I’ll admit it upfront: I’ve tried alternative meat on my own barbecue, and they’ve never been exactly a slam dunk for me. So when I sat down with the Chunk Foods founder and CEO Amos Golan for this latest episode, I wasn’t chasing a hype piece on the wonders of foodtech. I’ve written those stories before. What I wanted to know was whether the economics of fake meat had finally changed.
Turns out there is a number that can make that argument: $6.83, the price of a pound of ground beef in the US as of July 2026.
Beef steaks averaged $12.80 a pound back in May, up 16% year-on-year; the national cattle herd is sitting at its smallest size in 75 years. These Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers show a worrying trend for families and young people seeking affordable protein sources.
Today’s price rises may be a way for the fake meat industry to undergo somewhat of a comeback. And Golan has been watching this trend as closely as I have. “You don’t need to just talk about the need for the price of [fake] meat to go down,” I said to him. “You can also talk about the price of meat going up.” His answer: “Exactly.”
He’d already walked me through the math before I said it. “Ground beef in the US used to cost $4 [per pound]. Now it’s $5, $5.36. A steak is $10 to $20 a pound.” That was true when we recorded this episode in June, but beef has kept climbing since, which is, for those of us doing the weekly shop, the whole point of his pitch.
Chunk’s bet was never to compete with beef on ideology. People like me who genuinely like eating meat aren't suddenly going to stop because someone tells us it's better for the planet. The experience needs to be good enough, and the price needs to be good enough, ideally cheaper than meat. “The experience needs to be good enough. The price needs to be good enough, ideally cheaper than meat.” He was blunt that this is a demographic shift, not a moral one. “People are less altruistic, I’d say, at least externally, in how they talk about the food they consume.”
Ultimately, beef isn’t getting cheaper anytime soon. Forecasts put 2026 beef price increases as high as 18%, and analysts aren’t projecting relief into 2027. Chunk doesn’t need to win me over on taste alone. It needs the gap between $6.83 and its own shelf price to keep doing the argument for it.
It might be time that the alternative meat market comes back for seconds. And those at the dinner table may finally be ready for what’s on the menu.
