Why eat fake meat instead of just vegetables?

The objection

“If you’re not eating meat, just eat actual vegetables. Why bother with weird processed imitations?”

The answer

Nobody needs a plant burger to be vegan, and anyone happy with lentils, beans and tofu can leave the ultra-processed versions on the shelf. Meat substitutes earn their place with a different person: someone who likes meat and would sooner change one ingredient in a familiar dinner than learn a new way of eating. For that person, a 2022 Oxford trial that handed out free substitutes, along with leaflets and recipes, cut meat eating by far more than most randomised attempts to reduce it, though the result has not yet been replicated.

Does fake meat help people eat less meat?

Free meat substitutes, given with leaflets, recipes and success stories, roughly halved how much meat people ate in RE-MAP (2022), which its authors describe as the first randomised trial of the approach [1]. Researchers at the University of Oxford recruited 115 adults living near Oxford, UK, who ate meat at least five times a week, about 130g a day on average [1]. Half picked four weeks of free mycoprotein, vegetable and pulse-based substitutes from a major UK supermarket’s range, with leaflets on the health and environmental benefits of eating less meat, recipes and stories of people who had cut down; the other half got nothing [1]. Compared with that group, meat eating was 63g a day lower at four weeks and still 39g lower four weeks after the deliveries stopped, with no change in other main food groups [1]. At eight weeks, 55% of the substitute group still called themselves meat eaters, against 89% of the others [1].

The authors couldn’t say which part of the package did the work, but argued that the leaflets alone were unlikely to have halved meat eating, since earlier reviews had found that information on the benefits of eating less meat raised people’s intentions without changing what they ate [1]. They list the trial’s weaknesses themselves: some of the later effect may have been frozen products being used up, volunteers knew which group they were in and recorded their own food diaries, and two-thirds were women, most had a degree and all ate plenty of meat to begin with, so the cut is likely to be smaller in absolute terms for people who eat less [1]. The trial did not lessen people’s wish for substitutes that resemble meat, and the authors judged that, because of what it cost, the intervention is unlikely to work at scale in its current form [1].

One way they suggested of reaching more people, giving substitutes a more prominent place in shops, has been tested with a large UK supermarket chain by several of the same Oxford researchers [7]. In a non-randomised study published in 2021, 20 of the chain’s stores moved 26 plant-based burger, mince, meatball and sausage products into the meat aisle, and sales of those products rose 31%, against 6% in 88 matched stores [7]. Sales of the meat versions fell by much the same in both groups, about 6% and 5%, so the move sold more substitutes without cutting meat sales [7].

Why not just persuade people to eat vegetables?

In randomised trials, arguments for eating less meat have mostly made little difference to what people go on to eat. A 2026 meta-analysis of 41 randomised studies, covering 112 interventions and about 87,000 people, found that efforts to cut meat and other animal products had an overall effect its authors called “quite small”, with similar results for appeals to health and the environment and a smaller one for animal welfare [2]. They called meaningful reduction an unsolved problem, and cautioned that no single approach should yet be considered a well-validated way of achieving it [2]. RE-MAP, which they counted as a persuasion study because of its booklets, was one of five studies with comparatively large effects that they thought worth replicating [2].

In one small Swedish study, published in 2022, many people found swapping out mince or meatballs fairly trivial, while steak, chicken fillets and fish felt harder to replace [3]. Its 39 participants, from the Gothenburg area, were mostly meat eaters wanting to cut down, and 87% were women [3]. They cooked with meat substitutes in online sessions run with help from the company Paulig AB, which supplied the ingredients, then talked it over in focus groups [3].

What can I eat instead of meat?

Beans, lentils, chickpeas, tofu, tempeh and seitan all stand in for meat, and gram for gram tempeh and seitan carry roughly two to three times the protein of cooked pulses [4]. For anyone worried about protein, the table gives what 100g of each holds in FoodData Central, the US government’s food composition database (entries from 2019 to 2023), with meat for comparison [4].

Food, per 100g	Protein (g)
Lentils, boiled	9.0
Chickpeas, boiled	8.9
Black beans, boiled	8.9
Tofu, firm or extra firm	10.0 to 17.3
Tempeh	20.3
Seitan, shop-bought	17.9 to 26.3
Beef mince, cooked	25.1
Chicken breast, roasted, no skin	31.0

The tofu range runs from extra-firm tofu set with nigari to firm tofu set with calcium sulphate, and the seitan range comes from two US product labels [4]. Shop-bought meat alternatives are a different matter: when a 2023 study compared meat products from five UK supermarkets with their plant-based alternatives, 99 products in all, the alternatives had less protein, fewer calories and less saturated fat per 100g, more fibre and sugar, no significant difference in salt, and a higher price [5]. The British Dietetic Association says meat substitutes can be useful for people adapting to a plant-based diet, but that they are often high in salt and fat and best eaten in moderation, and some contain egg, milk or honey [6].