Mission ‘Impossible’: Plant-based meat alternatives are trying to exit the culture wars
Amid the highly polarized politics in the U.S., plant-based meat substitutes and their analog, animal 'flesh' meat, have become weapons in a symbol-laden political battle between some conservatives and liberals. Many consumers associate plant-based meat substitutes with veganism, animal rights activism and left-wing politics, as well as a symbolic stand-in for Big Government and a threat to individual liberty. That is why Impossible Foods, in order to appeal to the carnivorous cravings of meat eaters and reject 'woke' culture, is switching its green cardboard packaging to red.
S. MAREK MULLER: Increasingly, vegans, vegetarians and others looking for meat alternatives are seeing a new option on the menu: patties that look, taste and even appear to bleed like beef hamburgers, but are actually made of soy, pea protein and other ingredients. Now, a leading plant-based meat company called Impossible Foods plans to rebrand, in order to reach a wider audience.
From now on, Impossible Foods says that all of its green cardboard packaging will be switched to red, in a bid to “appeal to the carnivorous cravings of meat eaters”… Big-name, plant-based meat alternative brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are losing revenue at an alarming pace…
Some of the plant-based meat substitute industry’s woes can be attributed to politics. Many consumers associate plant-based meat substitutes with veganism, animal rights activism and left-wing politics.
Impossible’s CEO, Peter McGuinness, said in 2023 that his company has an elitist reputation and that the company’s rebranding is a rejection of “wokeness.” The so-called “wokeness” of Impossible and other plant-based meat substitutes shows the symbolic power that food can have in politics.
As communication scholars, we study and teach our students about the persuasive power of symbols. Even innocuous items like the food we eat are symbols that come with attached meanings and values.
Amid the highly polarized politics in the U.S., plant-based meat substitutes and their analog, “real” meat, have become weapons in a symbol-laden political battle between some conservatives and liberals, sometimes nicknamed the “Meat Culture War.” In other words, while an Impossible burger might literally be a soy patty, it is also a symbolic threat to the right-wing ideological order, a symbolic stand-in for the left-wing “villain of the week”…
Plant-based meat substitutes are often used by conservative commentators as a symbolic stand-in for “Big Government” and are seen as a threat to individual liberty. At the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz declared his wish “to see PETA supporting the Republican Party now that the Democrats want to kill all the cows.” At a 2020 rally in Des Moines, Iowa, then-President Donald Trump cast the anti-meat conspiracy in even more nefarious and illogical terms, saying that “they want to kill our cows! You know why, right? … That means you’re next.”
In 2021, a survey found that 44% of Republicans actively believe that there is a “movement in the U.S. to ban red meat”… A 2023 article in The American Conservative argued that Impossible was at the forefront of a “collective vegan madness that has seized our media and political classes … not to convince people but to compel them.” In the online backlash to Cracker Barrel’s new Impossible sausage item, some commentators similarly suggested that Cracker Barrel’s “5G sausages” were controlled by Bill Gates.
Psychology and gender scholarship has found that “traditional” forms of masculinity associated with right-wing ideologies correlate with high meat consumption. Right-wing males consume red meats at higher volumes and with greater frequency than other demographics.
As communication scholars, we’re confident that what Impossible can’t do is repackage in a way that will attract right-wing carnivores. The Meat Culture Wars won’t end because of red wrappers or meaty descriptors. They’ll only end when, collectively, other items become perceived as an identity threat and globalist conspiracy and people forget about fake meat. SOURCE…
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