The Danish Foundation for Plant-Based Foods has announced the first 36 projects receiving investment as part of its $180M Plant Fund. It comes two months after it became the first country to introduce a national action plan to transition towards a plant-based food system.
First announced in 2021, Denmark’s Plantefonden (Plant Fund) is part of a 2021-announced climate agreement plan, which earmarked $180M to advance the plant-based sector as a “central element in the green transition”. About $97M of this was set aside for the fund, with the rest going as bonuses to farmers growing plant protein crops for human consumption.
Now, it has announced the 36 recipients that will be part of the first round of the financing, amounting to $8.4M. These projects span multiple realms, from developing new plant proteins and training kitchen staff to national information campaigns – and they were selected from 101 applications from startups, universities and others, requesting more than thrice the allocated budget.
“This is world history,” remarked the foundation’s president Marie-Louise Boisen Lendal. “Denmark is a pioneering country and has created the Plant Fund in a broad agreement at Christiansborg, which has now made the first commitments. We have previously called Plantefonden’s milestones important – but this one is probably the most important. It is in the commitments that we really move forward with the plant-based agenda.”
How the first round of Plantefonden stacks up
Marie-Louise Boisen Lendal, president of the Danish Foundation for Plant-Based Foods | Courtesy: Frej
Of the 36 projects, 33 will start work in January next year. The Plant Fund operates on three governing strategic development areas: stimulating demand, stimulating supply, and building sector bridges. In the call for this year’s applications, it was stressed that the focus would be on the former, which is why 31 of the projects address this as the primary development area, with 78% of the round’s funding going to these projects. The remaining 22% of the pool focuses on stimulating supplies.
Nearly half (46%) of the funding supports a rise in “the proportion of plant-based food in public and private commercial kitchens and foodservice”, while 30% is earmarked for increasing citizens’ private consumption of vegan food. A further 17% is dedicated to enhancing the quality and quantity of products entering the market, as well as growing the demand for locally produced food on the export market. The final 5% is to ramp up both land- and marine-based plant protein production.
“In this round, we have prioritised commitments to the smaller projects with the goal in mind that the Plantefonden’s funds have as broad an impact in society as possible,” said Boisen Lendal. “I hope that when we look back on this moment in 10 years, we look back on something that was not just the starting point for a broad national success, but also the moment that set off a global trend.”
The largest part of the funding ($629,000) went to research and awareness project FIGO, a partnership between the Danish Vegetarian Foundation, the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, Tempty Foods Food Solutions A/S, and Professionshøjskolen Absalon. Normplant (a plant-based catering solutions provider) and Make It Easy (a legume promotion campaign) followed with $548,000 and $519,000, respectively.
Calls for increased plant-based funding in Denmark
Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, secretary general of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark | Courtesy: Vegetarian Society of Denmark
The announcement comes two months after Denmark became the world’s first country to announce a national plan to shift to a plant-based food system, which was part of a 2021 climate agricultural plan that aimed to cut food emissions.
The plan laid out by Denmark’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries involved training chefs in both public and private kitchens on the preparation of vegan meals, a higher focus on plant-based diets in schools and the education system, expanding the exports of locally produced vegan food through embassies, and increased investment more in R&D for this sector.
This is key, given that the sector remains “severely underfunded”, according to the Vegetarian Society of Denmark. Experts from several of the country’s universities have pointed out that funding must increase by at least sixfold, reaching $55M annually. And while retail sales of plant-based food in Denmark increased by 10% from 2021 to 2022, reaching €105.1M, it’s still amongst the smallest markets in Europe, accounting for less than 2% of the continent’s total.
“Both we and many other dedicated forces in the plant-based sector are determined to make the mission succeed, but it also requires further investments throughout the value chain,” said Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl, secretary general of the Vegetarian Society of Denmark. “And here, the money does not match the ambitions.”
He added that the national action plan lacked concrete objectives: “There are a lot of great visions in the action plan, but it is unclear which goals will be achieved and how they will be achieved. If Denmark’s constructive path is to be a credible alternative to, for example, the Dutch approach – which led to large demonstrations in the country – the visions need concrete figures.”
But he acknowledged that being the first country to introduce such a plan was “internationally groundbreaking”. Shortly after, South Korea was second on that list, unveiling its own dedicated plan to bolster plant-based food production and promoting alt-protein consumption.
Silicon Valley startup The EVERY Company debuted its hen-free egg made from precision fermentation at famed New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park, which went mostly plant-based in 2021, as the centrepiece of an exclusive one-off dinner last week.
How would you like it if you paid $365 for a plant-based tasting menu and got served a plethora of dishes starring eggs?
Well, that’s along the lines of what Eleven Madison Park trialled last Friday, hosting an exclusive dinner featuring an omelette, a creme brûlée and cocktails using eggs. But these aren’t eggs derived from hens – the three-Michelin-starred eatery spotlit The EVERY Co’s liquid egg made by precision fermentation, marking the first time the restaurant has created an event menu centred around another company’s product.
The special dinner – served to a group of leading culinary innovators, chefs and creators – also marked the debut of the EVERY Egg in the foodservice world, a landmark moment for the nine-year-old precision fermentation startup.
“Eggs are a universal staple in every kitchen,” noted Daniel Humm, chef-owner of Eleven Madison Park. “When we prepared an omelette using EVERY Egg, the taste and versatility was all but indistinguishable from hen eggs. We are excited about the potential of EVERY Egg to transform the food landscape.”
How EVERY makes its chicken-free egg
Courtesy: The EVERY Company
EVERY’s entry into foodservice makes it one of the only precision fermentation brands to do so – fellow Californian producers Perfect Day and New Culture have previously featured their animal-free milk and mozzarella at Starbucks and Pizzeria Mozza, respectively. In fact, it’s among just a handful of startups that have regulatory approval for the sale of precision-fermented foods in the US, and the sole egg maker.
Every’s nature-identical egg is made by incorporating the DNA sequences found in conventional egg proteins into a yeast strain called Komagataella phaffii, which is then fermented on a sugar-based feedstock and converted into protein. This is then boosted with additional plant-based ingredients for flavour and texture, resulting in a 1:1 replacement for hen eggs. “We’ve worked tirelessly to create a product that meets the absolute highest standards of the world’s top chefs,” said EVERY general manager Lance Lively. “We looked at every feature and functionality of our egg and worked to perfect it.”
Being an animal-free product, the Every Egg has zero cholesterol. Plus, it has no saturated fat and boasts 8g of protein per egg (a chicken egg contains between 5-8g). The startup says its innovations allow manufacturers to sidestep disease risks, price fluctuations, ethical issues, and the environmental footprint of conventional animal proteins.
According to a life-cycle analysis summary by EVERY’s scale-up partner BioBrew, which compared the impact of a fermentation-derived egg protein with an aggregation of conventional poultry eggs, the former emits three times fewer GHG emissions, 67 times less water, and 12 times less land than the latter.
The company has released an EggWhite product too, a “hyperfunctional protein” that has previously been used by brands to make smoothies, macarons and canned cocktails. It has also collaborated with ingredients giant Ingredion and drinks conglomerate AB InBev in the past. And in October, it teamed up with Colombian FMCG giant Grupo Nutresa for the use of its EggWhite as a binding agent in meat alternatives under the Zenú and Pietran brands.
The upscale Manhattan eatery re-emerged from the pandemic and the brink of bakruptcy as a mostly vegan restaurant in 2021 – its coffee and tea service still offered conventional milk and honey, but everything else on the menu was plant-based. “We have always operated with sensitivity to the impact we have on our surroundings, but it was becoming ever clearer that the current food system is simply not sustainable, in so many ways,” wrote Humm.
Last month, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, he described how “eating meat at some point is going to feel like smoking cigarettes”. And speaking to Wallpaper magazine ahead of the launch of his new book, Eat More Plants, he stressed that people need to eat more plant-based foods.
“I’m not saying that everyone, every day needs to eat plant-based, but we need to reduce [meat consumption]. We’re just running out of resources,” he suggested. “It’s scary to me that the people defining tastes and flavours, the chefs, are completely ignoring what is happening and are continuing to put their efforts behind meat products.”
Lower costs, more restaurants
Courtesy: The EVERY Company
“We’re honoured to introduce EVERY Egg to the world in spectacular fashion at Eleven Madison Park,” said Lively, adding that the bespoke menu showcased the “quality and culinary versatility” of EVERY Egg in each course. “Each dish is a consummate work of art.”
Appearing at a high-end eatery is a highly positive move for the precision fermentation industry as a whole – but it will inevitably raise questions about costs too. Such novel protein technologies can be pricey, and scaling them up to bring these costs down is paramount to their success. “Each day that passes, we are marching down the cost curve,” EVERY’s Elizondo told Green Queen last month.
“Considering the low cost of inputs for precision fermentation and our demonstrated progress in manufacturing scale-up – we are actively producing at manufacturing-scale fermentation runs of over 100,000 litres – this backdrop sets a clear path to positive unit economics at scale for EVERY.”
EVERY’s foodservice debut signposts a big year ahead for the precision fermentation company. Having raised over $233M in overall funding (with investors including Anne Hathaway), the startup – which has two ‘no questions” letters from the FDA and one under GRAS review – says its egg products are available for sampling to foodservice operators, and will be available at restaurants in 2024.
“For nine years, my dream has been to build a food system humanity can be proud of,” noted Elizondo. “When I met Chef Humm, I knew I had met someone with that same dream, and I am thrilled to join forces to make our shared vision a reality.”
Welcome to Days 9 of #COP28. In Green Queen’s COP28 Daily Digest, our editorial team curates the must-reads, the must-bookmarks and the must-knows from around the interwebs to help you ‘skim the overwhelm’.
BIG MEAT AND DAIRY SHOW UP IN RECORD NUMBERS: At a food-focused COP, you just knew there’ll be Big Ag hoping to influence proceedings. The food and agriculture industry has sent thrice as many delegates as last year’s summit, with meat and dairy represented by 120 and the number of agribusiness lobbyists doubling from COP27 to 340.
DUBAI ANNOUNCES PLAN TO CUT EMISSIONS IN HALF BY 2030: COP28 host Dubai has revealed that it plans to slash its carbon emissions by 50% by the end of the decade, which will help accelerate its clean energy transition plans and 2050 net-zero goal.
THOUSANDS TO JOIN CLIMATE JUSTICE PROTESTS IN 53 COUNTRIES: Today is the Global Day of Action for Climate Justice, which will be marked by demonstrations across the world – in 300 cities and 53 counties – to demand climate justice from all governments, but especially the wealthiest nations in the Global North.
INITIATIVE TO INCREASE YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN CLIMATE LAUNCHED: An International Youth Climate Program has been announced to increase youth participation in COP. Plus, the Youth Climate Champion, which amplifies the voices of under-35s with an emphasis on those from vulnerable communities, Indigenous populations or those with disabilities, was also introduced.
INDIGENOUS SCHEME TO INCREASE DIRECT ACCESS TO FINANCE: COP28 saw the launch of the Podong Indigenous Peoples Initiative, co-designed and -led by the IUCN, its Indigenous Peoples Organisations, and the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity. This aims to mobilise $200M in funding and improve direct access to climate finance for Indigenous communities around the world, who make up 6% of the global population.
60 COUNTRIES ENDORSE GENDER-RESPONSIVE CLIMATE PARTNERSHIP: Since 80% of the people displaced by the climate crisis are women, 60 countries have endorsed a Gender-Responsive Just Transitions & Climate Action Partnership, which seeks to enhance gender and climate data and ensure that it’s used in decision-making by leaders.
Key #COP28 Reports
The food and climate reports you need to know about today.
NYT, Reuters, Bloomberg top fossil fuel enablers in media: An investigation by DeSmog and Drilled has revealed that the in-house ad agencies of leading trusted media houses – the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Economist, the Financial Times and the Washington Post – have been producing and promoting content for fossil fuel companies. (News website Semafor has also been criticised previously for taking money from Chevron.)
Meat climate neutrality claims too good to be true: The push for GWP* is under the spotlight and has received criticism for being a tool the meat industry can use to greenwash consumers, and a new report delves deeper to tackle the question: are climate neutrality claims in the livestock sector too good to be true? The answer is yes.
Developing a farmer-centric, outcomes-based framework: Regen10 has published the first draft of its outcomes-based framework for a regenerative food system, representing a holistic and inclusive approach to measuring progress towards regenerative food systems, while improving farmers’ livelihoods, benefitting the climate, and reducing emissions.
Analysing the untapped potential of public climate flows: New analysis into public climate finance flows – titled ‘Untapped Potential’ and representing over 35 million family farmers across Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific – reveals that only a tiny amount of money spent on these farmers and sustainable agriculture.
Studies that show eating meat is bad for the climate: This is a subject covered by studies time and again – so it’s awesome to have a resource where you can view some of the biggest studies showing the impact of meat and dairy on the planet. Sentient Media has curated a great list for this very purpose.
Common principles to promote eco-positive finance: The European Investment Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) have published common principles to identify, track and increase climate-friendly finance by by mainstreaming nature in MDB operations and finances systematically.
Awesome Resources From Media Friends
A curation of our favourite reads of the day – excellent guides, explainers and op-eds from around the web.
Has the media just given up?: Writing for The Lever, Adam H Johnson questions whether news outlets have just stopped pretending to even care about the climate crisis, with a focus on how Donald Trump’s climate denial is being downplayed or straight-up ignored.
Who needs COP?: Do we need COP to solve climate change, or does tech have us covered? Head to the Financial Times for a neo-liberal capitalist view on tackling the crisis.
True presidential colours: Climate accountability news outlet Drilled has published a story exploring the true colours of COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, the oil boss who’s faced heavy criticism ever since he was announced as summit head, and things have only gotten worse since.
Why do COPs suck?: Environmental journalist George Monbiot appeared on the BBC’s Question Time programme and laid into the UN’s annual climate summits, explaining how 25 of them have been “total failures” and two “partial successes”. Strap in for a riveting two minutes and 11 seconds.
A farce rigged to fail: In fact, Monbiot’s BBC cameo came a day before he laid into COP28 with some choice words, while offering other ways we can try and save the planet.
Lighter Green Fun
Funny stuff, weird stuff, random stuff related to COP you may enjoy.
Using AI to track the summit: The use of AI is expanding at COP28. Due to the sheer volume of content and information, experts have curated an AI-led COP Tracker to search through published documents, access original publications and generate bespoke summaries.
Free doughnuts!: In support of the Plant Based Treaty’s vegan doughnut economics, PETA gave away free plant-based doughnuts to the Manhattan public on Friday to spread the message.
Follow all our #COP28 coverage. Like what you’re reading? Share it!
Welcome to Day 8 of #COP28. In Green Queen’s COP28 Daily Digest, our editorial team curates the must-reads, the must-bookmarks and the must-knows from around the interwebs to help you ‘skim the overwhelm’.
FOSSIL FUEL TALKS SET TO INTENSIFY: Following a day of much-needed rest, negotiations on greenhouse-gas-cutting measures are set to reach a new level of intensity as counties debate whether or not to phase out fossil fuels, with ministers holding a series of talks to break an impasse and come up with a roadmap to 1.5°C.
EX-UN CLIMATE CHIEF CALLS FOR FOSSIL FUEL PHASEOUT: Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief during the 2015 Paris Agreement, has backed a complete fossil fuel phaseout. “If we want a step forward in this Cop, then we cannot compromise on phase out. It sends a political signal that has ramifications for companies that need to decide where they’re going to put their [investment],” she said.
CANADA MANDATES FOSSIL FUEL FIRMS TO CUT EMISSIONS BY 35% BY 2030: Justin Trudeau’s government has announced that fossil fuel companies will be required to cut their emisions by 35-38% by 2030 (from a 2019 baseline). The policy is part of Canada’s 2050 net-zero plan and sets a limit on emissions – companies that don’t meet this target trade emissions allowances with other firms.
PUTIN NEGOTIATES OIL DEALS IN ABU DHABI AS COP28 CONTINUES IN DUBAI: Russian president Vladimir Putin is adding fossil fuel to the fire at the UN climate summit, landing discreetly in the capital city of Abu Dhabi – about 150km away from Dubai – to negotiate oil export deals with the UAE, in a two-part trip that will take him to Saudi Arabia next. The timing is… curious.
US URGED TO ABANDON SUPPORT FOR LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS: Over 250 global organisations have published a letter calling on the US to stop permitting new facilities dedicated to liquefied natural gas, which is set to grow exponentially in the coming years, as well as withdraw financial and diplomatic support for the same. The US is the world’s largest exporter of the gas, and its numbers are set to double by 2027.
ALT-MEAT COMPANY TAKES TO LONDON STREETS FOR ‘NO MORE HOT AIR’ CAMPAIGN: British plant-based meat producer Meatless Farm has initiated a new ‘No More Hot Air’ campaign to urge leaders to “make COP matter”, highlighting how addressing the food system is just as important as stopping fossil fuels. It recommends governments to support farmer transition away from meat and shift subsides to plant-based food.
AUSTRALIA COMMITS AU$150M IN CLIMATE FINANCE: Australia has committed AU$150M ($100M) in climate finance – mainly for Pacific countries. But none of this will go to the new loss and damage fund. Instead, AU$100M will go to the Pacific Resilience Facility, a trust fund investing in small-scale climate and disaster resilience projects, and AU$50M is set aside for the Green Climate Fund.
AZERBAIJAN POISED TO BE COP29 HOST: There has been uncertainty over the host of next year’s climate conference, which rules state needs to be held in eastern Europe. Now, Azerbaijan appears to be the frontrunner, after striking a deal with Armenia to ensure the latter won’t veto the bid.
CALLS FOR PRIVATE SECTOR TRANSPARENCY AT FUTURE COPS: This year’s climate summit has welcomed an unprecedented number of private sector players, but have all of them disclosed their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions? Industry leaders are being called upon to sign a pledge of transparency for emissions measurement and reporting at COP29, and target disclosures at COP30.
100 GLOBAL NATIVE GROUPS CALL FOR CLEAN ENERGY RIGHTS PROTECTION: In an open letter, 100 Native groups and allies have urged COP28 negotiators to protect Indigenous rights during the clean energy transition, including their right to engage in decision-making processes, access to full information, say “yes” or “no” to projects, and have the ability to withdraw consent at any stage if circumstances change.
Key #COP28 Reports
The food and climate reports you need to know about today.
The huge impact of animal agriculture: Ahead of its much-anticipated 1.5°C roadmap, the FAO has released a report highlighting the huge impact of livestock emissions on climate change. It found that animal agriculture produces 6.2 gigatonnes of CO2e per year, cattle contribute to 60% of total livestock emissions, two-thirds of this figure is linked to meat, and the demand for animal products is set to grow by a fifth by mid-century from 2050 levels.
2023 officially the hottest year on record: There were projections of this happening already, but the EU has confirmed that 2023 will be the hottest year ever. The numbers make for dark reading: last month was the warmest November ever, the year has been 0.13°C hotter than the warmest yet (2016), and between November and January, the average temperature was 1.46°C above pre-industrial levels. Even more alarming: November’s temperatures were 1.75°C warmer.
A playbook for climate resilience: Climate resilience platform ClimateAi has launched a playbook that acts as a blueprint for turning environmental challenges into business opportunities. This includes determining risk exposure, developing better on-the-ground visibility into regional climates, and creating action plans for singular assets.
An analysis of four worldviews on the future of farming: Green Alliance has launched a report titled ‘Crossing the divide’, which assesses the perspectives of four different groups of people on what the future of agriculture should look like: traditionalists, ‘technovegans’, agroecologists and sustainable intensifiers.
Rethinking school meals and their climate connection: A new white paper outlines how school meal policies and menus can provide a unique chance to catalyse a transformation of the global food system and its impact on climate change, biodiversity and food sovereignty.
Awesome Resources From Media Friends
A curation of our favourite reads of the day – excellent guides, explainers and op-eds from around the web.
The best and the worst of COP: Need a refresher of the high and low points of the conference so far? The Guardian has you covered.
Climate optimism: Don’t be so down – for some bloom among the gloom and doom, the BBC has a list of five things you can be optimistic about for the climate summit.
What happens if we miss 1.5°C: Okay, back to doom. Jonathan Watts, the Guardian’s global environment editor, sat down with five climate scientists to explain what breaching 1.5°C temperature rises would mean, and how it’s different from 2°C.
Big Ag follows Big Oil’s lead: As we get closer to the first COP Food Day on Sunday, Greenpeace has an explainer out on how the agriculture lobby is borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel industry to influence proceedings.
Can food waste solve the climate crisis?: Food and climate experts Lisa Moon and Gonzalo Muñoz have penned an in-depth opinion piece for FairPlanet describing how food waste and loss can help tackle climate change.
Brazil’s intensive farming exit: Brazil was a signatory of the Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action on the second day of COP28. Jennifer Ann Thomas analyses how the beef-producing giant is charting its course away from factory farming in a story for Reuters’ Ethical Corporation Magazine.
Lighter Green Fun
Funny stuff, weird stuff, random stuff related to COP you may enjoy.
A literal emissions cap: The Canadian delegation’s emissions cap (get it?) is now a coveted fashion accessory in Dubai.
What to eat at COP: How do you decide what to eat at the largest ever UN climate conference, covering a mammoth area and with two-thirds of meatless food? TimeOut has an extensive guide to help you make your mind!
Follow all our #COP28 coverage. Like what you’re reading? Share it!
*Today is the ninth day since COP28 began, but officially the eighth day as yesterday as a rest day.
Does plant-based meat have an image problem? Peter McGuinness, CEO of Impossible Foods – one of the largest companies in the space – believes as much. To counter the off-putting “wokeness” associated with these products and take on Big Meat more effectively, he’s now planning a rebrand to make the alt-meat giant bigger and more inclusive.
“There was a wokeness to it, there was a bicoastalness to it, there was an academia to it… and there was an elitism to it – and that pissed most of America off.”
This was Peter McGuinness’s assessment of the product his company has built its name and fortune on. Speaking at the Adweek X conference earlier this week, the Impossible Foods CEO reflected on the challenges faced by the plant-based meat industry, and how it can overcome them.
We’ve heard about the flavour, texture and price battles being fought by these products. Texture is the component Americans dislike the most about vegan food, followed by price. Meanwhile, across the larger food and beverage industry, taste is the top driver for purchasing decisions in the country. These factors come together to form what McGuinness notes is an image problem – and one that needs fixing stat.
This is because even if meat alternatives reach parity with their conventional counterparts on taste, price and convenience, current consumers would continue eating the latter primarily, according to a study by Rethink Priorities in August. But – at least on the cost issue – plant-based meat has some way to go still.
It’s been a tough couple of years for the industry, with retail sales suffering and brands going out of business as investors turn their backs on food tech. In the year ending July 2, meat analogues suffered from a 21% drop in sales volume, according to Circana data, while dollar sales have fallen by over 20% too over the last year. Citing this data, research firm CoBank ascribes this to high prices among a cost-of-living crisis, which means consumers are driven towards cheaper products (conventional meat, in this case). Now, alt-meat faces a “tipping point”.
Invite, don’t insult
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Without change, these headwinds will likely persist. Impossible’s chief marketing officer Leslie Sims admitted that brands have an uphill task to convince meat-eaters – who really should be the target audience – to try meat analogues.
In his TED-style chat with Adweek CEO Will Lee, McGuinness said that this might be because many founders in this space are historically “climate warriors” using sustainability as a USP. There was also the early messaging positioning alt-meat companies as food tech, which he believes alienated consumers: “We don’t eat technology,” he explained. All this “narrowed the aperture and made the category smaller than it needs to be”, going on to describe the aforementioned wokeness that has peeved Americans.
“The way to get meat-eaters to actually buy your product is not to piss them off, vilify them, insult them and judge them,” he said. “We need to go from insulting to inviting, which is a hell of a journey.”
