Hello again! Hope everyone had a good rest over the week :”)
If you have not checked out my 2 previous posts, do give them a read before reading today’s blog!
Let’s start with another question from my survey. Respondents were asked to choose between Beyond Burger Plant-based patties (227g) for SGD13.90 (USD10.16), Farmland Beef Burgers (227g) for SGD3.20 (USD2.34), or neither.
The results were rather similar to the rest, where the cheaper, less eco-friendly option was more popular among the respondents. 47 out of the 77 respondents chose the more affordable beef patties. However, an interesting find from this question was the fact that the percentage of respondents that chose neither was much higher as compared to the other products. In my opinion, this was due to the fact that a large majority, 43.2% of Singaporeans are Buddhist or Taoist. The majority of those who practice Buddhism or Taoism do not consume beef as part of their belief, which may have affected their decision towards this question. The results may be different in countries where Buddhism or Taoism is not as prominent as here in Singapore. However, despite providing a meat-free option, many still chose neither of the 2. Why is that so? Having been on a beef-free diet, many might not be interested or excited to consume the plant-based patties. The fact that the plant-based patties are very similar to beef patties in terms of appearance, many might be turned off by the extreme similarities, further affecting their decision on this question.
Limitations
Of course, creating a survey from scratch for the first time comes with many hurdles. I received multiple feedbacks from friends and family who did my survey. The most common criticism was the fact that my survey was rather biased and did not allow respondents to express their true feelings. I completely agree as I wanted to create a simple survey that would take less than 3 minutes to complete. Based on personal experiences, I would not do surveys that asked more than 1 open-ended due to time constraints. Therefore, I created a survey with zero open-ended questions to ensure respondents would not back out halfway through it. However, this was a bad move on my part as I did not manage to capture the true opinions of the respondents about the factors that affected their decisions as well as their views on the definition of a sustainable product. If I could re-do my survey, I would have definitely switched some of my questions from MCQ-based to open-ended to capture more accurate results. To add on, I should have shuffled the order of how the products were presented. I unconsciously placed the more sustainable substitute as the first option for each question, which may make the results biased. There are many other faults with my survey which I will address next week! See you 🙂
Hi Amira, I think the results of your survey are very interesting! During recess week, I had the chance to try out a plant-based meat burger for the first time. Personally, I didn’t really like the taste of plant-based meat as much as regular meat (and if given the choice, I’d rather go for other vegetarian/vegan dishes when eating with my vegetarian friends haha), but my other friends all enjoyed their burgers. Personal preferences aside, I do see how switching to plant-based meats could help to reduce one’s carbon footprint. How else do you think plant-based meats could be marketed to help encourage more people to switch to plant-based meat alternatives and can more be done in this area? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Hello Sarah! Thank you for giving my blog a read 😮
Plant-based meats are definitely gaining more popularity in Singapore, as seen from major mainstream food restaurants adopting it into their menu. Swensens, Stuff’d and Burger King are some examples that are currently serving or served “impossible meat”, also known as plant-based meat. This is a new sight for many locals and from personal experience, I found out about these ‘impossible meat’ meals mostly from social media advertisements. Since the younger generation are more open to try new things as well are more environmentally-conscious, social media is a perfect platform to advertise the switch to plant-based meats. I would even say that “impossible meat” is trendy among the younger generation. Apart from advertising, more could be done to incorporate plant-based meats in schools and large-scale catering events. In my opinion, if students were to try plant-based meats in school, there would be a higher chance of them purchasing it outside of school context, making ‘impossible meat’ even more popular.
Hope this managed to answer your question! See you ~