Key West diners just might think twice about chowing down on fried chicken after they see—and hear—“Hell on Wheels,” PETA’s guerilla-marketing campaign featuring a life-size chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on their way to a slaughterhouse, complete with actual recorded sounds of the birds’ cries and a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan. The vexatious vehicle will debut around Duval and Eaton streets, home to restaurants including The Flaming Buoy Filet Co. and The Bull & Whistle Bar, before moving on to confront diners at Wing Masters, Sarabeth’s, Smoked BBQ, Off the Hook Bar & Grill, and Rams Head Southernmost.
Where: Duval and Eaton streets, Key West
When: Friday, February 2, 12 noon
Credit: PETA
“Behind every barbecued wing or bucket of fried chicken is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken to remember that the meat industry is cruel to birds and the only kind meal is a vegan one.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.
Twenty-five years after her Emmy Award–winning role in The Sopranos, Edie Falco is taking on a seedy, violent underworld again—this time in PETA’s 2024 Super Bowl ad, produced by Sweet Rickey, a locally based female-owned production company, and directed by Boston native DeMane Davis, who’s worked with the likes of Octavia Spencer, Ava DuVernay, and Viola Davis. Chris Carl served as creative director, and postproduction was completed by EDITBAR.
Edie Falco Stars in Surprise Super Bowl Spot With a Sopranos Twist. Credit: PETA
The spot shows Falco in the kitchen making pizza when a couple of shady characters burst in and take her cheese away, prompting her to weep for its return. As she desperately chases after their getaway truck, the surreal comedic scene suddenly cuts to somber footage of a mother cow chasing after a truck as it carries away her calf—standard practice on dairy farms, which tear newborn calves away from their mothers so that the milk meant to nourish them can be sold for human consumption instead. The text reads, “Cheese isn’t your baby. But it robs a mother of hers. Go vegan.”
“Once people think about severing the bond between mother cows and their beloved calves, it’s a fair bet that many of them will say ‘fuhgeddaboudit’ to cheese,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA’s downloadable vegan starter kits are available for everyone who wants to kick off kinder eating habits in 2024 and beyond.”
Cows used for dairy are forcibly inseminated (a sexual assault) as workers insert an arm into the cow’s rectum and then use a metal rod to deliver semen into her vagina—all because cows produce milk only when they give birth and factory farmers want a constant supply of it. Once their bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. Each person who goes vegan saves nearly 200 animals each year and improves their own health, since vegans are less prone to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and strokes.
PETA’s Super Bowl ad will air on Sunday, February 11, on YouTube.
Oddball is hoping to reinvent jelly from the “almost scientific product” to a vegan, clean-label, superfood snack that takes inspiration from her childhood growing up in Asia and hopes to take back control from the big corps. Will it take off in the Jell-O-dominant US?
Sophia Cheng lays out the basic Asian principles of eating balanced. 1. Food equals health (“the US is just starting to catch up on this concept now”), 2. Embrace texture, 3. Fruit is dessert, 4. Whole-food-based snacking, 5. Less processed food, and 6. Less meat, more plants.
Cheng has combined all six of the principles into a product that challenges what Americans have been eating for over 125 years: jelly. But not jam, which is what they mean by ‘jelly’ stateside – no, these are the wobbly, jiggly, good-for-all-ages desserts that have taken on the name from the ubiquitous, genericised trademark of Jell-O.
“We grew up eating fruit as dessert and snacks,” Cheng, who hails from Singapore tells me. “In the US, ‘fruit snacks’ are Welch’s… which are candies, not fruit-based snacks. I knew it was a huge gap because consumers are looking to eat better, and are so clearly getting sick of ‘catfish foods’.”
It’s a term she has come up with to describe foods that are pretending to be another food. The problem in America was that it was too difficult to eat better. During the pandemic, when Cheng’s husband pointed out that she was stress-eating half a pint of ice cream (in the form of Häagen Dazs bars) each night – come on, who hasn’t? – she had a problem finding snack options that tasted good and were better for her.
“Why are my options either Oreos or Doritos or protein bars pretending to be a carrot cake, or candy with so much fake sweetener it gives me headaches?” she recalls thinking. “They didn’t taste good, and I stopped recognising the ingredients on the label.” So she set out to make a “delicious, simple snack where I didn’t have to guess whether the ingredient was good for me or not”.
