Beyond Meat's Latest Greenwashing

New "sun sausage" product rivals Big Meat marketing BS

New Beyond Meat product touting its American Hearth Association bonafides.

After many years of failing to turn a profit by getting meat-eaters to switch to its plant-based meat alternative burgers and sausages, Beyond Meat is trying a new approach: Pretend you’re making health food.

The company recently announced its new “Beyond Sun Sausage”, which comes on the heals of previous greenwashing attempts with reformulations of its signature products to reduce the amounts of saturated fat and salt.

But the marketing of the new sausages really deserves my Chutzpah Award for health-washing. The company’s press release touts the products are:

Filled with wholesome ingredients from vegetables, fruits and legumes, including spinach, bell peppers, yellow peas, brown rice, red lentils and faba beans…

OK, let’s break down just how deceptive and misleading this is.

1. The “wholesome ingredients from …” sentence mashes together ingredients across all three flavor varieties so unless you’re eating three sausages in one sitting, you are not getting all those ingredients.

2. For each of the three flavors, only a single vegetable ingredient is present in any meaningful amount, and in whole form. (More on this below.)

3. The press release touts “yellow peas” but the main ingredient on the product label is “yellow pea protein” which is a processed isolate and not at all a “wholesome ingredient”. Ditto for the mention of “brown rice”; the ingredient is in fact “brown rice protein”. Very different.

4. As for the “red lentils” and “faba beans”, those are listed under “2% or less of ingredients”, and on top of that, the ingredients are isolated protein for both. Here is the listing for the 2% or less (for the pesto variety):

   2% or less of Methylcellulose, Potato Starch, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Oat Bran, Vinegar, Faba Bean Protein, Red Lentil Protein, Oat Fiber, Salt, Spices (with Basil, Oregano, Rosemary), Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Brown Sugar, Yeast Extract, Dried Balsamic Vinegar, Sodium Alginate Casing.

By law, ingredients are listed from the most prominent to the least. So even from the 2% or less listing, the top ingredient is the thickening agent methylcellulose, which Beyond Meat has come under fire for using. It’s obviously an ingredient most consumers have never heard of, and Big Surprise, appears nowhere in the company’s press release.

In other words, Beyond Meat wants to tout its recognizable, whole food ingredients such as brown rice, oat bran, lentils, and faba beans, so the company decided to sprinkle some dust from these ingredients to make the product seem healthy.

Back in 2022, Beyond Meat was hit with a lawsuit for overstating its protein content. I am bracing myself for the next round of deceptive marketing claims. You would think by now Beyond’s compliance folks would pay closer attention to the marketing department. But I am often left wondering where the heck the lawyers are.

I have written a lot about how Big Meat companies such as Tyson engaged in greenwashing by jumping on the plant-based bandwagon. It seems that now Beyond Meat has gone down a similar path from the other direction.

I wrote a book called Appetite for Profit way back in 2006 about how the conventional food industry engaged in what I called “nutri-washing” at the time. Alas the term never took off. But maybe it’s time to bring it back for “Beyond Sun Sausage”. The name alone makes me roll my eyes.