Plant-based meat and dairy alternatives moved from specialist shops to supermarket shelves in little more than a decade. How much of that aisle actually reaches a plate is a different question, and a national dietary survey published in late October puts a number on the gap.
In Norway, the paper reports, sales of plant-based meat alternatives by weight rose 244% between 2016 and 2021, and were still 208% above the 2016 level in 2023. The annual edible quantity sold worked out to roughly 0.2 kg per person. That is the shape of the story that appears in the European Journal of Nutrition: a category expanding much faster than the eating of it.
What 1,815 adults reported
The study draws on Norkost 4, Norway’s national dietary survey, collected in 2022–2023 from a nationally representative sample of adults aged 18 to 80. Participants completed two 24-hour dietary recalls by telephone and a food-frequency questionnaire that asked specifically about plant-based alternatives — a category the survey defines as processed products designed to mimic meat, dairy, egg or fish, so tofu, falafel and margarine do not count.
Of the 1,815 people analysed, 52% had eaten at least one such product in the past year. Monthly or more frequent use was reported by 19%, weekly use by 11%, and 8.1% — 147 people — qualified as regular consumers at twice a week or more. Dairy alternatives did most of the work: 7.4% used them at that frequency, against 1.2% for meat alternatives and 0.6% for cheese alternatives. Across the whole sample, the products supplied 0.3% of daily energy; among regular consumers, 3.2%.
The regular consumers were a distinct group. Three-quarters were women, their median age was 38 against 47 for everyone else, and they were more likely to have a university education, a lower body mass index, a vegetarian self-description, a supplement habit and a diagnosed lactose intolerance. Their diets contained 36% less meat and 61% less milk than those of non-regular consumers.
The swap, product by product
The nutrient analysis covered 41 plant-based products recorded in the survey and 90 animal-based counterparts, matched by category. The headline finding is that most alternatives delivered less of the micronutrients measured — with two exceptions. Meat alternatives and fortified milks came out similar to or higher than the foods they replace.
The detail is where it gets useful. Cheese alternatives provided substantially less protein, zinc, vitamin B12 and calcium, with calcium at roughly half the level of the dairy cheese. Yoghurt alternatives contained markedly more saturated fat — one was coconut-based, and the category reached up to a third of the recommended daily maximum — while supplying less B12, calcium and iodine and more iron. Unfortified milk alternatives contributed negligible vitamin D, B12 and calcium; fortified versions (soy, almond, oat and coconut) matched fortified dairy milk on vitamin D, B12 and calcium, but not on iodine. Meat alternatives had less saturated fat and salt, more fibre, folate and iron, and less B12 than meat. An egg-replacement powder contributed minimal nutrients compared with eggs.
At the level of the whole diet, regular consumers took in less B12 (5.2 against 6.6 µg), less zinc (10 against 11 mg) and less iodine (136 against 160 µg, a difference the authors report as not statistically significant), and more fibre, folate and iron (11 against 10 mg). Calcium intake did not differ. Supplements were not counted in these estimates, and the authors flag that iron and zinc from plant sources are generally less bioavailable, which limits how much of the measured content the body can use.
Why the letter on the pack does not settle it
Both front-of-pack systems tested in the study — Nutri-Score 2023 and a proposed Nordic revision called the NewTools-score — produced identical classifications for all 131 items, and neither consistently favoured the plant-based side. Cheese, yoghurt, milk and egg alternatives generally scored worse than their animal counterparts, on salt, sugar, saturated fat or low protein. Creams and meat alternatives generally scored better, on lower energy, saturated fat and salt plus more fibre.
That is a more careful result than the aisle’s reputation suggests. The structural point is sharper: neither system accounts for fortification or micronutrient content. A fortified oat drink and an unfortified one can land in the same grade while delivering very different amounts of calcium and B12. A low-salt, low-saturated-fat product can earn a good score while supplying little of what the food it replaces would have supplied. The authors put it plainly — the score is most informative when read alongside information on fortification and micronutrient composition.
Work is under way to build something more specific. In Foods on 24 September, a Brazilian group published the NCS–Nutri Veggie Index, built from a Delphi consensus of nutrition experts across seven domains: front-of-pack labelling, protein quality and quantity, lipid composition, sodium, fibre, micronutrient fortification, and the use of ingredients from Brazil’s sociobiodiversity. Applied to 334 plant-based meat analogues, 53.0% landed in the middle grade C and 33.5% in B. The index agreed substantially with Nutri-Score and the Pan American Health Organization’s nutrient profile model, and the paper notes that no specific nutritional standards for the category have been established — the regulatory argument has largely been about what these products may be called, not what they must contain.
What families do with them
A scoping review in Nutrition Reviews dated 1 November looked at the household end. Twenty studies met the criteria — five on parents or caregivers, eleven on children, four on parent–child pairs — from a search run in April 2024.
Parents were more accepting of traditional plant proteins such as lentils, tofu, beans and chickpeas, and voiced concerns about the nutritional adequacy, sodium content and processing of the engineered look-alikes. Among parents who were not regular users, the traditional foods were seen mainly as a way to improve texture rather than as a nutrient source. Children were the more receptive group, particularly when a product resembled meat and when the environmental or animal-welfare case was made. For both generations, taste was the main driver of whether a product came back to the table. The authors’ suggestions follow from that: better sensory quality, better nutrient profiles, more transparency about ingredients and processing, and nutrition education that fits what families already cook.
What the guidance actually says
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration’s own consumer page makes the variability the starting point. Its list of possible base ingredients runs from nuts and seeds to rice, coconut, oats and legumes, and it notes that nutrient profiles “vary depending on the plant source, processing methods, and added ingredients.” The Dietary Guidelines for Americans include only fortified soy beverages in the dairy group, because they carry key nutrients similar to milk. The agency’s shopping advice is to read the Nutrition Facts panel and favour products higher in protein, vitamin D, calcium and potassium and lower in saturated fat and added sugars. Draft guidance issued in February 2023 recommends that products labelled with the word “milk” and carrying a different nutrient profile include a voluntary statement comparing them with milk.
MedlinePlus takes the same position from the other direction: people who follow vegetarian diets can get all the nutrients they need, but they have to eat a wide variety of foods, with protein, iron, calcium, zinc and vitamin B12 as the nutrients to watch. That is the same shortlist the Norwegian data flagged — and the same gap we looked at in our piece on B12 and plant-based eating.
What we did not find
No trial of these products with health outcomes. Nothing in this research says that swapping meat for a plant-based patty improves or harms anyone’s health over years; the survey is cross-sectional, and the nutrient work is a snapshot of a small product set.
No agreed nutritional standard for the category either — the index from Brazil is a proposal, applied to one country’s products.
The limits are stated in the paper and worth repeating. Forty-one products is a small base, and some categories held only one or two items, so the results are driven by the specific products recorded rather than the market as a whole. Intake was self-reported, two days of recalls capture infrequent foods poorly, and some nutrient values in the database were estimated rather than analysed. Home-made dishes containing animal foods were excluded, so the comparison is between bought products. The findings describe Norwegian adults in 2022–2023.
The practical reading is narrower than a verdict on the category: these products are not one thing. Fortification status, main ingredient and category matter more than the letter on the front of the pack — and for anyone using them as a regular stand-in for meat, fish, eggs or dairy rather than as an occasional convenience, the nutrient questions above are worth raising with a doctor or dietitian rather than settling from a label. Our notes on eating more vegetables cover the whole-food route, and the site’s medical disclaimer explains the limits of what an article like this can tell you about your own diet.