most exercise science is like nutrition science generally (very hard to control, considerable participant variability) but with even smaller samples/statistical power, and insufficiently long periods to observe effects. They also rarely target vegetarian or vegans, so this combination is even less known about. The 1.6-2g/kg/day target is reasonable and supported, but there is an interesting body of research about BCAAs and in particular mechanistic work on the 'leucine threshold' for stimulating muscle protein synthesis, with suggestions to bump up leucine when taking plant-based proteins for maximal triggering of MPS. I'm not 100% convinced such work is correct, but enough to implement elements of it. Whether it is completely proven or not my concern raised above was that many plant-based advocates might not be aware that there is even something to consider beyond just protein or macros.

Happy to discuss further but cognizant of hijacking the discussion with something not actually related to the interesting report the authors provided!

I appreciate y'all studying this and helping us learn more about what we can do to advance plant-based options, and I especially love that it is open access. I do have some questions tho.

(A) "Despite widespread optimism, simply increasing the number of PMAs on restaurant menus may not consistently reduce meat selection." Is this a reasonable expectation of any new food ingredient? Are there studies that show just adding a new ingredient, any ingredient whether plant-based or not, to a menu would result in uptake of it?

It seems to me, and I could be missing something, that this study might be studying the habitual nature of consumers, and less so their preferences about plant-based meat. A possible way to have controlled for this would be to have a new animal meat item and see how many people chose it.

If your general model of consumers, or people generally, is that they are cognitive misers, it seems that model would predict this result regardless if the additional items were plant based or meat based. So the casual factor would be habit, not the kind of protein. That would still be informative for plant-adoption and be a large barrier, but it be saying less about plant-based preferences and more about just needing to do proper UX and marketing.

(B) I saw y'all did awareness checks on what people thought the point of the study was, but curious why y'all didn't do an awareness check on whether they noticed if there was a plant-based option in the menu or not? Like how many people are taking the time to read the small grey on white text? And with steak or chicken, you don't need to because those are familiar and instantly understood. Without that, it is unclear to me, whether you are testing people's preference for plant-based options or their ability to notice new items.

Jacob_Peacock

Hi Dorsal, thank you for your kind words about the work and thoughtful questions. I agree with Seth's reply and would add for (A), there is some evidence of this effect for plant-based foods in general, for example: Garnett 2019, Parkin 2021, and Pechey 2022. I don't know of any studies which have tested adding animal-based meats.

Thank you for the studies, will take a look. I would think you could find either adding a new meat-based products and its affects in the marketing literature or something analogous -- though I haven't looked.

something along these lines, though not exactly

thank you! I will give it a read

Hi Dorsal, good questions:

In general, as an economist friend put it, "Changing options is a very strong intervention, like mechanically there should be an effect." So I would expect a new meat option -- BBQ chicken or whatever -- to attract customers. But you are right, we don't know that. On the other hand, our question was whether adding a chicken analogue would attract customers away from meat-based options, so whether a meat option would have also attracted customers is not really apropos of our estimand. It might help put our results in context, but it's not the theoretical quantity we're after. And there's a lot to be said for keeping a study focused. Another thing manipulated means either a smaller sample per treatment arm or a more expensive experiment. Always we are triaging.
That would have been a fine thing to check, but in the online ordering context we were trying to simulate, you also view the options without necessarily "taking the time to read the small grey on white text," so if they miss the new option, that's experimental realism. Also, as Lewis points out, we have reason to think our numbers are broadly in line with what people are actually ordering, which is some evidence that people were actually reading. However it might be interesting to do a follow-up where someone actively promotes the new PMA, which restaurants sometimes do.

I appreciate the thoughtful reply. My view hasn't changed to much, but I have updated towards more uncertainty.

Regards (2) however, I think the text being subtle is the opposite of "experimental realism" as when businesses introduce a new product they often give it a graphic treatment that highlights it and explain its value to customers.

Also, regarding Lewis' comment, I don't know how much a figure from 2015, a decade ago, when there was far less familiarity and knowledge of PMA can be regarded as converging evidence for your outcome.

