Imitation chicken nuggets, vegetarian sausages or vegetable protein balls cost on average 38% more than meat, even though the price of the latter has increased considerably since the start of the year, concludes a report produced by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytical Sciences Laboratory, in partnership with BetterCart Analytics.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
While the price for a 100 gram quantity of chicken nuggets is around $1.34, it costs $2.74 for its vegetable protein equivalent. This is the largest gap between the two categories, the report says. The famous pre-shaped hamburger patties are sold for $2.84/100 g in the vegetable version compared to $1.66/100 g for those prepared with meat.
“The study excluded certain animal protein products like dairy and other plant-based protein substitutes like tofu and unprocessed plant-based proteins like chickpeas and lentils because the comparisons were not not possible,” the report says.
We therefore focused on meat, its equivalents and their price in shops. “I wasn’t expecting that at all,” admits Sylvain Charlebois, director of the laboratory that conducted the study, when The Press asked him about the results obtained.
His surprise comes from the fact that the cost of meat has increased considerably since the beginning of the year. However, the price difference between the option made of meat and its vegetable equivalent is still quite large, he notes.
“For a few years, there has been a lot of noise with vegetable proteins,” he underlines, recalling the arrival of the Beyond Meat burger at A&W in 2018.
We expected, with a mature market or almost, to have better prices. You can really see that they do not present themselves as a more affordable source of protein for a consumer looking for bargains.
Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agrifood Analytical Sciences Laboratory at Dalhousie University
For the three months studied, from January to March, only turkey ($3.63/100 g) sold for more than its vegetable “imitation” ($3.20/100 g). “Turkey is not really an attractive product for this time of year,” underlines Mr. Charlebois to explain this exception compared to other categories.
By making a comparison by province, the report shows that for Quebec consumers, the average price for 100 grams of meat is $1.81, compared to $2.47 for the same quantity of vegetable protein (difference of $0.66 ). Ontario ($0.84) and Saskatchewan ($0.69) are the two places in Canada where the gap between the two product categories is the greatest.
In light of these results, Sylvain Charlebois believes that we “will have to ask serious questions to find out what we are doing with this category”. For now, he calls plant-based, meat-mimicking proteins “luxury goods.”
“Are we positioning the category as being competitive or not? What is the role of these equivalent products? Are we trying to attract flexitarians who want to consume a vegetable protein once in a while, or do we want to convert customers to consume it more frequently? For the moment, I do not see how we can do that with such a significant price difference. »