More than two out of three young people are positive about consuming plant-based meat, mainly because they believe such food consumption will help protect the environment and enhance animal welfare, a survey showed Sunday.
According to an online survey conducted on 1,000 people from the MZ Generation ― both Millennials (born 1981-1995) and Generation Z (born 1996-2005) ― last month by Embrain at the request of Shinsegae Food, 67.6 percent said they were positive about consuming plant-based meat.
This figure outnumbered the 14.6 percent of people who don’t intend to consume such meat and another 3.8 percent who said they don’t understand why people consume it.
More than 71 percent of the respondents said that consuming plant-based meat will help protect the environment, and 53 percent said that it will help resolve the problem of animal abuse by resulting in changes such as the shutting down of concentrated animal feeding operations, where livestock are confined for industrial meat production when multiple answers were allowed.
Some 42 percent have eaten plant-based meat at least once, and among those who had not tried it, 78.2 percent said that they are willing to try it. Of the former, 40.6 percent had tried plant-based pork such as ham for sandwiches, and 34.5 percent, beef substitutes such as hamburger patties.
The places where they purchased or ate plant-based meat varied, including supermarkets (37.6 percent), restaurants (33.6 percent), online shopping malls (26.5 percent), vegan restaurants (23.7 percent) and cafes (11.5 percent), when multiple answers were allowed.