But it’s a journey Impossible is already on. Vegans aren’t its target market – they never have been. The focus has always been on flexitarians and meat-eaters, aiming to entice them to consume more of its products. One survey puts the number of flexitarians in the US to about a fifth of the total population – but the more important figure is the 347g of meat Americans eat per day.
Speaking to Green Queen during the announcement of its new beef hot dogs, an Impossible spokesperson confirmed this direction. “We’re trying to reach meat eaters – not vegans, vegetarians or those already eating sustainable diets. That’s why we focus on making products that appeal to actual meat eaters,” they explained, adding: “Our goal is not to compete with fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods, but to offer meat eaters products that are better for them and the planet.:
(Not) fighting off the meat lobby
The plant-based meat category also hasn’t been helped by the constant attacks it has faced from the meat lobby. The meat industry interest group Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has been on the offensive at companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible, taking a shot at their overprocessed composition and long ingredient lists.
Its largest effort came during the 2020 Super Bowl, with an ad featuring Spelling Bee participants struggling with words like methylcellulose (which it claimed were “chemicals” used for “synthetic meats”). “If you can’t spell it or pronounce it, maybe you shouldn’t be eating it,” concluded the spot. Within a few days, Impossible bit back with a parody ad. The moderator – played by Impossible founder and then-CEO Pat Brown – asked a child to spell “poop”, noting how there’s “lots of poop in the places where pigs and chickens are chopped to pieces to make meat”. The ad ends with the line: “Just because a kid can spell ‘poop’, doesn’t mean you or your kids should be eating it.”
But if Impossible truly is to conquer the meat-eating consumer base and “go from insulting to inviting”, a change of tact might be in order. This is because plant-based meats are surrounded by a “massive amount of myths about plant-based products and the process” used to make them.
So the focus needs to be on emphasising its own value, rather than what it’s fighting: the $1.5T “highly coordinated, highly funded, highly lobbied” and highly subsidised animal agriculture industry. Alt-meat is worth $8B in sales, a “0.0001% share”, as McGuinness called it. “We don’t want to get into a kind of pissing match with meat – we will lose that,” he explained.
McGuinness and Sims want to relaunch their brand “in a very inclusive way”, spotlighting aspects like high protein content, zero cholesterol and half the saturated fat found in conventional meat. We’re already seeing this: Impossible has hopped aboard the health bandwagon with its recent launches. Most notably, its lean Beef Lite (one of six new launches this year) is now certified by the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check Food Certification Program, following Beyond as the only other meat alternative maker on the list.
A marketing coalition hits a snag
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
In August, Adweek reported that leading US vegan food manufacturers were looking to create a coalition similar to the marketing groups behind ad campaigns like Got Milk? and the Incredible Edible Egg, which was earmarked for a 2024 launch. Impossible is a part of this proposed alliance, but there have been setbacks.
“We have like 200 plant-based businesses, half are going out of business, we’re highly uncoordinated, no one has any money, everybody’s out for themselves. It’s a total mess,” said McGuinness. The Impossible chief still feels there’s “a collective opportunity to extol the benefits of the category,” but acknowledges that a lack of coordination and cohesion is stalling things.
Impossible will now amp up its educational efforts, with a focus on its soybean supply chain in Decatur, Illinois, and manufacturing in Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland, California. The plant-based meat giant will also target a rise in household awareness about its brand and products, which is only at 15% across the US. Additionally, it will focus on expanding its retail and foodservice footprint nationwide.
McGuinness, who has previously outlined how vegan food marketers (including Impossible) haven’t sold themselves well enough to consumers, further explained his thinking: “My job is not to steal share from Beyond Meat – then I’ve just moved the deck chairs around, and the category stays at the same size. We have to make the category bigger.”
Open AI’s artificial intelligence system ChatGPT has predicted that the world will go almost entirely vegan by 2073, two years after which the animal agriculture industry becomes obsolete. It was based on a prompt by the Daily Mail, which input data from a recent NPD Group survey to elicit the results.
Did you take ChatGPT for a fortune teller? Because I didn’t.
But that’s exactly what the Daily Mail has done, turning Open AI’s viral chatbot into a trend forecaster. Using data from a recent Future of Food report by the NPD Group, which conducted a study about Gen Z and millennials sparking a movement that could lead to an all-vegan world in the future, the British newspaper asked ChatGPT to create a timeline of events that could lead to a plant-forward planet.
“As consumers continue to prepare more meals in the home and younger generations cook more, plant-based foods and ingredients will be a part of their repertoire,” says Darren Seifer, a food industry analyst at NPD, and co-author of the study.
“In addition to providing a variety of plant-based foods and ingredients, food manufacturers should also focus efforts on Millennials and Gen Zs since they will be driving the category’s growth. Their concerns for sustainability and animal welfare should also be taken into account when messaging them.”
The prompt the Mail used was: “Provide a timeline of the world going vegan starting in 2024 when Gen Z and millennials raise awareness on animal agriculture.”
Here’s the vegan timeline ChatGPT came up with:
2024-2030
Courtesy: AI-Generated Image via Canva
As Gen Zers and millennials continue to raise awareness about the environmental, ethical and health issues linked to livestock farming, flexitarianism will become more widespread by 2027. By 2028, major food tech companies will have released more varied plant-based meat options, which will become more affordable and widely available as alt-protein investment increases.
A year later, vegan diets will be growing in Europe and North America. Some countries and regions will then introduce policies and incentives to promote plant-based eating and reduce meat consumption by 2030.
2030-2040
In 2032, ChatGPT predicts a breakthrough in food tech will lead to even more affordable and convincing meat and dairy analogues, aided by increased adoption of plant-based food and reduced meat consumption, particularly among younger generations and in urban areas.
Around this time, some areas will witness a decline in traditional livestock farming, while cultivated meat (which isn’t vegan but similarly sustainable) and other alternative proteins will become more accessible and ingrained into the mainstream food supply.
In 2037, there will be a legislative breakthrough, with North American and European governments implementing subsidies for plant-based agriculture – which would be significant considering that currently, the livestock industry receives 800 and 1,200 times more funding than alt-protein in the two regions, respectively. In Europe, 50% of farmer incomes currently come from direct subsidies.
2040-2055
Courtesy: Eat Just
Vegan diets will spread across a border cross-section of the population in this period, as many begin reducing their meat and dairy intake. And even more governments begin implementing policies to address the climate impact of animal agriculture and promote a shift towards a planet-friendly food system.
The AI chatbot predicts that 2048 will see the first Climate Action and Veganism Day be celebrated (World Vegan Month is currently celebrated on November 1, also the start of World Vegan Month). This event will be endorsed by the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Natalie Portman, who will be 74 and 67, respectively.
But despite traditional meat consumption falling significantly, plant-based diets will still be a minority in some regions.
2055-2075
A longer time period, the next 20 years will bring a lot of developments. In 2057, veganism will become “widely accepted and normalized in many parts of the world”, with athletes like Lewis Hamilton (who is already vegan) and Selena Gomez (currently following a plant-forward diet) pushing to make the lifestyle mainstream in 2059 – they will then by 74 and 78, respectively.
ChatGPT forecasts 2064 to be the first year when Global Vegan Week will become an international event, and four years later, the world’s current largest fast-food chain, McDonald’s, will “reintroduce the McVegan” (it currently offers a plant-based McPlant burger) as part of a wider shift towards a fully vegan menu. The company has pledged to have net-zero emissions by 2050, though its climate footprint has been going in the opposite direction in the last few years.
By 2070, most of the younger generation will have up with plant-based diets as the norm and played a dominant hand in shaping a “predominantly vegan world”. And it’s by 2073 that the AI tool predicts the world will almost go entirely vegan, before the traditional animal agriculture sector – which would have undergone a transformation toward more sustainable and ethical practices, and become a niche industry already – becomes obsolete in 2075.
At this point, meat consumption will be “a rare and special occasion in some cultures”.
Is ChatGPT right about veganism?
Courtesy: Sobo Foods
ChatGPT stressed that this is all purely speculative, as “it’s impossible to predict the future with certainty” and “the actual timeline may vary widely by region and culture”. It’s best to take this all with a grain of salt, of course. And here’s why.
When Green Queen put the same prompt forward to the chatbot (albeit without the knowledge of the NPD Group report), it reported similar predictions, but at a much more accelerated pace – for example, the points about animal agriculture becoming more sustainable and ethical and veganism being the mainstream choice are made in a timeline between 2036-2040.
Even when prompted to provide a timeline through 2075, the developments differ in timescales and events between these two predictions – for example, it says “celebrities, influencers, and public figures embrace veganism and advocate for sustainable living” in the 2030-2040 period.
Here’s another reason why AI chatbots may not be your go-to fortune tellers. Green Queen asked ChatGPT to provide a similar timeline, but one where meat consumption grows as the same two generations “raise awareness about sustainable animal agriculture”. Lo and behold, it came up with a timeline through to 2075 where governments prioritise green livestock farming practices, with a ‘conscious carnivore’ movement appearing and cultivated and plant-based meat part of a balanced diet with these, rather than being the norm.
So it seems ChatGPT may predict whatever you want it to – which kind of defeats the purpose. But it’s a fun exercise, and the way things are going, this latter forecast might be the one that actually comes true. The chatbot, though, is right about one thing: its nearest prediction, the rise of flexitarianism. As for the rest, let’s wait for 74-year-old Jack Dawson.
British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has given his most direct endorsement of a vegan diet in the latest episode of his BBC One series, Planet Earth III.
The longtime TV host highlighted the vast amount of land used by animal agriculture, and how freeing that up could help feed the world. Delivering a piece-to-camera in a green field surrounded by vegetables and cute video effects of blossoming produce, in his most direct on-screen assessment of the food system and livestock industry yet – and in front of millions, Attenborough said: “If we shift away from eating meat and dairy and move towards a plant-based diet, then the sun’s energy goes directly into growing our food.”
As a naturalist with possibly the most enviable filmography, Attenborough has travelled the world and warned the world about the destruction we humans are causing. His new BBC One docuseries, Planet Earth III, has been airing since October, shedding light on deforestation and biodiversity loss. The seventh and latest episode, Humans, focuses on how animals and wildlife adapt to and survive in a rapidly changing human world. And it’s when he gave his strongest message of support for plant-based diets.
What David Attenborough said about vegan diets on Planet Earth III
It’s not like the broadcaster hasn’t highlighted the issues of meat consumption before. In 2020’s A Life On Our Planet, he said: “We must radically reduce the way we farm. We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters.”
Highlighting biodiversity loss, he added: “Half of fertile land on Earth is now farmland, 70% of birds are domestic, majority chickens. There’s little left for the world. We have completely destroyed it.
“By 2080, global food production enters crisis, soils overused, weather more unpredictable… a sixth mass extinction is well underway. Our garden of Eden will be lost. I wish I wasn’t involved in this struggle. I wish I wasn’t there.”
But while his rhetoric has veered more towards human-caused destruction. But this time, he’s taken a more pragmatic, more optimistic, and yet more direct approach in an attempt to hit his point home better with viewers. On Sunday night, the 97-year-old made the aforementioned statement about the sun’s energy going into growing our food.
Expanding on that, he said: “And because that’s so much more efficient, we could still produce enough to feed us, but do so using a quarter of the land. This could free up an area the size of the United States, China, the European Union and Australia, combined – space that could then be given back to nature.”
He had prefaced this moment with various nods to the effect of livestock farming on the environment. “Currently the vast majority of agricultural land – more than 75% – is used to raise livestock and this is very inefficient,” he said.
Attenborough also said: “We rear 70 billion farm animals each year and every one of them needs feeding… Producing food for such numbers of domesticated animals is having a profound impact on the natural world.”
Honing in on the environmental aspect, the broadcaster continued: “Year after year, we clear over two million hectares of the Amazon rainforest – that’s the size of Wales. We use nearly all of it to make more space for cattle and to grow soya to feed livestock… Today, habitat destruction is the biggest problem we’ve created for wildlife around the world.”
Why this is a big deal
Courtesy: COP26
The Brit’s statements arguably make for a landmark moment in TV this year. It might seem unremarkable, but this is a man who has been covering the natural world and environment for 72 years now, so he knows a thing or two.
He is also one of the most universally loved figures in the UK and carries huge influence. Take this survey from 2021 that highlighted ‘the Attenborough effect’ as an example. When 2,000 Brits were asked about people their views on environmentalists, the biologist was top of the list in terms of inspiring people to be greener and make more sustainable choices, with 59% choosing him.
That Attenborough highlighted the land use aspect is significant. Research has shown that shifting to an entirely plant-based diet would cut global land use for agricultural purposes by 75%, thanks to a reduction in grazing and a smaller requirement to grow crops. This is because it takes about 100 times more land on average to produce a kcal of beef or lamb versus a vegan analogue. In fact, lamb, mutton, and beef use up the highest amount of land than any other food – over three times the next on the list, which is cheese.
And as Attenborough – an Earthshot Prize council member – alluded to, 77% of agricultural land is used for livestock (pasture grazing and animal feed), which produces only 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of its protein. The 23% of land used for crops for human consumption – plant-based food – accounts for 82% of calories and 63% of proteins.
Agriculture is also the biggest driver of deforestation – the expansion of pasture land to raise cattle is responsible for 41% of tropical deforestation. As our consumption needs increase (global meat-eating is set to grow by 14% by 2030), this will only become a bigger problem.
Are Brits paying heed to Attenborough’s words with their actions? The jury’s out. A recent government survey revealed that meat and dairy consumption are at their lowest in 49 years (when record-keeping began), but intake of fresh fruits and vegetables has dropped too (by 14% year-over-year). Cheese, meanwhile, has soared, with the UK eating more cheese per week in the last two years than any other year.
The entire world going vegan is unlikely, but even a 50% swap of meat and dairy to plant-based alternatives can bring tremendous benefits – a 31% cut in agriculture and land use emissions, a halt in deforestation, and 12% less land needed for farming – which is what Attenborough has been saying for years before last weekend’s more blatant remarks.
Will the kinder, more direct approach work? Seeing the progress (or lack thereof) on food systems change at COP28 makes it feel like it very much needs to.
What does the future look like for food tech? French consultancy DigitalFoodLab has released its annual State of FoodTech Trends report for 2024, distilling 28 directions in six ‘mega-trends’, including sustainable proteins, food is medicine and automation.
Food tech is the future of food. That’s what DigitalFoodLab, a French strategy consultancy counting over 50 clients including the likes of Nestlé and Danone, wants you to know.
In the fourth edition of its annual State of FoodTech Trends report, the insights firm has identified 28 key things to look out for in food tech next year and beyond – divided into six broad categories – and outlines how long each will take to reach a point of maturity.
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The report points out that 2024 will be an exciting yet complicated time for food tech, with an uncommonly large number of trends in the ‘disillusion’ phase, and many in the ‘excitement’ stage paving the way for disillusion. This has resulted in food trends being scattered all around a curve measuring expectations against time – tracking how a new tech becomes a trend, reaches a peak of excitement, which fades into disillusionment before its challenges are addressed, after which it becomes a disruptor seen by every observer.
Speaking to Green Queen, Digitalfoodlab co-founder Matthieu Vincent said he was most surprised at the extremes in many ecosystems, “we both super hyped up startups while at the same time, quite a lot of the companies in the space are in the disillusionment stage, which creates a strange situation where one part of the foodtech ecosystem is thriving while many startups are struggling to avoid bankruptcy.”
He added that he is most sceptical about the alternative protein trend because he has doubts about “the ability of many companies to sustain the hype.” While he is bullish on the space overall, “the problem is in the definition of ‘long-term’. We think most companies have overpromised on their ability to reach mass production fast so a period of reckoning may be coming where we’ll see which startups have the technology and the financial means to deliver in time to satisfy investors.”
Vincent noted that the trends have geographical specificities too. “In the report, trends are mapped from a global perspective, but obviously their impact and the way they will reach different markets will be hugely different. Let’s take the healthy ageing trend – if we broaden the topic to ‘healthy ingredients, this trend is far more advanced in Asia where there are already many products on the market (and regulation that is pushing the space forward, for example in China.”
So what does DigitalFoodLab predict the future of food tech to be? Here are the six mega-trends shaping the industry in 2024.
Food tech trend #1: The resilient farm
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Agtech is a critical component of the food tech ecosystem. “Multiple trends drive us toward a more sustainable and resilient farm: the growing appetite for locally grown foods, fewer farmers and workers, energy costs, climate change concerns, notably regarding arable land, and the convergence of technology and farming,” the report states.
This trend is going in two directions: existing farms are being augmented as more intelligent and automated, and between urban, indoor and next-gen farms, the former is overtaking the latter in terms of hype, investments and acquisitions.
Precision farming is one of the six food trends representing the future of agriculture. A farm management concept based on data measurement and analysis, it’s a well-established ecosystem that seeks to “increase food production by improving in-farm decision-making, product traceability and quality”. While one of the oldest agtech ecosystems, it’s yet to mature, with universal access to software and tools a key challenge.
Farm robotics, meanwhile, are the first step towards autonomous agriculture, featuring AI and machine learning tech. Out of the disillusionment stage, its growth is linked to a reduced pool of skilled workers and sustainability (cutting the amount of required inputs). There’s also indoor and urban farming, which is facing a reckoning thanks in part to the energy crisis, but this ecosystem is expected to grow around business models spotlighting tech over farm operators.
In terms of insects for animal feed, there’s a growing disillusionment as industrial facilities are more complicated to run than previously thought, while a consolidation based on the type of insects startups choose is likely. One of the new trends this year (which hasn’t appeared in DigitalFoodLab’s previous reports) is bio inputs, a field where companies are developing a new generation of organic and more efficient fertilisers. It’s still in its infancy, but is being boosted by the energy crisis and rising costs of fertilisers.
The final trend (and another new one) for the resilient farm is future crops, which involve improving seed quality for disease resistance, increased yields, flowering control, nutritional enhancement and longer life post-harvest. Genetic hybridisation (crossing) and gene editing are two of the most common technologies used by startups here.
Food tech trend #2: Sustainable proteins
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Alternative proteins have been on the rise for a while now, and for good reason. They’re much more environmentally friendly and present health benefits over animal-derived foods – and there’s the animal welfare aspect too. Even with the recent sales decline of plant-based meat, the category as a whole has been gaining traction.
There are five key directions part of the sustainable protein segment, with scale, costs, consumer acceptance and regulatory approval as the main hurdles to overcome, along with financing the industrialisation of these products. DigitalFoodLab proposes distributed production (bioreactors in the cloud, alluding to the cloud computing sector) as a potential solution.
The first trend here, of course, is plant-based protein. This trend has gone backwards from the ‘rising stars’ (overcoming disillusionment) stage to between the excitement and disillusionment phases. “We wrongly and collectively believed that plant-based products and alternative proteins, as a whole, were ready for mass adoption,” the report notes. Consumer concerns around health, taste and price are the key deterrents, but new facilities, cleaner labels and industry collaboration are markers of better things to come.
Next up is cellular agriculture – in this case, cultivated proteins – which is still in its infancy and at least three to five years away from being market-ready (apart from the very limited availability of cell-cultured meat in the US and Singapore). Mass adoption is much further away, and the key challenges (excluding regulatory approval) are lower costs, serum-free formulations, stable cell lines, better taste and texture, and scaling production. Large facilities are already underway, with several set to be operational by 2025.
Then there’s what’s known as the third pillar of alt-protein: fermentation. Precision fermentation – like cell cultivation – is hitting its peak in the excitement stage, with most companies focused on recreating dairy proteins by inserting the genetic code of the desired protein in a microorganism before fermentation. Regulatory and scale-up barriers (especially for casein) are key here, with price parity (and how to transition farmers effectively once that happens) also important.
Biomass fermentation, meanwhile, is also at this peak, with startups either using microbes that can produce proteins in an uncontrolled environment or using carbon dioxide as feed to create protein products. This faces similar challenges, notably regulatory clearance and flavourful products. Molecular farming – which involves genetically modifying plants to become bioreactors producing proteins – is highly promising and more scalable than precision fermentation or cell cultivation, but it’s still in an experimental stage, with the first large-scale demonstrations expected in the next two to three years.
Food tech trend #3: Instant retail
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
This trend encapsulates all innovations enabling consumers to access food quickly and efficiently from their screens, in one click, a concept that can be extended to anti-food-waste platforms, ethnic marketplaces, autonomous stores and restaurant delivery.
There are four trends here, all out of the hype phase. Smart stores, still approaching this stage, entail upstream concepts (warehouse automation), on-shelf tech (checkout-free stores) and complete automation. The adoption is very slow here, with large companies like Amazon leading the way, and the increasing need for more workers may speed this up.
Quick commerce – involving deliveries in usually less than 30 minutes from small warehouses – is facing loads of challenges, including zoning limitations and high labour costs. “If things move fast in FoodTech, nothing came close to the speed at which quick commerce startups went to the moon and are now crashing,” DigitalFoodLab noted, adding that disruption can still happen thanks to market consolidation and via delivery robots rather than the Q commerce we know today.
New retailers are reinventing grocery shopping from the ground up, considering online channels as their only focus. Some of the giants here offer identical products to incumbent retailers, but promise to do better, while smaller innovators are disrupting the market with subscriptions, reusable packaging, ‘ugly’ produce or damaged products.
The most mature trend in this category is restaurant delivery. Here, consultation is still underway, while regulations of driver status are no longer a priority outside Europe. These companies have also entered grocery delivery, demonstrating a viable profitability path, and they’re increasingly essential to foodservice.
Food tech trend #4: Food as medicine
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Food as medicine has been evolving for some time now – we’ve written extensively about it too. This trend is the new avatar of DigitalFoodLab’s previous ‘food personalisation’ direction, with the convergence of health and food at the heart of things. Two of the key pillars – especially in the US – are produce prescription programmes and medically tailored meals.
These initiatives can have a “potentially massive impact”, but there are very few players. One of the sub-trends here is food coaching, “a move from services to devices”, encompassing health testing apps and diet and nutrition platforms. This is in the disillusionment stage at present, with more scientific rigour needed to reach a wider audience.
Healthy ageing includes ingredients that help us live longer. One aspect is adding new ingredients like genetically modified produce or breast-milk-derived innovations to existing foods, while the other category seeks to reduce long-term damage caused by processed foods. This segment – a new trend – is approaching the excitement phase.
One that’s far away is personalised food – supplements or meals customised for people based on test results, and evolutive micronutrition to print supplements for home or office use. Low adaptability is a key concern for the former, while high costs and unconvincing tech are currently discouraging consumers from the latter.
Food tech trend #5: Automation
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The food automation sector is in limbo. “For many years, startups have used robotic arms and other complicated and costly technologies to replicate humans’ actions, but it is not working,” the report said. Now, the new goal is to scale down factories to the size of a restaurant instead of emulating chefs with robotic arms.
There are four trends at play here, with none at the hype stage. Cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants (“primarily a marketing expert that creates restaurant brands and menus”) are approaching the end of the disillusionment phase. Virtual restaurants are becoming more digital and offering their brands as a sales tool for restaurants, but the sector is compounded by influencer-owned brands. While the boom isn’t over, the report predicted that there will be a phase of rationalisation with concentration in the hands of a handful of players.
Moving from hype to disillusionment, cooking robots can include collaborative robots that replace employees for complex tasks, automated eateries, and automated kiosks and vending machines. DigitalFoodLab noted: “They don’t solve a real-world problem and are far from becoming profitable: what is the point of using a $25,000 robotic arm to serve coffee?” New solutions focus on less expensive robots (mechanical tools, really) and adapting them to humans.
Delivery robots became prominent after the pandemic, but were less successful than anticipated, with several down rounds, layoffs and shutdowns. It will take a bit of time to see robots and drones used in our daily lives at scale. 3D printing, on the other hand, is one futuristic tech finally finding its use. A new trend on the list, it’s allowing companies to display greater creativity and better define the texture or ingredients used in complex products like meat and seafood alternatives.
