That remains to be proven. Most of these substitutes are highly processed and require significant factory apparatus, so what are we gaining by skipping well-understood natural processes of animal husbandry?

> it really tastes nothing like actual meat

Not only that, but its nutritional profile is nothing like actual meat. Basically all of these substitute fake foods (milk, cheese, meats, etc) have significantly different nutrition from what they're purporting to replace. And that is incredibly difficult to account for in meal planning and recipes. Sure, it's fine if there's oat milk in your latte every morning instead of dairy (sort of like drinking your oatmeal anyway) but to swap out meat for highly-processed plant-based stuff is a huge question mark now, because even if you can 1:1 slide it into a recipe, it doesn't serve the same nutritional purpose, vitamins, protein, what have you.

The article is worth reading before commenting. The author notes that it is not just about price, taste, and convenience: there are other factors at play, for example that meat fans really love meat.

Personally, while I gladly accept that "meat isotopes" can be a good way to transition some people into a less meaty diet, they just dont do it for me. If I want to eat vegetarian, I cook a meal that was never centered around meat in the first place and that therefore has no gap caused by the absence of meat. And I'm especially suspicious of new entrants to the market who give off Silicon Valley disruptor vibes. This is not rational, I admit, but I feel that a meat producer is more likely to know what they are doing than someone building a "challenger protein" (which is how BM describe themselves). I dont want to be part of someone else's move fast and break things experiment. That doesn't mean meat production is great --it has notorious abuses-- but that just makes me want to reduce consumption, not replace it with an isotope.