NECTAR, a non-profit that conducts research on "alternative protein" foods, conducted a large study with 2,700 participants in a blind taste test of meat versus fake meat.
Overwhelmingly, meat won.
Animal meats scored far higher on all metrics. On average, 68 percent of participants rated the animal meat products as ‘like very much' or ‘like,' while only 30 percent of plant-based meat, on average, received the same ratings.
Isn't it interesting that those results almost perfectly mirror Biden's polling numbers before he dropped out of the presidential race?
It's got to be the same 30% of people, right?
Anyway, the folks over at Vox want us to know that, much like the majority's lack of preference of the morally tasteless Democratic party, people's preference of natural meat over chemically altered vegetables is all wrong.
They make the case that it's all in our heads:
In the real world, ‘people don't just taste food in an objective way,' Daniel Rosenfeld, a behavioral scientist at the University of California Los Angeles who researches consumer perceptions of animal-free foods, told me. They taste it, he said, with ‘a bias or a preconceived expectation.' For example, research has found that people who perceive healthy food to be less delicious will rate food as less delicious if they're told ahead of time that it's healthy — even if it's not.
Of course, the obvious pushback here is that the study was a blind taste test.
No one knew whether they were eating meat or not.
In fact, there were 20 meatless items that outperformed their meat counterparts, so the "it's all in your head" argument is kind of ridiculous, isn't it?
In the end, the study proves that there's a reason a lot of these "meatless" companies are surviving only on investor dollars and not real sales, and it's not some psychological barrier.
It's because deep down, in the core of our culinary beings, we are all Ron Swanson.
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