Food tech trend #6: The smart supply chain
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The final category of food tech trends for 2024 relates to smart supply chains, driven by the fight against food waste as well as digitalisation to reduce labour costs and promote standardisation.
Digital restaurant services – facilitating booking, online order management, payment and HR management – represent the most mature trend here, with acquisitions in this space expected to continue as services become more integrated. Smart packaging is in its disillusionment stage, underlined by underinvestment despite technologies working to cut food waste, improve shelf life, and enhance safety. The real disruption may come from protective layers (which keep moisture and oxygen out) instead of the packaging itself.
Reusable packaging (a new trend separated from the smart packaging direction) involves startups managing reusable packs or developing a network of collectors combined with digital tags. Regulation is crucial here, with single-use plastic bans driving interest in these solutions.
Another new trend, food waste management techniques are being created across the supply chain – spanning foodservice, unsold food, on-shelf solutions and home appliances – with the focus being shifted from discounting to software solutions, and now expected to evolve towards retail procurement management, with food waste and merging with B2B marketplaces in mind.
These B2B marketplaces are the third new trend, with startups digitalising the supplier-store relationship through mobile apps and integrated messaging systems. There are multiple types of players here, and competition from prominent companies adds a degree of challenge. Finally, the digital supply chain is focusing on carbon counting and decarbonisation, with the main challenge involving data about livestock and agricultural production. Startups are also developing carbon credit trading platforms, while others help inform consumers about their carbon footprint through food.
It’s an extensive list with loads of innovations, potential and challenges – how will these food tech trends pan out over 2024? We’ll have to wait and watch (this space).
Swiss-Ghanian startup Koa has raised $15M in Series B funding to scale up its upcycled cacao business, develop more products and intensify regenerative agriculture practices to involve over 10,000 more farmers and address the climate footprint of the West African cocoa industry.
Koa’s $15M Series B round takes its total funds raised to $25M. The upcycled cacao startup makes products from the fruit of the plant, and its latest investment round involves both returning and new investors.
It was led by the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund from global asset manager Mirova, who injected $9M (an existing investor). The Regenerative Growth Fund 1, which invests in climate tech solutions, was also a participant, alongside contributions from other new investors and support from existing shareholders, including Haltra, which led the brand’s Series A round in 2021.
“We are proud to have closed our Series B round in this challenging market environment for start-up funding, while at the same time having found once more like-minded investors that are fully aligned with our mission and ambition to expand and create more impact around the cocoa fruit,” said Fabien Nizard, head of corporate finance and investor relations at Koa Switzerland.
Cocoa’s climate question
Courtesy: Nana Yaw Asiedu
Koa makes a cacao fruit juice called Koa Pure, alongside a Koa Concentrate 72° (a reduced syrupy version of the juice) and dried cacao fruit powder for other food manufacturers. West Africa is home to the two largest cocoa producers in the world – with Ivory Coast and Ghana accounting for nearly two-thirds (63%) of the global share.
But the cocoa industry is notorious for its impact on the climate (including deforestation) and labour issues. One study found that the UK and Germany are driving deforestation primarily in Ghana and Ivory Coast, where over 85% of forest area has been lost since 1960. And in the US, the Biden administration was sued in August to block imports of cocoa harvested by children in West Africa, which has been linked to the chocolate used by brands like Hershey’s, Mars and Nestlé.
Apart from deforestation, cocoa production comes at a heavy cost to the climate. The only food worse than dark chocolate in terms of supply chain emissions is beef. In addition, cocoa beans have one of the highest carbon opportunity costs – the amount of carbon lost from native vegetation and soils to produce food.
What exacerbates this issue is the non-cocoa bit of the cacao plant. It’s estimated that 70% of the cacao fruit is wasted during production, but it’s a superfood that contains flavonoids and regulates blood pressure, prevents clots and, enhances blood flow to the brain and heart. This is where brands like Koa come in: it works closely with smallholders in Ghana to reduce on-farm food waste, generate extra income, and bring new ingredients to the food industry.
Courtesy: Koa
Founded in 2017, the company’s Series B round comes just months after it inaugurated a cacao fruit factory in Akim Achiase in east Ghana. The new plant allows Koa to increase its production by tenfold and generate income for 10,000 additional farmers, while the equity funding will enable it to scale its operations, develop more products and expand its distribution and marketing abilities.
“The Series B round provides Koa with the opportunity to continue our growth path with our existing operations, while at the same time allowing us to further invest into R&D and innovation projects that create a truly sustainable cocoa value chain,” said Francis Appiagyei-Poku, finance and administration director at Koa Impact Ghana.
Helping the West African cocoa industry
The Swiss-Ghanaian startup is further expanding its operations by ramping up its upcycling and regenerative agriculture practices, which it says is “a necessity in light of deteriorating soil fertility and the high carbon footprint associated with traditional cocoa farming in West Africa”.
Koa adds that there are several reasons why farmers have been struggling to uphold their yields in the face of climate change, chief among them being poverty – about a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line – and a lack of training in sustainable agriculture practices. This is why it wants to dig deep into regenerative farming, with which it hopes to increase the resilience of cocoa farms and reduce the industry’s climate impact.
Courtesy: Agyeman Duah
In early 2022, the company partnered with Germany’s Seedtrace and South Africa’s MTN Group to create a blockchain-tech-led approach to enable “tamper-proof” transparency across the value chain. “Instead of having a person enter information on the blockchain, it links the data from mobile money transactions,” explained Appiagyei-Poku. “This combination allows us to verify additional farmer income, deliver full proof and increase trust among stakeholders.”
Koa co-founder and managing director Anian Schreiber added: “We want to get rid of long, non-transparent supply chains. Instead of claiming good practices, we put our cards on the table to let the consumers witness each transaction to farmers.”
Other companies innovating with cacao fruit include Barry Callebaut’s Cabosse Naturals (Switzerland), Blue Stripes, CaPao (both US), and Pacha de Cacao (the Netherlands). Meanwhile, some are forgoing cacao and cocoa altogether, using alternative ingredients with traditional fermentation processes to emulate chocolate, with London-based WNWN Food Labs, Italy’s Foreverland, German startup ChoViva, and US brand Voyage Foods the leading players in this space.
Singaporean cultivated meat company Meatiply has closed the first round of its seed funding, securing $3.75M in financing to scale up production of its hybrid products and facilitate its new plant, set to open next year.
A second close is scheduled for Q1 2024, with the producer developing natural compounds to target the functional foods market.
Singapore-based cultured meat producer Meatiply has closed an initial seed funding round with $3.75M in investment, which will help it scale up production and facilitate the opening of its new plant next year. It brings its total raised to $4.75M, after a $1M pre-seed round in early 2022.
The round was co-led by co-led by existing investor Wavemaker Partners and AgFunder, with participation from Seeds Capital, the VC arm of Enterprise Singapore.
“While the challenge of meeting product launch deadlines persists for many companies, the Meatiply team has demonstrated the ability to achieve meaningful results within shorter timeframes and with considerably less funding,” said Paul Santos, managing partner at Wavemaker Partners. “Their achievements in developing hybrid structured poultry prototypes have particularly impressed us.”
He added: “We have confidence in the diverse backgrounds and technical skills of Meatiply’s founders, coupled with their unique technology, which positions them on a viable path to commercial success.”
A new facility in the works
Courtesy: Meatiply
The new funds will allow Meatiply to ramp up its R&D capabilities and production for more extensive co-development with commercial partners. A new facility will become operational next year, two years ahead of its targeted 2026 launch. Speaking to Green Queen, Meatiply CEO Elwin Tan explained: “We are building a dedicated R&D facility with small-scale production capabilities to generate more cell mass to support safety testing and product development.”
He did not disclose exact capacity numbers, but offered: “The new facility will allow us to expand the effort on bioprocess development, from the current scale in small, lab-scale suspension cultures, to eventually arrive [at] large bench-top bioreactors.”
The company was founded in 2021 by Tan, Jason Chua, Benjamin Chua (the three studied stem cell biology at the National University of Singapore), and Teh Bin Tean. In October 2022, Meatiply unveiled three structured meat prototypes – kampong chicken yakitori, chicken katsu bites, and Asia’s first smoked duck breast – in a combination of cell- and plant-based ingredients.
Tan confirmed that the first products won’t be any of these prototypes. “We aimed to showcase the level of complexity and comprehensiveness that our team can deliver, and aims to deliver these products in the long term,” he said. “Until then, we have strategically devised a product development roadmap that will allow us to rapidly commercialise new product formats, without running into the same challenges that companies before us have faced. The team is hard at work refining these new prototypes and we plan to unveil them next year.”
Cultivated meat as functional food
Courtesy: Meatiply
These prototypes – made from multiple cell types including muscle, fat and skin – were structured, rather than minced, which enables them to be used in a broader range of products. Meatiply’s “scientifically grounded” approach allows it to generate natural compounds responsible for the sensory and nutritional quality of meat, and targeting these health benefits means the company can focus its energy on the $280B functional foods market.
Jason Chua, the chief scientific officer, said: “Besides meat, we are also positioned for opportunities to commercialise in the nutraceutical and wellness market.” Tan added: “Meatiply’s strong upstream capabilities to create complex and functional products… not only justifies the use of animal cells, but also results in significant cost reductions.”
Speaking to Green Queen, the CEO explained: “Our radical development strategy and selected product formats will allow us to significantly reduce capex and input costs. With this same strategy, we can reasonably target commercialisation faster than any other company has been able to achieve.”
“We’re highly impressed by what the Meatiply team has achieved in a short amount of time and with relatively limited external funding,” noted John Friedman, AgFunder’s Asia director. “We firmly believe there is a place for cultivated meat technology in our future food system, and are encouraged by Meatiply’s practical approach towards product development and go-to-market strategy.”
Regulatory filing in 2025, with launch planned the year after
Courtesy: Meatiply
The Meatiply team attributes its success to its team of experts as well as the thriving food tech ecosystem in Singapore. “We are incredibly fortunate to be based in Singapore, where the numerous research and development grants, coupled with the presence of brilliant and purpose-driven individuals within the scientific and start-up ecosystems, have enabled us to establish a strong second-mover trajectory,” said Bin Tean.
The company has previously said establishing its base in Singapore was “an easy decision” for multiple reasons. Apart from the innovation support, this included the country’s 30 by 30 food security initiative, which aims to reduce the island state’s reliance on imports by producing 30% of all food consumed by its residents by 2030, as well as its progressive government and regulatory framework. It became the first country in the world to approve the sale of cell-cultured meat in 2020, granting clearance to California-based Eat Just‘s Good Meat.
Meatiply, which is aiming to submit an application to Singapore’s regulatory body by the end of 2025, says it is a “frontrunner” in product development in this space, with innovations across the cultivated meat value chain, helping it develop functional hybrid meat products. Tan confirmed that the company is aiming to launch in Singapore first, but is “keeping an eye on the regulatory developments in South Korea, Japan, and China for the potential to subsequently enter those markets”.
“Meatiply believes in maximising the potential of each cell type,” said Jason Chua. “Our focus on the production of complex value-added compounds using cells will allow us to create cultivated meat products with added health benefits. This strategic entry point will give consumers more reasons to embrace cultivated technologies.”
Tan added: “We are focusing on nutritive compounds that are abundant in animals but are either absent or in lower concentrations in plant products. This will not only mean that the products we co-develop will have a clear nutritional edge over plant-based, but at the same time, we’ll also be the best choice for a source of cultivated cells if a plant-based partner is looking to develop a hybrid product,” he said.
Can hybrid meat go the distance?
Courtesy: Meatiply
Hybrid meat is still a nascent category, and investors are divided over its potential. Some, though, argue that it’s the best way for cultivated meat to overcome its current cost and scale challenges. Companies like SciFi Foods – which has raised $40M so far – are examples of initial success. China’s CellX recently announced a move into hybrid proteins with mycelium fermentation and Dutch company Meatable’s first product – anticipated to launch in Singapore next year – is a plant-cultivated pork hybrid.
“During the development of the prototypes we unveiled last year, we explored a number of plant-based raw materials and built the prototypes from scratch, instead of assimilating our cells with an existing plant-based product,” explained Tan. “In doing so, we developed over 10 prototypes with different combinations of plant protein sources. In other words, our development team has the necessary knowledge and expertise to work with a variety of plant proteins. The eventual types of plant proteins we incorporate into our products will depend on the needs and demands of our co-development partners.”
A second close of Meatiply’s seed funding round is set to take place in Q1 2024. “Despite a more cautious investment approach this year, investors were excited by our development strategy,” said Tan. “Likewise, we are thrilled that our investors share our vision.”
It has indeed been a slow year for alt-protein and food tech funding – especially compared to the last few years. Cultivated meat has seen investment fall off a cliff – according to alt-protein think tank the Good Food Institute, the sector reeled in nearly $900M in funding in 2022 (versus $1.2B for plant-based and $842M for fermented proteins). But this year, the first half of 2023 saw only $99M of financing go to cultivated meat (compared to $124M for plant-based and $273M for fermentation).
But there have been a few success stories. Meatable raised $35M, while US producer BlueNalu brought in $33.5M. Israel’s Wanda Fish closed $7M in seed funding, while CellX and Jimi Biotech (both Chinese) reeled in $6.5M and $3M, respectively. And just this week, Chicago-based Clever Carnivore completed a $7M oversubscribed seed round. You can add Meatiply to this list.
McDonald’s new burgers are on their way, after seven years of testing and over 50 tweaks, in response to drying consumer sentiment about its dry burgers. But while these burgers might be more impactful on your palate, they certainly leave a sour taste on the planet, as the world’s biggest food chain keeps increasing its GHG footprint while planning for net zero.
Hurray, the new Big Mac is here! There are 50 new things for you to cheer But our climate footprint is worse, oh dear Meeting our net-zero goals? Nowhere near.
I wrote this jingle in celebration of McDonald’s new non-dry, less-industrial-looking burgers. The lettuce and pickles are fresher! The room temp cheese is meltier! The onions are cooked Oklahoma-style! The bun is now a brioche, and there’s more special sauce! And oh, the sesame seeds are more random so it doesn’t look like a robot placed them! Yay!
I only jest, of course. I have zero interest in commemorating a product I will never eat, but it’s hard to look past such a massive change in a core product offering by the biggest food company on the planet, which it is also consequently ruining.
The Wall Street Journal reported it took McDonald’s seven years to test different ways to make its burger better after a survey of nearly 50,000 by research firm Technomic revealed that only 29% of Americans crave it. 13th on the list and almost two times less desirable than Burger King? Not good enough, decided McDonald’s.
And so began the quest for its “best burgers ever”, which initially rolled out in Australia and New Zealand and are now coming to the US. “We can do it quick, fast and safe, but it doesn’t necessarily taste great. So, we want to incorporate quality into where we’re at,” said Chris Young, McDonald’s senior director of global menu strategy.
Courtesy: McDonald’s
While a little self-reflection and honesty from the company is great, it’s lacking in this aspect when it comes to climate change. “Sometimes you have to look to the past to understand where you are going in the future,” Young added. So let’s just do that, shall we?
Ambitious McEmissions
Since 2017, when it began testing its new burgers, McDonald’s emissions have risen across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 (the latter includes emissions from across the value/supply chain). According to data the company provided to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), its emissions amounted to 44.3 million tonnes of CO2e in 2017, which is the equivalent of powering 8.6 million homes or driving 9.86 million gas-powered cars for a year.
In 2021 (the latest available data), its emissions across the three Scopes were 57.4 million tonnes of CO2e. This is the same as 11.2 million homes’ annual energy use and 12.8 million cars being driven for a year, and higher than the emissions of Greece, Peru or Israel. Comapred to the 2017 baseline – the year R&D for the new Big Mac and other burgers got underway – it’s nearly a 30% increase.
That figure rise is striking, given that it’s almost the same (31%) as McDonald’s targeted emissions intensity reduction (per tonne food and packaging) across its supply chain by 2030, from a 2015 baseline. The company has additionally committed to a 36% decrease in emissions from its restaurants and offices by that year.
Courtesy: McDonald’s
Also in 2021, the fast-food chain committed to net zero by 2050. But the big beef with its emissions is, well, beef. Already known as the worst-emitting food in the world – accounting for twice as many emissions as the next best on the list, and a quarter of all food emissions – industrially-reared beef makes up about 80% of McDonald’s emissions.
McDonald’s – which is responsible for the production of around 1.5% of all beef globally – has consistently maintained that it promotes ‘sustainable beef’, having helped found the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef in 2010. In its CDP disclosures, it outlines its commitment to this agenda: “We support beef production that’s environmentally sound [it doesn’t], protects animal health and welfare [it doesn’t], and improves farmer and community livelihoods [it doesn’t], and we have done for over a decade [it hasn’t].” In fact, McDonald’s only scores 16.1 out of 100 on the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.
“This global movement is gaining extensive momentum through conversations, collaborations, pilot programs, and global and local roundtables, and is helping influence not just beef in McDonald’s supply chain, but beef production around the world,” the company adds in its CDP filings.
Looking to the future: McBlend?
As Young said, looking to the past to figure out the future is important – how can McDonald’s learn from its past? An analysis by The Mirror (using a carbon footprint calculator) shows that the Big Mac in the UK is responsible for 2.35kg of CO2 being released into the atmosphere, “with a gherkin from Turkey, lettuce from Holland or France, beef from Ireland or the UK, and mayonnaise made in Lancashire, among other ingredients”.
Of this number, the beef patties are the single-biggest culprit, emitting 2.11kg of CO2 (nearly 90% of the total footprint). This is in stark contrast to the climate impact of the vegan McPlant burger, which uses a Beyond Meat patty and only emits 0.12kg of carbon (95% less than the Big Mac).
It’s probably fair to assume that a company that made its $200B fortune on beef isn’t suddenly going to turn its back on the meat – but could there be a middle ground? Research by Profundo (commissioned by Madre Brava) has floated this idea. It calculated the impact of swapping 50% of McDonald’s beef with a mix of plant-based proteins, such as fermentation-based alternatives (like Impossible Beef made of soy protein and fermented heme), mycoprotein-derived meat (like Quorn) and soy burgers (like The Vegetarian Butcher).
Courtesy: Profundo/Madre Brava
It revealed that subbing half of all its beef sales (which have increased by 10% between 2017 and 2022) with vegan proteins can save 15 million tons of CO2e (the equivalent of the annual emissions of Slovenia), free up 84,000 sq km of land (equalling the surface area of Austria), and conserve 0.2 cubic km of water (over 80,000 swimming pools’ worth).
Similar research by Oxford University’s Joseph Poore (on McDonald’s and Burger King) found that doing so would reduce land use by 8.5 million hectares (an area the size of Ireland), remove 17 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere annually for 100 years, and reduce GHG emissions by 34 million tonnes of CO2e per year – the latter two figures would make up over 80% of both food giants’ net-zero targets.
There’s merit to this method. Meat causes twice as many emissions as vegan food, and one study has revealed that switching 50% of our meat and dairy intake with plant-based alternatives can slash agricultural and land use emissions by 31%, halt deforestation and double overall climate benefits. This is also the principle validating the approach of companies making blended meat – combining animal-derived meat with plant-based proteins and ingredients.
And it’s not like McDonald’s is opposed to this approach. Take a look at its famous chicken nuggets. While a nugget would never be 100% chicken (it needs breading and binders), in the UK, chicken only makes up 45% of the McNugget, with crumbing, flavourings and wheat gluten (aka seitan) making up the rest. The amount of wheat protein may not be a lot, but it’s still a marker of success for blended meat among the masses.
There may be 50 new things with McDonald’s new burgers – less beef needs to be the 51st.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers the launch of Italian Christmas desserts made from cocoa-free chocolate, a new kind of seafood analogue, and an alt-dairy campaign for Swedish schools.
New products and launches
If you’re looking to cook 3D-printed meat, Isreal’s Redefine Meat has finally entered European retail with its ‘new meat’ products, six of which (two pulled and four minced) are debuting at Ocado in the UK and Albert Heijn and Crisp in the Netherlands.
Courtesy: Redefine Meat
Another beef launch has come from German manufacturer BENEO, which has unveiled two semi-finished products for plant-based alternatives – beef bites and mince. The pea- and mycoprotein-based innovations will be launched next year but were sampled at Fi Europe in Frankfurt last month.
More beef: whole-cut meat maker Chunk Foods‘ vegan steak is headlining a culinary experience at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach by chef Paul Qui, as part of a Philly cheesesteak with cashew queso.
No more beef? Then McDonald’s New Zealand has got you covered with its Salad Burger, which feels like a slant for non-meat-eaters. That’s right, it’s just… salad ingredients in a bun, in an apparent response to Burger King’s version of the same thing in the country (which still has onion rings!).
Over in the dairy alternatives world, UK chocolate maker LoveRaw is expanding into the Netherlands, with its milk chocolate wafer bar available in about 200 Albert Heijn stores, and milk and white chocolate bars in 150 Shell stores.
Courtesy: Oatbedient
Hong Kong, meanwhile, has a new plant-based milk. Singapore-based Oatbedient has launched its oat and milk powders in original, chocolate and chia seed flavours. They’re available at select Market Place, 3hreeSixty and Wellcome stores across the island.
In Italy, cocoa-free chocolate maker Foreverland has launched its first products using its Freecao alternative: pralines and the Christmas classic, panettone. The products – made from carob-based chocolate – are available on its website, with the latter costing €32.90 for a kg.
UK vegan pizza chain Purezza has partnered with Chefs for Foodies to offer its vegan mozzarella as part of a create-your-own-pizza kit for home cooks, which comes with Quorn pepperoni, chopped tomatoes, red onions, fresh basil, dough balls, and – in a wonderful touch – flour for dusting.
Elsewhere, Canadian food tech company Cult Food Science has launched a third proprietary plant-based pet food ingredient, Bmeaty, which joins existing products Bmmune and Bflora. It’s made from yeast extract, hydrolysed yeast and carrier yeast, and boasts 40% protein, and the ingredients will appear in several pet food formulations next year.
Courtesy: WOOP4
Also in Canada, WOOP4 is a new alt-seafood brand with one product we’ve never seen before – a vegan piranha. Its lineup includes rice-protein- and konjac-based salmon and tuna alternatives as well, alongside a range of seafood-complementing flavoured mayos. You can buy these at certain indie food stores or online.
Another company that recently launched plant-based seafood products was CPG giant Nestlé – but it says that won’t be the focus of its upcoming plant protein portfolio in India. The company hints at innovations “more relevant to the Indian market”, but is keeping its cards close to its chest. Watch this space!
And California’s Heyday Canning Co.opened what became a TikTok-famous bean pop-up in New York City, with huge lines outside the viral store surpassing the expected footfall. The idea was to exchange a can of beans for Heyday beans, which would be donated to the food bank City Harvest. As co-founder and CEO Kathryn Kavner said: “People frigging love beans.”
Courtesy: Kathryn Kavner/LinkedIn
Finance and M&As
WNWN Food Labs, the UK brand making cocoa-free chocolate, has successfully completed the CoLab Tech accelerator with Mondelēz International. It will showcase its alt-chocolate bars, truffles and coated biscuits at the food giant’s North American HQ.
In Germany, food conglomerate Pfeifer & Langen has acquired a majority stake in sausage-maker-turned-vegan-meat brand Rügenwalder Mühle for an undisclosed amount, with product development and international expansion high on the agenda.
Fellow German brand MyriaMeat – founded by researchers at the University of Göttingen – has emerged from stealth mode claiming to be able to make cell-cultured whole-cut meat, and has already seen €40M in investment.
Australian food producer Wide Open Agriculture has received investment and a distribution deal for its lupin proteins from Sweden’s Ingå Group, which has injected $825,000 into the former and acquired roughly a 15% stake at a pre-money valuation of $4.8M.
Courtesy: Wide Open Agriculture
In the US, precision fermentation company Liberation Labs has secured a $25M loan from the USDA to support the construction of its 6,000-litre-capacity biomanufacturing hub, amid a Series A round it hopes to complete by the end of Q1 2024.
