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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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A Win for Veggie Burgers: Mississippi to Table Rigid Plant-based Meat Labeling Restrictions

In a win for free speech and veggie burgers everywhere, yesterday Mississippi officially revised its restrictive labeling rules around plant-based meat. The original regulations restricted companies from using traditional meat terms like “burger,” “hot dog,” and indeed “meat” on their packaging, even when preceded by terms like “vegan” or “plant-based,” arguing that the lingo could confuse consumers. This despite the fact that we’ve been buying veggie burgers for decades.

Mississippi’s restrictive meat labeling legislation went into effect in July of this year. In response, the Plant Based Food Association (PBFA) and member company Upton’s Naturals immediately sued the state, claiming that the new rules were a violation of the First Amendment. As a result of the lawsuit, the Mississippi Department of Agriculture proposed a new regulation in September that would let plant-based meat companies use terms like “veggie burger” and “vegan hot dog.” Yesterday that regulation took effect.

Mississippi wasn’t the only state to institute such strict labeling rules over the past year or so. Arkansas, Missouri, and a dozen other states have also banned a myriad of meat labeling terms. Under many of the states’ rules, each “offense” could be punishable by a $1,000 fine or one year in jail.

But plant-based meat wasn’t going to take these restrictions lying down. In August of last year the PBFA, Tofurky, the ACLU, and the Good Food Institute formed a coalition to sue Missouri, arguing that the new rules violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The group also challenged similar laws in Arkansas.

Jaime Athos, the CEO of Tofurky and President of the Board of the PBFA, spoke with me about the labeling issue in depth at SKS 2019 last month. There he told me that these labeling bills are a result of pressure from meat lobbies, which are threatened by the recent astronomical growth of the plant-based meat sector. They don’t actually serve the consumer. In fact, he argued that they could actually end up confusing the consumer, since people have been buying veggie burgers and vegan hot dogs for decades.”It’s insulting to the consumer,” he said.

It seems that at least in Mississippi, Tofurky has successfully netted a win for plant-based meat. But there are still many other battlefronts they have to win. “We hope that other states that introduced similar legislation in the past year, including Arkansas and Missouri, take note of Mississippi acknowledging and accepting already-used, clear qualifying terms such as ‘meat-free,’ ‘meatless,’ ‘plant-based,’ ‘vegetarian,’ and ‘vegan’ to describe plant-based protein products,” Athos wrote in an email statement to The Spoon.

Months ago, Athos told me that he and the coalition were fighting to establish a precedent with one of their three suits which would eventually kill all plant-meat labeling laws. This latest win with Mississippi could be just the precedent they were hoping for.

Impending Global Pork Shortage Could Mean Big Things for Plant-Based Bacon

Bacon lovers, prepare to tighten your belts. According to Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, the U.S. could experience shortages of ham and pork bellies as early as 2020 (h/t Bloomberg).

The shortage is due to an epidemic of African Swine Flu, which is rampaging through China’s pork industry. It’s so severe that NPR estimates that by the end of 2019, China’s pig population could be cut in half. Since China currently cultivates roughly half of the pork in the world, the outbreak will have some serious ripple effects on global pork consumption — ones that we will feel in the U.S. in the form of rising prices in the pork section of the grocery store.

That’s bad news for people who loves their bacon, ham, and pork chops. But it could be very good news for the growing number of companies producing plant-based pork products, especially bacon.

Several companies are developing their own alternative versions of the popular breakfast meat, or making technology to help others do so. Startups Hooray Foods and Prime Roots are both in the (very) early stages of commercializing their alt-bacon, and there have been murmurs that Beyond Meat is adding bacon to its product roadmap. Ecovative makes mushroom root scaffolds for meat alternatives, which it has successfully tested to create vegan bacon. Even Big Food is getting in on it: just last week, Nestlé announced it had developed its own version of animal-free bacon to complement its plant-based Awesome burger.

When it comes to other pork products, however, there are fewer options. Beyond makes a plant-based sausage, and there are products peddling jackfruit as an alternative to pulled pork. Right Treat in Hong Kong sells Omnipork, an alternative to ground pork geared towards Asian palates. However, we could start seeing new players creating a variety of plant-based pork products if China’s shortage continues.

According to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, pork is the most widely consumed meat in the world. That means that there’s not only a huge opportunity for companies to develop pork alternatives, but also a pressing need for them to do so if outbreaks like the one in China continue.

Bacon seems a tasty place to start.

