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plant-based dairy

October 13, 2021

I Tried THIS PKN Pecan Milk, the Latest Plant-Based Milk in the Alt. Dairy Space

With 41 percent of all households purchasing non-dairy milk, a carton of almond milk is no longer a fringe product but a mainstream staple. So it’s no surprise that the alternative milk category is now the largest in the plant-based space. One of the most recent companies to join this space is Texas-based Lifestock. 

Lifestock launched its first two products at the beginning of October: shelf-stable Original and Chocolate pecan milk called THIS PKN. Laura Shenkar, the founder of the company, worked in Central Texas to preserve freshwater ecosystems. She worked closely with local farmers that tended pecan orchards, a crop indigenous to the U.S. and Texas. After seeing how pecan trees can tolerate drought and grow with regenerative farming practices, Shenkar realized that the buttery pecan would be a great ingredient to use to develop sustainable plant-based milk.

The company recently reached out to me and offered to send me samples of its products. I am a daily oat-milk drinker and am hesitant to try new alternative milks due to some sub-par products I have tasted. However, having never tried pecan milk before, I happily obliged. 

The Original pecan milk on the left, the Chocolate pecan milk on the right

When trying new non-dairy milks, I first pour a cold glass of it and drink it straight up (full disclosure: I sometimes just take a quick chug straight out of the carton). I sipped on the Original pecan milk first and immediately noticed the pecan flavor. With some nut milks, like almond milk, in my opinion, you don’t really get the flavor of the nut, but just a generic nutty flavor. The milk also had a “buttery” flavor and creamy texture as the company promised. 

The Chocolate pecan milk tasted lightly sweetened, and it was enjoyable to sip cold. And while the chocolate flavor overpowered the pecan taste, it was nonetheless tasty. Both milks contain zero grams of added sugar, instead relying on monk fruit extract and stevia to add sweetness.

The next test was heating and attempting to froth the milk. While Lifestock did not state whether their pecan milks are capable of frothing, I figured I would try it anyway. I used my hand frother as I heated the milk up on the stove. Unfortunately, the milk remained relatively flat and I did not get the level of froth that oat and soy milk can provide. Despite this, it still tasted delicious in my coffee.

The possible downside for some people is that THIS PKN milk does not taste like dairy milk at all. As someone who hasn’t had milk in eight years, this did not bother me in the slightest. Someone looking to transition from dairy milk to alternative milk might be bothered by this. But in the company’s defense, Livestock makes no claims of trying to be a direct replacement for dairy milk (unlike NotCo and others).  

At this point, we’ve seen alternative milk made from every possible ingredient, including oats, barley, kabocha squash, walnuts, and hemp and other ingredients. However, the only other company we are aware of producing pecan milk is Malk Organics. Still, while alt-milk consumers often experiment with different types, many have standardized on their favorite oat, almond or soy brand, meaning THIS PKN will face competition from big players like Oatly, NotCo, Ripple, and So Delicious.

If you’d like to try out THIS PKN for yourself, it is currently available for purchase on the company’s website. Both the Original and Chocolate flavors cost $5.99 for 32 fluid ounces.

July 22, 2021

Plant-Based Cheese Company Nobell Foods Raises $75M

Plant-based cheesemaker Nobell Foods announced a $75 million Series B fundraise and launched out of stealth mode this week.

The round was led by investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures and included participation from new investors Hillhouse Capital Group and Footprint Coalition. Existing investors AgFunder, Andreesen Horowitz, Mission Bay Capital, Fifty Years, New Crop Capital, Germin8 Ventures, former Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, and Pear VC also took part. Nobell has now raised $100 million in total, according to Fast Company, which was first to report the news.

Nobell will use the new funds to commercialize its first plant-based cheese products, including mozzarella, which the company makes from soybeans that are genetically edited to produce casein. Casein, a protein unique to milk, is a major contributor to the texture, taste, and melt-a-bility of cheese. It’s also an element most plant-based cheeses out there lack, which is why so many fall short of the mark when it comes to adequately mimicking the real thing. 

Nobell effectively trains soybeans to produce this casein. The company has been quietly developing this method for the last four years, and says it could wind up being cheaper than the costs of producing cheese using cow’s milk. 

Cheese comes with a heavy environmental footprint. As demand for dairy has increased, so too has the percentage of global emissions the sector produces. Cheese, in particular, is highly resource intensive. 

There are many, many plant-based cheese options out there. Most of them can’t replicate the taste, texture, and mouthfeel of dairy-based cheese yet, largely because they don’t contain the aforementioned casein.

However, Nobell isn’t quite the only company out there producing the protein from alternative sources, though it’s the only one using plants for the process. A company called New Culture uses genetically modified microbes like yeast to produce casein, training these microbes to make the protein. Alt-dairy company Perfect Day also uses genetically modified microbes. 