Similarly, New York-based biomanufacturing company Synonym has raised funding from Open Philanthropy to expand its research into gas fermentation tech to produce planet-friendly proteins and other foods.
In sadder news, Floridian duckweed startupLemnature AquaFarms, which develops proteins and fibres from lemna, has filed for bankruptcy, with an online auction for its assets being held on December 12.
And things are shaking up at the top for Simulate and its sub-brand Nuggs, with co-founder and CEO Ben Pasternak leaving his role amid investor pressure. Co-founder Sam Terris (previously COO) is taking over.
Policy developments
Cellular Agriculture Australia, a Melbourne-based non-profit, has launched a tool to standardise terminology across the cell ag industry. The Language Guide used input from leaders across APAC, and one of its recommendations chimes with previous research revealing that ‘cultivated meat’ is the preferred term for cell-based proteins.
Italy, meanwhile, has resubmitted its cultivated meat ban proposal to the EU, which might mean a breach of the single-market rules and hefty fines. Now, Italian policymaker Alessandro Caramiello is hosting an “informal dialogue” on the subject today.
The UK government’s new National Vision for Engineering Biology is investing £2B in R&D and infrastructure over the next 10 years, including in the country’s cultivated meat sector, as it says there’s a critical shortage of infrastructure for alt-protein scale-up, and making cultivated meat doesn’t require “over-engineered” equipment like the life sciences sector.
British microbial oil company Clean Food Group has received government funding too, with the £1M, 18-month project helping the producer scale up the manufacturing of its functional oils, including its palm oil alternative.
In the EU, the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries (PECH) discussed the use of fish-related terms for plant-based foods, where the European Vegetarian Union argued that people aren’t confused with these labels. Newly launched alt-seafood association Future Ocean Foods was also present.
Meanwhile, two research centres on climate and sustainable food are in the works in Ireland, backed by €70M in funding. The former will focus on the climate, biodiversity and water, and the latter on researching sustainable and resilient food systems, convening academics, industry and policymakers from Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK.
The Czech Chamber of Deputies recently held a seminar promoting plant-based diets in the country for a healthier and more sustainable food system, with the parliament acknowledging the links and encouraging a shift towards vegan eating.
Courtesy: Oatly
In the Nordics, alt-dairy brands under the Plant-Based Sweden banner – including local Swedish favourites Oatly, DUG, Sproud, Planti and Oddlygood as well as international giant Alpro – have sent a letter to the government to include plant-based milk in the upcoming EU School Scheme review.
Further news from the region comes from Finland, which has a newPlant Based Food Finland consortium, headed by Oatly’s public affairs manager Niklas Kaskeala. There are 18 founding members which include Oatly, Lidl, WWF Finland, Nordic Umami Company, and Mö Foods among others.
Manufacturing and awards
And in news involving both these countries, Finnish company Fazer is moving the manufacturing of oat milk and oat-based cooking products to its Tingsryd factory in Sweden, with the facility in Koria, Finland focusing on oat yoghurts. The move – first mooted two months ago – will see 64 employees lose their jobs.
Meanwhile, the partnership between Israel’s Profuse Technology and Estonia’s Gelatex is bearing fruitful results, shortening the growth cycle of cell-cultured chicken muscle tissue to just 48 hours, with a fivefold increase in protein content.
In another partnership, French cultivated meat company Vital Meat has established a strategic link-up with cell-culture media producer Biowest to achieve successful repeat pilot productions of cultivated chicken in 250-litre bioreactors.
Courtesy: ChickP
Finally, at the Fi Innovation Awards, Hi-Food and Alianza Team Europe won the plant-based innovation award for their oil-based emulsions replicating animal fat attributes, alongside ChickP Protein for its 90% chickpea protein isolate. MycoTech won the health innovation award for its shiitake-fermented pea and rice protein powder. Meanwhile, Arkeon Biotechnologies received the Startup Challenge award for the most innovative plant-based or alternative ingredient – it makes proteins from air.
Chicago-based food tech startup Clever Carnivore has raised $7M in an oversubscribed seed funding round to expand operations and commercialise its cultivated meat products, starting with a pork bratwurst.
Clever Carnivore has secured $7M in seed financing for its cultivated pork, adding to a $2.1M pre-seed round last year to take total investment to $9.1M. The latest round was led by Lever VC, with other participants including McWin Capital Partners (Spain), Thia Ventures (Belgium and Switzerland), Valo Ventures (Palo Alto, California), Newfund Capital (France), and Stray Dog Capital (Kansas).
In addition to the round announcement, the company says it will relocate to a larger facility to scale up the manufacturing of meat it claims is much cheaper than any other cultured meat producer globally.
“We are delighted with the enthusiastic support from our investors in this seed round,” said Virginia Rangos, co-founder and CEO of Clever Carnivore. “This funding is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire team and reaffirms the confidence that investors have in our cutting-edge science, technology and business model. With this investment, we are well positioned to revolutionise the protein market and enhance the overall consumer experience.”
Founded in 2022, Clever Carnivore uses what it calls a “high-efficiency” biotech model to create “cost-competitive” cultivated pork sausages, burgers and chicken nuggets. Currently, it’s focusing on the former, with a Clever Bratwurst prototype set to be unveiled early next year.
A cost-competitive cultivated sausage
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
“Clever Carnivore’s approach blends breakthrough science and a demonstrated cost advantage in the cultivated meat sector,” said Pierre-Jean Cobut, entrepreneur in residence at Newfund Capital.
Lever VC managing partner Nick Cooney added. “We’ve been tracking and investing across the global cultivated meat sector since the first such company launched eight years ago, and we haven’t seen anyone come remotely close to Clever Carnivore’s astoundingly low current cost of production, a testament to the company’s phenomenal science.”
Clever Carnivore’s R&D is headed by co-founder Paul Burridge, who has over 20 years of research experience in cell line development and growth media optimisation. The company has been able to optimise its growth media to support its unique cell lines, achieving a significant reduction in cell culture media costs – “one to two orders of magnitude lower than any other cultivated meat company globally”.
“Paul’s experience with cell line development and low-cost media, coupled with Clever Carnivore’s cells’ superior growth performance in animal component-free media, places Clever Carnivore in a unique position to rapidly iterate and evolve their production processes and product formulation in a cost- and time-efficient manner,” said Subodh Gupta, partner at Valo Ventures.
Speaking to the Chicago Business Journal last year, Rangos explained: “We have what amounts to – at this point – a $10 burger, and as we continue to scale, we’ll bring that cost down considerably. We’re hoping to eventually get — and we think this is quite practical — to a $1 burger, essentially.”
This is crucial, given that cultivated meat needs to reach production costs of $2.92 per pound to be price-competitive with traditional meat, according to Reuters. And while players in this space have been able to cut production costs by 99% in less than a decade, analysis by McKinsey has found that it will still take until 2030 for it to reach price parity with animal-derived meat.
This is a challenge Clever Carnivore’s investors believe it is primed to overcome. “What was missing up to now was the technology to make products that will provide the same taste and nutrition as meat from farmed animals, and at a truly competitive price,” said Thia Ventures managing partner Bart Van Hooland. “Clever Carnivore has what it takes to bridge that gap, and they move very fast.”
Chicago’s growing importance as alt-protein hub
Courtesy: Clever Carnivore
The producer, which unveiled a 4,200 sq ft square-foot facility at Chicago’s Lincoln Park, will use the new funds to relocate to a larger plant by the end of the year. This will allow it to scale up production of its “low-cost, top-quality” meat with 500-litre bioreactors and add in test kitchens, with the company saying its growth has “already surpassed the capacity” of its inaugural lab.
Chicago – historically a meatpacking capital in the US – has recently seen a flurry of alt-protein activity to make the city a pioneer for protein diversification. This is a trend being seen across the state of Illinois, where the iFAB Tech Hub, which works on precision fermentation crops like soy and corn, was named one of 31 new Regional Innovation and Technology Hubs by the Biden-Harris administration. Most notably, the Greater Chicago area is home to the new 187,000 sq ft large-scale manufacturing facility being built by cultivated meat pioneer Upside Foods.
Upside had chosen to locate its factory here due to the region’s legacy in meat production, a shared commitment to innovation and sustainability, strategic geographical advantages (it’s situated at a major transportation crossroads), and its talented workforce. “This new facility is a significant investment in our communities – creating new good-paying jobs while advancing our ambitious clean energy goals to create a more sustainable future,” Illinois governor JB Pritzker said about Upside’s under-construction plant.
Upside is also one of only two companies (alongside Eat Just) to have received regulatory approval from the USDA for the sale of cultivated meat. This is a path all cultured meat producers will need to take, including Clever Carnivore. Rangos, who herself is a vegetarian, hopes the company can be part of the solution to the food system’s biggest challenges.
“It sounds funny on the face of it, but it makes all the sense in the world because there are a lot of problems with the current factory farming industry, one being [the] use of resources, and two the ethical treatment of animals,” she told the Chicago Business Journal. “I think there are a lot of vegetarians who would be interested in solving some of these problems.”
Courtesy: Meatable
The cultivated meat sector is a burgeoning market with over 156 companies globally and investment of $2.9B since 2014, according to alt-protein think tank the Good Food Institute. The category raised nearly $900M in 2022 but has faced a slowdown thanks to the global decline in food tech funding. But it has been boosted by the recent regulatory approvals in the US, which followed Eat Just’s maiden clearance in Singapore back in 2020.
Dutch fermentation startup Farmless has secured €4.8M to fund a pilot plant and accelerate R&D for its landless microbial protein. Founder and CEO Adnan Oner speaks to Green Queen about the investment round and plans for regulatory approval.
In total, Farmless has raised €6M, after a €1.2M pre-seed round earlier this year. The oversubscribed seed round was co-led by World Fund and Vorwerk Ventures, with participation from Revent.
The company creates climate-friendly functional proteins with a complete amino acid profile, employing a biomass fermentation technique that relies on liquid gases as feedstock. Its tech platform is designed “from the ground up” to be cost-effective, simple and efficient.
“Moving away from sugar as a feedstock for fermentation represents a significant opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions of fermentation-based food production,” said Dr Nadine Geiser, principal at World Fund.
Peter Schmetz, principal at Vorwerk Ventures, added: “We’re glad to back Farmless’s approach, which leverages molecular biology, food science and physics to develop superior food products that outperform its animal counterparts on all dimensions with significantly reduced climate impact.”
How Farmless grows its protein without farmland
Courtesy: Farmless
Founded in May this year, Farmless aims to build a fermentation platform that can create “an entirely new food repertoire” by harvesting naturally occurring microorganisms through controlled fermentation with a replenishable liquid feedstock. The latter is key, as instead of using sugar – as Geiser referred to above – the company’s feedstock is made from carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and renewable energy.
This allows Farmless to produce proteins locally, independent of agricultural land, which is important considering that half of all habitable land on the planet is used for farming, and 77% of that is for livestock production.
These proteins are made using liquid fermentation, a subsect of biomass fermentation. Unlike solid-state applications, where microorganisms are grown over an inoculated solid surface, microbial cells are submerged in a liquid for growth. It’s something that’s being used by large-scale manufacturers, most famously Quorn, the mycoprotein meat company. Farmless uses methylotrophs, which are microorganisms that consume methanol, for its product.
“We source the feedstock from other companies that make it with CO2 captured from the air with green hydrogen [and] renewable energy,” Farmless founder and CEO Adnan Oner tells Green Queen. “The ammonia can also be made with green hydrogen. Additionally, we use a minimal quantity of micronutrients, very similar to those needed by plants.”
This feedstock is then turned into protein through microbial fermentation. “After fermentation, we separate the water and microorganisms efficiently through centrifugation and then dry it further,” explains Oner. “The end result is a whole food where we really use the whole organisms as the end product. The organism has a high protein content, ranging from 60-80%.”
The Amsterdam-based startup has already developed an initial protein product that can be used in meat, dairy and egg alternatives, through a protein platform designed to eventually “outperform animal-based proteins” on cost.
Climate impact, competition and regulatory approval
Courtesy: Farmless
To measure the impact of its protein – which it claims is “carbon-negative” – Farmless conducted an internal life-cycle assessment (unverified by an independent third party). This revealed that the protein uses 15 litres of water per kg of protein (4,000 times less than beef, which uses 60,000 litres), needs no arable land (so about 5,000 times lower than beef, which uses 1,600 sq m per kg), and emits 2.2kg of CO2e per kg (227 times less than beef, which emits 500 kg of CO2e).
But it’s not just beef that Farmless’s protein trumps in terms of climate impact. Widely used in the plant-based industry, soy protein isolate – which is a pure protein extracted from soybeans – has a higher footprint too, using almost 350 times more water (5,200 litres) and 10 sq m of land, and producing nearly 3.5 times more GHG emissions.
Liquid fermentation certainly has its benefits, but it’s not an industry without challenges, which include – as Oner outlines – “scaling up the process specifically for your organism and finding the right equipment that makes the complete process efficient” and “finding non-dilutive capital to scale the infrastructure”.
Looking ahead
Courtesy: Farmless
Farmless is “working on a B2B2C application where our protein is branded but we don’t sell to the end customer”, and the startup is currently exploring partnerships. Another thing it will need is regulatory approval, as its protein would be considered a novel food under EU regulations, which means it requires premarket authorisation by the bloc. This can be a slow process, which Oner feels is a “problem for the fermentation industry as a whole”.
But his company is in the early stages of prepping a regulatory filing, with plans to seek approval in multiple regions. “We have not yet submitted any regulatory dossiers and expect it to take one to two years before submission,” he confirms.
For now, the company will focus on recruitment and building a “pilot protein brewery” in Amsterdam to scale up its process. “We’re also setting up a substantial kitchen within the same facility. This space will be our creative playground, where we will play with, ferment and try out new food products – all under one roof,” he explains. “The pilot protein brewery will also enable us to produce a steady stream of samples for product co-development with partners.”
Multiple companies are working with novel proteins using gases in some form. For example, Finland’s Solar Foods – which closed an €8M funding round last month – makes Solein protein using CO2, hydrogen and oxygen; Air Protein – a subsidiary of Californian biotech firm Kiverdi – makes use of recycled carbon; and Austria’s Arkeon Biotechnologies taps into carbon and hydrogen for its microbial protein. Meanwhile, companies like NovoNutrients, Calysta (both Californian) and Deep Branch Biotech (UK) are producing air proteins for livestock and fish feed.
But Oner doesn’t see any of these as competition – Farmless’s big beef is with Big Beef. “Our direct competitors are legacy animal protein producers,” he notes. “We initially target the production of proteins with best-in-class functional properties that can be used in a variety of food products. We’ve chosen proteins because they can directly compete with animal products.”
At a major APAC food tech conference in Singapore last month, I spoke to four alt-meat founders from India, China, the Philippines and Australia to find out what Asian consumers want from plant-based meat products.
Last month, as part of the Singapore International Agri-Food Week (SIAW), the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit organized by Rethink Events welcomed over 1,000 global leaders to meet and learn about Asia’s agri-food system to “accelerate the transition to a climate-smart food system” as organizer Rethink Events states on the event website.
As part of the week’s programming, I chaired a discussion about the ‘Healthier Proteins Shaping the Future for Plant-Based Innovation’ on stage. Joining me were four founders and leaders from plant-based meat startups in the APAC region, each representing some of the biggest markets in India, China, the Philippines and Australia, as well as the APAC Science and Technology Director from one of the world’s leading flavour companies.
Our discussion spanned a range of topics, from how important are clean labels to whether Asian consumers are still actively purchasing these products. We talked about what factors influence decision-making, what new ingredients are being developed in the sector, and what brands can do to build confidence in the nutritional value and overall quality of plant-based products
Most of all, the question we were trying to answer was: what does the Asian plant-based consumer want? The key takeaway from the discussion is that each Asian market is unique and its consumers have very specific and very different needs.
The below transcriptions have been edited for clarity and concision.
Anand Nagarajan, Co-Founder at Shaka Harry on Indian Consumers
Courtesy: Shaka Harry
On the Indian plant-based meat consumer: India is not one market. We’ve got 1.4 billion people, so it’s important not to view the Indian market as one ubiquitous market. The relationship to meat is complicated. In terms of who our consumer is, we have a very simple definition: anyone who has an affinity for the taste of meat is the consumer we’re looking for. We are going after the two-thirds of Indians who eat meat. Culturally, a large percentage of the Indian population that still consumes meat would abstain from it for close to 150 days of the year for various reasons. Some people abstain from meat on certain days. Some people will not eat meat at home. Some people only eat meat when they travel. Some people won’t eat meat on festival days. But all these people may want something that’s a familiar taste. This is where we position Shaka Harry.
On creating products for specific occasions: How do we create salience in a customer’s life, rather than trying to over-intellectualize the conversation? If something needs a lot of education…it won’t scale. We can’t educate a billion people individually. Even if I were to take the 100-200 million high-end consumer market, I can’t sit down and educate every single one of them. Instead, we focus on occasions. How do I win breakfast? How do I win school lunch prep? How do I win at a Saturday family gathering? We’re saying: here’s a very good product, it’s priced well and it is tasty. We’ll give you an occasion for when you need to have this at home. And we find that a far easier method to scale, rather than pursuing micro-markets.
On whether Indians want healthier products: Do Indian consumers want healthier products? There’s a disconnect between what the consumer tells you they want versus what they’re ready to pay for. When they go into the store, and you give them two products, one being healthier but with a 20-30% price premium, they will choose the value product. That’s what we are seeing.
On We have an entire line of clean-label products coming out soon with easy-to-read, natural ingredients. Thanks to consumer insights, we’ve developed a millet range. Millets is something that traditionally Indians have consumed a lot and consumers have very positive connotations about it. But here the point is not to mimic a meat experience. Rather we’re saying: here’s a very good product. We’re going to ‘de-junk’ your regular roti and paratha. We’re taking the gluten out. We’re adding natural fiber. The initial market response has been fantastic. So de-junking regular meals and giving consumers a superior version of everyday foods is working really well.
Shaka Harry is a plant protein company based out of India with a range of ready-to-eat products designed for the Indian palate and for Indian cuisines.
Astrid Prajogo, Founder and CEO at Haofood on Chinese Consumers
Haofood co-founder Astrid Prajogo exhibited the new peanut-based pork dumplings in Berlin | Courtesy: Haofood/LinkedIn
On the Chinese consumer base: Our consumer base is very interesting. They’re not flexitarian, but they’re gym-goers. So they choose our product because they are looking for specific protein with specific features- that’s one type of consumer that is pretty loyal to us. We also have the forein vegan community. Although not a large group, they have strong purchasing power. They also have a voice, which can be powerful. Finally, we have the local Chinese vegan community as well, they continue to support our products.
On what Chinese consumers are looking for from meat: We have spent the last couple of years studying how Chinese consumers approach buying meat. Not just plant-based meat, just meat. That’s what we want to understand. And taste is absolutely key, especially umami. China is the land of tasty food, every single part of the country has great-tasting food. So first: taste – they demand great taste. Second is safety. McKinsey published research earlier this year that revealed that for Chinese consumers, health and safety are the most important. Part of safety is for a product not to contain ingredients that consumers deem less safe, like methylcellulose or added gums so our definition of clean-label is free from added artificial ingredients, be it binders or perseveratives. We combine different types of plant proteins and we work with fruit fibres, so we can make a clean-label product where the cost is actually reasonable- we’re down to under $3.5 per kilogram.
Haofood is a Shanghai-based specialist in Asian plant-based meat designed for Asian applications.
Stephen Michael, Co-Founder and CEO at WTH Foods on Filipino consumers
Courtesy WTH Foods
The Philippines is a pretty sizable country- we have over 110 million Filipinos, and it’s a very meat heavy culture. As a predominantly Catholic country, we don’t have any dietary restrictions, so I’m jealous of my Thai and Malaysian friends whose vegetarian market exists already. In the Philippines, it’s almost non-existent and that’s what we are up against. Culturally and traditionally, a lot of dishes are meat-based, so putting out a plant-based meat product might not be the best idea. We’re continuously trying to figure out what the Filipino consumer wants. It seems they see something as healthy when it is local with added functional benefits in terms of beauty or physical aspects. So for example, if plant-based meat products are helpful for slimming, or if eating these products can help radiate beauty- that’s a driver. The entry point for the Filipino market is health, more than whether something is plant-based. Sustainability and animal welfare are very, very far down the list in terms of our consumers adopting plant-based meat.
When Filipinos think about health, they go for descriptive words like ‘organic’ or ‘cholesterol-free’, ‘low sodium’, ‘low fat’, ‘low sugar. Adding to that, Filipino consumers want their food to be more fortified or to have a unique ingredient like a local oil. For example, we’re trying mungbeans as an additive to respond to that demand- it’s a local and natural ingredient. to add a more local and natural ingredient to that. Consumers want to avoid preservatives and flavor enhancers so they do look at the ingredient list and want a cleaner label as well. For more of our plant-based meats, we fortify with local proteins or local ingredients to give them a more local and healthier profile.
There’s actually been a bit of pushback with plant-based meats when we offer Filipino favourites like sisig and sausages and holiday hams, where Filipinos will go for the real thing instead of the plant-based version, which has been a difficult scenario. So we’re done pretending to be meat. Achieving something as close to meat as possible will require that long list of ingredients and our customers are looking at labels, and if they don’t understand certain ingredients, they deem it to be less healthy. So we are actually in the midst of a pivot in terms of products. We are decreasing the number of our ingredients for our second generation of products and we don’t try so hard to be the meat product. I believe in the alternative protein industry and I believe there will be increased demand and need for protein, so we’re looking into high-protein snacks in more shelf-stable formats. The Philippines is an archipelago shipping frozen meat across all the islands is a logistical nightmare. So it’s a triple challenge: how do you ship your products across an archipelago, while making them shelf-stable and reducing the number of ingredients so they can be clean-label?
WTH Foods is a plant-based alternative protein startup based in Manila.
Chris Coburn, General Manager APAC at v2food on Australian plant-based meat consumers
Courtesy: v2food
On why Australia is different from the rest of Asia: I would say Australia is a little bit different from the rest of Asia, where I think we’re still seeing animal protein as being aspirational. Consumers in the rest of the region are looking to purchase animal products now that there’s more wealth available and a growing middle class. In Australia, as in a number of the developed markets, we’re seeing this trend to be a reducetarian, where people who have reached peak meat consumption are probably looking to come back the other way. If you look at animal consumption per capita in Australia, obviously it’s at levels that are close to the UK and US, unlike the rest of Asia.
On v2foods’ Australian consumer base: I would say v2food’s consumer base is the conscious consumers, those who are looking to reduce their meat intake, so we have a different challenge to the rest of Asia. Probably half of our retail sales are from this younger demographic -the millennials / the single-income-no-kids / the double-income-no-kids / those coming into families over the next 10 years- those conscious consumers looking to reduce meat consumption and consume alternatives.
On clean labels: I think from a portfolio point of view, we’re looking at the clean-label issue in two different ways and trying to distinguish from those more indulgent occasions where consumers are looking for that great taste and probably a treat and those everyday occasions where people are looking for more healthy options. In the first group of our products, we have burgers and sausages, and we’re competing against animal protein products which are highly processed, and for those, we are really trying to drive taste as the priority for our target consumers. Our biggest fear is that sometimes our competitors’ products are not good, and consumers are having a bad experience. So we really feel like taste is important for the category of products like sausages, burgers, and nuggets.
v2food is Australia’s number-one plant-based meat company.
Ai Mey Chuah, APAC Science & Technology Director at Givaudan Singapore on Asian Consumer Tastes
Courtesy: Givaudan
Ultimately for our customers, the most important thing is taste. If their products don’t taste good, and don’t look appealing, they won’t get a repurchase by the consumers. So in our business, what we do is customize the solutions to meet the needs of their consumers from the regions that they are marketing their products to.