Courtesy: Oddball
Enter Oddball. “Our American food system is ruled by lobbyists and these three ingredients: sugar, fat, and salt… it’s scary how much control large food conglomerates have over our bodies and our health is not what they are most concerned about,” notes Cheng. “With Oddball, it’s a small step to taking back a bit of control, and an attempt to hold these corporations accountable and raise awareness on what we put in our bodies.”
Why Oddball decided to disrupt Jell-O’s monopoly
Cheng describes Oddball as a concept rooted in the desire to bring Asian eating principles to the US, but in a digestible and acceptable form for Americans. I ask her why she decided to transform the $6.5B gelatin industry. “I’m one of those people [who] prefer to snack and graze all day versus eat full meals,” she tells me. “When I first came to the US for college, I’ve always thought it was bizarre that the only brand of jelly is Jell-O.”
She notes how people often confuse Jell-O as the category, the same way they do Kleenex, Q-Tips, Velcro and Xerox. The brand name is synonymous with the product category due to its sheer dominance. “If you do a deep dive into Jell-O, it is absolutely fascinating,” suggests Cheng. Its origin goes as far back as 1897, with a recipe that essentially hasn’t changed in all the years: water, gelatin, dye and sugar. At its peak, its sales neared a billion, with practically no competition.
It’s a food that made a luxurious product (gelatin) cheap enough to enter every household, and went through multiple phases of evolution – most notably its salad days during the Great Depression. It became a children’s favourite, and took on Bill Cosby – before everything came to light – as its brand ambassador.
“However, I knew from experience growing up abroad that practically nowhere else in the world eats Jell-O,” notes Cheng. “Jelly is a common dessert that comes in different forms – Italy’s panna cotta, France’s flan, Japan’s kanten, etc… What’s interesting is that most Americans had no idea Jell-O is just a brand and there are other variations of jellies in the rest of the world.”
Courtesy: Oddball
But the tide has shifted over the last couple of decades. Between 2009 and 2013, sales for the jelly giant fell by 19% to $753M (it was ascribed to a shift in consumer attitudes – 10 years ago – towards cleaner labels and healthier eating). By 2022, they had dropped off to $688M. There were multiple factors at play, explains Cheng: changes in consumer preferences towards low-sugar, more protein-centric snacks; Kraft unable to reinvent (or not needing to – “it’s a cash cow for the conglomerate”); having a brand and recipe too rooted in the inventions of the 50s; Cosby’s fall from grace following sexual assault allegations coming to light falling; and Americans catching on to gelatin being animal-based.
“It was hard for people to innovate the category without realising there is an entire world of jellies out there other than the form of Jell-O,” the Oddball founder and CEO says. The Kraft Heinz Company has been attempting to reinvent the brand, unveiling a new design last year to appeal to Gen Z. But it has come during the Great American Jelly Resurgence, with many challenger brands now popping up to make the segment their own.
Vegan jelly is hard to jiggle
While there are some brands making vegan jellies in the US (usually with agar as a base) – Bakol Natural Foods, Simply Delish, Lieber’s, Gefen and Slrrp Shots, to name a few – they’re still minute in comparison to Jell-O. This is because “vegan jellies are actually much harder to work with than traditional gelatin”, as Cheng points out. “It’s much more temperamental and it’s hard to get the texture right,” she says. “While in Asia, we embrace texture as a big part of mouthfeel, eating experience etc., in the US, I find food texture to be quite polarising.”
Growing up in Asia also allowed Cheng to “imagine the myriad of possibilities jelly could be”, something she says Jell-O should have been in the first place, instead of this “almost scientific product” that chases cheap ingredients. “Jelly is one of the most flexible, interesting foods out there that is able to literally mould itself to whatever is needed to be,” she says.
But for her, gelatin as an ingredient is “completely unnecessary”, because Asian jellies are traditionally agar- or konjac-based, and were never using animal products to begin with. The problem, though, is that it’s “extremely difficult” to find the right texture for gelatin-free jellies. “Gelatin has that natural jiggliness that has made it so iconic, but our gelling agents do not,” she says.
“As consumers, we do not tend to like change, and anything that is unfamiliar is often associated with unpleasantness. I think people often overestimate how much change consumers are willing to tolerate, and consumers always oversell how much change they are willing to tolerate as well,” adds Cheng.
Courtesy: Oddball
While working for Estée Launder, Cheng spent a year on the side “hauling Oddballs everywhere” to gather customer feedback. “It was almost overwhelmingly the texture,” she recalls. Agar is always much firmer and snappier, rather than jiggly and wobbly. So she sought to reformulate her product, working with in-house R&D chef Shawn Burnette and R&D partner Chew Innovation to find the ideal blend and deliver a texture that’s familiar yet elevated, “given our premium ingredients and our product values”.
