Writing in my personal capacity. Abhi and I have also discussed the possibility of working together on this topic.
I appreciate your engaging with my review of alt proteins. I agree that taste is somewhat underspecified there. One challenge I ran into is that proponents of improving taste don't often specify exactly how they think taste equivalence should be operationalized. I tried to cover the range of operationalizations for which I could find evidence, but ended up focusing primarily on human taste tests rather than analytical chemical evidence. My reasoning was twofold. First, taste tests measure taste experience most directly and address the extent to which differences can be perceived. Second, in practice they capture not only gustatory taste, but also texture, aroma, and other sensory characteristics that are often bundled together when people talk about "taste equivalence."
I'm curious about your comment that these studies are "arguably underpowered." Do you mean that, for example, the confidence intervals in the NECTAR taste tests are too wide to support meaningful conclusions about hedonic taste equivalence? Or are you pointing to something else?
Having only recently started looking more closely at the analytical chemistry literature, I have a few tentative thoughts:
Some operationalizations in this space seem quite demanding. Meat contains an enormous number of compounds (likely millions/billions), so demonstrating equivalence across all (or even most) of them may be difficult. Restricting attention to flavor-relevant compounds above perceptual thresholds would help, though that also raises the issue of measuring those thresholds for many compounds.
More broadly, I'm not yet convinced that this level of chemical equivalence is the right target. It seems plausible that there is a fairly large space of flavors consumers would find highly appealing, even if many do not closely resemble conventional meat. This seems especially plausible given that consumers themselves have only sampled a small fraction of the possible flavor space even within animal products.
In any case, analytical chemistry would also need to be complemented by measures of texture and mouthfeel. That's not necessarily an objection, but it does make the overall evaluation more involved.
On cross-price elasticity, I agree it isn't generally intended to predict long-run changes in market share unless the underlying demand structure remains stable while prices change—a fairly strong assumption. As you say, predicting these dynamics is hard. That said, given the current evidence on cross-price elasticities for alt proteins—including some apparently conflicting findings about whether lower prices increase or decrease meat consumption—I'm not sure I have strong intuitions about how a long-run prediction follows from that data. For beef/chicken cross-price elasticity estimates, is there a particular reference you have in mind?
Overall, I'm glad to see this RFP: as you know, I agree there's substantial value in better measuring and improving alt protein taste, and I'm looking forward to seeing more work in this area.
Hi @matthes, I appreciate your writing this post and agree with much of it. Thank you for recommending my article as well. I wanted to note I updated it for publication (preprint) earlier this year. In line with your thesis, little new evidence has been produced recently, so there wasn't much to update.
I did add a section on the effects of reducing alt protein prices, which gently pushes back against your framing that "alternative proteins are unlikely to cause harm":
Price changes [of alternative proteins] might seem to have the most straightforwardly favorable case: decreases in plant-based meat analogue prices presumably lead to more sales and, consequently, less animal-based meat sales. However, this is not guaranteed. For example, a lower price may lead some consumers to treat plant-based meat analogues as inferior goods—or cheap substitutes—rather than a better deal.
Reviewing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meats, milks and butters, I conclude: "Throughout, estimates sometimes suggested that decreased plant-based meat, butter and milk analogue prices might cause increased consumption of the corresponding animal product." Obviously, this is pretty counter-intuitive, but such is the evidence at present, in my opinion. We elaborate on the difficulties of interpreting this evidence in our review of butter cross-price elasticities.
Good post—I appreciate this synthesis of evidence and agree with your conclusions. One (minor) point of disagreement:
Likewise, they expected the labor force participation rate to be 55%, down only slightly from today’s roughly 61%.
I’d characterize a 6 percentage point decline as fairly substantial rather than “only slightly.” In absolute terms, 6pp may not sound like much, but relative to historical variation in labor force participation, it’s quite large.
Since measurement began in the 1940s, the labor force participation rate has remained within a relatively narrow 58–67% band. Even the COVID shock was associated with only about a 3pp decline. That historical range also spans the transition from a predominantly male workforce to much higher female labor force participation.