I would say that in APAC cost is still a very important factor. So while for our Europe and US business, clean-label and natural solutions are very important, for the APAC region cost is still the determining factor- we help our clients change their label to be more cost-effective, rather than clean-label, as our [clean-label] solutions tend to be more expensive.
Some markets like China have well-educated consumers who don’t like artificial ingredients or additives in their products, so when it comes to replacing ingredients like methylcellulose, Asia is slowly gaining traction and we have products in our portfolio like citrus fibre that can act synergistically with certain proteins to actually provide that texture that is meat-like, juicy and succulent.
Givaudan is a global leader in fragrance and flavour; the company develops tastes and scents for food companies all over the world.
On the same day leaders around the world signed a COP28 declaration recognising the impact of food on climate change, the Bezos Earth Fund has announced a $57M grant towards tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and food security, which marks the beginning of a $1B climate funding pledge.
The Bezos Earth Fund has earmarked $57M in food-related grants to tackle the threats of climate change and biodiversity loss and preserve the future of food, as part of a larger $1B commitment to mitigate the impact of the food system on climate change.
Founded in 2020 through a $10B grant by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the fund is calling for a greater focus on food system transformation after 134 countries signed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action today, recognising. the link between food and agriculture and climate change.
The food system contributes to a third of all global emissions and is a major focus of this year’s UN climate summit. The COP28 food declaration will see countries add the impact of food and land use in their nationally determined contributions and climate adaptation plans by COP30, which will be held in Belém do Pará, Brazil in 2025.
Breaking down Bezos Earth Fund’s future food grant
The Bezos Earth Fund says apart from the $57M allocated now, it intends to distribute the rest of the $943M funds to support the ambitious implementation of emerging global agendas on food systems and climate by 2030.
Of the current grant, $30M will go to make livestock more sustainable – animal agriculture is currently responsible for 11-19.5% of all global emissions. This includes cutting livestock methane emissions by up to 30% in the next 10-15 years through a range of innovations, in partnership with the Global Methane Hub’s Enteric Methane R+D Accelerator. Additional grants will provide the capital to identify and develop low-methane feed and low-methane cattle breeding, as well as use a wearable sensor to measure cow methane emissions.
Courtesy: US Department of Interiors
Marcelo Mena, CEO of the Global Methane Hub, said time is of the utmost importance in terms of emissions reductions. “Initiatives like the Accelerator, which concentrate efforts on the highest emitting sector of methane emissions, will advance important research and help create long-term solutions on methane reduction, as well as ensure food and economic security of local communities that participate, particularly in the Global South.”
A $16.3M portion of the fund will help limit Amazon deforestation, with plans to reach zero illegal deforestation in the Brazilian state of Pará within the next three years by creating what the Bezos Earth Fund claims will be the world’s largest animal traceability system. Teaming up with organisations like the Nature Conservancy, IMAFLORA, Earth Innovation Institute, and Aliança da Terra (among others), the initiative will be able to trace meat, dairy and leather to eliminate deforestation from value chains, and bring about “forest-positive incentives” for cattle farmers and ranchers.
Another $8.3M, meanwhile, is earmarked to promote climate-smart agricultural practices. The Earth Fund is increasing its knowledge of soil ecosystems through seismology to assess carbon sequestration potential, facilitated by the Earth Rover Program. And teaming up with the Platform for Agriculture and Climate Transformation, the fund says it’s ensuring that federal financing in the US to decrease farm-level methane emissions reaches producers adopting climate-friendly practices.
Finally, the remaining amount ($2.6M), will support efforts to tackle food loss and waste – a third of all food produced is wasted across the world – alongside the Food and Land Use Coalition. They will do so by setting up an alliance of nations that will work to transform food systems. Moreover, by partnering with the think tank Clim-Eat the Earth Fund will develop food tech innovations and bring together stakeholders to accelerate their deployment.
“At COP28, it’s time to turn pledges and commitments into action and funding for innovative food solutions and food systems transformation,” said Andy Jarvis, director of future food at the Bezos Earth Fund. “Food isn’t just having a moment in COP28 – it’s the start of real momentum, and through the grants, we are announcing we will deliver that.”
Addressing climate inequalities and food emissions
Courtesy: International Conservation Caucus Foundation
The fund has also collaborated with over 16 other philanthropies to sign a new statement of action, committing to invest, advocate and partner to tackle food security and sustainability, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which set out a goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But this target is already in doubt, with current policies and consumption rates on course to reach 3°C, which will have a calamitous impact on the planet, especially on vulnerable populations.
This $57M grant is part of a broader food portfolio by the Earth Fund to support innovations like low-cost virtual livestock fences and initiatives promoting plant-rich diets and alternative proteins. Research has shown that meat accounts for 60% of all food emissions. Moreover, further analysis has found that replacing just half of our meat and dairy consumption with plant-based alternatives can double climate benefits and halt deforestation while reducing the number of undernourished people globally by 3.6% to 31 million.
A report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – which will present a roadmap for agrifood systems’ pathway to 1.5°C at COP28 – earlier this month revealed that 70% of the food industry’s hidden costs are health-related, and a quarter linked to the climate, with low-income countries hit the hardest.
Courtesy: Oxfam/The Guardian
And a study by Oxfam has suggested that the richest 1% of the world’s population are responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with emissions high enough to cause heat-related deaths of 1.3 million people in the coming decades. Bezos was third on the list of the multi-billionaires analysed, with the report finding that it would take the bottom 99% over 1,500 years to match the emissions of the top 1%.
“We cannot afford for food to be on the sidelines of climate and nature conversations any longer. Food is a victim, problem, and solution in the climate and nature crises, and we must raise its profile in the discussion,” said Andrew Steer, CEO and president of the Bezos Earth Fund. “We applaud countries raising their ambitions, prioritising food in their climate goals, and urge them to go bigger and bolder. We need to do things differently to feed a growing global population without degrading the planet and now is the moment for action.”
While still a niche category, an increasing number of brands are working with blended and hybrid meats – some nascent startups, others established meat producers. Funding is critical if this sector is to grow and reach its potential, but how do investors and VCs feel about these protein solutions?
This article is part of our content series exploring the world of hybrid and blended meat products – those blending cultivated or conventional proteins with plant-based ingredients, respectively, and why some think this is the future of reducing meat consumption.
In October, Andrew Arentowicz, founder and CEO of blended meat company 50/50 Foods, told me: “Our investors are very bullish on our potential.”
It’s a statement that has stuck with me, especially since later interviews we’ve done for this series about blended and hybrid meats have featured a similar rhetoric. “We’ve found investors – including those who are strongly anti-meat – are committed to the welfare of the planet and animals and see the blended solution as an immediate and achievable means of reducing meat consumption,” offered blended meat ingredients provider Mush Foods’ founder Shalom Daniel.
Meanwhile, hybrid meat producer SciFi Foods has raised over $40M in funding, after emerging from stealth with a $22M Series A last year. Newer brands are adding to the category – cellular agriculture expert Parendi Birdie just this week announced her blended meat startup to the world, while Paul’s Table has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding.
This has come on the backdrop of a global drop in food tech VC funding over the last year. “In the current economic environment, fundraising is not only challenging for companies in the hybrid space, but across all of the food tech industry,” ProVeg International’s cellular agriculture lead Julia Martin recently told me.
So we at Green Queen were curious: in a more volatile environment than usual, and a category that is confident about its funding potential, how do investors see it? We spoke to Steve Molino, principal at Florida-based Clear Current Capital, and Heather Courtney, general partner at New York-headquartered Alwyn Capital.
Their views highlighted the often contrasting opinions among investors, and a need for consolidation and enhanced value propositions on the part of blended and hybrid meat startups. Here’s what they had to say.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Courtesy: Anisha Sisodia/Phil’s Finest
Green Queen: Do you believe blended meat has potential as a food systems solution?
Steve Molino – YES: I’m very bullish on blended meat as one of the many food system solutions if it’s done right. ‘Done right’, to me, means blending conventional meat with plants in a way that won’t make consumers think twice. This means using natural plant ingredients and spices and avoiding unrecognisable ingredients that give people pause. If consumers think it’s simply meat and plants combined, and realise it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice on taste or experience, then the potential is legitimate.
Heather Courtney – NO: Blended has been tried before and the market wasn’t ready for it. We have asked a lot of omnivores in our circle, and none of them are overly excited about a blended product – they would prefer to make a periodic plant-based option to reap the health benefits of integrating more plants into their diet. We are not overly bullish on blended, but we hope to be proved wrong and see it reduce meat consumption.
GQ: Is hybrid meat a viable option?
HC – YES: Hybrid meat is how cultivated will enter the market on a broad scale, so we see this as a meaningful food systems solution. Technology that revolutionises a long-standing industry will always face pressure, and the cultivated industry is no different. Despite negative press, we are still bullish on the cultivated meat industry, and we see hybrid technology as a means of entry into the broader market.
SM – UNCLEAR: Hybrid meat’s viability is still tied to the overall viability of the cultivated space, which has many question marks. I view hybrid meat as both a long-term solution and a short- to medium-term necessity. In the long term, I think it could be viewed in the same vein as blended meat products, but in the short term, it’s likely the only way to make cultivated commercially feasible… as the chances of being able to economically produce 100% cultivated products that can compete on price with commoditised meat are slim to none in the next 10+ years.
Hybrid products will allow the cultivated market the chance to build and become normalised with consumers, while also – importantly – generating the revenues and business necessary to keep dollars flowing into the space, so scale can be further achieved.
Courtesy: SciFi Foods
GQ: What is more attractive to you as an investor, blended or hybrid meat?
SM – UNCLEAR: It depends on what’s driving an investor’s strategy. Blended meat companies should only be interesting to true CPG investors attracted by CPG business profiles and fundamentals. Alternatively, I think hybrid products are attractive to investors who have a deep interest in synthetic biology and trying to radically change the way meat is produced in the future. The latter has blatantly more risks and hurdles to overcome, but the perceived potential upside is greater.
Regardless, one key commonality between both approaches is that they have the ability to radically improve the impact of the food system on the planet, people and animals.
HC – NO: As investors who see the long-term health of our planet tied to transitioning away from relying on animals, blended products offer a novel short-term solution, but not a long-term goal.
GQ: Is the animal welfare aspect a dealbreaker for you when it comes to blended meat?
SM – NO: Blended meat is a bit controversial with some in the animal welfare space; however, it is an unequivocal win for animals. This undeniable win stems from the fact that impact is only created by getting people who eat meat to shift away from meat products. Since a vegan or vegetarian would never touch a blended product, that means every time a blended product is consumed, there is guaranteed displacement of animal demand that’s directly tied to the percentage of a blended product that is not meat.
The risk with fully vegan products is that when a vegan or vegetarian eats it, there is zero displacement of animal agriculture. For impact, it’s all about what meat-eaters want, and if this satiates them, while reducing meat consumption, then I’ll take that win all day.
HC – YES: Our mission is to see animals fully replaced in the consumer supply chain. As such, we won’t invest in a company that utilises slaughtered animal protein in their products so blended companies are not part of our portfolio construction.
GQ: How would you evaluate a blended or hybrid meat company from an investor’s perspective?
SM: I’d view a blended meat company solely through a CPG investing lens, so I’d be looking to understand how the product offering of conventional meat and plants is hitting on a consumer need that exists in the present day, and how the team is the right one to create a brand that drives strong traction and consumer loyalty. Tech or IP isn’t what will lead to a brand being successful; instead, it’s all about creating a great product that’s positioned to create a cult-like following with consumers.
I don’t think of evaluating ‘hybrid meat companies’. I see this as evaluating cultivated companies that will likely need to have hybrid products for the short to medium term to be commercially feasible. For these types of companies, technical and scientific capabilities (i.e., IP) are paramount, as well as the team that drives innovation on the tech and science, as the only way cultivated has a shot at becoming one of the solutions in the food system is if it can scale and prices drop dramatically. That will almost entirely be driven by tech and IP that are different from what exists and built with the purpose of scaling.
HC: Many of the cultivated companies we have invested in/have diligenced are pursuing a hybrid offering as their first product. We see these products as the way cultivated meat can enter the broader market at a competitive price and prove market fit.
Cultivated meat company Meatable is planning to launch its pork via a hybrid model | Courtesy: Meatable
GQ: Do you think there’s consumer demand for these products?
SM – THERE WILL BE: At the moment, no… because consumers don’t know it’s an idea. In the few instances where I’ve shared blended products with friends and family to gauge their interest (I don’t eat meat myself), the responses were overwhelmingly enthusiastic; however, that was for one specific company’s product that had its own approach to blended products.
Ultimately, I think demand can be quickly created as the space becomes a topic of interest for consumers, especially since many of these products will be able to hit on product attributes that consumers actually care about, such as fewer calories, eating more vegetables, and lessened health concerns around meat-heavy diets.
HC – NO: Previous failure of blended products to capture the market share shows there is work to be done and the consumer is likely not yet ready. There needs to be a strong focus on educating consumers about their benefits and unique qualities.
There also needs to be a strong focus on educating consumers about cultivated meat and how hybrid products can provide both health and environmental benefits.
GQ: Is lack of education/demand creation why previous efforts have failed?
HC– YES: Many consumers may not have been adequately informed or educated about the benefits and qualities of blended products. Successful marketing requires educating the consumer about their health and environmental benefits, which can be a significant hurdle.
SM – NOT NECESSARILY: While some have failed (i.e., Tyson’s blended products), Perdue’s Chicken Plus products continue to be a strong seller in the market. I think this simply comes down to building a CPG product in the right way. Blended products are for the here and now, and you can’t make this about technology or saving the planet.
When you look at Perdue’s offering, it talks about getting kids to eat veggies without having to sneak it in. They are clear on their target market – parents who are dying to figure out how to get their kids to eat vegetables – state a clear value proposition, and stay true to the format and offering their target market wants and needs (quick, convenient, frozen chicken nuggets for a reasonable price). Assuming that blended companies can create products that taste good, it will simply come down to traditional food business fundamentals.
Courtesy: Ana Isabel Martinez Chamorro/GOOD Meat
GQ: Is foodservice a better way to enter the market for these products?
HC – YES: Ensuring a positive first customer experience is key to creating customer acceptance and trust.
SM – IT DEPENDS: That’s more dependent on the specifics of the product itself and the founders pushing the companies forward. If a founder has a background in building brands and deep relationships with distributors and retailers and has a product that doesn’t need much hand-holding during preparation, then retail is the obvious choice.
On the flip side, if there is more nuance to the product in how it’s prepared or used, and the founder doesn’t have strengths in brand building, then retail would likely be a disaster.
US pea milk maker Ripple Foods has secured $49.2M in its latest funding round, taking total investment in the company to over $274M. The financing comes amid a rise in interest in the pea milk category, which outpaced the overall alt-dairy segment year-on-year (but has been down in recent weeks leading up to July).
Ripple Foods’ $49.2M investment takes the Californian pea milk brand’s total capital raised to more than $274M. According to an SEC filing – first reported by Forbes – the funding came from a total offering of $55.4M via equity, debt, and securities that can be acquired upon the exercise of an option or warrant in the future.
The latest funding round follows a $60M Series E raise in 2021, which was led by S2G Ventures, Bloom8 and Ajax Strategies. Other previous investors include TAO Capital, Siddhi Capital, Prelude Ventures, Khosla Ventures and GroundForce Capital.
Courtesy: Ripple Foods
Creating a ripple in the alt-milk sector
The investment is among a very small number of large VC investments to women-led businesses – Pitchbook data shows that women-founded startups receive less than 2% of all VC. While Ripple, which makes plant-based milk and protein shakes from yellow peas, was founded in 2014 by two men, Adam Lowry and Neil Renninger, it is currently helmed by a female CEO, Laura Flanagan.
While there hasn’t been a statement about the latest funding, Flanagan had noted after the Series E raise that the company was outpacing the expansion of the overall plant-based milk industry by threefold, and was well-positioned to further accelerate this growth: “This capital raise will enable us to accelerate innovation and growth across product categories, and expand into new channels and global markets. It allows us to further achieve our mission of making plant-based foods that are better for people, and better for the planet, on an even larger scale.”
Since then, Ripple has added a blended Oatmilk + Protein oat and pea milk (though it seems to have been out of stock for a while) to its lineup of vanilla (sweetened and unsweetened), chocolate, original and sweetened milks. It expanded its kid-friendly line too, with an unsweetened version joining the original DHA- and calcium-rich milk. Moreover, its smoothies come in chocolate, coffee and vanilla flavours.
The company’s USP is its pea protein, called Ripptein, which is made from patent-pending tech that eliminates “the impurities like flavonoids and tannins that can give other plant-based milks their plant-ey flavour”, resulting in what it claims is the “purest, cleanest-tasting non-dairy milk”.
Courtesy: Ripple Foods
The US pea milk market
Ripple’s raise comes at a curious period for plant-based milk in the US. In 2022, it saw a 9% annual growth in dollar sales, which reached $2.8B, commanding 15.4% of the total milk market. This sector also penetrated 41% of households, with 76% of consumers repeating their purchases. Despite this rise, unit retail sales were down by 2% from 2021, suggesting the growth comes on the back of price hikes.
In fact, Ripple was among the top 10 leading brands in terms of alt-milk sales in 2022, when the pea milk category grew by over 27% year-on-year. And while that trend has continued over the past year – with SPINS data showing an increase in dollar sales by 17.3% and unit sales by 4.1% for the 52 weeks to July 16, 2023 – this market has faltered in recent weeks, seeing a 4.8% drop in dollar sales and 2.8% drop in unit sales in the 12 weeks ending July 16.
In contrast, the overall plant-based dairy sector saw dollar sales rise by 7% and unit sales fall by 5.4% year-on-year, but has experienced a fall in both metrics in the 12-week period (-3.6% and -2.5%, respectively). Similarly, while conventional dairy dollar sales were up by 4.6% annually, unit sales declined by 2.3% – and in the 12 weeks to July 16, both were down (-3.6% and -2.5%, respectively).
So while the pea milk segment has seen a slightly larger decrease in the number of packs sold as well as total sales in recent weeks, it has outpaced both conventional and the overall plant-based dairy sectors in the last 12 months. And as health becomes an even larger influence on purchasing decisions in the US – with Gen Zers going vegan more for health than environmental reasons, and brands pushing nutritional aspects in product messaging – you could make the case that Ripple is poised for growth.
Courtesy: VMG Creative/Ripple Foods
The brand’s pea milk is soy- and nut-free (making it more inclusive for people with allergies), and has half the sugar, 50% more calcium and the same amount of protein compared to semi-skimmed cow’s milk. Ripple is also synonymous with the North American pea milk industry, where it’s available in over 20,000 retail locations.
The sector includes players like fellow Californian brand Bolthouse Farms and Swedish producer Sproud. Perhaps its closest challenger at present, though, is Chilean food tech company NotCo, which uses yellow pea protein as a primary ingredient in some of its alt-milks. It has raised over $433M to date, and just launched a vegan mac and cheese with Kraft Heinz.
The Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet is partnering with Change Foods to host a food tech pavilion at COP28 on the conference’s dedicated food day (December 10) – here’s what it will entail.
After neglecting it for years, the UN climate summit is finally focusing on the sector that contributes to a third of all global greenhouse emissions. COP28 will shine a huge spotlight on food and agriculture systems this year, with the FAO set to announce a policy roadmap to bring this industry’s climate impact in line with the 1.5°C goal set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
There will also be a number of food pavilions, allowing organisations and stakeholders to have open discussions about the various issues faced by our food system. It’s more important than ever, given the world is on its way to 3°C temperature rises above pre-industrial levels – a far cry from the 1.5°C we might be approaching within the next five years (even though the conference president says this target remains possible).
Food has an outsized impact on the climate. Of the 34% of human-caused emissions attributed to food, 60% comes from meat production. The livestock sector, meanwhile, is responsible for about 11-19.5% of all emissions. An increase in consumption of plant-based foods, on the other hand, can have dramatic benefits for the planet.
One study has shown that a vegan diet can help cut emissions, land use and water pollution by 75%. Another revealed that animal-derived foods cause twice as many emissions as plant-based foods. And a third one suggested that swapping just half of our meat and dairy intake with vegan alternatives can halt deforestation, reduce agriculture and land use emissions by 31%, and double overall climate benefits.
The importance of protein diversification
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
This is why highlighting food is essential for climate action. As part of this effort, COP28 has announced that three-quarters of all food served at the conference will be meatless. Additionally, it will host a dedicated Food, Agriculture and Water Day (December 10), which will spotlight investment in innovation, procurement around regenerative agriculture, national transformation pathways underpinned by financing mechanisms, and project preparation, as Raphaël Podselver, director of UN Affairs at non-profit ProVeg International, explains.
He adds that it’s the “first time we are having real discussions on food and agriculture at a COP summit”, and expects policy shifts aimed at promoting plant-forward diets and protein diversification, improving food security and cutting agrifood emissions.
“Protein diversification is at the core of food systems transformation,” says David Bucca, founder and CEO of Australian-American precision fermentation company Change Foods, who will be speaking on food tech and sustainability at the summit. “Innovative technologies, such as precision fermentation, offer us a way to create nutritious high-quality protein without relying on industrialized animal agricultural expansion. It is a win for the planet, a win for consumers, and a win for the animals.”
The food day will convene entrepreneurs, financiers, policymakers, ecosystem builders and commercial leaders, who will discuss methods to scale up and commercialise these technologies – a major bottleneck for the cultivated and precision-fermented protein sectors.
Food pavilions at COP28
Courtesy: Change Foods
One of the pavilions is being hosted by the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet (GASP), a New York-based alliance of thought leaders that incubates ideas with system-scale transformation potential by leveraging private finance for the public good. It acts as a catalyst to create partnerships between governments, international organisations, entrepreneurs, climate advocates and global investors. Co-hosting is leading US-Australian precision fermentation dairy startup Change Foods, which announced last year it would be building a production facility in the UAE.
Held in the official Blue Zone of Dubai Expo City on December 10th, the official food and agriculture day as designated by COP28 organizers, GASP’s food tech pavilion will feature several leading entrepreneurs and thoughtleaders from sustainable food companies and advocacy organizations. The day will begin with a deep-dive into different pillars of food tech, where some of the leaders in this space – like Bucca and Change Foods CMO Irina Gerry, and Upside Foods CEO Uma Valeti – will outline distinct solutions, their benefits, and the hurdles yet to pass.
The conversation will then switch to investment and the impact of increased funding and feature Elysabeth Alfano of VegTech Invest, Manon Littek of Green Generation Fund and Jennifer Chammas of HSBC, who will discuss how to achieve scale through ecosystem collaboration, before moving on to frontier companies that are making innovative products for both retail and foodservice.
Green Queen founder and editor-in-chief Sonalie Figueiras will also be speaking at the event: she will interview Timo Recker, co-founder and executive chairman of Singapore-based alt-meat brand TiNDLE Foods in a fireside chat about how to bring consumers onboard with food innovation.
“We are thrilled to partner with Global Alliance for Sustainable Planet to deliver a full day of content focused on innovative food technologies at COP28, by bringing together an incredible set of expert speakers to ensure deep learning and meaningful collaboration and to catalyse action,” said Gerry.
Likewise, the Food4Climate Pavilion will return to the UN climate summit, following a first appearance at COP27 last year. It has been established by a coalition of NGOs, including ProVeg International, World Animal Protection, Compassion in World Farming, Plant Based Foods Institute, Humane Society International, Mercy for Animals, and Four Paws, among others.
This pavilion will tackle the need for prioritising alternative protein production over animal-derived foods, as well as the overconsumption of meat in the Global North, which accounts for 92% of excess carbon emissions, which disproportionately affects vulnerable populations largely in the Global South.
Pavilions like GASP’s and Food4Climate highlight the importance of food systems transformation and hopefully can help galvanize our leaders to take meaningful climate action at COP28.