In a statement on the Nobell website, founder Magi Richani says that cheese is “the last frontier, the insurmountable thing” most consumers won’t get up. With Nobell, she aims to ensure these consumers don’t have to give it up and can still enjoy, stretchy, melty, tasty cheese without further compromising the health of the planet.  

October 20, 2020

Impossible Is Prototyping a Plant-Based Milk Product

At a press conference today, Impossible Foods revealed a prototype for a plant-based milk alternative as part of its ambitious plans to eliminate animal protein from the food supply chain. The product will be called Impossible Milk and will look and function just like cow’s milk. 

To illustrate the differences, Impossible showed its prototype off alongside other alternative milks at the press conference, even mixing it with a cup of coffee to demonstrate how it does not curdle as other plant-based milks do.

Though the milk won’t be available to customers at any point in the near future, It is part of Impossible’s plan to diversify its products to include a range of plant-based alternative proteins. The company is also working on alternatives to chicken and steak, and CEO Pat Brown told MIT Technology Review that Impossible is on a mission to “completely replace the world’s most destructive technology by far, which is the use of animals, by 2035.”

“We will succeed or fail based on whether we build a complete technology platform that creates all the foods we get today from animals,” he added.

To help realize that lofty goal, Impossible also said at the press conference that it intends to double the size of its R&D team over the next year and launched the “Impossible Investigator” project to entice scientists to join the team.

Today’s news follows Impossible’s just-announced expansion onto retail store shelves in Hong Kong and Singapore. And overall, 2020 has been a busy year for the company. It raised another $200 million in August, expanded distribution of its products to Walmart, Trader Joe’s, and other food retailers, and launched a direct-to-consumer e-commerce store. 

The company’s ambitions to branch out from faux beef into dairy, fish, poultry, and other areas of alt protein comes as the entire sector is seeing enormous growth and investment. Impossible’s chief rival Beyond hasn’t exactly rested on its laurels this year, either, having also expanded its product line, launched its own D2C store, and launched products at retail stores in China.

One area we won’t see Impossible branch into, at least for now: cell-based meat. Pat Brown didn’t waffle about at SKS last week when he said the idea of commercially produced meat from a lab was never going to happen. Of course, the company could always change its stance. For now, though, expect Impossible ton continue its focus on plant-based proteins for the foreseeable future.

March 27, 2018

Coconut Collaborative Bets on Taste to Woo U.S. Plant-Based Dairy Market

If you told me to give up dairy tomorrow, there’d be claw marks on the milk carton when you pried it from my fingers.

If, on the other hand, you told me there was a plant-based dairy alternative that tasted more “dairy” and less “alternative,” I’d be on board in a second.

That’s tough to find, though, which may be one reason The Coconut Collaborative is gaining a steady following worldwide.

Founded in 2014 and based in London, the company makes dairy-free coconut yogurts and desserts. The idea behind The Coconut Collaborative’s mission that a plant-based dairy alternative shouldn’t have to taste bland in order to be healthy. Or to put it the way the company’s tagline does, The Coconut Collaborative’s products are “free from dairy but not from temptation.”

Clearly, identical twins Edward and James Averdieck (the latter of UK dessert business Gü), the masterminds behind the brand, aren’t alone in that thought. Their operation has expanded rapidly since 2014, first in its native Britain then across European markets including France and Germany. And just recently the products arrived stateside, where they’re available in the the New York Metro area, New Jersey, parts of Virginia, and a few other states.

“We love dairy yogurts and that’s what we benchmark against,” Edward Averdieck recently said. “With coconut you can make a plant-based yogurt taste as good or better than a dairy equivalent. We absolutely see this category just exploding if you can make the products taste good.”

It’s an approach that’s slightly different from a lot of dairy alternatives on the market, whose labels use rhetoric like “vegan” or “dairy-free” but don’t put a lot of emphasis on taste. The Averdieck brothers, on the other hand, have been very vocal about their desire to deliver on taste as much as on health benefits. 

That’s a significant point in markets like the U.S., where coconut-based dairy alternative have come under heat in the past for their high amount of saturated fat, low levels of protein, and, in many cases, added sugars.

Coconut Collaborative says its products have about half the sugar of big-brand alternatives: roughly 5 to 7 grams instead of 12 to 24. (Admittedly, though, the products are still pretty high in saturated fat and low in protein, according to the ingredient labels).

The company also makes it a point to give back through its work planting coconut trees with the Pur Project in Southeast Asia. They give seedlings to farmers in the Philippines and North Bali. Farmers plant them, and, once the trees are grown, sell the produce at markets or use it to feed their families and livestock.

But does all that give the company a viable shot in the U.S. market? I went around the block earlier today and bought some of Coconut Collective’s Mango & Passonfruit cups and was pleasantly surprised to find it actually tasted quite a bit like real yogurt. And with flavor beating out both health benefits and ingredient sources in a recent survey on why consumers choose plant-based dairy, it’s looking more and more like the Averdieck brothers’ betting on taste could win the company a serious following here very soon.

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