Novameat Gains New Funds to Take Its 3D Printed Plant-based Steak to Market

At the Good Food Conference in San Francisco last week, Novameat, a Spanish startup developing meat alternatives through 3D printing, announced it had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from New Crop Capital.

Novameat uses patented 3D-printing technology to “print” plant-based meat with the same fibrous texture of the real thing. According to founder Giuseppe Scionti, whom I talked to, the company’s special 3D printer uses syringes filled with plant protein to extrude cuts of meat that mimic the muscles of animal tissue. He said the company will use the new funding to do more demonstrations of his 3D printed steak, scale up the technology, grow his team of four, and expand beyond Europe.

Extrusion is how most plant-based meat companies make vegan protein look like real chicken nuggets, tuna chunks, etc. But Scionti told me that his machine is unique since it can make whole cuts of muscle, such as a steak or chicken breast. He also said that they could better imitate meat texture since 3D printing allows for micro extrusion on a large scale. “If you want to get material like beefsteak you want to control both micro texture and macro texture,” he told me. So instead of extruding out a piece of protein that is meant to be a whole chicken nugget, he can print out individual lines that look and chew like the network of muscle fibers that make up a large cut of meat.

Novameat’s technology also opens up possibilities for novel ingredients. Scionti doesn’t want to use wheat or soy in his printed meats for environmental reasons, and also because he said their texture isn’t quite as meat-like. His 3D printer apparently adapts to a wider range of plant proteins, such as pea (a favorite of Beyond Meat), which can be combined to take on the unique texture of almost any cut of meat.

NOVAMEAT - by EIT-Food

Instead of creating his own line of branded products, Novemeat will employ a meaty SaaS model by licensing out the technology to plant-based meat manufacturers. In addition to the 3D printer itself, his team will also work with individual partners to develop the optimal “recipe” of proteins to create their ideal meat substitute.

Scionti even told me he’s envisioning partnerships with high-end restaurants. He would rent them the machine, likely for a low cost, and provide them Nespresso-like capsules they could use to print their own custom cuts of “meat.”

Novameat hopes to bring its technology to restaurants and retail (through partners) within 5 years or so. As of now its 3D printed steaks still haven’t been put to a public taste test, so it’s too early to say if their technology will truly, as Scionti is hoping, usher in a new wave of more realistic whole cuts of meat. But if successful, it could open the door to an entirely new segment of plant-based meat products, such as whole T-bone steaks or pork chops.

However, Novameat could have some competition. In Israel, Redefine Meat is also using 3D printing to make vegan cuts of meat, including beef. They’re not using 3D printing, but Impossible Foods is also tackling plant-based steak. And new scaffolding technologies, such as the mushroom root-based ones from Atlast Food, are hoping to make it easier for meat alternative companies to make complicated cuts of meat like chicken breast and bacon.

Of course, with the soaring popularity of alternative meat right now, it likely won’t be a zero-sum game for whole plant-based cuts of meat — especially if Novameat’s 3D printing technology is really as innovative as Scionti claims.

But all bets could be off when cell-based meat, which re-creates animal tissue in the lab, comes to market. For example, Israeli startup Aleph Farms is developing cultured steak meant to taste and chew exactly like the real thing because it’s made of actual animal cells.

Then again, cultured meat is a ways from hitting the market, and even further away from creating whole, thick cuts of meat (right now Aleph Farms’ steak is only the thickness and size of a credit card). Which means that plant-based options like Novameat have a while to put their stake (er, steak) in the meat alternative space before competition becomes too fierce.

MorningStar Farms Launches ‘Incogmeato’ to Capitalize on the Meatless Meat Craze

Alternative meat giant MorningStar Farms seems to be taking a burger — er, page — from Beyond Meat. Today, the Kelloggs-owned company announced Incogmeato, its new line of plant-based meat products which are meant to look, taste, and cook more like the real thing.

The Incogmeato portfolio (are we sold on that name?) includes a refrigerated plant-based “beef” burger as well as meatless Chik’n tenders and nuggets. In grocery stores the burgers will be sold in the refrigerated section, a first for MorningStar Farms, while the Chik’n will live in the freezer section. All products are made with non-GMO soy.

The Incogmeato line will be available both in retail and foodservice in early 2020. Pricing details have not yet been disclosed.

MorningStar Farms has been in the meat alternative biz for over 40 years, which makes it a grandfather in the plant-based meat space. For most of that time, the company has peacefully cruised along with its frozen veggie patties and chicken strips for vegetarians. But now thanks to Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods’ sudden and much-publicized moves into the alt-meat space, consumers’ former notions about what plant-based meat could look like and taste like have changed.