New York-based sustainability research firm HowGood has partnered with Majid Al Futtaim, which operates Carrefour in the UAE, to bring the former’s climate impact labels to five of the French retail giant’s stores in Dubai, including one at COP28. HowGood’s stamp will be digitally displayed on over 2,500 food products.
HowGood, the US research agency that boasts the largest ingredient and product sustainability database (covering over 33,000 ingredients), has teamed up with Majid Al Futtaim – which operates Carrefour stores in the UAE – and SES-imagotag (a digital solutions provider for physical commerce) to bring climate impact labels to more than 2,500 food items.
The collaboration will see HowGood’s climate impact labels appear on product packaging at five Carrefour Dubai locations: Mall of the Emirates, City Centre Deira, City Centre Mirdif, Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3, and its store at COP28 (situated at the Blue Zone in Expo City). It will make Carrefour the only retailer in the region to transparently disclose the sustainability ratings of its products.
How HowGood’s climate labels will work at Carrefour
Courtesy: HowGood
Consumers will now be able to identify the climate and social impacts of the food they buy via three labels provided by HowGood, which include information on carbon footprints and comprehensive sustainability credentials. These labels will utilise SES-imagotag’s digital shelf edge tags, which enable “seamless visibility” for consumers to help them make purchasing decisions.
The first label, Product Carbon Footprint, is a measure of the greenhouse gas emissions of the food item from cradle to shelf. The second, the Comprehensive HowGood Sustainability Rating, ranks products based on their socio-environmental impact via a percentile system. If a food has the ‘Best’ rating, it means the product has better social and climate credentials than 95% of all others assessed. ‘Great’ indicates 85% and ‘Good’ 70%.
These ratings are part of Carrefour’s Choose Better programme as well, which is launching at COP28. It aims to “educate, empower and reward customers” for making better-for-you and eco-friendly choices accessible and affordable. The scheme is built on three pillars – For You, For the Planet, and For Communities – highlighting the health, environment and social focus points. It’s a pertinent campaign, given that 83% of the Emirati population doesn’t eat its daily recommended servings of five fruits and vegetables.
Courtesy: Majid Al Futtaim
“Our launch of the Choose Better programme is not only a testament to our commitment to sustainability, it also aligns with our purpose to help customers shop smarter and live better by helping them make healthier, more sustainable shopping choices,” said Sheila Chaiban, CMO at Majid Al Futtaim. Carrefour itself claimed to have reduced its emissions by 36% in 2019 and intends to cut them by a further 30% by 2030 and 55% by 2040 (from a 2019 baseline).
The third HowGood label available at Carrefour stores is called Product Sustainability Attributes, which digs deeper into additional climate concerns. This helps shoppers identify which products use less water (Water Smart), have lower GHG emissions (Climate Friendly), comprise simpler formulations with a maximum of seven or fewer ingredients (Clean Label), are made with ingredients not dependent on commercial or industrial processing (Minimally Processed), and respect workers’ rights (Fair Labor).
Catering to consumer trends and government plans
Courtesy: Majid Al Futtaim
HowGood says the three labels bring transparency to multiple areas of concern surrounding the food industry and its impact on the planet. Food systems are responsible for a third of all global emissions, with meat accounting for 60% of these. As the UAE hosts the UN climate summit in its Year of Sustainability, the focus on food and its impact on the climate is more pronounced than ever before – especially given that the UAE wastes roughly 38% of all food produced daily, while food imports make up 90% of its supply and 6% of its population remains undernourished.
At the Future Food Forum in Dubai in September, a panel discussed consumers’ rising interest in plant-based and flexitarian diets in the country – 44% of its residents are open to substituting meat and dairy with vegan alternatives. And a YouGov poll last month revealed that 55% of Emirati citizens identify as flexitarian (including pescetarians), vegetarian or vegan.
That third HowGood label also ties in with what people are looking for in the country. For flexitarians and vegetarians, health is the topmost priority (58% and 59% chose it, respectively) when it comes to food choices, according to the YouGov survey. That focus on clean-label ingredients and minimal processing will appeal to this cohort, but there’s a broader precedent as well: global ingredients manufacturer Ingredion has previously found that 50% of the country’s citizens are prioritising their food and drink’s nutritional content and naturalness.
Courtesy: YouGov
These labels have proven to be influencing consumer purchases. HowGood partnered with SES-imagotag in London recently, and the use of its attributes increased product sales by 25.8% on average. The Fair Labor attribute brought a rise of 45.1%.
It’s another chapter in what will be the UN’s first food-focused climate summit, where the FAO is set to introduce a roadmap for the agri-food sector to align to the 1.5°C goal, which COP28 president (and head of UAE national oil company Adnoc) Dr Sultan Al Jaber claims is still possible – despite recent scientific reports saying otherwise. In fact, one study has found that the world is currently on track for 3°C warming above pre-industrial levels, amplifying the importance of striking international climate deals at COP28.
“Food brands and retailers have an immense opportunity to drive transparency and empower more sustainable decision-making,” said HowGood chief innovation officer Ethan Soloviev. “Our launch at COP28 will be a clear signal of where the future of retail is headed with regard to sustainability.”
Kraft has unveiled a vegan version of its famed boxed mac and cheese in the US, the third innovation as part of its collaboration with Chilean food tech startup NotCo. The NotMac&Cheese will roll out in supermarkets in December through early 2024 in two flavours.
Borne out of its Kraft Heinz Not Company venture with NotCo, Kraft will soon launch the third product to come out of the collaboration – and it promises to be the most sought-after yet.
The 85-year-old food giant is giving its famous boxed mac and cheese a vegan makeover, releasing two flavours of the pasta – original and white Cheddar – in the US, starting December through early 2024. Priced at $3.49 per box, it follows the launch of plant-based NotCheese Slices and NotMayo last year.
Courtesy: The Kraft Heinz Company
While this isn’t the first time Kraft has unveiled a vegan mac and cheese – it has been selling this in Australia since 2021 – it does mark its US debut. “The Kraft Heinz Not Company creates plant-based versions of fan-favourite foods that taste like the real thing, yet don’t require people to drastically change their eating habits,” said Lucho Lopez-May, CEO of the Kraft Heinz Not Company. “NotCo brings its revolutionary AI technology that has a proven track record in creating mouthwatering plant-based foods to Kraft.”
Is Kraft’s vegan mac and cheese healthy?
The Kraft Heinz Company and NotCo announced their link-up in February 2022, with the venture being kept completely separate from their respective companies, leveraging the market expertise and distribution channels of the former and the artificial-intelligence-led technology and innovation of the latter.
The idea was to create vegan versions of Kraft products using NotCo’s patented tech. The Chilean startup’s platform (called Giuseppe) uses AI and machine learning algorithms to match thousands of different plant-based ingredients and find the combinations best suited to replace animal-derived foods. It is the brains behind the company’s range of plant-based milks, chicken and burgers.
Kraft cited IRI data to reveal that the distribution of better-for-you mac and cheese products is outpacing the overall category by over six times. It’s joining more and more food manufacturers in being more vocal about the nutritional aspects of its products, something Americans are increasingly concerned about.
Courtesy: Anthony Boyd Graphics/The Kraft Heinz Company
Research has suggested that more American Gen Zers want to go vegan for their health than the environment. And 1,022-person survey by the International Food Information Council (IFIC) in May found that health is the major factor behind US consumers eating vegan or vegetarian diets, with six in 10 choosing it.
Health is an omnipresent conversation in the US, with an alarming rise in rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes – over two-thirds (69%) of Americans are overweight and 36% are obese. Having said that, the Kraft vegan mac and cheese isn’t necessarily healthier than the original. When prepared according to its instructions – using almond milk and margarine – a cup of the pasta has 450 calories, compared to 350 calories for the original macaroni and cheese made with 2% milk and margarine.
The dry NotMac&Cheese mix (made from faba bean and coconut oil powder) is also higher in fat and carbohydrates. But, being a plant-based product, it doesn’t contain any cholesterol and additionally boasts higher protein and fibre content – the two nutrients Americans are trying to consume more than any other this year, according to the International Food Information Council (IFIC).
Taste and texture paramount for vegan cheese
Health is one aspect – taste is just as important. Numerator data reveals that vegan mac and cheese only has a 30% repeat purchase rate in the US, with consumers citing taste and texture as deterring factors. It chimes with IFIC research that shows taste is the top driver for food and beverage decisions among Americans.
Similarly, a study leveraging Kroger data from 60 million American households revealed that texture is the aspect Americans dislike most about vegan food, followed by high price (Kraft’s vegan mac and cheese is nearly three times as expensive as the original). In fact, when it comes to vegan cheese, 73% of US consumers are unhappy with the flavour (“plastic” or “unnatural”) and texture (“grainy”). They want cheeses that taste better, melt well and have a creamy texture.
The US plant-based market has faltered over the last couple of years, owing to the post-pandemic supply chain and inflationary pressures, as well as consumer concerns about overprocessed ingredients. According to SPINS data crunched by the Good Food Institute, the country’s vegan cheese sector saw $233M in dollar sales last year, a 2% drop from 2021. Retail sales (47 million) were also down by 5%.
Moreover, plant-based cheese only has a 5% household penetration rate, and makes up 1.1% of the overall market share. But this won’t discourage Kraft, a food giant that sells a million boxes of boxed mac and cheese every day, and had net sales of about $26B last year. Other players in this space include Amy’s, Annie’s Homegrown, Upton’s Naturals, Wicked Kitchen, and Gal Gadot-owned Goodles.
Now, the Kraft Heinz Not Company plans to continue its scale-up into several other categories and begin international expansion next year. Maybe we’ll all be whipping up a vegan boxed mac and cheese while watching old Hollywood alongside our dogs in no time, à la Brad Pitt.
In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a vegan deviled egg launch, cultivated meat approval guidance in the UK, and several developments from Californian businesses.
New products and launches
Singapore-headquartered TiNDLE Foods continues its aggressive expansion drive with a new foodservice partnership with UK sushi chain YO! Sushi, which will see two limited-edition dishes (a bao and fried chicken) appear in over 50 locations until the end of the year.
Courtesy: TiNDLE Foods
More expansion news, this time from Hong Kong vegetarian eatery Treehouse, which is gearing up to launch its fourth and fifth locations at the Kai Tak Airside shopping complex (December 4) and in Tsim Tsa Shui (December 5), respectively.
Another upcoming restaurant is Nic Adler’s Italian diner Argento in Los Angeles, whose investors include pop megastars Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas (who are both vegan). Opening in winter 2024, the kitchen will be headed by Scott Winegard, former deputy of celebrity chef Matthew Kenney.
Courtesy: Planetarians
Fellow Californian business Planetarians is presenting its waste-to-food plans and products at Dubai’s COP28, which will begin tomorrow. Its CEO Aleh Manchuliantsau will be part of a panel on December 1, and the brand will have a booth at the Tech and Innovation Hub from December 8-12.
One more brand from California, hemp-based meat maker Planet Based Foods is expanding its footprint in the state, partnering with New Leaf Community Markets and Lunardi’s Markets, which will house several of its company’s products starting next month.
Over in Texas, vegan egg company Crafty Counter has launched a deviled egg SKU in collaboration with Fabalish‘s faba bean mayo. The limited-edition product comes in a tray filled with the former’s WunderEgg half egg white shells, and a sachet of pre-made deviled egg filling.
Courtesy: Crafty Counter
Elsewhere, in Malaysia, GoodMorning Global has unveiled a “complete-nutrition” plant-based meat dry mix under the brand name WonderMeat. The soy and pea protein blend has been listed in the Malaysia Book of Records and will retail at RM5.50 ($1.18) for each pack, which makes about 200-240g of wet mix.
The UK, meanwhile, has seen the launch of Herbie Wilde, a plant-based hypoallergenic alternative superfood for dogs. The vegan pet food contains 39 ingredients, including sweet potato, fruits, greens, ancient grains, herbs, and botanicals.
Across Europe, DSM-Fonterra-backed Dutch B2B ingredients startup Vivici has collaborated with Boston-based cell programming firm Gingko Bioworks to develop and commercialise animal-free functional alt-dairy proteins from precision fermentation.
South Korean vegan cheese brand Armored Fresh, meanwhile, has expanded into conventional and natural grocery stores in the US, including Fresh Thyme Market, Town and Country Foods and Fred Meyer – months after first launching its almond milk American cheese stateside.
Courtesy: Vegan FInest Foods
Also in the Netherlands, plant-based seafood brand Vegan Zeastar has added a Crispy Coconut Shrimpz SKU to its lineup of potato-based shrimp analogues, which will be on sale from December 4.
And in Austria, Rewe Group’s Billa retail chain is ramping up its plant-based portfolio, with a new superstore featuring a dedicated vegan aisle – this will be expanded to 20 existing stores across the country.
Finance and markets
Swedish seitan startup Edgy Veggie – which makes kebabs, tacos and souvlaki – has reportedly raised $200,000 at about a $250,000 pre-money valuation, according to the FoodTech Weekly newsletter.
Berlin-based microalgae startup Quazy Foods has brought in €800,000 in a pre-seed funding round, which involved ProVeg International, Antler, and Sprout and About Ventures.
Hello Plant Foods, a Spanish vegan foie gras maker, expects to sell 110,000 units of its product during the holiday season – almost four times its figures last year.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
One brand that isn’t selling as well is plant-based giant Beyond Meat, which has experienced sales declines for months now. But it still has enough money to get through the next couple of years (and possibly more with further cost-cutting), according to John Baumgartner, managing director at analyst Mizuho Securities, who told AFN it’s hard to sense what will happen.
Another giant that has faced challenges is Hong Kong-based alt-milk company Vitasoy, which saw a 7% decline in annual revenue, driven by hurdles in its main plant milk markets, Australia and New Zealand (where revenue dropped 10%). But the company remains positive that its strong Asia performance – particularly with soy milk and tea – will help it bounce back.
Research and policy developments
Staying in the alt-dairy realm for a second, a student in Los Angeles – who wasn’t allowed to promote soy milk in her high school without doing the same for dairy – has won a lawsuit against her school, which ruled that students have a right to non-disruptive speech critical of dairy under the 1st Amendment.
Meanwhile, a study published in the Appetite journal has revealed that repeated consumption of plant-based meat doesn’t improve consumer liking of those products – it’s the context of what meals they were used in that really matters.
A little left field, but Minneapolis-based plant-based food and drinks manufacturer SunOpta is celebrating its 50-year anniversary. It has invested over $200M in its production capacity in the last three years to double its business.
Elsewhere, consumer finance website Little Loans has revealed that Lidl is the cheapest supermarket to buy a vegan-friendly Christmas dinner in the UK this year, costing £8.83 for nine items. The most expensive – no surprise – was M&S at £16.8.
Courtesy: Lidl
Still in the UK, charity The Food Foundation is calling for mandatory reporting of animal-derived and plant-based proteins by retailers and the out-of-home channel for greater transparency, criticising government inaction on the issue.
There has been some action for cultivated meat though, with the UK Food Standards Agencypublishing guidance on cultivated meat regulatory approval – weeks after it was reported that cultured meat approval could be fast-tracked in the country, following an application from Israel’s Aleph Farms in August.
Meanwhile, new research by Dutch cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat outlines the challenges the industry faces, including scientific ones like manufacturing bottlenecks and non-scientific ones like regulatory approval and consumer acceptance.
Movers, shakers and awards
In Germany, mycoprotein startup Nosh.bio has partnered with the Berliner Berg brewery to set up a pilot plant to demonstrate the concept that breweries can co-produce food ingredients whilst brewing beer at the same site.
Courtesy: NotCo
There have been some more changes in the alt-protein corporate world. At Chilean AI-led plant-based company NotCo, CMO Fernando Machado will be transitioning to an advisory role.
Canadian vegan cheese brand Daiya, meanwhile, has welcomed new CEO Hajime Fujita, who was a VP at its parent company, Japan’s Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. He replaces Michael Watt, who has held the position since 2019.
Food tech company MycoTechnology also has new leadership, with Michael Leonard joining as CEO, replacing co-founder Alan Hahn, who will step into the role of executive chairman.
Courtesy: Roots & Rolls
And finally, in some awards news, Barcelona’s plant-based eatery Roots & Rolls has won the Notable or Innovative Venue Award at the IV Barcelona Hospitality Awards 2023.
The Biden administration has made investments worth $195.9M in 185 agricultural projects to bolster the food supply chain and lower costs, but there’s barely a mention of climate change, protein diversification or GHG emissions.
The USDA has announced a $196M package of investment into 185 farming projects across 37 states and Puerto Rico to boost the agricultural supply chain, expand markets for producers, and lower overall costs. It was announced after the first meeting of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience, which also introduced new schemes to improve larger supply chain logistics, something the Biden-Harris administration says is part of its Bidenomics agenda.
“Today’s investments in agricultural producers and rural entrepreneurs will create better economic opportunities that spur competition and bolster food supply chains across the country,” said agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack.
And yes, supporting farmers is absolutely vital to protecting our food system. However, there’s a giant climate hole in the list of projects being awarded with the grants. Of the 185 recipients, only 10 have any mention of ‘sustainability’ in the USDA’s list. There’s no mention of carbon emissions – at least 11% of which come from agriculture in the US – or methane at all, despite at least 36% of the US’s methane emissions created by the farming industry.
This is, sadly, largely consistent with funding efforts in the US. One study found that between 2014 and 2020, American livestock farmers received 800 times more funding than plant-based and cultivated meat, while 95% of all research and innovation spending went to animal farmers, aimed at improving production. This latest grant fits that trend.
“These actions will help Americans get the products they need when they need them,” the White House said in a statement. But what the Americans really need is a way to cut down their meat consumption, which is overboard, to help bring their overall emissions down.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The US’s meat and climate problem
Americans eat 127kg of meat per year, which is eight times higher than the recommended amount of 15.7kg by the Eat-Lancet Commission to align with our decarbonising goals – of this figure, only 12% of its citizens are responsible for half of the share. And a 2021 poll found that 59% of them believe eating meat is just part of “the American way of life”.
Studies have found that 74% of Americans don’t think eating meat is linked to climate change – despite 60% of all food emissions (which make up a third of all emissions) coming from meat. Research has also revealed that switching to a vegan diet can cut emissions, land use and water pollution by 75% compared to a meat-rich diet, and swapping just 50% of our meat and dairy intake with plant-based alternatives can double climate benefits and halt deforestation.
In September, amid the aftermath of the flash floods in New York City (months after its polluted sky turned orange due to Canadian wildfires), a report revealed that Americans need to reduce their meat intake by 82% if they are to avoid similar climate disasters in the long term. Its authors called for more “public investment in research and innovation for cell-cultivated meat, plant-based proteins, and protein from fermentation” and a redirecting of subsidies towards “plant-based innovation”.
The fact that the Biden administration has largely ignored climate change, sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions and protein diversification in this latest grant is quite consistent with previous US presidencies. As food writer Alicia Kennedy wrote in the Guardian: “During the Obama presidency, despite gestures toward progressive environment policies, there were pushes to speed up poultry processing, continued antibiotic overuse in factory farm operations, and other issues in the meat industry that went unattended.
“At the start of the pandemic, Donald Trump declared meat processing “critical infrastructure”, keeping factories open regardless of safety. Between April 2020 and April 2021, nearly 60,000 meatpacking workers became infected with the coronavirus.”
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
Previous climate funding exists, but the scale is disproportionate
It would be unfair to say that the Biden administration has completely ignored climate change in all its funding efforts. Just this month, the White House announced $5B in investment in five USDA projects to help farmers adopt “new climate-smart agricultural practices”, support community infrastructure and ramp up rural economic development.
In September 2022, it released an executive order directing agencies to create reports on the biotech sector, which included one from the USDA on “cultivating alternative food sources”. This was followed by the allocation of $6M to USDA’s Agricultural Research Service for alternative protein R&D. A year earlier, the government made its largest public funding package for alt-protein through a $10M NIFA grant, which formed the Tufts University Center for Cellular Agriculture in Massachusetts.
There has been regional-level support too. In July 2022, California became the first US state to invest in research for alt-protein, allocating $5M from the state budget. And earlier this year, 1,400 mayors ratified a resolution promoting a shift to vegan diets across the US, which can help address chronic diseases, climate change and national healthcare costs.
But these alternative protein investments are dwarfed by the larger investments going into the US agriculture industry. All kinds of financing going into agriculture need to prioritise emissions-cutting and climate-friendly farming – the climate crisis is the most urgent threat we face. America’s farmers know this too, having lost yields to bad harvests and crop failures increasingly over the last few years.
US politicians haven’t exactly inspired confidence in terms of their stances or actions on climate change. Republicans have been ignoring or altogether denying the crisis, and sure, while Biden re-entered the Paris Agreement, he’s skipping COP28 – the most important climate conference ever – ahead of an election year.
How would that play out with America’s youth, who have already had to stand up against the system to fight for climate justice? Only 14% of the country thinks it’s been better off since Biden took over – will that number drop even further?
When the chips are down and batteries low, a dumpling dinner can cushion the blow. Open your freezers and the microwave door, and ready yourself for plant-based goodness galore. Here are the best frozen vegan dumplings to save you from midweek depression.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good dumpling. I mean, how can you hate it? It’s seasoned filling wrapped in dough that can be steamed, boiled, fried or baked, with a dope dip that just leaves you wanting more.
Dumpling dinners and lunches (or breakfasts, let’s be real) have been my saviour countless times when the last thing I had time for was cooking, but I needed feeding and a break from instant ramen. It used to be all-veggie frozen gyozas that I’d pan-fry and make a 50-50 soy and rice vinegar sauce with, but now, there are countless options for people looking for a vegan dumpling fix.
So, to save your weekdays and nights as well, here are the best frozen vegan dumplings you can buy. (This is by no means an exhaustive list!)
OmniPork Plant-Based Potstickers
Courtesy: OmniFoods
Hong Kong’s famous vegan export OmniFoods (a sub-brand of Green Monday) released a dumping offering as part of a wider product launch in the US last year, featuring its soy protein pork.
The frozen plant-based potstickers contain a mix of the OmniPork and vegetables like cabbage and wood ear mushrooms, plus a host of seasonings and aromatics. Each serving of four pieces contains 5g of protein and 2g of fibre (one 200g pack contains 10 pieces).
The frozen OmniPork gyozas can either be pan-fried or deep-fried for three to four minutes, air-fried for five to six minutes, and steamed for six to seven minutes, or until fully cooked. They can also be heated up in the microwave for 1.5 to two minutes – though you won’t get that delightful crunch.
You can find Omni’s plant-based potstickers at various retailers and online stores across the US, including Walmart, Whole Foods and Instacart from $5.98.
Too Good to Be Foods Dumplings
Courtesy: Too Good to Be
The consumer-facing brand of Triton Algae Innovations, Too Good to Be was launched earlier this year, featuring the former’s Hardtii green algae superfood ingredient. The ingredient can be used to give plant-based meat and seafood products a more realistic look and flavour.
While Triton Algae began innovating with a tuna analogue, its first product is a plant-based frozen dumpling filled with vegan pork (using Hardtii) and cabbage. The wrapper is infused with the green algae as well, offering a striking visual appearance. The pork and cabbage are supplemented with alliums, seasonings and spices.
The dumplings can be steamed for eight to 10 minutes, or pan-fried until golden brown. Each three-dumpling serving contains 7g of protein and 2g of fibre.
You can find Too Good to Be’s frozen algae dumplings at online store GTFO It’s Vegan for $8.99 per 10oz pack.
Sobo Foods Dumplings
Courtesy: Sobo Foods
North Carolina’s Sobo Foods, which launched out of stealth earlier this year, was launched by Eric Wu (co-founder of Gainful) and Adam Yee (formerly a scientist at Motif FoodWorks), raising $1M in funding for its mission to provide better-for-you Asian comfort food to consumers.
