Categorising Meat Alternatives: How Dominant Meat Culture Is Reproduced and Challenged Through the Making and Eating of Meat Alternatives
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Categorising Meat Alternatives: how dominant meat culture is reproduced and challenged through the making and eating of meat alternatives A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2019 Malte B. Rödl Alliance Manchester Business School Contents Contents 3 List of Figures 9 List of Tables 11 Abstract 15 Declaration 17 Copyright 17 Acknowledgements 19 Preface 21 1 Introduction 23 1.1 Why Meat Alternatives Matter ..................... 24 1.2 Categorisation and Carnism ...................... 26 1.3 Scope and Aim of this Thesis ...................... 28 1.4 Overview of this Thesis ......................... 31 2 Situating the Research 33 2.1 Foundations of Category Studies .................... 34 2.1.1 Category Identity ........................ 35 2.1.2 Category Relations ....................... 36 2.1.3 Strategic Categorisation .................... 37 2.2 Category Formation ........................... 38 2.3 Substitution and Categories ...................... 40 2.4 Changing Culture and Challenging Cultural Dominance . 42 2.5 Conceptual Framework ......................... 44 3 Contents 2.6 Methodologies to Study Categories . 49 3 Methodology 51 3.1 Research Design ............................. 51 3.1.1 Overview of the Research Design . 51 3.1.2 Assumptions and Considerations . 53 3.1.3 (Qa) Studying Emergence ................... 54 3.1.4 (Qb) Investigating Category Identity . 57 3.1.5 (Qc) Analysing Cultural Change Through Frames . 59 3.2 Methods ................................. 61 3.2.1 Content Analysis ........................ 61 3.2.2 Frame Analysis ......................... 67 3.3 Data ................................... 68 3.3.1 Contextual Data ........................ 68 3.3.2 Print Advertisements for Meat Alternatives in Vegetarian Magazines ............................ 71 3.3.3 Semi-structured Expert Interviews with Manufacturers and Stakeholders .......................... 76 3.3.4 Taste-Test Videos of Meat Alternatives from YouTube . 79 3.3.5 Tweets on Replacing Meat during National VegetarianWeek and World Meat Free Week . 83 3.3.6 Summary of Data Sources ................... 87 3.4 Limitations and Validity of this Research Project . 87 4 Contextualising Meat Alternatives in Past and Present 89 4.1 Description of the Data ......................... 89 4.2 What are Meat Alternatives? ...................... 90 4.3 A Brief History of Commercial Meat Alternatives in the UK . 92 4.3.1 Early Meat Alternatives .................... 92 4.3.2 Vegetarianism Becomes Visible (1985–1993) . 94 4.3.3 The Healthy Choice (1994–2001) . 95 4.3.4 Slowly Towards Mainstream (2002–2011) . 96 4.3.5 Arising Competition (2012–2015) . 97 4.3.6 Market Boom (since 2016) ................... 98 4.4 Meat Consumption in the UK ..................... 99 4.5 The Market for Meat Alternatives in the UK . 100 4.5.1 Consumers . 100 4.5.2 The Market . 102 4.5.3 Ownership Structures . 103 4.5.4 Supply Chain Networks . 104 4.5.5 Laws, Regulations, and Certifications . 105 4.5.6 Marketing and Consumer Engagement . 107 4.5.7 Relations to Meat and its Industry . 109 4.6 Other National Markets for Meat Alternatives . 110 4.7 Conclusion ................................ 113 5 Print Advertisements for Meat Alternatives 115 4 Contents 5.1 Description of the Data . 115 5.2 (Qa) Longitudinal Analysis of Changes in Advertising (1985 to 2017) 117 5.3 Contemporary Advertisements (2016 to 2017) . 129 5.3.1 (Qb) What Are Meat Alternatives? Promoting New Foodstuffs 129 5.3.2 (Qc) Is there Meat in a ‘Chilli Non Carne’? Suggesting Al- ternatives and Re-inventing Meat . 132 5.4 Conclusion ................................ 135 6 Expert Interviews with Meat Alternatives Stakeholders 137 6.1 Description of the Data . 137 6.2 (Qb) What Are We Selling? Identifying Meat Alternatives . 139 6.3 (Qc) On Copying, Reducing, and Reinventing Meat . 146 6.4 Conclusion ................................ 148 7 Taste Test Videos of Meat Alternatives 151 7.1 Description of the Data . 151 7.2 (Qb) Valuing Meat Alternatives . 153 7.3 (Qc) The Meanings of Meat (Alternatives) . 158 7.4 Conclusion ................................ 164 8 Tweets on Replacing Meat 167 8.1 Description of the Data . 167 8.2 (Qb) Describing Meat-Free: How Meat Matters . 171 8.3 (Qc) Talking Meat: How Tweets Frame Normality and Disruption . 175 8.4 Conclusion ................................ 180 9 Meat Without Animals: An Analysis 181 9.1 An Established and Coherent Category . 181 9.2 Emerging Understandings of Meat Alternatives (1985–2017) . 183 9.2.1 Origins in Vegetarian and Meat Categories . 184 9.2.2 Declining Differentiation from Meat . 185 9.2.3 From Characteristics to Meanings . 