This Blind Test of Whether People Prefer the Taste of Real Meat or Fake Meat Might Surprise You

Image by Getty / Futurism Studies In a blind taste test, thousands of self-professed "omnivores and flexitarians" were given meat substitutes alongside the real thing and asked to rate which was better — and their responses were pretty telling. As Vox reports, new results from a survey conducted by NECTAR, a nonprofit that researches "alternative protein" products, suggest that preferences for real or fake meat may be more in our minds than in our taste buds. When averaging out the results in sum, NECTAR found that their 2,684 subjects far preferred the animal "benchmark" products they were fed alongside fake meat products ranging from imitation bratwurst and burgers to ersatz pulled pork and deli slices. But accounting for the massive disparities in quality between brands — which anyone who suffered through the vegan pizza craze of the early 2010s can attest to — paints a very different picture. When given unbreaded "chicken" cutlets from Impossible Foods, for instance, 60 percent ... Read full article.