in love with saying they are a vegetarian than actually being a vegetarian
I'm not sure that's fair. People have a lot reasons for cutting out meat. I'd explain more behind the curtain, but I'll say my reasons have changed a lot over the 36 years. Now, one driving factor for me and many others is concern for the carbon footprint of foods (not just meat, but beef tends to be the worst, though airdropped asparagus from Chile is as bad or worse on a per-calorie basis... it's complicated). For others, it's animal welfare.
So there is a place for "fake meat" for people who crave the taste, but have reasons for avoiding it. Personally, I never craved meat. Some people I know try to go vegetarian and they just keep dreaming of cheeseburgers. So if a product like this helps some people get off meat, I won't question motives.
That said, I think this is an uphill battle.
1. The one I mentioned. Though I have no problem with people wanting to eat factory food in order to get off meat, it's just really out of step with so many other trends and it is the people who avoid factory food who, in general, are thinking about food. And regardless of what else you may say, this is a product for people who think about food (by which I mean, this is not a default choice for anyone).
2. They just can't get out of the shadow of meat. As long as people think of it as "fake meat" (and most articles refer to it as such, despite all the efforts of the PR department) instead of real something else, I think they're doomed. Again, what is the market that wants fake meat? It's not me. I couldn't care less about how closely something resembles meat. It's not DrCool. He wants the real thing.
But at the same time, it's a battle that must be won before the world gets richer. As more and more people around the globe can afford beef, the footrpint becomes bigger and bigger. Some people estimate that it's already bigger than the entire transportation sector in the US (and other dispute that, but nobody disputes that it is huge).
500,000 pounds is a start. The total for beef is 25 billion pounds. So there's a ways to go. But if they can get it right and people *want* to eat these products, it's a huge win on climate in particular and environmental degradation in general. But getting people to *want* this will be a slow process.