Sobo has only recently its first product, a line of frozen vegan dumplings in three flavours. The Japanese-inspired curry potato has chickpeas, carrots, peas and pea fibre, the Chinese-influenced pork and chive features soy protein, cabbage, mushrooms, aromatics, seasonings and methylcellulose, and the Korean-inspired kimchi and mushroom contains tofu, gochujang, sweet potato starch, alliums and pea fibre.
These are available in 288g packs of 12 dumplings each, with protein content ranging from 12-19g and fibre from 4-7g for each 144g serving.
South Korean alt-meat brand Unlimeat has been making waves this year, establishing a flagship partnership with California’s Just Egg to offer vegan kimbaps in its home market, a week after introducing upcycled plant-based tuna to its lineup.
Unlimeat launched in the US last year via online channels, and offers two beef-filled Mandu (Korean dumpling) flavours: original and hot chilli. Both contain a base of its soy and pea mince, with cabbage, alliums, tofu, starches, oil and emulsifier, and seasonings, with the latter comprising some extra chillies.
Each 85g serving contains 7g of protein and 2g of fibre, while every pack weighs 400g. Unlimeat’s dumplings can be pan-fried for seven minutes or air-fried for 10.
You can find Unlimeat’s frozen Mandu dumplings on its webstore or online retailers like Plant X and Instacart starting at $10.99 per pack.
Dina’s Dumpling Frozen Offerings
Courtesy: Dina’s Dumpling
A food truck and catering service in Pasadena, Dina’s Dumpling makes a lot of, well, dumplings – they’re not all vegan, but it does have a wonderful vegan, all-vegetable option that you can buy frozen too.
The green, spinach-infused dumpling wrappers are filled with tofu, purple cabbage, green cabbage, celery, and wood ear and shiitake mushrooms.
This is a more gourmet option, and it’s reflected in the price tag. But it’s a wonderful way to have restaurant-style dumplings at home, and fulfil your veggie cravings.
You can find Dina’s Dumpling’s frozen offerings at its Pasadena location starting at $30 for 20 pieces.
Moo Shu Dumplings
Courtesy: Moo Shu Ice Cream
Another veggie-celebrating dumping maker, Canada’s Moo Shu is actually an ice-cream parlour, but spotlights Asian creations and offers a range of frozen vegan dumplings.
The Ottawa-based business makes three varieties: five-spice and pickled shiitake, cabbage and shiitake, and curried sweet potato and black lentil. Each contains a filling of its homemade tofu and seitan-based meats, and is packed with aromatics and seasonings.
These gourmet dumplings come with a sheet that comes with detailed instructions on cooking with a pan-frying method (which takes about 10-13 minutes), alongside multiple dipping sauce options.
You can buy Moo Shu’s frozen vegan dumplings via its online store or in person for $30.
Bibigo Organic Potstickers
Courtesy: Bibigo
Bibigo, a subsidiary of South Korean food giant CJ CheilJedang, is known around the world for its dumplings – and it has an extensive range in the US too, with one vegan option too.
The Organic Vegetable Potstickers are filled with brown rice, cabbage, tofu, textured soy flour, edamame, carrots, alliums and a bunch of seasonings, alongside soybean oil (which also features in the wrapper).
Bibigo’s frozen plant-based dumplings come in three sizes: 16oz, 32oz and 48oz, and each four-piece, 82g serving contains 6g of protein and 1g of fibre.
You can find Bibigo’s vegetable potstickers at Kroger, Costco and Instacart, starting at $7.
As blended and hybrid meats begin to sizzle, Green Queen speaks to alternative protein bodies the Good Food Institute and ProVeg International to get their take on this novel approach to protein diversification.
This article is part of our content series exploring the world of hybrid and blended meat products – those blending cultivated or conventional proteins with plant-based ingredients, respectively, and why some think this is the future of reducing meat consumption.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve interviewed founders of various blended and hybrid meat startups, as we explore the potential of this approach. Plant-based meats have hit a roadblock in the last year, and cultivated meat is still in its commercial infancy, but – as the myriad reports published on the eve of COP28 next week say – we need to decarbonise fast, and now.
We’re on track to approach temperatures 3°C higher than pre-industrial levels, which present beyond-catastrophic implications. The global food system is responsible for a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and meat production itself contributes to 60% of this share. Research suggests that replacing 50% of our meat and dairy intake with plant-based alternatives – which is essentially what blended meat is doing – can halt deforestation and double climate benefits.
The founders we’ve spoken to underline the potential for blended and hybrid meats as a means of protein diversification, and they are – as you’d expect – highly optimistic. But what do think tanks and sustainable food advocacy platforms think?
To find out, we spoke to the alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI), the Good Food Institute APAC, and food systems change non-profit ProVeg International, to share their views on blended and hybrid meat. Here’s what they had to say:
On blended meat acceptance
GFI says any approach that can get alternative proteins closer to taste and price parity with conventional meat is worth leveraging, and blended meat can support both aspects. Combining pricier plant proteins with conventional meat can achieve comparable markups – but GFI highlights its focus by adding that this could eventually help increase scale to a point where plant-based proteins become cheaper than conventional meat.
GFI APAC’s managing director Mirte Gosker, meanwhile, added that these gateway products “present an opportunity for legacy food companies to dip their toe in, test the market, and provide a stepping stone towards increased plant-based food consumption” and open up “a lucrative new revenue stream for plant-based ingredient suppliers”.
But ProVeg has a slightly sterner stance on blended meat. Its cellular agriculture lead Julia Martin said that while the organisation “actively promotes” hybrid meat, it merely “tolerates” blended meat, acknowledging that the latter could be a “possible solution for the time being”.
Courtesy: Anisha Sisodia/Phil’s Finest
On hybrid meat acceptance
“These combinations have a bigger potential to become sustainable long-term solutions,” Martin says of hybrid meats, adding that they “have a great potential to accelerate and expand consumer transition away from animal-based foods and towards a kinder and more sustainable food system”.
“Moreover, as cultivated meat technology develops, hybrid products are an impactful first step in creating familiarity among consumers with ingredients produced through this novel technology,” she adds.
GFI says the argument for hybrid products is similar to that of blended meat, but notes the dynamics are flipped on cost. Most cultivated meat offerings that will come to market in the short-term are likely to be hybrid, in order to provide a more accessible price point- currently, these are very expensive to produce. Cultivated meat can offer similar sensory improvements that conventional meat does in blends.
Additionally, the think tank believes that using cultivated fat as an ingredient in primarily plant protein products (as companies like Mission Barns are doing) could be especially attractive, as fat is essential for flavour and a meaty mouthfeel.
On investor support
“In the current economic environment, fundraising is not only challenging for companies in the hybrid space, but across all of the food tech industry,” notes Martin. “Fortunately, we are starting to see the first cultivated companies apply for regulatory clearance and even hit the market, and hopefully, this will serve as proof of the immense impact that these products are able to deliver and stimulate further confidence into the space.”
“The blended meat category is still very nascent, so there isn’t much investor data available. So far, it is mostly large-scale food companies that have ventured into offering such products,” says Gosker, pointing to the examples of Perdue Farms, Tyson and Hormel.
Perdue Farms, which used Better Meat Co.‘s mycelium-derived Rhiza protein in its blended meat range, told GFI in its State of the Industry Report 2022 that it has been “extremely successful since launching in 2019”, with new flavours and formats being added to the category.
Smaller-scale companies have also attracted investor interest: Los Angeles-based blended meat maker Paul’s Table has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding, while San Francisco’s hybrid meat startup SciFi Foods emerged from stealth last year with a $22M Series A round. Andrew Arentowicz, CEO of blended meat company 50/50 Foods Inc (also from LA) – which mixes meat with vegetables – told Green Queen its “investors are very bullish on our potential”. A similar startup, New York-based Phil’s Finest, found success on Shark Tank too.
Meanwhile, Shalom Daniel, founder of Israeli blended meat producer Mush Foods, told Green Queen: “We’ve found investors – including those who are strongly anti-meat – are committed to the welfare of the planet and animals and see the blended solution as an immediate and achievable means of reducing meat consumption.
Courtesy: Dan Lev
On consumer interest
“As cultivated meat technology develops, hybrid products are an impactful first step in creating familiarity among consumers with ingredients produced through this novel technology,” says Martin.
To gauge consumer opinion about hybrid meats, ProVeg conducted a UK-wide survey last year, asking 1,000 Brits whether they’d eat these products. A third of respondents said they would, a result ProVeg calls “quite promising, especially given that the vast majority of people are not at all familiar with this novel product category”, though a similar number of people (30%) were unsure about consuming these products, highlighting the need for increased public awareness and familiarity.
The acceptance for these products was higher among younger generations and men, with about 40% of millennials and Gen Zers expressing interest, versus 32% of Gen Xers and 29% of boomers. Men (39%) are more likely to try these products too (compared to 31% of women). University-educated millennials and Gen Z men are, in general, more open to eating (51%) and buying (47%) hybrid meat.
GFI says it is planning to conduct its first report on blended meat in the near future. Moreover, an investor who attended GFI’s Good Food Conference 2023 in September told Green Queen the panel on blended meat had a high level of engagement and was much more well attended than in previous years.
On marketing
How these products are presented to customers is vital to their success. GFI alludes to this in its State of the Industry report. “Communicating the benefits of blended products to consumers may require nuanced product positioning, as this is a relatively new and subtle category that requires a clear value proposition,” it states. “Targeting the right consumer groups will be critical – for example, parents who want to incorporate more vegetables into their children’s meals.”
With hybrid meats, Martin says the “trend is definitely focusing on the superior sensory attributes” provided by hybrid products – especially those composed of plant-based proteins with cultivated fats ( as GFI mentioned above). “These products are likely to be initially marketed as premium, but that’s just natural in early adoption cycles for any novel category.”
GFI APAC’s Gosker adds: “Non-meat ingredients such as meat extenders, starches and binders have long played a role in developing conventional meat products to reduce costs for consumers or add functionality, but the new wave of plant-based innovation offers plenty of room for more strategic integration of higher-quality ingredients that bring added nutritional benefits.
“If brands select plant-based ingredients that offer advantages such as lower fat and desirable vitamins and nutrients, this could increase the overall health profile of a conventional meat product in a way that is broadly appealing to consumers.”
Gosker stresses the need for further research to determine where these products need to be shelved in-store, how best to communicate to customers that they contain both animal and plant-based ingredients, how to establish a value proposition for these meats, and which blends perform best in different formats and contexts.
Paul Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of Better Meat Co (which supplies to Perdue), told Green Queen that blended meat must be marketed as “enhanced meat – something better than a product that’s solely animal meat”. “This is what Perdue does, and its Chicken Plus product has performed well on the market for nearly four years now,” he outlined.
Courtesy: Perdue
On the category’s challenges
Where next for blends and hybrids? “Consumers across different geographies are excited to try the products,” says Martin, though she warns that early products will have high prices and very limited availability. “However, as the technology evolves, it is expected that costs will decrease making products more accessible, as well as increase their availability.”
GFI reiterates the hurdles relating to category, product and brand positioning, as well as consumer communication, adding that blended and hybrid meats will need to reach a broader audience of meat-eating consumers to truly fulfil their potential.
Gosker concurs with Martin’s point about public excitement. “Consumer interest and potential demand for blended meat products are evident – but to grow as a category, [companies] will need to hit the trifecta of achieving price parity, meeting or exceeding consumer expectations on taste and texture, and effectively communicating their benefits over conventional meat,” she explains.
“Fortunately, blends are positioned to compete well on price, since they offer wide flexibility in ingredient ratios to adjust for taste, texture and cost optimisation. Indeed, some conventional meat producers have even managed to lower their total product costs by integrating plant-based proteins, thereby making their blended products more affordable from a cost-of-goods standpoint than conventional meats.”
She echoes GFI’s statement about how growing demand for blended meat could ramp up plant protein production, reaching a scale that will close the price gap between animal and plant proteins. GFI, though, envisions a multi-hybrid future. The organisation that named plant-based, cultivated and fermented proteins as the three pillars of the alt-protein category says the lines between these products will blur.
Each offers unique advantages, and the products most likely to win on taste and price would ideally leverage the best of all of these platforms. For example, a meat alternative composed primarily of plant proteins, a dash of cultivated fat and key flavour-boosting ingredients like fermentation-derived heme proteins, perhaps? Could be a winning formula for early actors in this space!
Months after teasing an expansion into Germany, Hooked Foods has delivered on that promise with a listing in 400 Rewe West stores across the country. The Swedish vegan seafood maker is launching four SKUs – including its Salmoonish and Toonish analogues – in Europe’s largest plant-based market.
Hooked Foods has landed on German shores with its range of vegan seafood analogues. The Swedish startup’s tuna and salmon chunks are now available in 400 Rewe West stores across the country, alongside two of its tuna mayo SKUs.
It caps off a year where the startup reeled in more than $1.3M in funding, including over $700,000 from a crowdfunding campaign in June. At the time, Hooked announced its intention to move into the German market, which is the largest for plant-based food in Europe. More recently, the company joined the inaugural cohort of Future Ocean Foods, a new global association of 36 companies to advance the alternative seafood sector and increase awareness about the health and environmental benefits of these products.
“At Hooked, we’re thrilled to finally bring our Swedish plant-based seafood range to Germany,” said Hooked co-founder and CEO Tom Johansson. “Our success in the Nordics has demonstrated a growing demand for innovative, sustainable alternatives, and we’re excited to introduce our iconic Swedish brand to German consumers.”
Clean-label vegan seafood
Courtesy: Hooked Foods
Hooked’s retail offerings in Germany include Salmoonish, Toonish and two mayo spreads made from the latter. Its vegan tuna combines a dual protein base of pea and algae with pea fibre, sunflower oil, aromas and natural colouring, while the salmon blends soy, pea and wheat protein with pea fibre, vegetable oils, algal oil, aromas, and natural colours, and is fortified with vitamins and minerals.
The former contains 17.1g of protein per 100g (versus 26g for conventional bluefin tun), while the latter boasts 17g of protein (compared to 20g for traditional salmon) – but being plant-based, Hooked’s seafood offerings contain over 3g of dietary fibre per 100g each, something that’s missing from their marine counterparts.
The relatively clean-label formulations – especially for the tuna analogue – are a win for the brand in a country whose consumers find shorter ingredient lists essential. A 1,026-person survey by retail association BVLH found that 66% of Germans would be deterred from buying plant-based products if they contained additives and extra ingredients – a number that rises to 72% for flexitarians, who would be a key target group for Hooked.
Meanwhile, the two spreads – Toonish Mayo and Toonish Curry – are a mix of its plant-based tuna (albeit with a different recipe, using soy and wheat protein) with vegan mayo and flavourings.
Hooked had already penned an agreement with sales agency Ooha, which has expertise in the German market, when announcing its crowdfunding round. “After extensive exploration and discussions with several vegan seafood companies, it became clear that Hooked possesses all the key ingredients for success,” an Ooha spokesperson said. “With their talented team, strong brand, and top-notch products at competitive prices, Hooked stands out as the ultimate challenger ready to conquer Germany.”
Speaking of price, the Toonish and Salmoonish retail at €3.19 for 180g, while the spreads set you back €2.79 for 120g. This is cheaper compared to competitors like Nestlé’s Vuna, which costs €4.29 for 175g, and BettaFish’s Tu-Nah, which is priced at €2.99 per 130g jar. Meanwhile, Revo Foods’ smoked salmon is priced at €4.49 for an 80g pack, and its tuna spread is more comparable with Hooked’s, at €2.99 for 140g.
Hooked makes its seafood analogues using high-moisture extrusion technology (HME). None of the other three employs this tech – Nestlé and BettaFish use textured vegetable protein (TVP), while Revo Foods uses fibre dispersion tech for some of its products (which involves combining plant proteins with individual fibre strands). HME allows companies to introduce more complex muscle fibres and flakiness and is typically a more expensive technology than TVP, so making its products cheaper than its competitors is a big win for Hooked.
Vegan seafood is expanding, but still has a long way to go
Courtesy: Hooked Foods
Conquering Germany would be a big feat indeed, given that it’s the European leader in retail sales for vegan food. The country saw purchases in this category grow by 11% from 2020-22, reaching €1.9B, according to the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe. It’s also why Hooked chose this market for its European expansion. “We have a clear opportunity to deliver value to consumers in the market,” Johansson told Green Queen.
Additionally, Germany also boasts a large flexitarian population, with some putting it as the largest in the world – estimates have ranged from 40% all the way to 55%. This is an important consumer base for brands like Hooked – according to Mintel, 90% of Germans eat fish, and 28% of people have switched from meat to seafood for health reasons (though seafood itself has problems with high mercury levels, antibiotic use, sea lice infestation, and microplastic ingestion). Take into account the 59% of Germans who want to reduce their meat consumption, and one can sense that there’s a huge opportunity.
The German seafood market is set to grow by 3.2% annually to reach $9.59B in 2028. Alt-seafood players would be looking to capture a piece of the pie, after experiencing exponential growth across Europe in the last couple of years. While retail sales for meat alternatives have fallen, vegan seafood purchases increased by 60% from 2021-22 (and a whopping 326% since 2020), as per GFI analysis.
It is the fastest-growing plant-based category, as well as one of the only ones that witnessed a drop in average unit prices (down by 4% in 2022). Having said that, it still makes up for a fraction of the overall plant-based market (0.75%) in Europe, signalling that there’s still a long way to go.
Courtesy: GFI Europe
The brand is looking into foodservice too. “However, we found most success with retail in the Nordics, so we will continue focusing on retail, but are of course open to partnering with forward-thinking restaurants in Germany,” noted Johansson. He added: “We are focusing 100% on Germany right now. We will start in the western region to create a success case. Once we have it, we will continue to expand to other regions in Germany. Hopefully, [by the] end of 2024, we will be on the shelves in the most important regions in Germany.”
Hooked, which launched in 2019 and has raised over $6M in total funding, will be helped in its mission to convert the 12% of Germans who eat fish thrice or more per week by the country’s plant-forward nutrition strategy. Its food and agriculture minister Cem Özdemir says the government intends to build a comprehensive nutrition strategy to promote food system changes via early education and accessibility initiatives.
Other recent seafood developments in Germany include the EU-wide launch of Nestlé’s marine-style crispy fillets and nuggets and the unveiling of Esencia Foods’ whole-cut mycelium whitefish at the Anuga food fair in Cologne. Rewe Group’s Austrian vegan store Billa Pflanzilla, meanwhile, saw the debut of Europe’s first 3D-printed meat alternative, a salmon fillet by Revo Foods.
A new report by Asymmetrics Research outlines the opportunity for protein diversification in China, highlighting key active categories, overall trends and what’s in store for the future for alternative proteins in the country.
In August, research by Singapore-based firm Asia Research Engagement found that to align with a climate-safe future and decarbonise, alternative proteins would need to make up 50% of China’s protein consumption by 2060. It came amid a host of advancements in the country’s alt-protein sector, across cultivated meat, fermentation-derived protein, and plant-based food.
Now, Asymmetrics Research has published the third edition of its annual China Alternative Protein Products Market Landscape report, which highlights the key trends, challenges and opportunities for protein diversification in the world’s second-most populous nation.
“This year has been challenging in a China that is fraught with uncertainty – consumers, businesses and investors are generally spending more conservatively,” Huiyi Lin, chief insights officer at Asymmetrics Research, told Green Queen. “Nonetheless, there are opportunities for food products which offer good value both in cost and health benefits.”
She added: “Brands need to probe different consumer segments’ motivation and turn-off factors, and ultimately food needs to taste good. Fermentation and cell-culture protein technologies are at an early stage, the growth path would require support from regulators and commercial scaling partners.”
“In the post-pandemic era, consumers are placing greater emphasis on nutritional value and affordability,” said Jeremy Yeo, acting general manager of Beyond Meat China. “Additionally, there’s a pronounced shift towards products that prioritise health, flavour and environmental sustainability. ‘Green’ and eco-friendly options are not mere trends; they mark a profound evolution in consumer tastes and values.”
Here are 10 key takeaways from the China Alternative Protein Products Market Landscape report:
Alt-protein investment has been slower in 2023
Courtesy: Asymmetrics Research
Amid the wider investment squeeze in the global food tech category, China’s alt-protein industry has also suffered from a slower funding environment, which has been exacerbated by tough fundraising and macroeconomic conditions. Local investors are less bullish about CPG categories including food, while foreign investors are adopting a wait-and-see approach “due to geopolitical tensions, decoupling strategies and uncertainty”.
Plant-based meat – which had a relatively high deal flow in 2021 and 2022 – saw fewer investments in the past year, while larger deals have involved cultivated and fermentation startups. Interest in cultivated meat has increased due to high-level policy callouts, but it has been affected by cautious sentiments this year. Eventual investors usually tend to be experienced in biomedical fields. Additionally, Chinese meat giants are said to be interested in acquiring cultivated meat startups, but no such acquisitions have been made yet.
“Cell-based meat is gaining more attention in the capital market, and R&D and manufacturing costs will continue to fall with technological progress,” said Larry Lee, CEO of the China Plant-Based Foods Association.
Plant-based milk, meat snacks and functional foods are key segments – but eggs and cheese are not
The report highlights a few key active categories, led by plant-based milk and ready-to-drink beverages, alt-meat snacks, SKUs and prepared meals, vegan yoghurt and ice cream, and functional protein foods. However, despite being the largest egg producer in the world, vegan egg replacement is a less active category, alongside cheese and cream.
“China’s plant-based milk market is experiencing a blend of tradition and innovation,” said Vivian Wang, founder and CEO of plant milk brand Vitalbox. “Enzymatic hydrolysis oat milk coexists with traditional soy milk and coconut milk.”
Alt-meat and milk brands are restructuring and diversifying
Courtesy: Asymmetrics Research
As a result of slow market penetration, high marketing costs and fundraising difficulties, the plant-based milk and meat markets have seen a reduced number of players, with many brands also restructuring adjusting their portfolios and brand positioning, and diversifying their offerings.
Echoing the global stagnation of plant-based meat, several startups in this space have downsized, suspended operations, or exited the market. Many multinational vegan players have changed team structures, personnel and strategies, but remain committed to the market. “The market will need more high quality, diversified protein products,” said Cecilia Zhao, impact programme manager at food consultancy Lever China.
“Although adoption of plant-based meat in China lags behind Western markets, there is a dedicated consumer base motivated by health, safety and dietary diversity, necessitating solutions to taste, additives and cost issues,” added Astrid Prajogo, founder and CEO of Haofood. “Targeting specific consumer groups with customised products and marketing approaches holds great promise in this evolving market.
Health consciousness is high on the agenda
Brands are honing in on the health aspects of their products – similar to the shift seen in the international market – with marketing messages a key outlet for doing so. Many plant-based milk brands highlight ‘no sugar/cholesterol/trans fat’, ‘good for brains/eyes’, and ‘high protein/calcium’ alongside cleaner labels, while some use functional ingredients like DHA, collagen and peptide to target specific consumer needs.
Likewise, plant-based meat products highlight attributes like ‘no trans fat/cholesterol’, ‘fewer calories’, ‘dietary fibre’ and ‘natural ingredients’. It chimes with the results from a 1,206-person study last year, which found that health is the stronger driver of plant-based meat purchases for Chinese consumers.
“China is promoting healthier and more nutritious food options in response to the Healthy China policy,” said David J Ettinger, chief representative officer at law firm Keller and Heckman Shanghai. “Therefore, foods offering health benefits and high nutritional value are going to likely lead the way. Chinese consumers will look to healthier options, like alt-proteins, so it will be up to the alt-protein industry to demonstrate that these novel foods provide another nutritious option for consumers.”
Prices and spending are in full focus
Across the country, many middle-income consumers are now reining in their spending on impulse purchases and looking for better value on products. Prices of pork and beef have fallen, which has ramped up the challenge for plant-based brands trying to sell to food service, which is a cost-sensitive approach. Many have lowered their product prices by 10-30% in the last year as a result.
