Consumer acceptance of cultured, plant-based, 3D-printed meat and fish alternatives

Abstract

Novel food technologies, such as three-dimensional (3D) food printing and cellular agriculture, offer many opportunities in the field of meat and fish production, such as texture variety, food waste reduction, animal welfare, and personalized nutrition. Nevertheless, they still face resistance from consumers. Thus far, conventional meat and fish have yet to be compared simultaneously with other food alternatives. Therefore, we conducted a study to analyze acceptance of these alternatives among Swiss consumers in terms of perceived healthiness, willingness to buy, willingness to eat, and perceived environmental friendliness. In doing so, conventional meat and fish were compared on these four acceptance measures with 3D-printed plant-based, cultured, 3D-printed cultured, plant-based, and 3D-printed byproduct meat and fish alternatives. The results suggest that the plant-based alternatives perform best, whereas the 3D-printed byproduct meat or fish alternatives perform worst on all acceptance measures assessed. Moreover, perceptions of healthiness and environmental friendliness of the meat or fish alternatives appear to be the most important predictors of willingness to eat. These results indicate that future focus should be placed on communicating the health- and environment-related benefits of 3D food printing and cellular agriculture to facilitate their adoption.