MorningStar Farms isn’t the only alterna-meat veteran seeking to capitalize on the recent craze around plant-based burgers, chicken, and more. Tofurky, Lightlife, Boca Burgers and others, which have traditionally made meat substitutes specifically geared towards vegetarians, are releasing new, more realistic “meat” products to draw in flexitarian diners — with mixed results.

While these companies have the advantage of name recognition, retail relationships and robust manufacturing, their relative seniority could also hinder them. Flexitarian consumers looking to try this popular “bleeding” plant-based that’s getting so much media attention might skip over brands like MorningStar Farms, which they associate with less-than-stellar first-generation meat alternatives, and go straight for newcomers like Beyond and Impossible. Which is probably why the Incogmeato branding looks completely different from traditional MorningStar Farms products.

With its new Incogmeato line, MorningStar Farms is clearly trying to show that it, too, can be part of the new wave of meaty meat alternatives. But when it comes to plant-based meat, can an old dog learn new tricks? Come 2020, we’ll have to taste and find out for ourselves.

If you want to keep up with the fast-paced world of alternative protein, make sure to subscribe to our weekly Future Food newsletter!

Japanese Startup Integriculture Tests Foie Gras Grown in a Lab

Foie gras is one of the most contentious animal products out there. In order to get the goose liver so fatty, farmers have to force feed the animals — a practice that makes foie gras both ethically iffy and really expensive. Some cities are even considering banning it altogether.

However, Japanese cellular agriculture startup Integriculture is developing a cultured foie gras that can be made entirely without animals and therefore without the ethical hangups. This week, the company got one step closer to its goal when it did a private taste test of its cell-based liver at the Beyond Next Ventures office in Tokyo.

Integriculture has done previous tests of its product, but according to an email from Integriculture CEO Yuki Hanyu, this version was significantly more sophisticated. He noted that previous experiments were “chicken cell liver paste,” while this new product was “actual fat-loaded duck liver cells.” It apparently tasted much better and had a cleaner flavor than earlier versions. Hanyu said that they didn’t calculate the cost of producing the cultured foie gras.

The company is also finishing development on their SpaceSalt, a powdered version of cell media (the nutrient-rich bath in which cellular meat is grown) which they’ll sell to biohackers who want to grow their own meat at home using the guide from Shojinmeat, the DIY cultured meat community which Integriculture grew out of. in the aforementioned email, Hanyu told me he hopes to start selling the SpaceSalt by the end of this year.

Integriculture is on a tight timeline to perfect its cell-based foie gras and make it in large enough quantities to sell. The startup plans to launch the cultured liver in restaurants in 2021 and roll it out in Japanese retail in 2023, assuming the government approves cell-based meat for sale. That’s not a lot of time, but this latest test seems to show that the company is at least getting closer to perfecting the product.

New Coalition Forms to Bring Cultured Meat to Market Faster

Today five cellular agriculture and aquaculture companies announced that they have formed a new coalition to educate and advocate for cultured meat — that is, meat or seafood grown outside the animal.

Called the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), the group consists of cellular aquaculture companies BlueNalu and Finless Foods and cell-based meat companies Fork & Goode, JUST, and Memphis Meats.

The goal of the coalition is to twofold. They want to provide resources to educate consumers on what exactly cell-based meat is and its health and environmental footprint. But to get to that, they’ll first have to tackle their other goal: to get cell-based meat and fish approved by regulators.

According to a press release sent to the Spoon:

In the coming months, AMPS Innovation intends to engage policymakers and stakeholders to educate them on their products in addition to working with Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration as they continue to build out a regulatory framework for meat, poultry and seafood that is grown directly from animal cells, rather than harvested from the animals themselves.

Basically, AMPS Innovation will act as a mouthpiece and knowledge expert for the larger cellular agriculture industry, pushing for regulatory acceptance needed to bring cultured meat to market.

As of now, the regulatory pathway for cell-based animal products is still pretty nebulous. Last year the FDA and USDA agreed that they would jointly regulate cultured meat; the FDA will oversee animal cell collection and initial cell growth, while the USDA will be in charge of large-scale production labeling. It’s still unclear at exactly what point in the process that handoff will take place, and there’s no timeline about when the governmental bodies will actually approve cultured meat for sale.

Cell-based meat will make it to market; with the amount of interest around and capital invested in cell ag companies, that seems inevitable. At that point AMPS Innovation will likely pivot to focus more on educating consumers who are wary of eating meat grown in a lab — and pushing back against big meat and farming coalitions that don’t want them edging in on their sales.

