TL;DR: the meat industry’s misleading messaging campaign + lobbying
I believe a lot of it also is the price, as someone who has worked in the plant based meat industry for years. It wouldn’t be hard to design a product that is comparably priced with meat but it is seen as a premium space where more money can be charged so companies do charge more, from the finished food manufacturers to the ingredient suppliers. Also hard to compete price wise with meat subsidies, in the US anyway
Capitalism is gonna capitalism
But it is much easier to just blame the meat industry for all shortcomings of the plant based industry.
Being vegan for the animals, I admittedly spend a ton of money on fake meats. I eat more fake meat than I ever did real. I wish it’d be priced lower to bring in more customers.
Yes, price is an important factor. Especially because people who are regular meat eaters think that by becoming vegan that they’ll be spending their meat money on fake meat, thus becoming poorer. This is generally not true, because once you learn to cook vegan you’ll not be using fake meat a lot, but it sure does cause a hurdle to new vegans.
That’s true, I didn’t mean to imply that it’s normal to eat fake meat all the time. Truthfully when I cook I cook without it; it’s just that when I’m lazy I tend to eat fake meat.
There’s more variety to it and not every one will work in every recipe. And the traditional “fake meats” (like tofu-based ones or veggie burgers) are amazing too!!