Plant-based meat and alternatives: the marketing push continues

I dealt with cell-based alternatives to animal foods yesterday; those are not on the market yet and are unlikely to be on the market soon at any reasonable scale.  In the meantime, we have lots of plant-based products to deal with.  These too require critical discussion.

• It’s official: plant-based diets make us gassier… so what’s worse for the planet – cow or human farts?  We all know plant-based foods increase our wind. But with the take up of this kind of diet seen as one of the best ways for individuals to combat climate change, could these gasses potentially bode badly for the atmosphere?… Read more

Pea protein is a basic ingredient of plant-based meat alternatives.  Take a look at what’s happening to pea prices.

While sorting all this out, the quest for profitable products is relentless.

• • Impossible Chicken Nuggets launch in restaurants: The plant-based powerhouse’s latest offering is on a handful of menus now and will be at more than 10,000 grocery stores by the end of the year, the company says.
  • Plant protein that behaves like animal protein? Lemna-fueled Plantible Foods raises $21.5m, gears up for 2022 launch:  Plantible Foods – a startup producing protein from lemna, a fast-growing aquatic plant that can be harvested all year round, has raised $21.5m in a series A round* led by Astanor Ventures, as it gears up for a commercial launch in 2022…. Read more
  • Quorn USA president: ‘We want to be the kings of [meat-free] chicken’:  While investors and journalists are pretty excited about a new wave of startups growing food in fermentation tanks, it’s easy to forget that we’ve been eating a filamentous fungus grown in big metal vats (a.k.a. ‘mycoprotein’) since the 1980s, says the US president of Quorn, who says we’re going to be hearing a lot more from the original ‘alt protein’ brand later this year…. Read more
  • Meatless Farm, Equinom tie-up on high-protein yellow pea: ‘Food companies have merely scratched the surface when it comes to yellow peas’:  Israeli seed developer Equinom and plant-based business Meatless Farm have announced a tie up to leverage Equinom’s high-protein yellow pea varieties…. Read more  
  • Hershey tests plant-based chocolate bar:  The Pennsylvania snack maker and confectioner is selling Oat Made bars in select markets as it continues its push into better-for-you products.
  • Fermenting yeast into ‘cream’: Start-up ads richness and texture to plant-based dairyCultivated Biosciences is addressing textural challenges in plant-based dairy with a fat ingredient developed from oleaginous yeast. Co-founder and CEO Tomas Turner explains how…. Read more