Plant-based meat analogues, such as hamburgers and chicken strips and nuggets, can make it easier for average people to reduce their consumption of animal products in their daily diet by providing familiar tastes and textures that substitute for meat. But in order for this to work, these analogues need to actually taste and have texture that is like the things they are meant to replace. Millions of dollars are being raised and spent by advocates and organizations to promote innovation in plant-based meats. Millions of dollars are also being raised and spent to promote plant-based eating and promote existing plant-based meats. Oddly, no one we can find has done research to determine the current state of these products. There is no data we can find that indicates if the current or soon to be available plant-based meats are in fact palatable and acceptable to meat eaters. This information is very important to help guide donations and advocacy efforts. If, for example, advocates knew that we have on the market today plant-based meat products that are truly acceptable to a majority of meat eaters, this decreases the need to support more innovation for those products specifically, and would indicate that advocates should use resources to help promote awareness, accessibility and demand for those existing products. If, however, there are not currently acceptable products on (or soon to be on) the market, this would indicate that more research and innovation is absolutely needed. Also, if specific deficiencies in current products can be identified (such as aspects of taste or texture for meat eaters), this could be used to help prioritize innovation and research projects to specifically address those deficiencies. Additionally, when an average meat-eating consumers tries one of these plant-based meat products, if they are disappointed, this not only means they won’t use that product again, but it can cause them to dismiss the entire category and not be open to trying other products. It is therefore very important for individual advocates and organizations working to promote these products to meat-eating consumers to understand which if any of these products are actually likely to be well-received. To our knowledge, there is no research available on the actual palatability of these products among meat eaters. Individual brands make claims, and there has been a great deal of press recently around newer products such as Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger, but there is also information in the public arena that is critical of the palatability of these and other new products. Advocates are essentially flying blind, and if they promote these products, may be simply caught up in media hype and promoting products that average meat eaters may reject and may therefore be counterproductive to our cause. Introduce your research idea/question, and summarize any existing evidence relevant to your idea. Do any of the plant-based chicken or hamburgers on the market, or soon to be on the market, rate well among average consumers who consume chicken and hamburgers? Accounts vary with some relatively positive mentions in pop media but also some very negative ones. Our focus will be on chicken and hamburgers. According to the USDA, chickens far and away represent the largest number of animals killed in the U.S. (approximately 9 billion), so having a good replacement for chicken could be incredibly impactful. Beef accounts for far fewer animals killed (approximately 44 million which is less than turkeys and pigs), but hamburgers are a ubiquitous and iconic way people consume meat, so we believe that successful hamburger replacements will open the door to consumer willingness to try other meat substitutes. Plant-based chicken and hamburgers are also mature enough in the marketplace to have a significant inventory of brands to test. In terms of lives saved, excellent plant based fish could also be impactful, but a variety of fish replacement products simply do not exist on the market yet in the volume worth testing.