Alternative Proteins and the (Non)Stuff of “Meat”

Abstract

Beyond Meat, a food technology company based in California, is currently developing a range of plant-based proteins that aim to provide more sustainable, ethical, and healthful alternatives to conventional meat. Its products are also aiming to be viscerally equivalent in terms of their meatlike taste, texture, and overall sensory experience. These alternative proteins (APs) are not, however, intended merely as a substitute for conventional meat. Instead they are viewed and marketed by their developers as meat, made simply from a different raw material and via different methods. Yet as animal meat has become increasingly linked with environmental, health, and ethical concerns, Beyond Meat is having to negotiate a careful balance between positioning its products as meatlike in some respects and not meatlike in others in order to gain consumer adoption. To become “meat” in consumer thinking not only depends on the things these APs are made of—both material and ideological—but also the things that are actively excluded; as such, their materiality is made of purposefully chosen “stuff” and “non-stuff.” The article explores this decision-making via my fieldwork encounters with Beyond Meat's products. Using a visceral-autoethnographic approach, I discuss how certain (non)stuff was “made to matter and not matter” (Evans and Miele 2012) to me during these encounters, and how this careful balancing of stuff can create new and problematic imaginaries, moral politics, and misguided understandings of what constitutes “better” foods and “better” eaters. The observations made contribute to existing discussions on visceral methodologies, perceptions of (novel) foods, embodied consumption practices, and the ways in which bodies are made as eaters and things as food.

Bringing cultured meat to market: Technical, socio-political, and regulatory challenges in cellular agriculture

“…Conversely, others have envisaged the potential for a shift towards localised and more connected relationships with meat production – for example, the ‘pig in the backyard’ scenario discussed by Van der Weele and Driessen (2013) or ideas of community donor herds that live out their lives serving local areas with their slaughter-free cells. Exploring how cultured meat will become situated within existing socio-political relations regarding the commodification of nature ( Birch, Levidow, & Papaioannou, 2010 ), the different scales and geographies of food production and consumption, and the politics of sustainable and healthy eating ( Sexton, 2016 ), is of critical importance for understanding the ability of cultured meat to realise the promises its proponents currently claim. Importantly, this is a task that must be conducted in the current early stages of the technology and as it develops over the coming years.…”

Palatable disruption: the politics of plant milk

“…Even the most overt mention of animals (such as Oatly's slogan 'wow, no cow!') are not explicitly related to animal rights but rather to the absence of animals, or animals as 'non-stuff' (Sexton 2016).…”

“…We examine taste and its disruption as both material and semiotic processes (Roe 2006 ; Hayes-Conroy 2010 ; Evans and Miele 2012 ). In keeping with other work in this vein (Longhurst et al 2008 ; Mann et al 2011 ; Sexton 2016 ), we tasted the products we describe and explored how the affective experience of drinking mylk is conceived and modified by those in the trade. Informed by thinking in the industry science of behavior change (Marteau 2018 ), we trace how the claimed disruption of mylk involves both pre-discursive and discursive interventions that work on consumers’ ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ thinking (Kahneman 2011 ) in ways that far exceed narrow understandings of rational economic action.…”

“…Refraining from revolting and shaming consumers is especially important given that the vast majority of mylk drinkers also consume dairy. Even the most overt mention of animals (such as Oatly’s slogan ‘wow, no cow!’) are not explicitly related to animal rights but rather to the absence of animals, or animals as ‘non-stuff’ (Sexton 2016 ).…”

How Normal Meat Becomes Stranger as Cultured Meat Becomes More Normal; Ambivalence and Ambiguity Below the Surface of Behavior

“…"Just meat, " the name proposed by Just's CEO Josh Tetrick, subtly contains this ambiguity. Sexton (2016), looking at meat replacers more generally, observes that plant-based meat replacers too are increasingly marketed as "real meat." They too do not challenge the demand for meat but try to satisfy it, by offering something that ambiguously is and is not different: while it is "real meat, " it is also "better meat.…”