The sneaky way even meat lovers can lessen their cabon impact
Frida Garza | 04 June 2025
Grist / Getty Images
Blind taste tests show several blended meats are outperforming conventional meat, in addition to 100 percent plant-based products. Grist / Getty Images
It is virtually impossible for the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate targets without producing and consuming dramatically less meat. But demand for plant-based alternatives, like the imitation burgers sold by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, has steadily declined in recent years — all while global meat consumption continues to grow.
The problem with plant-based alternatives, for the moment, is that most consumers just don’t seem interested in buying them instead of conventional meat. This year alone, U.S. retail sales for refrigerated plant-based burgers fell by more than a quarter.
But there are signs that consumers might be perfectly happy to reduce their meat consumption in other ways. New research shows that meat eaters already prefer the taste of some “balanced proteins” — items like hamburgers and sausages that replace at least 30 percent of their meat content with vegetables — over conventional meat. While that may sound like a small change, the climate impact could be surprisingly large at scale: Initial research suggests that if Americans replaced 30 percent of the meat in every burger they consume in a year, the carbon emission reductions would be equivalent to taking every car off the road in San Diego County.
Taste and price are often listed as reasons for sluggish consumer interest in plant-based proteins. That’s where Nectar, the group that conducted the new research, comes in: Part of the philanthropic organization Food System Innovations, Nectar conducts large-scale blind taste tests with omnivores to determine exactly how much consumers prefer meat over veggie options, or vice versa.
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