Food-production companies are a big target. BMC Ingredients, which collaborated with Perdue on a line of blended nuggets, markets a plant-based protein that can be mixed with meat to up its nutrition and flavor. BMC grows mycelium—the root-like structures of fungi. It underpins popular meat alternatives like Quorn and also features alongside mushrooms in Joyn’s 50/Cut. Shapiro likens his factory to a brewery, but instead of yeast fermenting barley, a fungus called Neurospora crassa digests starch to produce a protein with a dense network of fibers that makes for a meat-like chew. “We grow four hours before we get a harvest,” Shapiro says. “It’s among the most efficient ways to produce protein on Earth.”

Joyn also sees its path forward outside the grocery store. Food eaten away from home accounts for more than half of what US consumers spend on grub, according to the USDA. Padraic Doherty, who joined Joyn from the meat distributor D’Artagnan and holds the title of chief growth officer, says its main areas of focus are K–12 and college cafeterias and other major food service providers, like stadiums. These organizations, he says, often have sustainability goals and also are pressured to find both nutritious and affordable options. The 50/Cut Joyn sells to cafeterias is between 5% and 15% cheaper than beef. 

But can cafeteria mushroom burgers prompt a larger cultural shift? 

The folks touting the idea of going halfway see it as a bridge. BMC’s Shapiro thinks the movement toward meat-light eating reflects the reality of how these changes happen. Nectar’s Cotto compares blended meat to a hybrid car. “Moving people toward blended products [is] a way to drive demand for some of the fully plant-based ingredients that don’t scale right now to bring the price down,” she says. “So it’s both a short- and a long-term approach.”

Not everyone is so sure market forces will be enough, though. Nil Zacharias, a longtime entrepreneur in food sustainability who offers plant-based options to New York City delis through his company Plantega, isn’t sold on the notion. “Too many people in the space believe that as long as we create meat that is not from an animal but tastes like meat and costs the same, people will eat it,” he says. “I think the plant-based backlash to ultraprocessed foods shows you that’s not necessarily how things are going to go.” He believes blended meat’s main impact will be on institutional dining, in places like schools and health-care facilities.

“People in this space believe that as long as we create meat that is not from an animal but tastes like meat, people will eat it.”

Nil Zacharias, founder and CEO, Plantega

Meat hybrids could, however, taste just familiar enough to open consumers’ minds to alternatives. Some research has found that thinking about mock meats prompts people to reconsider the whole system. In the 2010s, Clemens Driessen, a cultural geographer who teaches at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, worked on a project that asked people in pubs, supermarkets, and other public spaces what they thought of lab-grown meat. “There’s a first response, which is ‘Oh, that sounds horrible,’” Driessen says. Then people tended to reflect that the meat they consume is also heavily industrialized. “A whole train of thought emerges out of proposing something very new,” he says.

COURTESY OF 50/50 FOODS

If the category succeeds, climate advocates will need to make peace with imperfection. A life-cycle analy­sis Joyn commissioned on the 50/Cut burger confirms that the product has half the greenhouse-gas footprint of a beef patty, which—if you go by company claims—means it has about five times the impact of a burger from Impossible or Beyond. Hedenus, the climate scientist, says that even if blended products don’t reduce impact as much as plant-based ones, he’s all for trying any solution that works. “It is very difficult to change how we eat, so I think most good suggestions should be explored,” he says.

Meanwhile, the products are finding their way to more plates. They’re in cafeterias, high-end grocery stores, and small burger chains. They’re in the catalogues of major distributors like Sysco. The Both Burger has even been at Disneyland.