Episode Details

Context

Last year, I shared on this forum my growing skepticism about cultivated meat and the case for being more critical about where we direct resources in the alternative protein space. That post focused specifically on cultivated meat but the broader question behind it, one I had actually started working on before writing that post, is: if we look at the full landscape of alternative proteins, which ones actually deserve priority?

This question matters because, as with any cause prioritization exercise, resources are limited. Every dollar, every policy push, every year of R&D directed toward a suboptimal alternative is a resource not spent on a more promising one.The recent collapse of Ynsect despite €600 million in investment is a painful example of misallocated resources in the French alternative protein landscape, but the problem runs deeper than individual company failures. If we systematically back the wrong horses, we slow down the entire protein transition, and with it our ability to act on climate change and animal welfare.

This kind of prioritization thinking, which I'd say was directly inspired by EA principles, led me to write a scoping review that was recently published in npj Science of Food. The rest of [...]

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Outline:

(00:15) Context

(01:49) The problem with how we currently evaluate alternatives

(03:16) What the paper found

(03:43) Plant-based meats: the clear frontrunner

(05:13) Single-cell proteins: promising but uncertain

(06:24) Cultivated meat: still facing the problems I flagged last year

(08:18) Insects: the least promising option, despite popular assumptions

(10:27) Caveats

(11:05) A personal note

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First published:
March 3rd, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/TMbrMxusL2ptW6pCF/comparing-alternative-proteins-which-ones-should-we

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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