Not too long ago, imitation meats, including plant-based products from brands like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, appeared poised to help save the world from the environmental, health and ethical harms that often go along with eating animal flesh.

But that was before concerns grew that the products were “ultraprocessed,” a message amplified both by adherents of whole food diets and meat industry proponents.

Since then, sales of plant-based meat are beginning to stabilize. But, as I report in an article published today, the sector is still grappling with a bit with an identity crisis.

If it’s to grow, the imitation meat industry needs to figure out how to appeal to more customers, said John Baumgartner, a consumer food analyst at Mizuho Americas, a financial services group.

“Effectively, what is the problem to solve?” Baumgartner wrote in an email. “Is it health concerns? Is it climate concerns? Is it neither?”

Countering the narrative

Research has shown that swapping in plant-based meats for conventional meat can reduce cardiovascular risk factors, and that those benefits can outweigh the fact that the products are processed. But the growing public perception was that the products were unhealthy because they are ultraprocessed, and sales declined.

Some in the imitation meat industry blame their counterparts in other areas of the food business.

“It was that union of elite foodies that want to buy their backyard hen in Amagansett and big industrial ag lobbyists crafting this narrative,” said Ethan Brown, the founder and chief executive of Beyond Meat. “They found union in one another that was very damaging.”

As I wrote, Beyond Meat has reformulated some of its products, simplifying ingredient lists, and cutting saturated fat and sodium. Impossible Foods, one of its main competitors, now offers a healthier version of its plant-based ground beef, and also changed the color of its packaging to red to try to win over carnivores.

Conversion to plant-based meat, like so many of our eating choices, can be highly personal and culturally dependent. Baumgartner, the food analyst, said that the category was far more established in Europe. There, supermarket chains have cut the prices of plant proteins and ended discounts on fresh meat to encourage people to eat less meat, improve dietary health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But in the United States, where discussions of climate and red meat consumption are part of broader culture wars, the big plant-based meat companies are still searching for a way to connect with more customers.

As Peter McGuinness, chief executive of Impossible Foods said, “I think this is one of the greatest communication challenges in the history of business.”

My dad tries imitation steak tips

Over the winter holidays, while visiting family in Canada, I thought I’d try out one of the products, Beyond Steak, which has been certified as heart-healthy by the American Heart Association, on one especially discerning carnivore: my dad.

I didn’t have high hopes. He’s a meat-and-potatoes man in his late eighties from County Tipperary in Ireland, as committed to contrarianism as he is to weekly Mass.

In 2017, doctors discovered, in the barest nick of time, that his left anterior descending coronary artery, the so-called widow maker, was more than 99 percent blocked. Lying in the hospital, my mother at his bedside, my dad told the nurses it was because of all the organic food she’d tried feeding him. When they told him that eating more fruits, vegetables and legumes and less red meat would lead to a healthier life, he asked them, “but will it be worth it?”

Since my mother’s death nearly two years ago, out of necessity, a yen for the familiar and culinary bewilderment, he has been living largely off frozen dinners and ham and roast beef lunch meat. Beyond Steak seemed like a bridge too far, but, two nights before Christmas, I gave it a shot.

I seared the faux steak tips, served them with mushrooms and a side of vegetables, and set down the plates. The tips were savory, meaty, decidedly steaky. I glanced over at my dad.

“Wow,” he said, between bites.

He was downing them by the forkful. “ He ended up polishing them off and going for seconds, and asked where he could find them in his local grocery store. A few days later, I overheard him raving about them to one of his brothers, an equally skeptical Irishman.

“They’re tasty,” my father said. “And that’s all that matters.”

More Americans than ever are living in wildfire areas

Across the country, including in Los Angeles and California, millions of Americans have been moving to places at risk of burning, particularly developments on the outskirts of cities that bump up against forests, grasslands and shrub lands. The rapid growth in these areas, known as the “wildland-urban interface,” has increased the odds of devastating blazes, especially as climate change fuels larger and more intense wildfires across the West.

Between 1990 and 2020, the number of homes in fire-prone parts of California grew by 40 percent, according to research led by Volker Radeloff, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. By contrast, the number of homes in less-flammable areas, like city centers, only grew by 23 percent. — Mira Rojanasakul and Brad Plumer

More about the L.A. fires:

What to know about Trump’s cabinet hearings

More climate news:

Thanks for being a subscriber.

Read past editions of the newsletter here.

If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here. And follow The New York Times on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok at @nytimes.

Reach us at climateforward@nytimes.com. We read every message, and reply to many!