A plant-based burger has a fraction of beef's climate footprint. But
there is little evidence yet that plant-based meat is replacing meat: it
is 0.7% of US meat spending and falling, US buyers keep buying meat, and
world meat production kept growing while US sales peaked and fell.
Far lower-carbon, but not replacing meat so far
Not so far. A plant-based burger has a fraction of beef’s climate footprint, but there is little evidence that plant-based meat is replacing meat at any scale that shows up: it makes up 0.7% of US meat spending and that share is shrinking, studies of what US households buy find its buyers keep buying meat, and the world produced about 37 million tonnes more meat in 2024 than in 20197121.
Plant-based meat was sold as a way to shrink livestock farming, and the per-kilo case for it is strong. What has not happened, yet, is the swap. Everything Beyond Meat, the best-known brand, sold in 2025 equals what the world’s meat industry produces in about 38 minutes, by our arithmetic101.
That's how much world meat production grew between 2019 and 2024, while US sales of plant-based meat peaked and then fell
Plant-based meat gets seven dollars in every thousand spent on meat in the US
In the United States, the biggest market for plant-based meat, it took about 0.7% of all money spent on meat in 2025, or $1.0 billion, down on the year before7. That is about seven dollars in every thousand.
Nobody publishes a reliable figure for plant-based meat’s share of the world’s meat by weight, so the honest picture comes from the pieces that exist. Germany, one of its strongest markets, made 124,900 tonnes of meat substitutes in 2025; its meat output was worth more than 70 times as much9. Beyond Meat sold about 26,700 tonnes of product in 202510. The 37 million tonnes of extra meat the world produced between 2019 and 2024 is about 1,400 times that, by our arithmetic.
The meat plant-based alternatives are measured against, still growing.
A fraction of beef’s emissions per kilo
On the climate, plant-based meat clearly wins per kilo. A kilo of beef from a beef herd causes about 99 kilos of greenhouse gases on average, pork about 12 and poultry about 103. Plant-based meat products come in at about 2 to 4 kilos4, because there are no cattle digesting grass and no manure, and less energy goes in5.
There are caveats. The same review finds heavily processed substitutes have 1.6 to 7 times the footprint of tofu, beans and peas, and that some, made in certain ways, come close to chicken4. The UN Environment Programme says the benefit depends on the factories running on low-carbon energy17. But against beef, the gap is enormous.
The large climate gains in the research come from scenarios, not sales. One model finds that replacing half the world’s pork, chicken, beef and milk by 2050 would cut farming and land-use emissions by 31%16. It assumes that swap happens, and three of its authors worked or work for Impossible Foods, a plant-based meat company16.
The emissions a real swap from meat would cut into.
Tonnes of greenhouse gases from livestock (CO2-equivalent)
Globally, this year
Why a lower-carbon burger hasn’t cut meat
The per-kilo benefit only counts if a plant-based burger replaces a meat one, and in the US, where it has been measured, the chain breaks at each step.
Price comes first: most plant-based meats still cost one to three times as much as the animal product they copy7, and taste is what buyers say would most make them try a new one6. Many people tried it and stopped. About 20% of US households bought plant-based meat in 2021; by 2025 it was 11%7.
Those who stayed mostly buy it alongside meat. In 2025, 96% of US households that bought plant-based meat also bought animal meat6. A study of household shopping records found that 86% of buyers also bought ground meat, and that their ground-meat buying did not fall after their first plant-based purchase12. Plant-based meat takes a marginal share of the meat budget14, and it tends to be bought with beef and pork rather than instead of them, though it does replace some chicken, turkey and fish13.
That suggests an awkward fit, at least in US shopping data: the one meat it does seem to replace, chicken, is the one where its climate advantage is smallest3.
Cheaper plant-based meat might not change the picture. A model built on a restaurant choice experiment tested what lower prices would do.
World meat production rose by about 37 million tonnes over the same years1. That growth doesn’t prove plant-based meat failed, since the category is too small to register in a global total either way. The deciding evidence is the measurement: where its effect has been measured, in US shopping records, meat buying did not fall.
Fewer US households are buying plant-based meat
Plant-based meat sales are falling in the US because fewer households buy it and those who remain aren’t buying more. In 2025 dollar sales fell 10% and the number of products sold 11%, and it was on 8% fewer shelves7. Of the households that do buy it, 62% come back, a rate that has held steady7, so the fall comes from new buyers not arriving and early ones leaving.
In Europe, price looks like the lever for its own sales: in 2025 plant-based meat sales rose 16.8% by volume in France as prices fell, and fell 7% in Spain as prices rose28. Selling more plant-based meat is not the same as selling less meat, though, and that is the test the French figures cannot yet answer.
Beyond Meat’s revenue fell by two-fifths
Beyond Meat has shrunk every year since 2021. Its revenue fell from $464.7 million in 2021 to $275.5 million in 2025, about 41% lower by our arithmetic1110. In 2025 it sold 15.9% less by volume, which it blamed on “weak category demand” in US shops and restaurants10.
Many plant-based meats are highly processed
Many are heavily processed, though whether that makes them unhealthy is less settled. The UN Environment Programme notes that some novel plant-based products are highly processed and high in salt and saturated fat17.
The health evidence is mixed. In a large UK study, every 10 percentage points of calories from ultra-processed plant foods was linked to a 5% higher risk of heart disease and 12% higher heart-disease deaths, but that category covers breads and pastries as well as meat substitutes18.
The trials disagree. In Singapore, eight weeks of plant-based meat brought no broad heart or metabolic benefit compared with meat, and salt intake went up19; an earlier, smaller US trial found lower LDL cholesterol while people ate plant-based meat20.
A $140 billion forecast, a $6.6 billion market
In 2019 the bank Barclays forecast that alternative meat could reach $140 billion within a decade, about 10% of the global meat industry22. Six years into that decade, global retail sales of plant-based meat were an estimated $6.6 billion8. The two figures don’t measure quite the same thing (Barclays counted all alternative meat, in every channel), but the gap is wide.
What shoppers actually spend on plant-based meat each year, on an industry estimate.
Dollars spent on plant-based meat and seafood in shops
Globally, this year
The founders promised more still.
Since then, the share of US households buying plant-based meat has almost halved, from about 20% to 11%7, and Beyond Meat’s revenue has fallen by two-fifths10.
Unilever sold out to a meat giant; governments keep paying
The big food companies are pulling back. Unilever sold The Vegetarian Butcher in 2025, calling its chilled and frozen products less scalable23, to Vivera, which is owned by JBS, the world’s largest protein company by revenue, by its own description24.
Governments are still spending. By 2025 they had put at least $2.5 billion into alternative proteins in total, according to an advocacy group’s tally25, about two and a half years of US plant-based meat sales at 2025’s level, by our arithmetic. Denmark has a dedicated fund of more than a billion kroner to 203026, and China’s 2025 farm policy documents name plant-based meat as a food source to explore25.
Europe’s rules may cut the other way. The EU agreed provisionally in March 2026 to reserve “meat” and terms like “steak” and “bacon” for products that contain meat27.
What would show it replacing meat
The OECD and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expect the world to eat another 47.9 million tonnes of meat a year within a decade2. For plant-based meat to dent that, cheaper products would have to take meat’s place in shopping baskets, not sit beside it. France is the test to watch: if its price cuts come with less meat bought, the swap is real somewhere28.
For now the trend runs the other way even in a strong market. In Germany, meat eaten per person rose to 54.9 kilos in 2025, on provisional figures, from 52.9 in 20239. Plant-based meat has shown it can be made with far lower emissions. It has not yet shown that people will eat it instead of meat in amounts that register.