2025-07-26 09:38:50
WITH THE ABUNDANCE OF PLANT-BASED CHOICES NOW AVAILABLE, CONSUMERS AREN’T SURE WHICH PRODUCTS AND BRANDS ADHERE TO THEIR VALUES AND WHICH ARE SELLING A FABLE.
Twenty-five years ago, if you preferred a bean- or soy-based burger — hold the cheese — you were probably vegan. That was kind of it; there weren’t many other ways to define yourself.
But in 2025 to “be vegan” is to follow a specific lifestyle, a commitment that turns people away and has likely kept many consumers from enthusiastically trying alt-meat.
To be “plant-based,” on the other hand, is to be made from plants. Just plants. It’s a far softer, less strident term, hinting at what it will add to the consumer’s life (vitamins, minerals, fiber) rather than what it will remove (meat, cheese, joy). While “vegan” is a pair of handcuffs, “plant-based” has a halo of health.
A decade ago, people wanted that halo. They wanted plant-based. And they got it. Mintel data shows that the number of food and drink products on U.S. grocery shelves with “plant-based” on the label spiked 287% between 2012 and 2018.
For a time, the label meant you could have your burger and eat it, too. But then something happened. “Plant-based” leaked out of the healthfood section. It slid off the Impossible Burger boxes and the MorningStar Farms Chik’n Nuggets bags and onto the containers of nearly every product in the supermarket. Plant-based peanut butter. Plant-based maraschino cherries. Plant-based vape juice.
The term became diluted, and consumers started to mistrust it as mere marketing or — worse — as a synonym for “ultra-processed.”
The question is: What comes next? Alt-Meat asked industry insiders for their thoughts.
YONATAN GOLAN
CEO, BREVEL
Personally, I'm good with the term "plant-based.” I'm vegan myself, so I may be biased. But I think we should be careful about overusing the term, and I think we should start talking about ‘plant-based 2.0.’ There's a lot of talk about Beyond Meat and other first-generation plant-based companies that have done tremendous work in bringing plant-based products to the mainstream. You can find a Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods burger in any chain restaurant and in many supermarkets globally. Being a vegan, it's really easy for me to find meat alternatives; there is always an alternative on the menu now. But at this point, consumers are saying, ‘Okay, that’s nice, but now we want healthier, tastier, more affordable products.’ So there's work to be done to provide better ingredients and better processes to meet this second wave of demand by the market. If it were up to me, I’d stay with ‘plant-based,’ but try talking about ‘plant-based 2.0’ as the next generation of products, bringing plant-based beyond vegans or flexitarians and much deeper into the mainstream market.
RILEY JACKSON
HEAD OF BRAND AND MARKETING, IVY FARM
As an industry, I think, we’ve pivoted away from ‘vegan’ because it, unfortunately, has a lot of energy around it. ‘Plant-based,’ though, to me, has a much broader application. It gets people a little bit curious, in my experience, about what they’re eating. And I think we could all use more curiosity around what we’re putting in our bodies and what our ingredient label says. So I like that people are asking that question. But I do believe as the products evolve, we’ll see other iterations of the term down the pipeline.
PETE SPERANZA
FORMER CEO,WICKED FOODS; CEO, ROXIISUPERCUBE
The word ‘vegan’ fell into this angry niche, which turned people off, so the move to ‘plant-based’ seems like a nice, natural fit that encompasses more of the types of businesses in the sector. But people are misusing the term in some ways we’ve just started to navigate. For example, there’s some companies that are using ‘plant–based’ as a descriptor for a product that still has ingredients that are animal-based. That could confuse consumers quite a bit. Generally speaking, plant-forward, 100% veggies, whatever you want to call it — I think there are other nomenclatures that could be leveraged over time. ‘Plant-based’ is still the most friendly way to talk about it right now, but I can see that changing as more large companies like Cargill and General Mills get involved and subtly change the meaning.
ANNIE RYU
FOUNDER AND CEO, THE JACKFRUIT COMPANY
I'm a little concerned about how the word plant-based has been diluted, and I think that there's just a lot of malaise about it right now. The association between ‘plant-based’ and ‘processed’ is pretty damaging. It’s a question of: Does that perception get fixed or change? Or does the word we use need to evolve? If we decide our term needs to evolve, we have to make sure that it’s applied specifically to products that are less processed, that are really made from plants, that are better for you. We need to ensure that whatever term we use doesn’t get diluted again.
BRETT CHRISTOFFEL
FOUNDER AND CEO, ALL Y’ALLS FOODS
The term ‘vegan’ has been around a long time, and I think of vegan products as causing the least harm possible to animals. The term, though, turns a lot of people off, and that’s been shown in study after study. The term ‘plant-based,’ though, continues to hold value. To me, that means it’s made from plants, but it’s not quite as well defined as ‘vegan.’
People respond to the term ‘plant-based.’ The problem is that not all companies play with it the same way — some will say a product is ‘plant-based’ when it is loaded with animal products because one specific ingredient is made from plants.
There are a ton of vegan certifications a product can achieve. The parameters are well defined, and the certifying organization does audits of a brand’s facilities and everything else. Not so for plant-based. I’ve always encouraged the Plant Based Foods Association to do something to really define ‘plant-based’ in the marketplace and hold companies accountable to it. I think that would help a lot.
Contributors: Ed Finkel
©Marketing & Technology Group. View All Articles.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
https://library.alt-meat.net/articles/too-much-of-a-good-thing