AMPS Innovation is already building its case. In addition to resources such as high-res media images and descriptions about the cell-based meat production process, their website also has a page called “Terms that are accurate” (kind of an aggressive way to label a glossary, IMHO). The page states that terms like “Meat / poultry / seafood” or “meat / poultry / seafood products” are applicable to cell-based meat, poultry, and seafood, since they are made from animals and real animal flesh.

Big Meat is not going to like that. Farming groups and large meat corporations are already aggressively pushing for labeling restrictions for both plant-based and cell-based meat, even though the latter has yet to make it to market. AMPS Innovation clearly understands to gain regulatory approval, they’ll have to fight not only skeptical regulatory bodies, but also traditional animal agriculture companies with boatloads of money and governmental support.

The timing is right for AMPS Innovation. As the list of companies making cell-based meat and seafood grows, their messaging is becoming more fragmented. They need a unified voice with which to answer questions and advocate for their cause — both now as they start gearing up to advocate for regulatory acceptance, and later as they try to win over consumers.

Future Food: Finally, Impossible is Headed to Retail

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Hey guys. We may not be having record-breaking heat levels in Seattle, but as we wade into the depths of summer it still seems harder and harder to do anything that’s not jumping in a lake.

One group that doesn’t have the luxury of summer chilling is Impossible Foods. Fresh off of a headline-grabbing four-month shortage, this week the plant-based meat company announced that it had partnered with one of the world’s largest food manufacturers, the OSI Group, in order to increase its production capacity.

Impossible is going to need all the help it can get. Just yesterday it officially announced that it will launch its plant-based meat in retail this September. That means the company has two months maximum before it needs to be prepared to supply not its growing list of restaurant partners — including fast-food behemoths like Burger King, which is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide on August 8 — but also grocery stores. Hopefully Impossible’s shortage really is donezo, because otherwise they could get some serious backlash when shoppers find an empty retail shelf where they were expecting some Impossible “meat.”

Wait, Impossible is going to retail?

Yes it is! We may now know that Impossible will hit grocery shelves in September, but there are still a lot of question marks.

What will its first product be?
A safe bet here would be burgers, as that’s the vast majority of what Impossible sells now to its restaurant partners and the first product that most people associate with its brand. However, since the launch of its new recipe 2.0 back in January, the company has been working to emphasize the versatility of its “bleeding” meatless meat.

Over the past year they have begun to branch out beyond burgers with some of their restaurant partners. At Qdoba, Impossible plant-based protein is turned into seasoned taco “beef,” and at Little Caesar’s, it’s a sausage-like topping for pizza (extra interesting, since that iteration skews more towards pork than beef). Just a few days ago it appeared on Wow Bao’s menu in the form of a spicy Mongolian bao bun.

Maybe instead of a pre-formed patty we’ll see something more ground meat-like, sort of like Beyond Beef? It seems less likely, but they could also to differentiate themselves and offer products that Beyond doesn’t already sell in retail, such as ground pork or breakfast sausage.

How much will it cost?
Obviously Impossible will need to price its product competitively with Beyond Meat. Because the two products are so similar — many people I talk to about them refer to them interchangeably — even a minimal price difference could push someone to put an Impossible product in their cart instead of Beyond.

What’s less clear is if Impossible will be able to hit that competitive price point. Unlike Beyond, its plant-based meat contains heme, which it makes from genetically engineered yeast. I’m not sure how expensive that process is, but it’s one step that Beyond doesn’t have to deal with. Then again, Impossible has been able to sell its products at a pretty competitive price through its fast-food partners (it’s only $1 more than the meat options at both Burger King and White Castle), so clearly they’re able to get their costs down at least relatively low.

Where will it launch?
We don’t yet know which retail partners Impossible will launch with, or how many stores.

But one thing that does seem clear is that Impossible has learned an important lesson from its recent product shortage. In the past, it has been burned by growing too big too quickly. The company is already hedging its bets with the nationwide Burger King launch, stating that Impossible Whoppers will only be available “while supplies last.” It’s likely that they’ll roll out slowly in grocery stores to avoid the embarrassment of another shortage, especially so soon after their last one.

Impossible heading into retail is a big deal not only for the company but for plant-based meat in general. Now consumers who want to try out meatless meat will have more than just one option in the grocery store.

Sure, there are other plant-based meat products sold on store shelves, but Beyond is unquestionably the leader in fake meat retail right now. It also has the first-mover advantage. All of which is to say that Impossible will have to keep hustling on marketing, production, and product innovation to make it stand out in the grocery aisle. Looks like the company won’t be able to chill for a long time.

