Agricultural Economics, Department of
Cornhusker Economics
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Are Plant-based Foods a Threat to the Livestock Industry?
Date of this Version
7-29-2026
Document Type
Newsletter Issue
Citation
Cornhusker Economics (July 29, 2026)
Agricultural Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abstract
Recent research suggests that the plant-based takeover might be more of a slow crawl than a sea change. In a study involving hundreds of American consumers, researchers found that when faced with the complexity of a real-world market, only around 10% of people chose a plant-based option—even when the percentage of plant-based options was artificially inflated relative to real-world product assortments to examine the impact of product prevalence on choice. This finding stands in stark contrast to other recent studies suggesting that as many as one-third of consumers would choose plant-based options when offered at the same price as meat-based burgers. The question is: why is there such a big difference in the results from these studies?