Surprise! 'Plant-based' has become just another semi-meaningless marketing buzzword
Though plenty of vegetarian and vegan diets don’t include anything made to imitate meat, “meatless meat” and “plant-based protein” are nothing new. Ask anyone who’s ordered mock duck in their pad Thai. Cartoonist Maki Naro outlined the history of mock meat, from tofu in ancient China to the peanut-butter-and-seitan mix Protose, developed by John Harvey Kellogg in the early 1900s.
Hence the rise of “plant-based meat substitutes,” which promise to mimic the texture, and even the bleeding, of “real” meat for those who can’t do without those specific oral sensations. In the public imagination, the term came to the forefront mostly where applied to fast-food patties, with Impossible Whoppers and Impossible White Castle sliders, Dunkin’ Beyond sausage breakfast sandwiches and KFC plant-based fried chicken.
Usage of “plant-based” is now expanding from shorthand for “meat substitute” to refer to just about everything, including products that were already vegan or vegetarian to begin with. Case in point: a PR email I got from Ancient Harvest about its line of “plant-based pasta.” Pasta is traditionally made from wheat flour. And in case you haven’t cast your gaze upon a golden field lately, wheat is a plant. All pasta is plant-based.
Instead, “plant-based” contains within it a host of other implications, whether it’s that the food in question is full of protein or is low-carb or uses “healthier” ingredients. Take theaka margarine, an emulsion of plant oil and water that’s been around since the 1950s. Plant butter is only new in that now it more often uses olive oil than vegetable oil, but mostly it’s a rebranding to obscure a product with which customers may have negative associations.
Though meat-free eating has been common in numerous cultures, labels and identities began to harden in the 20th century. The phrase “vegan” was
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