Raw milk prices have dropped too, which means initiatives like Starbucks offering oat and almond milk at price parity are paramount. “Overall, consumers are more price-sensitive,” noted Blue Canopy Biotech’s Chenfeng Lu. “Despite this, the consumption of healthy foods is not strongly affected by the economic environment.”
Oat milk reigns supreme
Courtesy: Asymmetrics Research
Despite soy being the traditional milk alternative in China, oat milk has really risen up the ranks and now leads the way in terms of form and flavours, with the widest product range out of all plant-based milks. This is followed by soy, coconut, almond and a smattering of others.
Oat milk’s utility in coffee is a big reason for its dominance. Most barista milk products that highlight ‘frothability’ as a key feature are oat-based, and thanks to brands like Oatly and Luckin Coffee, tier 1 and 2 cities have seen oat (and coconut) become common latte choices – though the report highlights an expansion of B2B applications beyond coffee as a key challenge.
“The market is still in its early stage,” said Oatly China’s sustainability director, Chloe Lin. “It is crucial to educate and guide consumers, listen to local consumer needs, work closely with upstream and downstream value chain, and conduct in-depth research in raw material quality, processing technology, production equipment, product taste and nutrition.” (The company has had its share of struggles in China recently.)
Education and regulation remain major hurdles for fermentation
Both biomass and precision fermentation have attracted interest, but product application needs to be stepped up, and production needs scaling. Most companies are focused on a single type of fermentation tech, but firms like Changing Bio and Blue Company are among the few working with both precision and biomass fermentation.
Some startups do have a diversified portfolio, with products and applications in cosmetics, industrial and biomedical sectors too. The report calls for increased application for B2B consumers, including functional products and blended meat (like Mush Foods is doing).
Precision fermentation, in particular, needs increased consumer awareness and regulatory approval, especially when it comes to GMOs. In May 2022, China’s National Health Commission approved single-cell green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a new food raw material in May 2022 – a positive sign, albeit for a non-GMO ingredient.
Cultivated pork and traditional meats are high-priority
Courtesy: CellX
As the world’s largest pork producer, it’s hardly a surprise that pork is the most popular cultured meat being produced in China, followed by chicken, beef and seafood. Companies like CellX and Joes Future Food are making cell-cultured pork, while Jimi Biotech makes cultivated chicken.
Additionally, some producers are making high-priced animal parts used in traditional Chinese cuisine, such as deer antlers (Jimi Biotech) and fish maw (Avant Meats).
Cost and regulation are key barriers for cultured meat
As is the case globally, scaling up production and reducing costs are the main obstacles facing cultivated meat (alongside regulatory approval). CellX opened a 2,000-litre pilot facility in August, while Joes Future Food produced pork fat in a 500-litre bioreactor in September. Meanwhile, some are developing serum-free or non-animal culture media to reduce costs – Jimi Biotech’s serum-free medium is made from soybean and corn extracts.
Meanwhile, China doesn’t have a clear regulatory framework, something that’s still under review by the National Health Commission and China National Center for Food Safety Risk. This is why some companies are focusing on Singapore or the US – the only two countries that have approved the sale of cultivated meat.
Policy support for alt-protein in China has increased
Courtesy: UN Geneva/CC
Government support for alt-protein has become more prominent in the last two years in China, with measures being formed at local, provincial and regional levels. In February, for example, the annual Central No. 1 Document mentioned a diversified food system of animals, plants and microorganisms.
In May 2022, the country’s 14th five-year plan for bioeconomy development highlighted an advancement of synthetic biology, and exploration of man-made protein and novel foods – two months after President Xi Jinping called for a Grand Food Vision that included the plant-, microorganism- and animal-based protein sources. And in December 2021, the 14th five-year plan for agricultural and rural tech development called for research in cultivated meat, synthetic egg and dairy, and recombinant proteins.
“Government guidance and policy support is necessary – it would be best to have subsidies for start-ups and R&D institutions to raise the level of innovation,” said Lee from the China Plant Based Foods Association. “Investors should be more patient, avoid following trends blindly with unrealistic expectations of rapid returns. Companies should focus on the product based on consumer needs, step up R&D, improve product quality and differentiation.”
“In the post-pandemic slower growth environment, alternative protein players with products in the market need to provide tasty and high-value offerings, which fulfil specific consumer segments’ health and nutritional wants,” added Huiyi. “In the longer term, new technologies of fermentation and cell-based culture, and blended products hold interesting possibilities.”
British tempeh brand Better Nature is working on a new whole-cut vegan chicken ingredient made from tempeh mycelium and okara, the pulp left over from soy milk production. Speaking to Green Queen, the company spills the beans on the upcycled ingredient, its R&D and launch plans.
There’s a café chain in Indonesia called Titik Temu (“meeting point”). Each spot is beautifully designed and popular with expats, thanks to its speciality coffee and a menu of locally inspired classics. During my time in Bali, I passed by and was instantly drawn towards the eatery, and ended up visiting it a couple of times.
On my second visit, I tried a black pepper chicken dish, substituting the poultry for tempeh. But when I tasted it, I was apprehensive. This was chicken, not tempeh: it was fibrous, without the customary crunch of the whole soybeans, and tasted an awful lot like chicken. When I asked the staff, they assured me it was the latter, requesting me to break down a piece and proving that it was, indeed, a black pepper tempeh dish.
It blew my mind – Indonesia had already proven to me that tempeh can (unlike in many places in the west) be splendid. But I’d never had tempeh with this texture or flavour, and it opened my eyes to the potential versatility of this protein powerhouse.
So naturally, when Christopher Kong – one of the co-founders of London-based tempeh startup Better Nature – teased an ultra-realistic vegan chicken breast on his social media, I was curious and excited.
The company has gone from strength to strength this year, raising £3M in Series A financing, launching a £1M crowdfunding round, becoming B Corp certified, securing listings in Tesco and Lidl, and entering the German market. Now, its R&D has led to a product blending traditional plant protein with a whole-cut meat analogue – while Singapore’s Good Health Farm makes a beef mince from tempeh, nobody has introduced a tempeh-derived whole cut before.
A tempeh makeover
Kong described the prototype as Tempeh 2.0, boasting an amino acid profile that’s similar to beef. Speaking to Green Queen, Better Nature goes so far as calling it “the future of plant-based food”, an all-natural and nutritious (both key consumer concerns in the UK) protein ingredient.
So how is it made? You know the white part between the soybeans in tempeh? That’s mycelium. Better Nature grows this mycelium in a “nutritious broth” containing okara, the pulp left over from soy milk production. This is fermented using natural tempeh cultures from Indonesia, then drained and dried.
The company explains that there are multiple mycelium strains part of the “tempeh fermentation family”, including Rhizopus, Mucor and Neurospora. While it can’t yet disclose what it’s using, since the prototype is still in the development phase, Better Nature does confirm it’s a GRAS (generally recognised as safe) food component, which Kong said has been in use for decades – eschewing the need for any regulatory filings.
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
“The manufacturing process is also remarkably robust,” explained Kong. “Tempeh has been around for hundreds of years, so we’re not reinventing the wheel. We’re just giving it a serious makeover.”
CTO and fellow co-founder Driando Ahnan-Winarno noted that the development of the new product was possible thanks to a £350,000 grant it received from government-backed fund Innovate UK, and in partnership with microalgae R&D startup Neoalgae, nanotech expert Nucaps (both Spanish) and Estonian biotech solutions startup TFTAK.
Elevating tempeh’s appeal amidst a rise in whole-cut plant-based meat
A recent 7,500-person survey by the EU’s Smart Protein project revealed that 50% of Europeans don’t know what tempeh is. This is in stark contrast to its traditional soy counterpart, tofu, which 90% of people in the region recognise. Moreover, only 16% consume tempeh once a week.
Tempeh hasn’t yet hit the European protein mainstream the way tofu or plant-based meats have. But while the category is still niche, Kong said earlier this year that growing awareness means “it’s a matter of one year before tempeh becomes mainstream”.
This is part of the reason why Better Nature is working on this new tempeh product. “We want to widen the appeal of tempeh by creating 100% natural, nutritious, tempeh-based versions of category-leading formats like meat alt sausages, fillets, and nuggets, which we cannot currently do in a way that replicates meat with our regular tempeh,” the company explains.
Courtesy: Better Nature
Whole cuts have been described as the ‘holy grail’ of plant-based meat, and the upcycled tempeh mycelium chicken can be seasoned, sizzled and served just like its conventional counterpart. I personally like it in the form of nuggets because its bouncy and fibrous texture is great combined with the nuggets’ crust. Unlike traditional tempeh, there aren’t any whole soybeans in this product – it’s just mycelium grown in the okara broth. “Compared to regular tempeh, it has more bite, is chewier, and more fibrous,” says the brand, adding that its bouncy and fibrous texture is great for chicken nuggets.
Plus, its nutritional credentials are potentially even greater than tempeh. Better Nature’s tempeh, for example, has 19g of protein and 6.6g of fibre per 100g. The Tempeh 2.0, meanwhile, can contain 50g of protein and 10.3g of fibre per 100g of dry weight – though “these numbers will change since we are still optimising the production process”. (A conventional chicken breast, meanwhile, consists of 31g of protein per 100g, and no fibre.)
Better Nature hopes to host public samplings of its tempeh mycelium chicken as soon as the development process is complete, but because it needs to go from pilot production to mass manufacturing, the earliest it can be launched is at the end of 2025.
Courtesy: Libre Foods
Whole cuts have been gaining ground in the plant-based meat scene of late. Catalan brand Libre Foods will soon be launching the EU’s first whole-cut mycelium chicken breast, France’s Umiami added $34.7M to its Series A round to scale up its vegan chicken, and Singapore-based TiNDLE Foods debuted its TrueCut chicken at a trade event in Chicago.
In terms of seafood, Revo Foods launched Europe’s first 3D-printed meat with its salmon fillet, Escencia Foods unveiled its whole-cut mycelium whitefish at the Anuga food fair, and three Canadian companies have collaborated to create a salmon analogue. Israel’s Chunk Foods, meanwhile, has made its way onto fast-food chains and steakhouses with its whole-cut beef – a meat that’s the focus of several other startups too.
Following a rollercoaster of a couple of years, Miyoko Schinner speaks to Green Queen about leaving Miyoko’s Creamery, news about the company’s potential sale, and her future plans.
It’s been a few months since Miyoko Schinner closed the chapter on the vegan dairy company she founded for good. There were disputes, lawsuits and some bitter words between her and Miyoko’s Creamery – but it’s all in the past now, and Schinner is moving on.
In an interview with Green Queen, the vegan dairy queen talks about her departure from Miyoko’s Creamery, what she’s been up to, and her upcoming plans (which include a seventh cookbook and featuring in a Netflix documentary). Whisper it, but there’s a potential restaurant tease too.
How Miyoko Schinner became a vegan cheese leader
Courtesy: Miyoko’s Creamery
Schinner has always been known as a plant-based pioneer, and for good reason. Having turned vegetarian when she was just 12 (in the late 60s, the “glory days of the hippie movement”), she learned how to cook for herself since her mother didn’t support the shift. After a decade or so, realising she was lactose intolerant, she went vegan.
This sparked an entrepreneurial instinct that turned Schinner into who the force she is today. She began selling okara pound cakes from her backpack – a business called Madam Miyoko – before her yearning for cheese led her to start Now and Zen, an all-vegan eatery in San Francisco in 1988. The restaurant, which became popular for its plant-based turkey, was sold in 1997, evolving into a namesake natural foods company.
When the business shut in 2003 – amid family responsibilities and personnel issues – she ascribed it to a lack of investor interest in vegan food. But that didn’t stop Schinner the innovator, who already had three cookbooks to her name by then.
Her everlasting love for cheese culminated in her own company in 2014, Miyoko’s Creamery (then called Miyoko’s Kitchen). What began as a fledgling plant-based artisanal cheese business turned into an industry giant producing butters and spreads as well. Schinner was hailed as the queen of vegan cheese, with her cashew-based innovations reaching over 20,000 retail spots and another cookbook acclaimed as a game-changer for the industry.
Credit: Miyoko’s Creamery
The company gained B Corp status in 2019, and won a landmark legal labelling battle against the State of California two years later, which allowed it to use the term ‘butter’ on its packaging, with the judge noting “the State’s showing of broad marketplace confusion around plant-based dairy alternatives is empirically underwhelming”.
Legal disputes and exiting Miyoko’s Creamery
By June 2022, Miyoko’s Kitchen was worth $260M, according to one estimate. But this was also when things began unravelling. Schinner was ousted as CEO that month, being sued by the company she founded earlier this year for an alleged breach of contract, a violation of trade secrets, and stealing company IP.
Schinner countersued, saying she was “blindsided” and alleging that sexism led to her dismissal. She claimed that recently hired male executives discriminated against women in the company, and that multiple HR complaints about the same are what led to her being forced out. Schinner accused COO René Weber of “openly denigrating women, their expertise and their contributions at Miyoko’s”, adding that after raising an HR complaint about an operational consultant hired at an investor’s request, the company “swiftly retaliated against [Schinner] by demoting her and then terminating her”.
Courtesy: Miyoko Schinner
The board, however, claimed Schinner’s exit came as she lacked the necessary skills to take Miyoko’s Creamery to the next level as its CEO. However, two months later in May, there was a resolution between the company and its founder, with both withdrawing legal claims and settling their disputes.
Since then, Miyoko’s Creamery has revamped its website and branding and hired former Beyond Meat CMO Stuart Kronauger as its CEO. In September, the brand launched its first product since the fallout, a range of cheese spreads. But now, the company is closing its Petaluma factory in Sonoma County, with 30-40 jobs being affected as it moves to a co-manufacturing setup.
And according to Bloomberg, the company is now raising funds and preparing for a potential sale after sales fell by 24% on the back of sustained deficits for years.
Schinner, who remains a minor shareholder in the company, spoke to Green Queen about this news and what she’s up to now.
Green Queen: Are you still involved in the company or with the board?
Miyoko Schinner: I’m not involved anymore, am no longer on the board, and am only a minor shareholder, so I know nothing other than what I read in the news. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Stuart Kronauge, however. She sounds like the right person to lead the company. In a different life, I might even enjoy working with her.
GQ: How do you feel overall about having exited Miyoko’s Creamery?
MS: I have had a good year and a half to reflect on my life, the economics of the food industry, the role of innovation in defining the future of food and what we need to watch out for in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and the role of activism in business. I have lots of thoughts around all of that, and am beginning to share some of them, and will be doing more.
Courtesy: Matt Lever/Miyoko’s Creamery
GQ: What are you working on these days?
MS: I’ve been doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I am under contract with Ten Speed Press/Penguin-Random House on a new book, The Vegan Creamery, which is slated for publication in 2025 [her third book with the publisher, after 2015’s The Homemade Vegan Pantry and 2021’s The Vegan Meat Cookbook].
I’ll be sharing new ideas for many plant dairy foods, including new methods for making cheese and butter (no, the experimentation hasn’t stopped, and I’m at the top of my game again). I’m also looking forward to seeing a new four-part Netflix series about food that I am in (it airs in January, I think).
I started a fledgling, scrappy YouTube channel, The Vegan Good Life with Miyoko. And I’m also beginning to work on an autobiography/memoir. I’ve been speaking in various venues around the world, and am open to more speaking engagements, so reach out to me!
GQ: Where do you see yourself going as you look ahead to the next decade?
MS: I am entering a new chapter of life where I am focused on inspirational activism that will help build community so that people can be change makers together. I spend a lot of time helping to strategise the direction and growth of the sanctuary, Rancho Compasión [which she opened in 2015], as it enters a new phase focused on education – we have about 50 kids visiting each week, and we plan to expand our after-school and other programmes for humane education and food systems.
GQ: Would you ever start another company?
MS: I’m unsure if I will start another company. If I do, it will likely be more experiential, based on activism, less on selling things (although I keep playing with the notion of a restaurant). It’s time to bring power to the people. I guess I’m becoming a revolutionary.
A handful of restaurants and fast-casual chains are bidding adieu to seed oils as consumer concerns about the health credentials of these fats grow. Some are turning to alternatives like Zero Acre’s sugarcane-based cultured oil – what’s all the fuss about?
In September, fast-food chain Shake Shack began trialling an eco-friendly Cultured Oil by Californian startup Zero Acre Farms at two of its locations in New York City. This meant it was ditching the soybean oil it usually uses, and replacing it with Zero Acre’s better-for-you fermented cooking oil.
Last month, burger chain Hopdoddy announced it would go seed-oil-free in its eateries, starting with 10 locations. It too swapped soybean oil for Zero Acre’s offering. Millennial-popular fast-casual salad chain Sweetgreen issued a press release saying it would only use extra virgin olive oil instead of sunflower oil to cook vegetables, grains and proteins going forward.
Zero Acre, which raised $37M in a Series A funding round last year with participants including British band Coldplay and Robert Downey Jr’s FootPrint Coalition – itself received an undisclosed sum from fast-food giant Chipotle’s VC fund, Cultivate Next. The fund is meant for climate-friendly solutions but the announcement also signalled a potential future partnership for the two brands.
Why are fast-food chains getting rid of seed oils? And what does Zero Acre offer instead?
Why people say seed oils are bad for you
Courtesy: Zero Acre Farms
Seed oils – which include the likes of soybean, corn, canola (aka rapeseed), cottonseed, grapeseed, sunflower, safflower, peanut, sesame and rice bran oils – have seen a massive increase in consumption. In the US, the consumption of soybean oil alone grew 1,000-fold from 1909 to 1999. Globally, vegetable oil production has grown 16-fold since 1909 and doubled in the last 20 years.
But these fats have cultivated a bad rep among consumers, and the topic has become popular of late in part due to a growing number of Bitcoin and Tiktok influencers citing research finding them inflammatory or toxic. The argument centers around what makes up the fat content in these oils, and how they’re used.
Saturated, trans, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are four of the most common types of fat found in food products. The first two are known to be bad for you and are tied to heart disease and cancer. The latter two, however, are said to be healthier fats, containing some essential fatty acids. Two of these acids are omega-3 (usually found in fish) and omega-6 (commonly found in seeds and nuts).
But whole omega-3 fatty acids are usually hailed for being heart-healthy, omega-6 acids don’t always enjoy the same reputation. This is due to the presence of linoleic acid, which critics say can oxidise 40 times faster than saturated fat, creating free radicals that can cause a host of diseases.
Linoleic acid has been linked to increased inflammation, which can be a bedrock of different illnesses and conditions. The body can convert this into arachidonic acid – another fatty acid – which, when oxidised, can form molecules that can cause inflammation, blood clotting, and blood vessel compression.
Another part of this argument against seed oils is what happens when they’re heated up. When heated to high temperatures beyond their smoke point, seed oils high in linoleic acid can generate a compound called hydroxynonenal, which can lead to health issues like decreased metabolism and higher oxidative stress.
Courtesy: Zero Acre Farms
While most people in the know agree that a small amount of linoleic acid and omega-6 is essential for good health, it’s the high consumption of these oils that is being knocked by its critics. The average human eats around 6-10% of their overall calories from linoleic acid today. However, the American Heart Association and Institute of Medicine actually recommend getting 5-10% of your daily calories from omega-6 fats.
How valid are these claims, and how does Zero Acre compare?
The issue with health research is that there’s so much of it and it’s hard not to get bogged down by conflicting conclusions. In a review of evidence about seed oil’s impact on heart disease, Zero Acre concluded: “Given that increasing dietary linoleic acid above evolutionarily appropriate levels consistently increases heart disease mortality and all-cause mortality, one of the safest approaches to preventing heart disease may be to avoid seed oils.”
But there is opposing science here too. For example, in 2019, a 30-study analysis by scientists showed that linoleic and arachidonic acid levels didn’t raise the risk for heart disease and that people with higher amounts of the former in their bloodstream were 7% less likely to develop it. This type of conclusion is typical of most arguments about seed oil- for every claim, there’s a counterclaim, resulting in a great deal of confusion on the subject. Some studies say high consumption of seed oils can cause obesity, forms of cancer, and type 2 diabetes too, while others refute these claims.
Courtesy: Zero Acre Farms
A large part of this discourse comes from seed oil’s use in ultra-processed foods as well, which make up 60% of an average American’s daily calories – and it’s the high concentration of sodium, sugar, refined carbohydrates and calories that could be more detrimental to your health, as Guy Crosby, an associate nutrition professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, told Consumer Reports: “If you cut back on these foods, chances are you’re going to feel better.”
So how does Zero Acre fare? According to the company, its sugarcane-based cultured oil made via fermentation has the lowest linoleic acid content of all oils and does not turn toxic when heated at high cooking temperatures, the two key health criticisms attributed to most seed oils.
The company says that, on average, its oil contains 0.3-1% of omega-3, 1-3% of omega-6, and over 90% of omega-9 (a monounsaturated fat). And in terms of the types of fats, it has about 4% of saturated fat, 90-94% of monounsaturated fat, and 3% of polyunsaturated fat.
Compared to the linoleic acid content of rapeseed (or canola) oil (23%) – the most commonly sold cooking oil – and olive oil (12-27%), Zero Acre contains between 1.8-3%. This compared to canola , which contains 63% monounsaturated fat, while olive oil has 55-83%.
Courtesy: Zero Acre Farms
Zero Acre, which incorporated as a public benefit corporation, says its product is the only cooking oil it studied that didn’t “turn toxic” after 10 minutes of cooking, while only ghee, butter and tallow are less susceptible to oxidation than its cultured oil. This means it has a higher oxidative stability than all plant-based oils it studied.
On the pros side, the company adds that its oil offers high levels (over 90%) of heart-healthy and heat-stable monounsaturated fat and an unprecedented level of traceability and transparency.
The environmental question
Another criticism of seed and vegetable oils – and one with firmer scientific evidence – is their environmental impact. Zero Acre co-founder Jeff Nobbs told Green Queen that while olive oil might be “the closest ‘peer’ in the grocery store” in terms of fatty acids – though it contains more saturated fat and omega-6 fat, and less omega-9 – it “tends to have a lower smoke point and less neutral flavour, along with a much larger environmental footprint”.
Vegetable and seed oils have a massive climate problem, spearheaded by palm oil and the fat derived from its seed, palm kernel oil. Palm oil, which is present in half of all supermarket products across all categories, is a major driver of deforestation. It accounts for 40% of all oil production, and growing demand has led to increased tropical deforestation – which is responsible for nearly 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions annually.
Courtesy: Zero Acre Farms
Olive oil, meanwhile, has a high water and land use footprint, and its production generates a huge amount of waste. Zero Acre commissioned an independent life-cycle analysis to assess its environmental impact and has found that it uses 18 times less land than olive oil to produce a ton of product.
Meanwhile, if just 5% of vegetable oil in the US were replaced with the company’s alternative, it would save 3.1 million acres of land, 56.9 billion gallons of water and 3.6 tonnes of CO2e. Only sunflower oil has lower emissions than Zero Acre’s offering, while only canola oil needs less water.
There’s the packaging too: Zero Acre says its oil comes in a 100% recyclable BPA-free aluminium bottle, “offering a more sustainable option than plastic or glass”.
Food pundits agree that the environmental cred of Zero Acre is a winning factor, separately from the health controversy. As Matt Newberg, founder of food tech media outlet HNGRY, writes: “While there is little evidence supporting that seed oils are actually more harmful for our health than their alternatives, products like Zero Acre Farms do pose major sustainability advantages.” Newberg does point out that solutions like Zero Acre are not ready for scale today: “until it is ready for large-scale foodservice beyond a dozen locations in the US at the right price, Cultured Oil won’t be able to make a real dent” but given that the company is less than three years old and already at pilot stage with multiple food companies, there’s every reason to be optimistic.
Widespread adoption would also drive down the steep cost of Zero Acre’s oil, which retails at $29.99 for a 16oz/473ml bottle. Can it – excuse me – pip its competitors?