Generally agree, especially the emphasis on cognitive processes as partial determinants of taste. Also interesting to think more about the limitations of other sensory measurement approaches, although I find myself somewhat less skeptical (and less informed). I'm also pro-big taste test! Do you have any insight into why human taste testing in the alt protein industry has been so limited for so long? Thoughts on how these massive taste tests should be designed?
Exciting results! Is the RCT written up in more detail anywhere? I'm confused by the current reporting because it seems to compare pre-post intervention results, rather than treatments and controls. Also, how was the control group set up? (Eg, no intervention, active control, waitlist control etc)
I agree this would be an implication of such a bar and that it seems demanding, to say the least! I'll reiterate I have a great deal of uncertainty on this and related topics. That said, I do think the answer is potentially yes, or that those lives were possibly mostly instrumental in getting to a world where some lives were worth creating.
I think it's also notably "convenient" that the bar was crossed so recently; perhaps the bar is even higher and we have largely not yet reached it. Of course, this seems like a very counter-intuitive conclusion, although I think most conclusions on the topic will be.
This is a great video, congratulations to all involved! It seems like it could be valuable in getting the word out and increasing engagement on the issue. I also thought the production value was high and the story compelling.
Who is the intended audience? I think it may be too technical for a general audience, and might not be effective in conveying it's message to such an audience. Was there any audience testing involved in the script writing and production process? I would be interested to see work akin to what I've worked on re:factory farming documentaries.
Thanks, Vera, appreciate your responses here! I'll have to learn more about Frick's work at some point.
I think my key uncertainty remains what sorts of lives are acceptable to create? My intuition is that the sorts of lives cage-free layer hens live are still far from worth creating. For example, to my mind, lives of sufficient quality probably have meaningful availability of individual moderate-to-high-quality health care—so that an individual would not die due to infection of a minor wound or a condition requiring surgical intervention. I think this bar makes it quite unlikely that lives on CAFOs would ~ever be worth creating. But, perhaps that's too high a bar, especially if chickens don't experience, say, anxiety about uncertain health care availability as a human might, even if that health care is never needed.
Perhaps somewhat beyond the scope of your paper, although it does seem like a crux of the argument, do you have a sense for the sorts of lives you think are acceptable to create?
Writing in my personal capacity. Abhi and I have also discussed the possibility of working together on this topic.
I appreciate your engaging with my review of alt proteins. I agree that taste is somewhat underspecified there. One challenge I ran into is that proponents of improving taste don't often specify exactly how they think taste equivalence should be operationalized. I tried to cover the range of operationalizations for which I could find evidence, but ended up focusing primarily on human taste tests rather than analytical chemical evidence. My reasoning was twofold. First, taste tests measure taste experience most directly and address the extent to which differences can be perceived. Second, in practice they capture not only gustatory taste, but also texture, aroma, and other sensory characteristics that are often bundled together when people talk about "taste equivalence."
I'm curious about your comment that these studies are "arguably underpowered." Do you mean that, for example, the confidence intervals in the NECTAR taste tests are too wide to support meaningful conclusions about hedonic taste equivalence? Or are you pointing to something else?
Having only recently started looking more closely at the analytical chemistry literature, I have a few tentative thoughts:
Some operationalizations in this space seem quite demanding. Meat contains an enormous number of compounds (likely millions/billions), so demonstrating equivalence across all (or even most) of them may be difficult. Restricting attention to flavor-relevant compounds above perceptual thresholds would help, though that also raises the issue of measuring those thresholds for many compounds.
More broadly, I'm not yet convinced that this level of chemical equivalence is the right target. It seems plausible that there is a fairly large space of flavors consumers would find highly appealing, even if many do not closely resemble conventional meat. This seems especially plausible given that consumers themselves have only sampled a small fraction of the possible flavor space even within animal products.
In any case, analytical chemistry would also need to be complemented by measures of texture and mouthfeel. That's not necessarily an objection, but it does make the overall evaluation more involved.
