Catering to vegetarianism is virtue signaling? Aren’t there entire religions (real ones, not, you know, prosperity gospel derivatives) that encourage people to eat more plants? In addition there are lots of nonreligious that support the science that indicates that it is a viable and healthy way to live with lower cases of certain types of heart disease and certain types of cancer and less obesity. I’m certain I know of conservative nonmeat eaters.

I sort of expect the market to solve these things. Someone placed a bet, once we process the hell out of soy and make it behave like a hamburger, the entire world will be willing to pay more money for a burger that might not be healthier but will have less saturated fat and no animal product in it. They raised some capital, proved they could build the product, spent and invested to get it in stores and fast food restaurants. Along the way they probably bumped into numerous issues scaling a food enterprise but somehow have managed to stay pretty close to the mission. Turns out that might be a bad bet. What if the veggie burgers were cheaper? What if you have to use GMOs to achieve that price point? Or maybe the idea isn’t that great or the product has some deficiencies, maybe those can be repaired. That’s why we do it.

Was the investment because of “moral beliefs” or because it takes billions to get a food to that market? The TAM here is interesting too, it just well distributed which is what makes it expensive.