https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/409175/meat-plant-based-blind-taste-test

There was one veggie winner, 60% favored it over meat: 

Impossible Foods' unbreaded chicken fillet performed best out of the 122 plant-based meat products, with 32 percent of participants rating it higher than a (real) unbreaded chicken fillet from Perdue Farms, while 28 percent rated them equally.

If the article mentioned this I missed it, but I'd be interested to know how all the samples were prepared.

The <exact> same foods can have <very> different taste and palatability depending on how they're cooked.

There is chicken and there is chicken.  A lot of Purdue and Tyson frozen chicken fillets are over processed, bleach washed, seasoned, saline water injected crap.  And then there are chicken McNuggets extruded for your eating pleasure.  So yes I do believe some vegan, vat grown faux chicken might taste better.

That said, MorningStar Farms chicken patties have been out for over 20 years and they are edible if you put enough condiments on top.

>MorningStar Farms

Love some MorningStar items, but -IIRC- what they lacked in meat protein they made up for it with salt.

>salt

That always seems to be the trade off, if you want it easy you get tons of salt.  Most of the health benefits of eating vegetarian are negated by so much salt.

As a vegetarian for 42 years who recently started eating some meat, my feeling is that the more they try to make it like plain meat, the less likely it is to actually taste good.

So most black bean veggie burgers are great. Boca burgers are good. Smart Dogs are good. All are trying to fill the same spot in a meal as meat, without trying to *mimic* meat.

But I find Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers, which are really trying to mimic meat, to taste less good than either meat or the non-mimic meat substitutes.

It doesn't surprise me that the "chicken" nuggets do well since the "meat" is only part of the taste.

Maybe it's all psychological, but I find ground beef to be a take it or leave it thing and I mostly leave it, but grass fed ground venison is something I really enjoy now. Bison too.

Meanwhile, to give a sense of how picky I am, we had bargain butter that someone left behind and nice, rich, grass-fed Irish butter. I told my wife I didn't want the "yucky" butter on my toast. She said she couldn't tell the difference, so I asked her to do a blind test on my toast to see if it was all in my mind. I bit into the first piece of toast with butter and thought, "Yuck! This better be the bad stuff or I'm going to have to eat my words." Then I tasted the second one and I thought, "Saved. This is *definitely* the good butter."

That's on a relatively flavorful wholegrain bread (Dave's Killer Bread, 21 grain). So yeah, I can be particular.

>*definitely* the good butter

Blind taste test:
We bought Kerry Gold to a cabin shared with one of our daughters and her kids.  With zero mention about the Kerry butter being served, our grandson (then 9) took a bite of a pancake and immediately turned and asked his mom if she would switch to this butter at home.

Turns out it was actually grass-fed New Zealand butter, which is even richer than Kerrygold... I just did the taste test.

The NZ butter is at Costco and is almost exactly double the cost of the other butter. And so worth it.

If your grandson wants to visit, I will make him heavy-duty multi-grain pancakes, probably with wild elderberries, grade A maple syrup and NZ butter.