On cross-price elasticity, I agree it isn't generally intended to predict long-run changes in market share unless the underlying demand structure remains stable while prices change—a fairly strong assumption. As you say, predicting these dynamics is hard. That said, given the current evidence on cross-price elasticities for alt proteins—including some apparently conflicting findings about whether lower prices increase or decrease meat consumption—I'm not sure I have strong intuitions about how a long-run prediction follows from that data. For beef/chicken cross-price elasticity estimates, is there a particular reference you have in mind?
Overall, I'm glad to see this RFP: as you know, I agree there's substantial value in better measuring and improving alt protein taste, and I'm looking forward to seeing more work in this area.
Hi @matthes, I appreciate your writing this post and agree with much of it. Thank you for recommending my article as well. I wanted to note I updated it for publication (preprint) earlier this year. In line with your thesis, little new evidence has been produced recently, so there wasn't much to update.
I did add a section on the effects of reducing alt protein prices, which gently pushes back against your framing that "alternative proteins are unlikely to cause harm":
Reviewing cross-price elasticity studies of plant-based meats, milks and butters, I conclude: "Throughout, estimates sometimes suggested that decreased plant-based meat, butter and milk analogue prices might cause increased consumption of the corresponding animal product." Obviously, this is pretty counter-intuitive, but such is the evidence at present, in my opinion. We elaborate on the difficulties of interpreting this evidence in our review of butter cross-price elasticities.
Good post—I appreciate this synthesis of evidence and agree with your conclusions. One (minor) point of disagreement:
I’d characterize a 6 percentage point decline as fairly substantial rather than “only slightly.” In absolute terms, 6pp may not sound like much, but relative to historical variation in labor force participation, it’s quite large.
Since measurement began in the 1940s, the labor force participation rate has remained within a relatively narrow 58–67% band. Even the COVID shock was associated with only about a 3pp decline. That historical range also spans the transition from a predominantly male workforce to much higher female labor force participation.
Generally agree, especially the emphasis on cognitive processes as partial determinants of taste. Also interesting to think more about the limitations of other sensory measurement approaches, although I find myself somewhat less skeptical (and less informed). I'm also pro-big taste test! Do you have any insight into why human taste testing in the alt protein industry has been so limited for so long? Thoughts on how these massive taste tests should be designed?
Wow, congrats!
Out of curiosity, are you able to share why you're leaving?
Exciting results! Is the RCT written up in more detail anywhere? I'm confused by the current reporting because it seems to compare pre-post intervention results, rather than treatments and controls. Also, how was the control group set up? (Eg, no intervention, active control, waitlist control etc)
I agree this would be an implication of such a bar and that it seems demanding, to say the least! I'll reiterate I have a great deal of uncertainty on this and related topics. That said, I do think the answer is potentially yes, or that those lives were possibly mostly instrumental in getting to a world where some lives were worth creating.
I think it's also notably "convenient" that the bar was crossed so recently; perhaps the bar is even higher and we have largely not yet reached it. Of course, this seems like a very counter-intuitive conclusion, although I think most conclusions on the topic will be.
This is a great video, congratulations to all involved! It seems like it could be valuable in getting the word out and increasing engagement on the issue. I also thought the production value was high and the story compelling.
Who is the intended audience? I think it may be too technical for a general audience, and might not be effective in conveying it's message to such an audience. Was there any audience testing involved in the script writing and production process? I would be interested to see work akin to what I've worked on re:factory farming documentaries.
Thanks, Vera, appreciate your responses here! I'll have to learn more about Frick's work at some point.
I think my key uncertainty remains what sorts of lives are acceptable to create? My intuition is that the sorts of lives cage-free layer hens live are still far from worth creating. For example, to my mind, lives of sufficient quality probably have meaningful availability of individual moderate-to-high-quality health care—so that an individual would not die due to infection of a minor wound or a condition requiring surgical intervention. I think this bar makes it quite unlikely that lives on CAFOs would ~ever be worth creating. But, perhaps that's too high a bar, especially if chickens don't experience, say, anxiety about uncertain health care availability as a human might, even if that health care is never needed.
Perhaps somewhat beyond the scope of your paper, although it does seem like a crux of the argument, do you have a sense for the sorts of lives you think are acceptable to create?