(photo: Chris Albrecht).

It’s all a process

Speaking of Beyond Meat, the company’s post-IPO honeymoon might be coming to an end. Beyond’s share prices dropped significantly this week, and they’ve also been fielding some critiques regarding their heavy processing methods and long ingredient lists. Even Chipotle threw them some shade.

During their Q2 earnings call this week, Beyond’s CEO Ethan Brown directly addressed concerns by stating that their company’s production methods are admittedly complex, but no more so than those used by a cow to turn plants into muscle.

“When it comes to meat, it’s not a question of processed or not no matter which process they prefer,” he said, referring to making meat from plants and from animals.

That’s an interesting way to look at it. After all, the process of animals digesting plants and turn them into meat is definitely complex — far beyond the scope of my 11th-grade bio abilities. By comparison, extracting protein from peas and beans, adding vitamins and extruding them a machine seems, well, simple.

However, compare Beyond Meat to other veggie burgers — the kind many flexitarians now turn their nose up at — and the processing critiques hold a lot more water. A black bean burger may not be as “sexy” as a burger that turns plants into a pretty damn good simulacrum of meat. However, you also know exactly what’s going into it (mostly beans), and have a pretty good idea of how those ingredients were prepared and assembled (cooked, mashed, shaped, frozen). Both options are still made by machines, so in the end they’re both probably processed a similar amount.

But while people have a pretty good idea about how companies turn beans into burgers, most of us can’t say the same about Beyond, Impossible, and the like. Though I guess we could take Brown up on his offer and visit the Missouri production facility to find out.

Photo: Meatless Farm

Protein ’round the web

  • Fast-casual Asian restaurant Wow Bao is launching a meatless bao bun made with Impossible Foods “meat” on August 5th.
  • In Canada, fast-food chain Tim Horton’s is testing out JUST’s plant-based egg. Might there be Beyond/JUST breakfast sandwiches in our future?
  • U.K. company Meatless Farms, which makes plant-based burgers, sausages, and more, will launch in Whole Foods next week.

Eat well,
Catherine

Tastes Like Chicken: Planted Makes Clean Label Plant-based Poultry From 4 Ingredients

When you consider what goes into making plant-based meats, generally the thing that comes to mind is, well, plants. But take a closer look at the ingredient list of most meatless meats, and you’ll typically see a long list of other ingredients, including protein isolates, stabilizers, natural flavors, and other add-ins like dye and minerals.

That lengthy ingredient list is one of skeptics’ biggest beefs (sorry) with the new wave of meatless proteins. But one company trying to address those concerns is Swiss startup Planted, whose realistic meat analogs are completely clean label — no artificial ingredients or synthetic chemicals. They’re starting with chicken.

In a phone conversation this week, Planted co-founder Pascal Bieri told me his company’s products only contain four ingredients: pea protein, pea fiber, sunflower oil, and water. When Bieri first tasted plant-based meat two years ago, he liked it but was confused as to why the ingredient list was so long and confusing. So he and co-founders Lukas Böni and Eric Stirnemann, through a partnership with Swiss university ETH Zurich, began to develop a plant-based chicken analog with the absolute minimum of ingredients.

Planted’s first product is about as pared-down as it gets: a chicken chunk. They currently sell to 17 restaurants in Switzerland and next month will announce a partnership with a local foodservice provider to expand their distribution. The chicken chunks are currently priced below organic chicken, though Bieri pointed out that poultry is actually quite expensive in Switzerland.

No matter how simple the ingredient list, Bieri knew he’d never get people to buy his product if it didn’t taste excellent. With that in mind, Planted focuses less on flavor — the company keeps products intentionally neutral so they can be a blank canvas, sort of like real chicken — but on texture. To do so, Planted uses a special machine to extrude “chicken” pieces that realistically mimic the fibrous texture of real poultry.

Planted still does all its R&D and production at ETH Zurich, which, due to the university’s space limitations, strictly limits their capacity. The Swiss company is currently searching for a separate manufacturing facility around Zurich so they can scale up production and provide to more restaurants and retailers. He said they’ll probably focus on Europe for a while, especially since, as he put it, “Europeans are a little more skeptical when it comes to long ingredient lists.”

I haven’t tasted Bieri’s products yet and likely won’t be able to anytime soon, unless a very odd twist of fate sends me to Switzerland. But I can say that Planted’s choice to focus on chicken is a solid strategy. As we covered in yesterday’s Future Food newsletter (you subscribe, right?), the plant-based chicken space is far less crowded than, say, plant-based burgers or hot dogs.

