As someone who's been vegan for a dozen years and vegetarian for a half decade before that, I can assure you that every contact I've had with mycoprotein has been unpleasant. The stuff simply tastes horrible. Further, this is a highly processed food. That means it will not be actually healthy for you, though they're trying to market it as such. As a highly processed food, it will also be expensive and have a high carbon footprint relative to more whole food options. That obviates at least two of the three primary supposed benefits of mycoprotein; those being that it is inexpensive to make and has a relatively small footprint per kilo of protein.

The term "flexitarian" is a non-existent consumer who, while still consuming meat, consumes a significant amount of plant-based protein out of concern for their health and the health of the planet. I cannot stress enough how much this person does not exist. It's almost entirely marketing hype. Some people lie about how much animal products they eat and how willing they are to eat vegan products when asked by pollsters because they understand the deleterious effects eating meat has on the climate and their personal health. But when you actually look at what those people actually eat, they eat a standard amount of meat and almost never eat any vegan alternatives. Sure, in theory, they'll say they'll eat a vegan product if it tasted just like meat. In practice, none of those products actually taste like meat and they never actually buy them because actual meat is cheaper, they're more familiar with it, and it tends to taste better.

The reason for the term's existence is simple. Most people are neither vegan nor vegetarian. Vegetarians only make up ~1% of the population. If you're a food processor start-up and you go to a bunch of VCs for your initial funding round and begin by telling them that your target market is only 1% of the population, you're unlikely to get much funding. But if you claim that 20%, 30%, or even 50% of the general public would love to swap one or more meals a week for your product, then you get to be a unicorn. That's where the money for the (failed) "Meatless Mondays" campaign came from. It's also why you got marketing for the Beyond and Impossible "meats" with copy talking about how much they tasted like meat and how the burger would "bleed" when cooked. I, and every vegan I talked to about this, found such copy deeply off putting. (If you're vegan for more than 6 weeks, meat starts smelling awful to you.) You know, the people who actually might buy your product with any regularity.