Plant- and cell-based meats are not doing as well as expected, and the new dietary guidelines, pro-meat and anti-highly processed don’t help this cause much.  Here are some items I’ve collected lately on this topic.

• Does plant-based meat still dominate the meat-free sector? Meat alternatives are in trouble, but traditional plant-based and vegetarian foods will not necessarily replace them… Read more
• Cultivated meat’s casualties: who is failing and why?  Makers of cell-based meat are falling, fast. We round up who’s shutting up shop and why… Read more
• Plant-based meat isn’t dead, but it is in a reset: Plant-based meat faces a slowdown as price, foodservice strategy and manufacturing innovation shape the next phase for the sector… Read more
• What will it take to rebuild plant-based and cultivated meat?  As protein demand rises and consumers grow choosier, Good Food Institute Founder Bruce Friedrich outlines how plant-based and cultivated meat can move beyond hype and become investable, scalable industries… Listen now
• Meat alternatives are too niche – plant-based can do so much more: Meat mimicry shows little sign of broad appeal, yet plant-based foods have opportunities beyond it… Read more
• 5 ways to boost plant-based meat sales: Health claims may be an overlooked lever that could reignite plant-based meat demand, according to consumer research by the Good Food Institute… Read more  
• What’s driving the rise of hybrid meat? Industry is showing keen interest in the hybrid trend… Read more  [Hybrid combines plant-based with real meat]
• Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research: FFAR and GFI seek research to improve flavor of plant-based proteins: A new funding call from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the Good Food Institute (GFI) will support precompetitive academic research to reduce off-flavors and improve the sensory quality of plant-based and fermentation-derived protein ingredients.Read More
• Plant-based meat laws aren’t misleading, court rules: Court finds that requiring disclaimers like “does not contain meat” violates free speech, marking another victory for Tofurkey, Plant Based Foods Association and the Animal Legal Defense Fund… Read more

Comment

Alt-meat products comprise their own industry, one hard at work to make these products desirable, accessible, affordable, and acceptable.  Clearly, it has work to do on all counts.

A reader, Jennifer Windh, has done some serious investigation of loopholes in USDA’s school food rules that allow lots of ultra-processed snacks to be sold a la carte (“competitive foods”) outside of the USDA’s school meals program.

USDA’s nutrition tandards also apply to competitive foods: Smart Snacks in Schools.

The final rule for these standards, effective as of 2016, sets requirements or limits for whole grains, saturated and trans fat, sugar, sodium, and calories.

This sounds good, but as Jennifer Windh found out, even though snacks are required to be either 50% whole grain or have as a first ingredient fruit, vegetable, dairy product, or protein, the rules allow for plenty of loopholes.

She summarizes the findings of her investigation in The Smart Snacks Loophole: How Junk Food Companies Target America’s Students in School.

One reason for the loophole is the generous sugar standard: “Acceptable food items must have ≤35% of weight from total sugar as served.”

She points out the irony of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s visit to an elementary school where cooks make healthy meals from scratch (parents protested his visit because of his stance on vaccination, not food).

This school, she notes, offers plenty of loophole snacks.

She is particularly concerned about the loophole for ice cream.  For this, she has analyzed sales in 12 Houston area school districts: Ice Cream at School.

Schools usually sell ice cream at the same time they serve the main meal. There is no adult present who encourages students to eat their lunch before eating dessert. As expected, most children eat their ice cream first! This spoils their appetite for the more nutritious foods on their tray. School lunch periods are short, children eat slowly, and there are many distractions as students socialize with their friends. As a result, some students eat their ice cream first and then throw the rest of their lunch away.

There is so much money to be made from school meals that sellers of ultra-processed foods are happy to reformulate their products to meet USDA nutrition standards and get their products in through the loopholes.

Obviously, the standards could use some tightening.

The big question: Will USDA tighten the loopholes when it issues new school food standards to reflect the new dietary guidelines?  Recall:  These emphasize eat real food and reduce intake of highly processed foods.

Stay tuned.

University of California Press has just announced the forthcoming publication of my next book in September.  This one is co-authored with Lisa Sutherland, a former vice president of Kellogg, currently interim president of Jacksonville University.  We had a great time doing it.

From the publisher:

If you want to understand how the food business works, just have a look at a box of breakfast cereal. Hardly anything on supermarket shelves is bigger, bolder, or more deliberately designed. The fiercely competitive industry that brings us Cheerios, Froot Loops, and Trix sells a distinctly American dream: indulgence and health in one convenient package.

Cereal boxes chronicle our shifting national obsessions with health, ingredients, dietary advice, and American culture. They show us what sells food: cartoons for kids, athletes for men, weight loss for women. And hidden in the history of cereal package designs, we find clues to the corporate lobbying that shapes agricultural policy, health claims, and labeling regulations.

Sugar Coated unboxes the influence of cereal companies on food policy and the power of marketing, revealing, in the process, why Big Food is so good at selling profitable products regardless of their effects on health.

• Amazon(opens in new window)
• Barnes & Noble(opens in new window)
• Bookshop(opens in new window)
• UC Press(opens in new window)

The study: Efficacy of 42-month oral administration of glucoraphanin in preventing cognitive decline in individuals at elevated risk of dementia, including those with mild cognitive impairment: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study. Frontiers in Nutrition.  DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2026.1740494

While I am on the topic of legal challenges, UNICEF has produced an invaluable resource.

PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM UNHEALTHY FOOD MARKETING: A Toolkit for Developing Effective Laws.

It is based on a previous UNICEF document,  Taking Action to Protect Children from the Harmful Impact of Food Marketing: A Child Rights-based Approach.

It includes Model Legal Language along with essential background information.

Use it!

Here’s the chronology:

In June, Texas passed the “Make Texas Healthy Again” bill which required food companies to put warning labels on products containing any of 44 ingredients such as artificial additives, dyes, and chemicals.  As I wrote at the time, the label would have to say:

WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United  Kingdom.

In December, the American Beverage Association, joined by other food industry groups, sued Texas over this.

In February, a federal district court issued an injunction on First Amendment grounds.

Also in February, Texas issued a final rule on the labeling law.  But this says that “ingredients considered generally recognized as safe or determined to be safe by the FDA or USDA are not subject to the rule requirements.”

Oops.  I’m pretty sure that most of those 44 ingredients are considered GRAS by the FDA.

It will be interesting to watch what the courts decide on this one too.

Interesting times we live in.

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement now counts 22 states as having passed laws eliminating sodas and sometimes other sweet foods from what SNAP recipients are allowed to buy with their electronic benefit cards.

I am often asked what I think about these laws.  I can argue them either way.

Pro: Even with these restrictions, SNAP recipients can continue to buy sugar-sweetened beverages with their own money; the government should not support purchases of demonstrably unhealthy drinks.

Con: These laws are not about improving the health of SNAP recipients; they are about punishing the poor for being poor, further stigmatizing them, and encouraging them to withdraw from benefits to which they are entitled.

I have long been a supporter of pilot research projects (USDA “waivers”) to see whether restrictions like these help SNAP recipients eat more healthfully.  But these laws are not designed that way.  I just hope their effects are being researched adequately.

Now, the laws are being challenged in court. The lawsuit calls for a halt to waivers in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia – five of the 22 states to which USDA has granted them.

The suit comes from the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, an advocacy group focused on equity, and Shinder Cantor Lerner, an anti-trust law firm.

The suit alleges that USDA is:

• Trying to shrink SNAP by authorizing a patchwork of state laws.
• Changing the statutory definition of food without authority or notice.
• Preventing recipients from buying foods they need to maintain health.
• Confusing SNAP recipients about what they can buy.
• Increasing burdens on retailers, thereby adversely affecting SNAP recipients.

I can’t help wonder whether the food industry is behind all this.

Calley Means, who advises Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, says no.  He blames the Democrats.

What are we to make of all this?

I guess we wait to see what emerges during the discovery process and what the courts decide.

What a strange and complicated time this is.

This week, I’m going to be writing about lawsuits against food companies, starting with the class action lawsuit filed against David Protein, which states that the company misrepresented the calorie and fat content of its bars.

Here is a Nutrition Facts panel from the company’s website.

The FDA allows several methods for counting calories in food products, one of which is to apply Atwater values, 4 calories per gram for protein and carbohydrate, and 9 calories per gram for fat (this is why fat is fattening).

Doing that here gives:

Fat: 2.5 x 9     =    23 (rounded off)

Carbs: 12 x 4  =    48

Protein: 26 x 4 = 104

Total calories  =   175

This is higher than what’s on the label.  But calories are difficult to measure accurately, so the FDA allows a 20% margin of error.

But the difference must have gotten the attention of the plaintiffs.

They took the product and burned it in a bomb calorimeter, a device that measures the heat produced when foods are burned to completion.  This heat is equivalent to calories, when corrected for the nitrogen in protein.

Here is what the plaintiffs got when they did this.

Wow.  That’s quite a difference.

But David’s has a rebuttal.

…bomb calorimetry is not the right testing method for determining calories in foods containing certain ingredients, such as dietary fiber, certain sweeteners, and, critically for us, fat substitutes like esterified propoxylated glycerol (EPG)…If you burn ingredients like complex carbohydrates, fiber or EPG in a calorimeter, these ingredients would appear to deliver far more calories than the body actually metabolizes.

This took me right to the ingredient list (see above)

PROTEIN SYSTEM: MILK PROTEIN ISOLATE, COLLAGEN, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, EGG WHITE. | BINDING SYSTEM: MALTITOL, GLYCERIN, ALLULOSE, TAPIOCA STARCH, SOY LECITHIN. | FAT SYSTEM: MODIFIED PLANT FAT (EPG), COCONUT OIL. | FLAVOR SYSTEM: UNSWEETENED CHOCOLATE, PEANUT FLOUR, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, PEANUT EXTRACT, SALT, DUTCH PROCESS COCOA POWDER, SUCRALOSE, ACESULFAME POTASSIUM.

My first question: Why would anyone want to eat a collection of concocted ingredients like this with hardly any of them recognizable as food?  These bars are quintessential ultra-processed products.

Whatever.  EPG is esterified propoxylated glycerol, a fat substitute. It provides less than one calorie per gram.

Here’s my quote from the New York Times

Dr. Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition and food studies at N.Y.U., told DealBook that the plaintiffs’ claims were based on counting calories from a “concocted ingredient that’s not absorbed” by the body. The lawsuit was likely to be dismissed, she added.

Not that Nestle was weighing in on the healthfulness of David bars: “Whether anyone should be eating non-absorbable fat is another discussion,” she said.

Precisely.