“It is a delicate dance to toggle the line between evoking the childhood nostalgia of a familiar product, while providing a better experience with a better, healthier product,” says Cheng. “We had hundreds and hundreds of variations and tested almost every gelling agent available in the market.” Oddball settled on a mix of agar, konjac and carob bean gum – “natural, ancient ingredients” that are popular in Asia.
The next challenge, however, is consumer education. Gelatin already has a bad rep, and agar konjac or carob bean gum are unfamiliar, foreign ingredients to Americans. “While agar is a common pantry staple in Asia, in the US, it’s still mostly sold in specialty health food stores as supplements.”
Tackling costs and ingredient lists
The other obstacle is the price premium. While Cheng doesn’t divulge exact numbers, she acknowledges that Oddball’s superfood jelly snacks come at a higher markup than their gelatin-based counterparts. But to contextualise, she outlines the realities of America’s “convoluted and murky” food system, which is mostly monopolised by huge conglomerates.
“They have created an illusion that as consumers, we can walk into a grocery store and believe we have so many choices, but we actually do not,” she argues, adding that Big Food is the reason why prices for unhealthier foods are so low in the US. “Big food is the reason why we consume so much chemicals, sugar, corn syrup, and eat the way we do in here. It’s by design and through a lot of lobbying.”
But as a small food business, Cheng explains that “pricing is paramount” for survival, especially during the initial stages before it hits scale and reduces production costs. “Our positioning is ultimately to provide a premium, clean product for the masses. The goal is to ultimately lower our price points and charge fairly for good-quality ingredients in the long run, and take back control over what we put in our bodies.”
So let’s talk about the ingredients then. Cheng ascribes Oddball’s identity as a superfood brand to the fact that it uses “fruits that we consider superfoods – mangoes, raspberries, blueberries, grapefruits, pineapples”. The first iteration of its products contained just two ingredients, but that has since changed due to customer feedback and challenges around scalability and shelf life. But the founder insists that the ingredient list remains “extremely clean and all-natural”.
Courtesy: Oddball
Oddball is launching with four flavours: mango, double berry, grape and pink grapefruit. To illustrate her point, she explains how the double berry jelly snacks contain 50 calories per serving and comprise raspberry and blueberry purée; apple, blueberry and raspberry juice concentrates; carob bean gum; agar; konjac; fruit and vegetable concentrates for colour; and natural flavours for preservation. (For comparison, Jell-O’s Berry Blue offering is made up of sugar, gelatin, adipic acid, artificial flavours, disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, fumaric acid, and a food dye called blue 1.)
Target consumers, funding and launch plans
So, with its fruit-forward, cleaner-label, better-for-you jelly snacks, who is the average Oddball eater? “Jelly is one of those foods that could be consumed from [ages] 0-100. I have seen babies eat Oddballs, and I have seen older adults in the 70+ range really enjoy them as well,” reveals Cheng. “Oddball is made for all, whether you are vegan, kosher, halal, gluten-free, nut-free, etc. It is an easy snack that is light and fun. It is not a fad diet, it is not a fad food.”
Ultimately, she created Oddball for herself – a millennial who loves to snack, isn’t overly health-conscious, but is looking to change her diet and health with minimal compromises, meaning she still prioritises taste over anything. “I didn’t want Doritos or Lay’s, or Oreos… [or] a protein cookie or candy with so much fake sweetener that would give me a headache, or Ashwagandha chips that claim to bring me beauty or prosperity,” she tells me. “I wanted something that was delicious, convenient and with understandable, simple ingredients. I wanted to snack on real food, not chemicals. I wanted a snack that didn’t require effort to choose.”
And her own ethos extends to the brand name too, which she calls an “ode to jelly as a food, and myself”. “I’ve always thought jelly is one of those foods that’s funny, not too serious, a bit weird and a bit eccentric,” she explains. “At Oddball, we celebrate our eccentricities and differences, and we savour idiosyncrasies in life. Our brand promise is to break the mould in whatever we do… We want to remind people to embrace their inner Oddballs that I know we all have in us, and we want people to think of us when they think of Oddballs that have changed the world or made an impact.”
The brand is currently pre-launch, but you’ll find its products at Fairway/ShopRite and Fresh Direct stores in late spring, while Gold Coast will be its distributor in New York region. Cheng is also in talks with other retailers – including one of the nation’s largest. This year is all about completing Oddball’s reformulations, expanding the team, and entering retail.
