Plant-based meat alternatives—products that look, taste, and even sizzle like animal meat—are having a pretty big year. The brands Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have been scoring headlines, raising impressive amounts of capital, and creating legions of hungry, happy customers: a splashy IPO and partnerships with chains including Carl’s Jr. and TGI Friday’s for Beyond Meat; a $300 million funding round and deals with the likes of Burger King and Cheesecake Factory for Impossible Foods.

You might assume that the surge in popularity of these meat-free products is driven by a rising number of vegetarians in the U.S. But the percentage of Americans who identify as vegetarian has actually ticked down from 6% to 5% over the past 20 years, according to Gallup polls. (The same poll only started tracking rates of veganism in 2012; they’ve risen from 2% to 3% since then.)

In reality, Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat say that their customer bases are just as meat-loving as the general population. Impossible Foods chief communications officer Rachel Konrad tells SELF that over 95% of people who order their burger regularly consume animal products (i.e., aren’t vegan), and that most are not strictly vegetarian either. Beyond Meat boasts similar numbers. “Purchase data from one of the nation's largest conventional retailers showed that more than 90% of consumers who purchased the Beyond Burger also purchased animal protein,” Will Schafer, the company’s VP of marketing, tells SELF.

The real wonder, then, is how Impossible, Beyond, and similar companies are convincing all these meat eaters to buy into the idea that plant-based is better, at least at some meals. Why are people who enjoy meat shelling out for these meatless products? I talked to experts and looked at research to try to find an answer.

“It seems like it’s better for me.”

Los Angeles resident Kasey L., 23, tells SELF that her family history of heart disease is what spurred her to start eating less meat. “I’m pretty healthy in general, but the amount of [red] meat I was eating was one thing that always worried me in the back of my mind,” Kasey says. “I wanted to cut back, so I gave it a shot once and loved it.” While she still eats meat, she says she’s probably cut her intake by something like 20 percent thanks to the availability of Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers at restaurants and retailers.

“From what we have observed, most people choose to eat less meat for health reasons,” Ricardo San Martin, Ph.D., research director of the Alternative Meat Program at the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at UC Berkeley, tells SELF. “We suspect that people may [be turning] to new meat alternatives in an attempt to foster healthier lifestyles.”

The belief that eating less meat (particularly red meat) may be a boon for health comes from a decent amount of research connecting red meat consumption to negative health outcomes, David A Levitsky, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and psychology in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Psychology at Cornell University, tells SELF. But it’s hard to say whether swapping out beef burgers for these new imitations will actually improve your health or not. The truth is, the research is pretty complicated.

For instance, a massive NIH-funded, Harvard-led study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2012 observing more than 37,000 men and 83,000 women since 1986 and 1980, respectively, found that one additional daily serving of red meat over the course of the study was correlated with a 12% increase in a person’s odds of dying from any cause. Which, of course, sounds scary! But it’s important to note that the researchers did not find a causal link—proof that eating red meat directly leads to higher mortality—only an association.