“Tesco is to become the first UK retailer to set a sales target for plant-based alternatives to meat as it steps up efforts to offer shoppers more sustainable options.
“The UK’s largest supermarket will on Tuesday commit to boosting sales of meat alternatives by 300% within five years, by 2025. Over the past year, demand for chilled meat-free foods – the most popular line including burger, sausage and mince substitutes – has increased by almost 50%, the retailer said. As a result, it is expanding into more categories and creating larger “centrepiece” dishes for two people as well as family-sized portions.”

Pretty impressive.

“The target is part of a wider package of sustainability measures developed with its charity partner the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to try to halve the environmental impact of the average UK shopping basket.
“The trend reflects people paying closer attention to their diet during the Covid-19 lockdown and increasingly adopting “flexitarian” diets—cutting down on meat and dairy while eating more plant-based foods.”

Flexitarian, the gateway drug.

“Among 11 new plant-based foods going on sale at Tesco this week are centrepiece dishes using the wheat protein favourite seitan as a meat substitute, including a beef-free joint and hunter’s chicken-free traybake. Turkey-free crowns and vegan mince pies are launching in time for Christmas.”

Here’s one of Tesco’s photoshoot pictures:

It’s only really the glasses of rosé that let this picture down. Yuck!

On the other hand, it’s perfectly easy to go meat-free without resorting to products engineered to “be like meat”.

But if it helps some people, why the hell not? Some—but probably not all—of these products are going to be indistinguishable from the “real thing” at some point, and then the question of which to eat becomes pretty murky for meat-lovers.