What Happened To The Vegan Movement?

In 2020, plant-based eating was everywhere. Beyond Meat had the best-performing IPO of the year, Oatly was on every shelf, and elite athletes were crediting vegan diets for faster recovery and better performance. Then the enthusiasm collapsed. Beyond Meat's stock fell more than 99%. Grocery store sections devoted to plant-based alternatives shrank. The cultural energy shifted toward carnivore diets and animal-based eating. Rich Roll and Simon Hill sit down to do an honest autopsy on what went wrong — and the picture they draw is more complicated than a simple story of hype and bust.

The Three Failures

Simon Hill frames the collapse around three interconnected failures. The first is about the products themselves. Plant-based meat alternatives like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods were supposed to compete on taste and price. They never reached parity on either. Plant-based meat is still two to three times more expensive per pound than chicken, and in an inflationary environment where household budgets are squeezed, that price gap is fatal. The taste also never fully closed the gap. On top of that, the growing cultural conversation around ultra-processed foods — important in itself, but often lacking nuance — made these products look even worse. The result: people felt misled. They were told these were health foods, but most are highly