Faux Meat Will Be Cheaper Than the Real Thing in the Next 5 Years, Predicts Vegan Saudi Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed

Saudi Arabian Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, an advocate for the vegan lifestyle and founder of KBW Ventures, has predicted that faux meat products will become cheaper than actual meat by the year 2025. Prince Khaled's KBW Ventures is an investor in companies like Beyond Meat, The Vurger Company and Plant Power Fast Food, along with Turtle Tree Labs, a company using biotechnology to produce real milk in labs meant to displace the animal cost of producing milk on dairy farms.

In an interview with CNBC, bin Alwaleed said that the most important thing he looks for in plant-based investments is their taste compared to regular meat, saying, "If [the vegan product] tastes the same or better, if it costs the same or even less, if it has no or very little impact on the environment compared to traditional agriculture, then people are going to flock to it.”

“And this is what we’re seeing—slowly but surely, what’s going to happen with Beyond Meat etc., what’s going to happen with Memphis Meats and others, their price point is going to go dramatically down—and I’m betting that Beyond Meat will be cheaper than traditional meat by 2025.”

With more and more faux-meat products being integrated into mainstream fast-food chains such as Dunkin', Burger King and others, it's a pretty safe bet that the plant-based food industry, up 11% in the US in the last year, will continue to grow. Companies are working to drive down the prices of products by using more widely available ingredients and improving the efficiencies in their supply chains.

So, why does bin Alwaleed find investing in the plant-based market so important? Climate change: “We’re really focused on companies that solve problems that the world is going through right now," he told an interviewer. "One of the biggest problems we’re facing right now is global warming. The third-most impactful industry is the animal agriculture industry. And we have to find a better way to source protein for people.”

Regardless of what motivates plant-based eaters—the planet, animals or personal health, lowering the cost of plant-based products will help introduce these items to an even wider audience, and The Beet is for that.