Courtesy: Oddball
So far, Oddball has raised over $1M in a pre-seed funding round, with participants including a former Lindt & Sprungli CEO, Chew Innovation and Unreal Candy founder Adam Melonas, Hero Cosmetics founder Ju Rhyu, a president of Dyson Beauty, fashion designer Phillip Lim, and US Olympian Apolo Ohno. “I believe we might be the first – if not one of the first – woman-/immigrant-woman-founded CPG brands in the US that have raised as much as we did in pre-seed food companies,” says Cheng.
She explains that Oddball was created so that every person and child can learn to crave flavour over sugar and salt from a young age. The idea is to hit the ideal taste profiles, convenient accessibility, and the right price points. “It is not designed to only be on the shelf of specialty stores or Whole Foods – it is designed with the plan to be in every gas station, at every regular corner store in the country,” she says.
“Oddball is ultimately about improving accessibility to real, better-for-you foods,” she notes, adding: “Having control of our diet, I believe, is one of many building blocks of equalising playing fields for socioeconomic discrepancies… We shouldn’t need to be a nutritional specialist in order to know how to eat better.
“It’s a small step, but I believe all lifelong changes and habits come in bite sizes.”
Eat Just has relaunched its vegan mayonnaise and ranch lines, citing years of requests from consumers to bring back the products. The return of the SKUs, which were discontinued after major controversy and to focus on the Just Egg rollout, will help the business reach its profitability goals.
Five years after discontinuing its ultra-popular (and controversial) condiments, Eat Just has responded to consumer’s wishes. The Just Mayo and Ranch ranges are returning to supermarket shelves, as the Californian company steps up its efforts to become profitable this year.
The relaunched dressings will be rolled out in the refrigerated section of Whole Foods stores nationwide from February, before entering the ambient aisles of additional retailers in March. Both products have been brought back in two flavours: original and chipotle.
In a tongue-in-cheek statement, Eat Just’s global marketing head, Tom Rossmeissl, said: “Who would have thought? People who had a religious obsession with our mayo and dressings would be pissed when we cut them? I thought I’d get a few angry emails. But instead, we’ve seen almost four years of pseudo-online bullying and boxes of hate mail.
“We just wanted people to scramble some plant eggs, but I guess we could have let them continue to slather their bread and pizza too?”
Bringing back a fan favourite
Courtesy: Eat Just
The relaunch of Just Mayo comes after the company encountered calls from consumers “in the comments of nearly every @JUSTEgg social post over the last four years”. The company recently held a poll on Instagram asking users if it should bring back its mayo and ranch, where 87% of its followers responded with ‘Yes!’ (only 2% said no, with the other 11% selecting ‘What even is that?’, reflecting how the company has onboarded new fans in the last few years).
An Eat Just representative confirmed to Green Queen that the recipes for the returning condiments are the same as earlier. “The main ingredients in the mayo are canola oil, vinegar, and pea protein,” they said. Modified food starch, salt, sugar, spices, and fruit and vegetable colours also appear in the original flavour. “For the ranch, it’s very similar, but with additional seasonings like onion, garlic, and lemon juice.” Other ingredients include autolysed yeast extract, lactic acid, propylene glycol alginate, modified food starch, xantham gum, salt and spices. (For both ranges, the shelf-stable versions contain calcium disodium EDTA for preservation.)
Mayo is a lucrative market. According to Amazon Fresh, mayo is the top-purchased condiment in all but one of the US states it delivers in. Circana data reveals that dollar sales for mayo were up by 21% year-on-year in July 2023, reaching $2.6B, as unit sales crossed $592M stateside. One estimate put the global mayo market at $12.3B in 2022.
And this trend is reflected in vegan mayo too, with one insights firm valuing egg-free mayo at $4.3B last year. According to the Good Food Institute, dollar sales for vegan condiments, dressings and mayo increased by 47% from 2019 to 2022 (reaching $89M), and unit sales swelled by 32% in the same period.
This has been helped by a proliferation of plant-based mayonnaise options in recent years beyond Follow Your Heart’s Vegenaise, which came onto the market back in 1977. These include Primal Kitchen (owned by Kraft Heinz), Hellmann’s, Sir Kensington’s (both Unilever), and Chosen Foods, to name a few.