Excited to more research in this area! : )

GladosTCIAL

4mo

The methods of the paper just don't bear any useful relationship to the real world.

this was a survey, not a real pilot where people had to actually spend real money, or had a choice as to whether or not to go to the shop. They could 'decline to order' and notably this was higher in the no PBMA arm.
The veggie option in this instance was just the same as the other options without any protein added (albeit 'free guac'). Arguing therefore that people choosing the Plant-based meat one are 'forgoing veggies' is incorrect, if the orders had been real, they would have just had the veggie wrap plus plant protein.

Even if we assume this survey is a reasonable reflection of real world behaviour, the main thing that jumps out to me is that you can force vegetarians to spend the same amount of money on a wrap that has less in because they are a captive audience, and when you add plant protein, some of those people prefer to have plant-based protein in.

The most leveraged audience to target with meat reduction is those on board but struggling, not random people out of the blue. Plant-based meat shows clear utility in this, and this study doesn't really undermine that proposition in my view.

4mo*

Hi there, thank for engaging with our results. On a preliminary note, I wish to gently counsel you that the tone of this response is not in keeping with the norms of this community, which tend towards being collegial/assuming good intent/etc. Instead of noting that our methods "don't bear any useful relationship to the real world," you might try something like "I'm afraid the methods used here don't answer the questions that I think are most important to the movement."

Yes, a hypothetical survey has important limitations. I think we are upfront about them. If we had found larger effects here, we likely would have pursued funding to take this design out to a restaurant or setting with consumption outcomes. When we didn't, we went a different direction. Always we are triaging.

I agree that flexitarians/meat-reducers/would-be-reducers are probably the best target audience for PMAs. We are testing a different estimand, which is demand for the product in a silmulalcrum in the world at large. This quantity is important from the POV of, e.g., the viability of marketing and deploying PMAs at popular restaurants like Chipotle.

GladosTCIAL

4mo

Thanks for your response and sincere apologies for being flippant in the previous comment. New to the forum and clearly misjudged my language, too used to less friendly parts of the internet i guess. I also certainly agree with the overall thesis you make that its not so simple as 'if you build it they will come', and as far as pmas go far more complex than parity of taste, price, convenience.

That said, I do still think that the framing of pma 'just replacing veggies' seems at odds with the research design and presents a risk of misinterpretation and alienation of those who don't share the same goals for reducing farmed animals in our food system. If this were true we should absolutely flag it, but the headline presents it as though the pma option was nutritionally less complete. If it had been against chickpeas or something that would be a more reasonable conclusion in my view, but not compared to nothing and free guacamole.

I appreciate the limitations were acknowledged but also do think that relative to the broad headwinds for vegan diets generally at the moment, we as a community need to be careful not to overfit. Relative to the extent of the uncertainty for this kind of study design, the conclusions do maybe paint a stronger picture than is justified - particularly relative to the existing research we have from more robust real world studies and the relative performance of such options when a genuine choice is offered (albeit there is wide variation in exact methods).

I do think broadly that parity is not likely to be sufficient to genuinely shift mainstream behaviour, and non meat whatever form it takes must be better on some averaged matrix of cost price and convenience (or normalcy), however I don't think this study is compelling evidence of the stated conclusion in the title and the way it is posed i think presents a risk of misinterpretation that could be quite harmful.

Comments

Key takeaways

Making an additional plant-based option available did not meaningfully change meal selections. This held for both a long-standing PMA option (Sofritas) and a novel one (Chick’nitas). Reducing meat consumption is a hard problem, and achieving price-, taste-, and convenience- parity won’t obviously do the trick either.

Technology will likely play a large role if we are to transition away from factory farming, as it has for past externalities; but we also see an important role for culture and attitudinal change, as well as changing the choice architecture of meal environments and actively promoting plant-based options.

^{^}

A previous version of this post linked to 'a new preprint from the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab at Stanford titled “Taking a bite out of meat, or just giving fresh veggies the boot? Plant-based meats did not reduce meat purchasing in a randomized controlled menu intervention.”' We changed the paper's title to meet the journal's conventions.

david_reinstein