Despite All the Fake Meat, Americans Are Still Gobbling Up the Real Stuff

Beef and chicken consumption got a boost during the pandemic.

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These days, you can find faux beef at just about any national fast-food chain and supermarket meat case. Already wildly hyped in 2019, tech-backed burger analogues got a boost from the pandemic. As COVID-19 roared through meatpacking plants, sickening and killing workers and triggering shutdowns that briefly caused real-meat shortages, consumers loaded up on Impossible Burgers and various competing products. More recently, faux bird has landed, too: Walmart now peddles house-brand vegan “chick’n patties,” and KFC is trialing not-chicken nuggets developed by Beyond Meat. 

But here’s a question: When will all this plant-based “meat” consumption start to curtail the US appetite for the real stuff? Americans lead the globe in carnivory, and the great bulk of our meat supply comes from massive confinement operations that spew greenhouse gases, pollute air in other ways, and foul water. Venture capital darlings like Impossible Foods may claim their ground legume patties—tweaked to look and taste like flesh—hold the key to enticing consumers to cut back.

But so far, there’s no sign of it.

The US Department of Agriculture just released 2020 numbers on meat consumption. For chicken, pork, and even beef—so far, the main target of Silicon Valley disruption—the per capita numbers have crept up since 2016, the year the Manhattan restaurant Momofuku Nishi served the first Impossible Burger. 

Sure, tech-enhanced, hyper-realistic fake meat hasn’t been around long enough for any definitive judgment of its efficacy. Maybe it’ll eventually work. Or maybe Americans are treating the Impossible Burger like an amuse bouche—a palate-tickling prelude to a meaty meal.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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