Over the last decade, plant-based meat has gotten a lot more meaty.
Dozens of startups have launched in recent years to develop more realistic-tasting burgers, nuggets, and sausages as an alternative to factory farmed meat, which causes billions of animals to suffer terribly, pollutes our air and water, and accelerates climate change.
For a time, the plant-based meat sector was on a major upswing: Retail sales doubled from 2017 to 2020. But since then, sales have continually declined. Recently published data found a seven percent drop in plant-based meat retail dollar sales from 2023 to 2024 and an 11 percent drop in the number of products sold.
To better understand what consumers really think about plant-based meat, a few months ago one organization conducted a huge blind taste test, which I recently covered:
In December and January, Nectar — a nonprofit that conducts research on “alternative protein,” such as plant-based meat — brought together nearly 2,700 people in a first- and largest-of-its-kind blind taste test. Without knowing which version they were tasting, the participants tried 122 plant-based meat products across 14 categories, like burgers, hot dogs, and bacon, alongside one animal meat “benchmark” product per category. Each product was tested by at least 100 participants, who then rated them on texture, flavor, appearance, and overall enjoyment on a 7-point scale from “dislike very much” to “like very much.”
Twenty of the plant-based products won Nectar’s “Tasty award” — meaning that half or more of the participants rated them better than or equal to the animal-based counterpart (six of the 20 came from just one company: Impossible Foods). This suggests that some of consumers’ preference for animal meat — or dislike of plant-based meat — is just in their head, an idea I explored in depth in April.
The products were all served as part of a dish, like they’d be eaten in regular life — vegan meatballs were served with spaghetti, for example, and deli slices in a sandwich with fixings. While some of these products don’t taste identical to meat when eaten on their own, when prepared in a meal, differences in taste become much less important.
If you want to give the top-performing products a try, continue on to learn where to find the 14 that are available in the US, what I think of them (at least, the ones I’ve tried), and a bit about the companies behind these standout plant-based meats. (The six award-winning plant-based meat products that are only available in Europe can be found at the end of the article.)
Burgers
US plant-based meat companies have reliably churned out meat-free burgers for decades, in part because they’re a beloved American staple, but also because ground beef is easier for food scientists to replicate than, say, a steak’s complex fibrous structure. You can now find plant-based burgers at the vast majority of US grocery stores, and even at a lot of restaurants. Here are the companies that made the best burgers in Nectar’s blind taste test:
Chicken nuggets
I’ll be honest: I’ve tried a lot of plant-based chicken nuggets, and I can’t tell much of a difference between them (they all taste like, well, chicken). They’re among the easiest foods to make plant-based because chicken nuggets are already highly processed and bear little resemblance to whole chicken meat.
You can’t go wrong with meat-free nuggs from the two Tasty award winners — Impossible Foods and MorningStar Farms — but I also recommend chicken nuggets from Beyond Meat and chicken tenders from Gardein.
Chicken fillets
Breakfast sausage patties
Plant-based breakfast sausage patties, like plant-based nuggets, all kind of taste the same to me. But blind taste testers have a preference for two companies’ products: Impossible Foods and Gardein, a Canadian company that’s launched a number of delicious plant-based meat products over the years, which are widely available in the US.
I also like Impossible’s ground sausage, which comes in a roll, giving you flexibility in how to use it.
Turkey deli slices
Meatballs and hot dogs
The only plant-based meatballs and hot dogs to win a Tasty award are made by — you guessed it — Impossible Foods. Its hot dogs are even good enough for Joey Chestnut, the world’s top-ranking competitive eater, who signed an endorsement deal with the company in 2024.
Other plant-based meat products worth your money
The list above only includes products available in the US, but a number of Nectar’s winners appear to only be available in Europe:
While a blind taste test is the best measurement of a plant-based meat’s quality, I also want to share some of my personal favorites — and those from friends and fellow Vox colleagues — that didn’t win a Tasty award but deserve the limelight just as much:
If you can’t find a product near you, or want to try something not widely available in the US, there are a number of online food retailers, like Vegan Essentials and Thrive Market, that carry specialty plant-based products.
Nectar’s blind taste test demonstrated that, overall, plant-based meat still has a long way to go to compete with animal meat on flavor, texture, price, and other attributes. But that so many of the plant-based products were rated just as good or better than their animal meat equivalents shows how far the industry has come in recent decades.
In the years ahead, as the problems of our food system — animal cruelty, climate emissions, water pollution, and more — grow and worsen, its alternatives will improve. If we’re lucky, they’ll come to be seen less as substitutes and more as ethical, and tasty, options to satisfy humanity’s desire for meat.
The post The 14 best plant-based meat products, according to a huge blind taste test appeared first on Vox.