Bieri is very conscious of the opportunity. “There’s so much room out there,” he said, referencing the alternative chicken market. Now he’s hoping Planted’s realistic texture and clean-label approach can help the company stake their claim before the plant-based chicken space is too pecked-over.

Future Food: Why Are Companies Chicken about Plant-Based Poultry?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Hi guys. Seeing as it’s summertime, the season for grilling, lately I’ve had some deep thoughts about (plant-based) burgers. Specifically, why they’re one of the only options in the meatless meat section of my grocery store.

Like the Little Mermaid, I want more. Chicken is the most popular meat in America, so why can’t I find a decent plant-based version of it?

Tastes like…
There’s clearly a demand for plant-based poultry. KFC in the U.K. recently tested out a plant-based chicken patty called the Imposter Burger that sold out in just four days.

But considering the popularity of chicken, innovation has been surprisingly slow when it comes to finding an alternative to the real thing. Perhaps that’s because poultry has a far smaller environmental cost than cattle, so companies have prioritized beef over chicken. Or maybe the texture of chicken is harder to emulate than that of ground beef.

Nonetheless, we are starting to see a few leaders hatch:

  • Poultry processing giant Tyson launched its Raised & Rooted line last month. One of its first two products was a vegetarian “chicken” nugget made of pea protein and egg whites.
  • Swiss startup Planted makes meat-free chicken from pea protein, pea fiber, water and sunflower oil.
  • Last week NUGGS launched its plant-based chicken nuggets, which it delivers in boxes right to consumers’ doorsteps.
  • Rebellyous, formerly called Seattle Food Tech, also makes vegan chicken nuggets. It sells them wholesale to large-scale foodservice providers like schools and hospitals.
  • In the U.K., THIS, whose chicken “chunks’ are pictured above, just launched its plant-based poultry in stores yesterday.
  • Meatless meat veteran Quorn, which is available in 18 countries, has a variety of vegetarian and vegan chicken products.
  • Freezer aisle staples Morningstar Farms and Gardein offer plant-based nuggets.

Photo: Beyond Meat

There’s the Beef

That’s not to say alterna-beef is going anywhere. In fact, it’s only going to get eerily closer to the real thing.

I found that out the hard way when I cooked up a package of Beyond Beef, the new, “meatier” ground beef product from Beyond Meat. I haven’t eaten meat in quite a while, but dang — this took me back. The flavor was full of umami and the texture really mimicked the juicy give and bounce of ground beef.

As a vegetarian, that verisimilitude grossed me out. But my colleague Chris Albrecht and my carnivorous roommate were both big fans, though my roommate noted it had a slightly “chemically” taste.

Despite the positive reviews, I think it’ll take a while before people flock to Beyond Beef like they did to the original burger. Right now it costs $9.99 for one pound. That’s roughly on-par with organic, grass-fed beef. Most people I know would rather spring for higher-quality beef — which has a smaller environmental footprint than industrial beef and, some actually argue, a critical role in the ecosystem.

In fact, with its new ground “beef,” Beyond Meat may be entering the Uncanny Valley, something we’ve referenced frequently for humanoid robots but not for meat alternatives. Beyond Beef is almost indistinguishable from beef. But it’s just different enough — slight discrepancies in flavor, aftertaste, and texture — that it could be off-putting.

All that said, I’ll reiterate that I’m a vegetarian and Beyond Beef was too much like the real thing for me to enjoy it. It’s still quite new so we’ll have to see if flexitarians have beef with Beyond’s new offering.

Where in the world is Impossible Foods?

With all this talk about what will be the next hot plant-based meat, it’s easy to overlook the where piece. This week Impossible Foods’ SVP for International made the location question pretty clear when he laid out the startup’s expansion strategy.

One word: Asia.

We’ve seen this coming for a while now. Asia is the new hotspot for alternative protein innovation, both plant- and cell-based. It’s got a ton of consumer demand, a relatively open playing field, and ample manufacturing power. Add to that mixture the recent outbreaks of African swine fever, and Asia seems primed for an alt-meat revolution.

There are also a few local plant-based protein companies gaining traction there, including Omnipork and Phuture Meat. But there are currently lots more U.S. and European players, and they have more funding. We’ll likely see quite a few of them trying to carve out a piece of the Asian alt-protein market before the competition gets too fierce.

Photo: Business Newswire.

