If the meatless option is 29% cheaper, the meat option is .29/(1-.29) = 41% more expensive, not 29%. Meatballs in the article are .41/(1-.41) = 69% more expensive than plantballs, which is close to your target number.

I remember the days when a veggie cheeseburger was a grilled cheese sandwich. Progress.

Impossible, at least to me, is functionally indistinguishable from a ground beef patty. Back when I was vegetarian and before I was vegan, I went to Burger King on lunch to try the Impossible Whopper. I wasn't fond of Burger King, but I was mostly curious enough to see what an Impossible Burger tasted like having had Beyond at home once (where Beyond is pretty easily distinguished from ground beef by its flavor).

Walked in, walked out, took a bite in my car. Straight-up almost went back in and asked for a new one before realizing it wouldn't do any ethical good and that I didn't have the time. This was even after seeing that it was in the Impossible-branded wrapper. I decided to go there another time to "try the real one", and it was the same. I was dumbfounded; it was straight-up just a Whopper – having admittedly not eaten a BK burger in a few years at that point. (They also put mayo on it by default without telling you, so good job, BK.)

The greatly increased sodium content is a concern for my household, though.

This. I could go vegan today if the fake meat stuff was more affordable. Right now I'm maybe half of the way there.

Soybeans as a commodity can be cheap, but that doesnt mean that an end product made out of soybeans will also inherently be cheap.

The market for soybean based meat alternatives is not that huge, so one of the more expensive aspects of trying to have an end product in an actual brick and mortar store is going to be getting space on the shelf in the first place. Packaging design and maybe some marketing, not to mention creating the actual product itself. All that stuff is expensive even if its mostly soybeans that the end product is made from

Laundry detergent is like 95% water, but it costs far more than if it was actually 100% water

Just of the top of my head here are some possible ideas to explain why not:

• Meat subsidies
• Meat substitutes require more processing and additional ingredients
• Meat sells a lot more than meat substitutes hence the whole chain benefits more from economies of scale
• Animals raised for meat can extract nutrition from plants and parts of plants which humans cannot (for example cattle can actually break up the fiber in food and extract nutrition from it, which humans cannot), plus they can eat plants which are far more hardy than most plants grown for human consumption. Some will also eat other animals which humans do not, such as insects.

I doubt it's just one of those things that is responsible and suspect it's a mix of those and maybe more.

Meat and dairy are heavily subsidised

This is correct, however:

You need to also take into account that plants are just the primary ingredients and it needs a lot of intermediary steps during manufacturing.

I say this not to say you're incorrect but just to be a more complete picture so it's unassailable

A distinction without a difference. Let's subsidize legumes and plant-based products to the same level animal-based parts are subsidized and see which one is cheaper.

Extra form tofu.

MAGA importing beef… to the UK?

Lentils, beans, tofu, chickpeas. Much healthier, cheaper.

There's some good vegan recipe communities here on lemmy if you want some inspiration

!veganhomecooks@lemmy.world

!veganrecipes@sh.itjust.works