I trust when something is "vegan" to mean it's vegan, but "plant-based" means I'm checking the ingredients list to confirm that they know what they're saying.
I've been to enough restaurants that refer to something as "plant-based", but they just mean the burger patty (served with cheese and a ranch-based sauce!).
A "meat-based" patty isn't 100% meat either. There might me onions, flour, egg, salt, spices, etc. "plant-based" is a term that just tells you "most of it is noch meat" and so you have to check the ingredients making it a pretty useless term.
Also fuck everybody who makes a meat-alternative-food that isn't vegan because they added 1% of some shit...
That's exactly what it is. The font size is not significantly different between those words, and it is a single sentence.
Yes it is a different size, but we're talking like font sizes 18 and 20, its not significantly different. To be fair though, plant-based is black while the rest is white.
It clearly is referring to the bowl. It has an arrow pointing to the bowl.
The other side of the packaging, where all the rest of the info about what food is in the product is located also clearly says Vegetarian in larger font. That's where any phrasing like Vegan would clearly be.
This looks like someone trying to find a complaint in an otherwise pretty clearly labelled product. No one would mistake this product unless they didn't look at the packaging.
Currently, I still eat meat, but in theory, am working towards a world where I'm at least vegetarian. I'd expect "plant based" to mean something that someone like me would eat. By default, I'd assume it wasn't vegan and possibly not even vegetarian, and I might not even think to scrutinise the label if I was cooking a meal for vegetarian or vegan guests - I'd just pass over the product.