Walmart, Target & plant-based protein access in rural Middle America

(Beth Clifton collage)

Is variety the spice of life,  or the death of the plant-based protein sector?

by Brooke Stein

The impact of investor-driven invention versus mission-driven invention may well be keeping animals on the plate while at least a billion people remain hungry.

The movement to support a global shift towards plant-based protein may be missing big considerations that are hidden in plain sight.  Price-gouging and product redundancy may not get us where we want to be.

Here in the Midwest,  many lower to lower-middle income households rely heavily on big box stores, specifically Walmart and Target,  for groceries.   For the past several years,  these stores offered a wide variety of plant-based alternative meat and dairy items.  Now the displays in the cases in this region are rapidly shrinking.

Popeye gains strength from his plant-based diet.
(From “Be Kind to Aminals,” Fleischer Studios, 1935.)

Cost of most plant-based meats remains significantly high

Despite discount pricing that makes big box stores far less costly than trendier supermarkets, the cost of most plant-based meats remains significantly higher than the cost of animal meat.

At the same time,  an enormous amount of product redundancy likely makes the refrigerator case contents slow-moving.

Yesterday a young worker in the freezer section of a big box store here explained to me that the plant-based products had largely been cleared out because they didn’t sell enough and became outdated.   There were too many options for the market to sustain them.

I now drive nearly 50 miles to get a selection even close to that which was available in three Walmarts within 12 to 25 miles from my home.   Most middle-income Americans base purchasing decisions both on available information and cost.  And at some point for most,  cost directs what goes into the cart.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Tripling spending for protein will not happen

Pound for pound,  plant-based options are double to triple the price of the corresponding animal meat. Has the fact that plant protein requires far less resource than animal meat somehow changed?

The water footprint,  meaning water used to bring a pound of product to market,  for beef is ten or more times that of bringing a pound of pea protein to market.   Packaging and transport factor in.  However it is still unclear why peas and/or soy cost three times the price of meat,  if indeed hundreds of pounds of grain and thousands of gallons of water go into making each pound of meat.

Unless they are already vegan,  most people in the U.S.,  to say nothing of the developing world,  are unlikely to triple their spending for their protein.   It is not happening now,  and will not happen any time soon.

And while the number of vegans and vegetarians has grown significantly over the last decade,  the number of alt protein options has grown at a far greater rate.   New start-ups may be damaging the stability and steady growth of established alt protein businesses.

(Beth Clifton collage)

New technologies for scaling up are desperately needed

New technologies for scaling up are desperately needed.   But new iterations of look-alike products,  for example “milk,”  or alternative burgers,  may do much more harm than good for the movement to replace suffering with kind food choices while saving the earth.

As a case in point,  in addition to being nearly twice the price of animal-based dairy,  12 years ago in our region there was one brand of soy milk.  It came in a few flavors.  Then came other brands,  and then the popularization of almond milk.  Then cashew.  Then coconut,  rice,  oat and hemp,  each with at least three flavors and multiple consistencies from each of several brands.  In the case of plant-based substitutes for ground beef and chicken,  there were the Loma Linda,  Boca,  and Morningstar Farms brands.  Then came Gardein.

Now there are countless imitation chicken products and the same goes for alternative ground beef.

Eight or more of each of these alternative chicken or ground beef products were available at WalMarts in this region as compared to ten years ago;  now that number is quickly,  and overwhelmingly, declining.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Options are going away

Unfortunately the increase in the number of vegans is far from equal to the number of products on the market.   Manufacturers are closing and options are going away.  The opportunity to replace meat with alternatives has certainly not gained the traction it could have if people did not look at the price tags and cast their glance back at the meat section.   The oversupply was obviously not great for business,  but more importantly it was also bad for the animals.

It is tragic that profitability appears to be the main driver of plant-based protein innovation.  Each new product may contribute to the demise of the one before,  and the very high costs do not encourage sales.

It is time to break the cycle whereby products that could spare the suffering of those who are voiceless and improve the lives of the poorest people on the planet must first enrich investors.

Analog salmon bagel and vegan cream cheese with chives.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Increasing protein is a priority

As people rise from extreme poverty,  increasing their protein is a priority.   For much of the world,  that currently means adding meat to the diet.  Ironically, while there are more vegetarians than ever before, there is also more meat eaten than ever before.

Purchasing protein,  plant or animal,  is relative to cost.  Sadly,  it is very likely that those who are moving out of extreme poverty will be forced to access animal meat long before being able to afford tasty plant-based proteins.

Stopping horrific cruelty,  preserving the planet,  and providing a meaningful supply of protein to the over a billion people who are currently undernourished are far more important goals than making sure that novel foods serve Wall Street investment brokers.

We hope we will soon see the dramatic reduction in price that is needed for alternative protein products to gain a meaningful foothold,  grow and thrive.

Without that,  animals will cry out in misery,  and a quarter of the world will continue to go hungry, while investors hope to rejoice.

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(Beth Clifton collage)

ANIMALS 24-7 responds:

Probably every vegan or vegetarian grocery shopper,  every meat-eater trying to eat less meat,  and everyone working to improve nutrition in the developing world can personally identify with much of Brooke Stein’s complaint.

Brooke Stein’s first sentence,  however,  contains a hidden historical truth in her reference to “investor-driven invention versus mission-driven invention.”

