There is a particular species of supermarket product that has always struck me as engaged in a small, ongoing act of self-deception, and it is the plant-based “meat” patty, sitting there in its glossy packet, doing its level best to convince you it is something it manifestly is not. It has never once fooled me, and according to a new piece of Australian research, it hasn’t fooled most of you either – however cleverly the marketing department has tried. What mattered was a set of pre-existing beliefs sitting quietly underneath all of it: that plant-based “meat” is riskier to buy, and worse value, than the real thing. The bit where it gets genuinely interesting for those of us over 60Here’s where this stops being simply a marketing story and becomes a generational one. The underlying academic literature the Adelaide team drew on is consistent and unambiguous on one point: older consumers are considerably more reluctant than younger generations when it comes to alternative food products of any kind, plant-based meat very much included.