The relaunched Just Mayo is priced at $6.99 per 12oz jar. “The SRP for JUST Mayo and JUST Ranch is in line with, or even lower than, other plant-based mayos and dressings on the market,” the spokesperson said. “Given our fans’ consistent feedback that our products are superior to others they’ve tried, we feel our prices are fair and accessible.”
The new launch will hope to help the company on its path to profitability. Eat Just has been facing financial stress lately, with its cultivated meat division Good Meat involved in a number of lawsuits (it has just filed counterclaims against one of its suppliers). To date, the company has raised over $850M for its plant-based and cultivated businesses but has reportedly been facing a cash crunch.
But CEO Josh Tetrick – who was named in the TIME100 Climate list last year – told Green Queen in November that Just Egg, which makes up 99.9% of the company’s current revenue, experienced a 173 percentage-point improvement in EBITDA in the first half 2023 vs full year 2022, and an 80-point hike in gross margin in the same periods. “Our business plan is on track to achieve break even in 2024, with half of our current SKUs selling at a positive margin today,” he said.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Why the Eat Just mayo was discontinued in the first place
Eat Just had originally launched its mayo in 2013, when the company was still called Hampton Creek. The product was subject to a lot of press attention and consumer excitement and quickly became one of the leading vegan mayonnaises on the market, available at Whole Foods Market, Walmart, Kroger and more.
But the popularity led to Eat Just being sued in 2014 by Unilever, which admitted that Just Mayo was eating into the sales of its own Hellmann’s mayo). The lawsuit was filed “on the grounds that the term ‘mayo’ implied the use of eggs”, but the food giant withdrew it after criticism from the media and consumers, applauding Eat Just’s “commitment to innovation and its inspired corporate purpose”, before launching a plant-based version of Hellmann’s in 2016.
It was a win for Eat Just, but it soon followed a much larger controversy. In 2016, Bloomberg reported that the Californian startup had been directing employees and contractors to buy up “mass quantities of Just Mayo” as part of an undercover operation in 2014 that “made the product appear more popular than it really was”. Contractors were also allegedly asked to call retail store managers posing as customers to ask about the availability of the mayo, presumably in a bid to drive hype for the product.
“We need you in Safeway buying Just Mayo and our new flavored mayos. And we’re going to pay you for this exciting new project!” Caroline Love, the brand’s director of corporate partnership at the time, wrote in an April 2014 email to contract workers. “The most important next step with Safeway is huge sales out of the gate. This will ensure we stay on the shelf to put an end to Hellmann’s factory-farmed egg mayo, and spread the word to customers that Just Mayo is their new preferred brand.”
A March 2015 correspondence signed by the corporate partnerships team’s Melanie Myers read: “You will be calling Whole Foods Market locations as a customer to create buzz and increase demand for Just Mayo flavors and Just Cookie Dough in these stores, putting pressure on the Regional Buyer.” Eat Just provided scripts to these workers, asking them to pretend to be caterers or planning events for which they require “this new mayonnaise. I think it’s called Just Mayo.”
“We’ve always been transparent about what happened here,” the Eat Just spokesperson told Green Queen. The company “was trying to address a QA/QC [quality assurance/control] issue with our first shipments of Mayo and add shelf space, and it represented less than 1% of sales at the time.”
This is consistent with what the company had said, with Myers outlining that the project was carried out primarily for quality-control purposes, but admitted that “we also thought it might give us a little momentum out of the gate”. Tetrick added that it had cost the company about $77,000, representing less than 0.12% of its total sales.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Despite expanding its line mayo range with flavours like wasabi, truffle, sesame ginger, garlic, chipotle, and sriracha, Eat Just eventually withdrew the condiments range to focus on Just Egg, which has become incredibly popular and captured 99% of the vegan egg market. But now, it’s hoping to make amends to customers with “coupons, recipes, mayo-based holiday surprises and more via its Instagram account” in the coming months.
“Challenges, doubts, and unforeseen hurdles have not stopped Eat Just from continuing to drive innovation in plant-based foods to give consumers better choices and more ways to change the food system for the better every time they sit down to a meal,” said the brand.
The focus is to now become financially sustainable and break even. “It’s the most important objective of the company and the team is focused on increasing the probability of achieving it,” the spokesperson told Green Queen. Asked what its goals for the year were, they responded: “To sell healthier, sustainable products to millions of consumers in a way that enables the company to sustain itself in the long term.”
It echoes what Tetrick said in November: “We are focused on the daily execution of our zero-burn plan (i.e., cover operating costs through margin dollars) and serving our customers. If we execute, the company and its missions win. It’ll be challenging and hard – and it’s up to us to get it done.”
