Did you see all that money pouring into the alternative meats category this spring? There was $300 million for Impossible Foods. Another $241 million to Beyond Burger through its headline-grabbing IPO, which saw its stock price rise 163% in the first day. And $12 million, some of it from Cargill, for Israeli company Aleph Farms, a company with a technology but no product yet. Think of what that kind of investment could mean to your average meat processor.

And the headlines! “Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods Could Be the Coke and Pepsi of Alternative Meat” (Barron’s). “Beyond Meat IPO gives veggie burger company a $1.5 billion market value” (CBS News). “Lab-grown meat is coming” (Wall Street Journal).

It’s enough to make you wonder if someday your grandkids will ask in astonishment, “Did you really used to eat meat from an animal?!?”

But — think a minute. Doesn’t it all seem like an uncomfortable deja vu? Doesn’t it seem ... what’s the phrase ... “irrationally exuberant?”

Yeah, Alan Greenspan hit the nail on the head when he coined that combination to describe the dot-come craze of the 1990s. And we’ve seen it applied in so many markets: The real estate bubble that crashed when the financial crisis hit, 1987’s Black Monday in the stock market, the price of Beanie Babies.

I’m not an economist or an investment adviser, but I’ve been reporting on business a long time, and if it walks like a bubble and talks like a bubble, I expect it will someday pop like a bubble. When a company’s big news is that the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Katy Perry are among its financial backers, I begin to wonder what they’re not talking about.

Of course, as economic bubbles go, the damage done by a meat alternatives market crash would be safely contained. I’m not talking about millions of people losing their life savings.

I do anticipate that the double-digit market growth, crazy stock market valuations and breathless proclamations about saving the planet will come to an end, and the meat alternatives sector will establish whatever permanent niche it’s going to occupy. The venture capital will move on to the next shiny gadget, the industry will consolidate and the survivors will fight day-in and day-out for share of stomach, just like everybody else in the supermarket.

And the meat industry will benefit, in the long run. Some meat companies are investors, and if they’ve bet on the right horses, they will have diversified their protein portfolio and expanded their customer base. Some processors already have increased their business by co-packing plant-based alternatives. Anecdotal evidence suggests that stocking a plant-based alternative in the meat department increases sales for both types of product.

And consumers around the world have an expanded array of delectable foods to choose from, choices that religion, culture, health concerns or just personal preference put out of reach for years, even millennia. And that’s pretty rich.

POP goes the bubble!

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