Protein ’round the web

  • A new food hall is opening in Providence, RI. The draw? All the businesses inside are entirely plant-based (h/t Forbes).
  • Beyond Meat will be popping up in Blue Apron’s meal kits this summer. Will the plant-based darling’s fame help the struggling meal kit company? Probably not.
  • Integriculture, the Japanese cellular agriculture company, is launching a joint research project with food processing giant NH Foods Ltd. to develop large-scale production processes for cell-based meat.

If you happen to be in Tokyo in August, you can see the founder of Integriculture, Yuki Hanyu, speak on a panel at SKS Japan about the future of protein. Tickets here. 

Be careful what you wish for. Finally, remember how Arby’s made meat into vegetables as a cheeky response to the rise in plant-based meat? Apparently, they got a lot more than they bargained for.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Impossible? Beyond? Our Guide to Meatless Meat in Fast Food

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. The newsletter has exclusive additional content, so be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Quick service restaurants (QSRs) can read the tea leaves: consumers want more tasty, meatless options. The month after it put the Impossible Whopper on St. Louis store menus, Burger King reported an 18 percent increase in foot traffic. Del Taco’s introduction of the Beyond Meat tacos was one of the chain’s most successful product launches ever.

It’s a smart play for fast-food joints to embrace plant-based meat, allowing them to:

  • Attract new customers who might not otherwise opt to eat at the restaurant
  • Draw back lapsed customers who might have pivoted away from fast-food to embrace a more plant-based diet
  • Boost their brand and frame themselves as an innovator.

With all this action, it can be hard to keep track of which chains are serving which meat alternatives. Who’s got the Impossible patty? Which spots are hitching their horse to Beyond Meat? Which restaurants have yet to make a move, and is anybody rejecting meat alternatives altogether? (Cough, Arby’s, cough.)

It’s a lot to keep straight. Thankfully, we drew up a handy one-sheet outlining which QSR’s are lining up behind which meat alternatives. Check out the full piece for details, then go order a vegan combo meal.

Image: The Spoon.

Beefing up the portfolio

Big Food is going whole-hog on plant-based meat investment.

Tyson, the world’s second-largest meat processor, made headlines when they decided to invest in Beyond Meat. (It has since cut ties, but that’s a different story.) Major Canadian packaged meat company Maple Leaf Foods acquired vegan meat veterans Field Roast and Lightlife Foods and has plans to build the largest plant-based protein factory in North America. Late last year, Unilever snapped up Dutch startup the Vegetarian Butcher.

Photo: Before the Butcher.

This week that list got a little longer when the owners of Jensen Meat Company, a ground beef processor, acquired meatless meat startup Before the Butcher. It’s a textbook symbiotic relationship. Big Beef gets to diversify its portfolio and carve out a chunk of the white-hot alterna-meat market. Before the Butcher gains access to more capital and bigger production facilities, which can help the startup scale and differentiate itself in the crowded plant-based protein market.

Win, win. Expect to see quite a few more of these type of acquisitions coming around the curve. But also expect to see some consumer pushback against big meat companies coming in and sticking their noses (and pocketbooks) into the alterna-meat space.

Photo: Moving Mountains

Protein new ’round the web

Photo: Beyond Meat sausages and burgers.

In the spirit of research and summertime I grilled up a few Beyond Meat burger patties and sausage links last night. Look out for a meatless meat grilling guide coming at you soon.

Eat well,
Catherine

Plant-Based Meat Startup Before the Butcher Acquired by Big Beef

Big Meat just can’t keep its hands off smaller alternative meat companies.

Plant-based meat startup Before the Butcher announced yesterday that it has been acquired by private investors Jeff and Gregg Hamann, who also own the ground beef-centric Jensen Meat Company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Entrepreneur reports that the California-based company will gain access to a $25 million line of credit, a 90,000 square foot production space, and warehousing facilities.

Founded two years ago, Before the Butcher makes 12 products, including plant-based burgers, chorizo, and breakfast sausage patties. They’re currently served at over 1,000 restaurants in the U.S. The company is also gearing up for a retail launch, heading to over 3,000 locations by the end of August.

Before the Butcher’s founder Danny O’Malley told Entrepreneur that the acquisition will give them “both the financial resources and the production capacity to support our strong growth forecasts,” and will turn the company “from a startup to a major player in the space.”

We’ll see. The plant-based meat space is becoming quite crowded, and will only get more so after Impossible heads into retail later this year. However, Before the Butcher does set itself apart with its extensive product line (most companies only make a handful of “meats”). And now that they have some bigger (plant-based) muscle behind them, the company’s can invest more in marketing and other strategies to suck in more customers.

