Over the last decade, plant-based meat has gotten a lot more meaty.

Dozens of startups have launched in recent years to develop more realistic-tasting burgers, nuggets, and sausages as an alternative to factory farmed meat, which causes billions of animals to suffer terribly, pollutes our air and water, and accelerates climate change.

For a time, the plant-based meat sector was on a major upswing: Retail sales doubled from 2017 to 2020. But since then, sales have continually declined. Recently published data found a seven percent drop in plant-based meat retail dollar sales from 2023 to 2024 and an 11 percent drop in the number of products sold.

To better understand what consumers really think about plant-based meat, a few months ago one organization conducted a huge blind taste test, which I recently covered:

In December and January, Nectar — a nonprofit that conducts research on “alternative protein,” such as plant-based meat — brought together nearly 2,700 people in a first- and largest-of-its-kind blind taste test. Without knowing which version they were tasting, the participants tried 122 plant-based meat products across 14 categories, like burgers, hot dogs, and bacon, alongside one animal meat “benchmark” product per category. Each product was tested by at least 100 participants, who then rated them on texture, flavor, appearance, and overall enjoyment on a 7-point scale from “dislike very much” to “like very much.”

Twenty of the plant-based products won Nectar’s “Tasty award” — meaning that half or more of the participants rated them better than or equal to the animal-based counterpart (six of the 20 came from just one company: Impossible Foods). This suggests that some of consumers’ preference for animal meat — or dislike of plant-based meat — is just in their head, an idea I explored in depth in April.

David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

David McNew/AFP via Getty Images

The products were all served as part of a dish, like they’d be eaten in regular life — vegan meatballs were served with spaghetti, for example, and deli slices in a sandwich with fixings. While some of these products don’t taste identical to meat when eaten on their own, when prepared in a meal, differences in taste become much less important.

If you want to give the top-performing products a try, continue on to learn where to find the 14 that are available in the US, what I think of them (at least, the ones I’ve tried), and a bit about the companies behind these standout plant-based meats. (The six award-winning plant-based meat products that........

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