When meat companies buy into veggie burgers you know things are changing. Tyson, the largest meat processor in the US is investing in Beyond Meat, a company that creates burgers not from beef, but plants the New York Times reported in October.
Meanwhile in Germany one meat producer is planning to have at least 30 per cent of its sales as vegetarian products by 2019, according to food industry journal Food Navigator.
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Trailer: For the Love of Meat
Matthew Evans explores the impact of eating meat on our health, animals and the environment.
It's a sign that more of us want our protein to come from plants but it's also something else: a sign of a collaboration between two opposite sides of the fence - an industry that kills animals for profit and one that caters for consumers who'd rather not eat food produced in a slaughterhouse.
That's not such a bad idea, says Marta Zaraska, author of Meathooked, a new book looking at our hard-to-break love affair with meat. If our goal is to improve health, boost our chances of combating climate change and reduce animal suffering, then a purist vegetarian approach may not be the best way, she argues.
![Are we meating too much?](/web/20161108035143im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/i/6/0/8/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gshyzl.png/1478463900572.jpg)
"If you are an ethical vegetarian, think about it," she writes. "Which saves more lives - one person stopping eating meat altogether or millions cutting out just one meat meal a month?"
In Meathooked, Â Zaraska, a Polish-Canadian science writer, investigates why humans persist in devouring so much meat despite the evidence that it's not good for our health or the planet. The reasons are a complex mix of evolution, history, culture - and marketing.
Meat is marinated in symbolism, she says.
"We humans like power and that's precisely what meat stands for. It stands for wealth, for masculinity and for power over the poor and over nature.
"As children, we observe the people around us and see the pleasure of consuming animals reflected in their faces and we learn that meat is good, really, really good. Acquired early and reinforced daily by the culture in which we live, that's a difficult lesson to unlearn."
But unless we can find another planet somewhere on which to grow more pigs, cows and sheep, the world can't afford our addiction to so much animal protein, Â Zaraska writes. It can't afford the water and the antibiotic use it takes to produce meat and it can't afford the global warming that high meat diets are linked to.
So where to from here? In Meathooked, she tracks the worldwide hunt for animal food alternatives: there's lab grown meat, there are tomato-and- pepper grasshoppers creeping into upmarket French delis and food companies doing clever things with plants to replicate meat's smells, tastes and textures - including a former meat-loving farmer now making plant-based sausages in the Netherlands.
Another idea comes from Australian philosopher Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in the US. He might be the author of books like Animal Liberation and The Ethics of What We Eat but his argument is for a less ideological approach to avoiding meat.
"We should stop abusing people if they are not completely vegan or vegetarian," he says. "If we want the majority to reduce meat consumption I don't think insisting on dietary purity is the way to get there."
That's also the message from the Reducetarian movement - which encourages people to eat less meat but without demanding they avoid it entirely - and it's flexible enough to include people who are taking just small steps like one meatless meal a week.
"It's likely that making a plant based diet less of an all or nothing proposition and less attached to a set of lifestyle choices will encourage people to try it," says  Zaraska.
Her prediction is that 'veggie meat' will sneak up on us and replace more meat meals - but putting the planet on a more plant-based diet won't be easy. To do it we have to change the script.
"We should emphasise that plant based diets are convenient and economical and not just healthy - because that's what changes people's buying choices. We should try to change the image of a vegetarian diet by showing athletic, masculine men eating a plant-based diet, emphasising that 'veg' can make you strong and beautiful. That is, after all, how meat has been sold to us for years."
Keen to try a greener diet? Here comes The Climatarian Challenge, a free app that challenges you to eat in a more sustainable way for 30 days. Available from November 12 on Android and iOS.