On the Hamann’s end, the Before the Butcher acquisition can help them diversify their portfolio and cash in on the white-hot plant-based meat trend. They’re not the only ones doing these types of deals. Lately quite a few major meat corporations have been investing in — or all-out acquiring — alternative protein startups. Tyson Foods was an early investor in Beyond Meat before the poultry giant cut ties to pursue their own line of plant-based protein; Canada’s Maple Leaf Foods acquired Field Roast and Lightlife; and Unilever bought the Vegetarian Butcher.

The plant-based protein space projected to be worth $140 billion over the next decade and capture around 10 percent of the global meat market. With those numbers, it’s no wonder that more traditional meat companies are starting to take note — and take action.

If Plant-Based Meat Tastes This Good, Do We Even Need to Make Meat in a Lab?

There’s never been a better time to be a vegetarian. Or a flexitarian, for that matter.

Gone are the days when the only veggie option at a barbecue was a dry disc of a bean burger. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have harnessed food science and culinary technology to essentially reverse engineer meat; taking the textures and flavors we crave and figuring out how to make them out of plants (and some genetically engineered yeast), skipping the animal entirely.

So far, they’ve done a pretty good job. When we tried Impossible’s new Recipe 2.0 at CES this January — where it won the Best of the Best award — we were blown away by how closely it replicated beef. It was almost uncanny. In the months leading up to its wildly successful IPO Beyond Meat also unveiled a tasty new recipe which has been roping in flexitarians at Carl’s Jr. and Del Taco.

We’re not the only ones impressed by these companies’ meat-like vegan offerings. Consumers have been flocking to plant-based meat as of late. Spurred by increased demand, meat alternatives have become more widely accessible (geographically and price-wise) as it heads onto menus of nationwide fast-food chains like Burger King.

Plant-based meat may be doing a good job at imitating the real thing, but some companies are trying to actually make the real thing by growing animal cells in a lab.

No cell-based meat product has hit the market yet, though companies are already doing taste tests of everything from cell-based sausages to shrimp. Food tech company JUST is claiming it’ll make the first public sale of cell-based meat by the end of this year, but most other companies are estimating 2020/2021 as the launch date.

It sounds great on the surface: real meat, minus the environmental and ethical costs! But cultured meat is actually quite polarizing. First of all, it’s expensive — as of now, it costs around $50 to make a single burger. There are also questions around whether or not it’s actually better for the environment than traditional animal agriculture, especially considering many companies rely on controversial (and non-vegan) fetal bovine serum. And the FDA and USDA haven’t exactly nailed down how they’re going to regulate this new foodstuff.

Lately I’ve been wondering: If plant-based meat tastes so good people can’t even tell it’s vegan, do we even need cell-based meat? After all — it’s expensive, polarizing, and it’s unclear when (or where) we’ll be able to taste it. So why bother?

JUST’s nuggets made with cell-based chicken meat.

I actually think there are a couple reasons that cell-based meat is still a relevant endeavor. First: taste. Sure, companies may make pretty good imitations of chicken nuggets or beef burgers out of plant proteins. But it’ll be a much bigger lift to make a vegan version of a white meat chicken breast, a T-bone steak, or fatty bacon that will fool the average carnivore.

There, cell-based meat has more of a chance. As of now it certainly has textural and taste hurdles of its own. However, at least it’s working with the same raw material that goes into an animal product (muscle cells, fat cells, etc). I’m optimistic that scientists will eventually crack the code — finding an affordable animal-free media, figuring out the right scaffolding to create texture — and be able to make cell-based meats that are pretty darn indistinguishable from the real thing.

The second reason that cell-based might have the upper hand over plant-based meat is psychological. Some people are just very stubborn carnivores (hi there, my entire Southern family!). Even if they couldn’t tell the difference between a plant-based and a cell-based burger in a blind taste test, I’m guessing that, given the choice, the majority of them would go for the latter — because at least it’s real meat.

In fact, a recent consumer study from Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems found that 24 percent of consumers were not at all likely to purchase cultured meat, while 26 percent said the same for plant-based meat. Going forward, cell-based meat companies will have to figure out effective branding strategies to win over those that are hesitant and convince them that meat grown in a lab is the same — if not better — than what comes from a pasture.

In the end, it’s not an either-or. Our protein future will likely feature both plant-based and cell-based meat. Heck, there might even be some insects thrown in there. Consumers will choose different options based off of dietary preferences, budgets, marketing, etc.

So while plant-based meat does indeed rule for now, the alternative protein landscape will likely change in the next decade or so when cultured meat enters the scene. Until then, dig into your Impossible Whopper and let its (lab-made) blood run down your chin with abandon.

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