Indeed,  plant-based staples including Graham crackers, peanut butter,  Quaker oats,  and the whole range of cereal products marketed by the Kellogg and Post companies, trace origin to faith-based,  mission-driven product development,  meant to promote healthful living,  temperance,  and abstinence from lust.

1948 Vegetarian Party presidential candidate John Maxwell was among the first celebrity vegan raw foodists.  (Beth Clifton collage)

Mission-driven to profit-driven transition

Only after those plant-based products came on the market and began to establish themselves were they further developed,  popularized,  and promoted through profit-seeking investment.

A similar process of transition from mission-driven to profit-driven plant-based food products is underway today,  the success of which is illustrated by Brooke Stein finding any vegan and vegetarian alternatives to meat products at all in her local Walmart and Target stores.

Only a few decades ago there were none,  and none in most mainstream supermarkets,  even in the most populated parts of the U.S.,  where the most vegans and vegetarians live.

To find ready-made vegan and vegetarian alternatives to meat products,  one had to visit health food stores,  or the subset of explicitly vegan stores found near some of the biggest university campuses,  where the denizens of “student ghettos” were more likely to try pricy unfamiliar food products than mothers feeding families in the suburbs.

Whole Foods Market & Global Animal Partnership founder John Mackey.
(Beth Clifton collage)

Success secularized the sector

Beginning about fifty years ago,  exemplified by the growth of Whole Foods Market,  the health food store sector began to be profit-driven,  but before that,  even the ancestral Whole Foods Market store in Austin,  Texas was founded and run by mission-driven volunteers,  as were many and perhaps most of their counterparts in other cities.

Quite a few were affiliated with particular cults or religions.  That entire faith-based sector has today faded almost entirely from view,  as the health food industry became big enough to first attract corporate investment,  and then become assimilated into sections at,  yes,  Walmart and Target.

At Walmart and Target,  “health” sections bigger than the typical health food store of the 1960s and 1970s stock a countless variety of vitamins and protein supplements,  typically the most profitable health food store offerings,  but not the food products formerly found in health food stores.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Limited variety was all the variety

Those products,  or their equivalents,  are now in the Walmart and Target food sections,  where Brooke Stein found them.  And,  difficult though this is for younger shoppers to remember,  the limited variety Brooke Stein laments used to be all the variety there was anywhere.

            (See Beyond Impossible?  Forecasting the future of plant-based burgers and Beyond Meat: supermarket invasion trips vegan police alarms.)

Times and the economics of the plant-based food industry have markedly changed.

The disappearance of much of the short-lived intense variety of plant-based alternatives to animal products and byproducts that Brooke Stein remembers is an inevitable part of that change,  representing the shake-out from experimental introductions of new technology that precedes popular acceptance and price drops.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Walmart & Target aim for the middle

To be remembered is that Walmart and Target are in the business of maximizing profits by selling the narrowest possible range of options that most consumers will accept.  That means a limited variety of choices per standard item.

When they shoot for the belly,  Walmart and Target literally shoot for the midsection of the marketplace.  Sometimes,  but rarely,  this does include some experimentation.

Protein supplements are presently in the same experimental introduction phase that plant-based alternatives to meat products were in just a few years ago.

Walmart and Target offer a dizzying variety of protein drinks now,  but just a few years from now,  that currently hot product category will occupy much less shelf space,  while the brands still on the shelves command much greater market share,  as result of the public having made their enduring choices about which ones to buy.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Walmart and Target sell mostly what has succeeded elsewhere

Except for such experimentation to see which brands,  flavors,  and styles in a hot new product category will win the most market share,  Walmart and Target do not normally introduce  products unfamiliar to most Middle American shoppers.

In their food sections they mostly sell what has already succeeded in topping product category sales at supermarkets such as Safeway,  Kroger,  Albertsons,  Fred Meyer,  Hagen,  et al,  which,  focusing on food,  do not also sell the most popular varieties of everything else most Middle Americans buy at frequent intervals.

None of this really has much to do with feeding the hungry parts of world.

(Beth Clifton collage)

Feeding the world

The faith-based,  mission-driven development of Graham crackers,  peanut butter,  Quaker oats, and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals more than 150 years ago were meant to help feed the hungry parts of the world,  but the hungry parts of the world then included poor and working class neighborhoods right here in the U.S.,  teeming with millions of immigrants from war-torn and famine-stricken parts of Europe,  recently emancipated former slaves,  and field and factory hands whose forebears had produced and subsisted on their own local diets.

The foods needed to feed the hungry parts of the world already exist,  almost where needed,  just not in sufficient abundance and reliability of access,  largely due to warfare.

Most of our plant-based protein foods,  including peanuts,  soy,  and seitan,  originated in what are now hungry regions.

Beth & Merritt Clifton.
(Beth Clifton collage)

The dietary salvation of those regions will not be Walmart and Target,  but rather those regions gaining,  or regaining,  the relative domestic peace and economic stability that the U.S. has enjoyed since the U.S. Civil War,  enabling the development of those regions’ own food sectors,  building upon their own largely plant-based food cultures,  turning inevitably away from unsustainable animal agriculture precisely because it cannot be sustained.

(See Keeping the Horn of Africa impaled on dilemma.)

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