186 9.2.4 Emancipation from Meat . 188 9.3 The Meat in Alternatives: Current Understandings . 188 9.3.1 Format Flexibility . 189 9.3.2 Meat as a Reference . 191 9.3.3 Signposting Deviance . 192 9.3.4 Opposing Meat . 194 9.4 Breaking Down Meat Alternatives . 195 9.5 The Cultural Politics of Meat Alternatives: Mechanisms of Chal- lenge and Reproduction . 200 9.5.1 Stigmatising and Invisibilising Deviant Ways of Eating . 201 9.5.2 Knowing Meat and Trusting Meat . 201 9.5.3 Counting Consumption and Creating Moral Obligations . 202 9.5.4 Eating Experiences and Expectations . 203 9.5.5 Navigating Experiences: When Food is Just Tasty . 204 9.5.6 Reclaiming Language . 205 5 Contents 9.6 Theoretical Implications . 205 9.6.1 Insights on Category Formation . 206 9.6.2 Limited Substitutability and Categorisation Stability . 206 9.6.3 Categorical Generativity and Hegemonic Accommodation . 208 9.7 Conclusion ................................ 209 10 Discussion 213 10.1 Responses to the Research Questions . 214 10.2 On Meat Alternatives . 216 10.2.1 Just the Same: Meat Alternatives as Continuity . 216 10.2.2 Violating Norms: Meat Alternatives as Diversity . 217 10.2.3 Plant-Based Counterculture: Meat Alternatives as a Political Project .............................. 217 10.2.4 Food Activism: Meat Alternatives between Values and Money 219 10.2.5 More Meat from Less Feed: (Eco-)Efficient Contingencies . 220 10.3 On Theory ................................ 222 10.3.1 Insights from Category Studies . 222 10.3.2 Limitations of the Theory in Context of this Research Project 223 10.3.3 Reflections on the Proposed Conceptual Framework . 224 10.3.4 Further Considerations for Category Studies . 225 10.4 Contributions of this Thesis . 227 10.5 Limitations and Generalisability of this Research Project . 228 10.6 Rethinking Meat Alternatives? Implications and Recommendations 230 10.7 Conclusion and Future Research Directions . 232 Epilogue 235 References 237 Academic References ............................. 237 Archival References .............................. 256 Appendix A Further Details of the Contextual Data 269 A.1 Detailed Overview of the Sampling Procedure . 269 A.2 Key Companies and their Histories . 270 A.2.1 Direct Foods . 271 A.2.2 Haldane Foods . 273 A.2.3 Quorn Foods . 276 A.2.4 Linda McCartney Foods . 280 B Further Details of the Advertisements 283 B.1 Detailed Overview of the Sampling Procedure . 283 B.2 Magazine Selection . 286 B.3 Software used for Coding . 287 6 Contents B.4 Statistical Considerations . 288 B.5 Bibilographic Details of the Collected Advertisements . 289 B.6 Coding Schedule ............................. 307 B.7 Statistical Evaluations . 312 C Further Details of the Interviews 317 C.1 Detailed Overview of the Sampling Procedure . 317 C.2 Overview of Interviewees . 318 C.3 Interview Guide ............................. 319 D Further Details of the Taste Test Videos 323 D.1 Detailed Overview of the Sampling Procedure . 323 D.2 Overview of Taste Test Videos . 325 D.3 Structure of Taste Test Videos . 327 E Further Details of the Tweets 329 E.1 Detailed Overview of the Sampling Procedure . 329 E.2 Food Words Searched in the Data Set . 331 E.3 Foods Mentioned in the Tweets . 332 E.4 Reprint of Tweets Used for the Qualitative Analysis . 333 E.4.1 During #NationalVegetarianWeek . 334 E.4.2 During #WorldMeatFreeWeek . 350 E.5 Coding Schedule ............................. 356 F Data Summaries Across Data Sets 359 F.1 Category Identity ............................ 359 F.2 Frames .................................. 360 Word Count: 84,530 7 List of Figures 1.1 Visual outline of this thesis. ......................... 32 2.1 Visualisation of the conceptual framework. 48 3.1 Visualised overview of data choices and research design. On the top, the choice of data and the different analyses used are mentioned. On the bottom, a timeline of data collection and analysis is presented, and the different research questions and their use are summarised briefly. 54 4.1 Listings of various meat alternatives brands by store as identified in on- line shops in July 2017. ............................ 91 4.2 Comparison of the per capita (a) expenditure and (b) consumption of meat alternatives based on market data from 2001 to 2018. Kantar calcu- lates their estimates from consumption-level data, Mintel and Euromon- itor use aggregated retail data; categorisation differences are likely to be responsible for the remaining differences in the estimates; each continu- ous represents data published at different times. The price adjustment of Mintel data was reversed; price index and population data were ob- tained from the Office for National Statistics. 98 4.3 Upstream supply chains. 105 4.4 Advertising expenditure from 1995 to 2016, including the share of Mar- low Foods (owner of Quorn; the Cauldron brand