Evaluating plant-based and cultured meat for XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion

Concerns surrounding the environmental, economic, and ethical consequences of meat production and industrial agriculture have prompted substantial research and capital investment into the production of meat alternatives. Alternative meat production encompasses a variety of technological approaches including plant-based meats, cell-based or cultivated meats, mycoprotein-based meats, and hybrids thereof. Each offers unique advantages and disadvantages and has been associated with a myriad of claims supporting it as the preferred alternative to animal-derived meats. As part of XPRIZE Foundation’s Feed the Next Billion competition, we developed a framework for evaluating meat alternatives by measuring seven key parameters including structural, nutritional, and organoleptic properties while also assessing safety and their purported environmental and economic benefits compared to animal-derived meats. The framework is technologically agnostic and enabled comparisons across three distinct types of meat alternatives. The framework enables a data-driven comparison to animal-derived meat and/or other alternative meats, allowing stakeholders (e.g., food startups, investors, government) to assess technological readiness, competitive advantage, and impact potential. This work provides a replicable and validated framework that serves as a benchmark for future regulatory and industrial assessments, helping this nascent industry as it moves towards standardizing approaches to evaluating the quality, safety and proposed benefits of meat alternatives.