Since launching in 2014, Veganuary has boasted increasing sign-ups year on year. But what’s the evidence that the campaign that encourages people to adopt a vegan diet during January is really taking a bite out of the meat market?
More than 700,000 people signed up in 2023, and it’s likely that these figures – which only account for people who officially signed up on the Veganuary website – represent just a fraction of all those who took part without signing up.
Veganuary is a campaign which encourages people to try veganism in January. The Veganuary charity, a UK-based non-profit behind the campaign, counts Deborah Meaden, Joaquin Phoenix and Chris Packham among its ambassadors.
Official Veganuary signups have increased every year since it began in 2014.
In a paper we published last year, we highlighted Veganuary as the most well-known and participated-in meat-free challenge. More than three-quarters of British people have heard of Veganuary.
One in ten have considered taking part, and 6% claim to have taken part. That equates to around four million people – significantly more than the official participation numbers.
Three out of four British people have heard of Veganuary, and one in six have at least thought about taking part.
So why has Veganuary succeeded where so many other efforts to curb our problematic meat consumption have failed? There are two reasons, as outlined in our recent study.
First, Veganuary invites people to try a vegan diet at a time of year when people are often open to trying healthy new habits. Capitalising on an annual time of change can help to overcome any inertia that normally prevents people trying vegan diets.
Second, Veganuary is a social experience. People can connect with others attempting the same challenge. The sense of camaraderie and community is something that Veganuary participants frequently comment on having enjoyed.
Encouragingly, Veganuary’s survey of participants indicates that 98% would recommend the experience to a friend. Moreover, 78% of participants intended to cut their previous animal product consumption at least in half beyond the end of January, and 25% said they intend to stay vegan.
So, Veganuary makes sense in terms of social psychology. Lots of people have taken part, and plenty say they’ll cut down on meat in the longer term. But what evidence is there that Veganuary has made a real impact on dietary habits?
The recent increase in the number of people embracing meat-free diets in the UK is shown in the graph below – in particular, the number of vegans has increased 370% in the past five years.
The rate of veganism in the UK has increased by 370% since 2019.
So Veganuary came to exist and grew rapidly during a time of increasing UK interest in veganism. Could that have been a simple coincidence?
Researchers at the London School of Economics looked at more than 2 million meals sold in workplace cafeterias between 2016 and 2022. Crucially, the workplaces began their Veganuary campaigns halfway through this period, in 2019. The researchers estimated that Veganuary increased sales of vegan products by 86–113% in the 2019-2022 campaigns, and had a lasting impact on sales of vegan products
Sales data from 200 UK supermarkets indicate that, during Veganuary 2023, sales increased for plant-based foods which were on promotion, but not for those which were not on promotion, according to a University of Oxford study.
Veganuary has also increased sales of plant-based products at UK grocery stores. A team at the University of Surrey studied sales of plant-based and animal products at 154 UK grocery stores from November 2020 until March 2021 and found that Veganuary increased sales of plant-based products by a huge 57% during January.
Sales also remained 15% higher after Veganuary compared to before the month-long campaign. That said, there was no significant change in meat consumption observed during the same period.
Curious about Veganuary’s far-reaching impact, I searched Google News to estimate the number of published news stories about veganism during January compared to the rest of the year. In January, there was an average 66% increase in the number of media articles about veganism compared to other months between 2015 and 2020 – evidence that Veganuary increases public attention on veganism-related issues.
Media stories mentioning veganism were 66% higher in January between 2015 and 2020.
Next, I used Google Trends to investigate seasonal trends in the number of people actively seeking out information on veganism. The data in the graph shows some of the clearest evidence yet for the Veganuary effect, with clear spikes in search activity every January. Moreover, interest appears to begin rising right around the time that Veganuary began in 2014.
UK Google searches about veganism peak every January, and started increasing around 2014 when Veganuary began.
Finally, I tracked down the dataset from an unpublished survey of vegans conducted in 2019, because I knew it contained data on a very specific question. The survey, which the researcher kindly shared with me, asked more than 2,000 vegans when they changed their diet, to the nearest three-month period.
Using this data, I created this graph, which shows clear spikes, with more people turning vegan in the first quarter of the year, and an increase starting around (or slightly before) Veganuary began in 2014.
Self-reported dates of when UK vegans changed their diets shows clear peaks in January.
One piece of data stands out most of all. When Veganuary asked participants about their number one motivation for taking part, 18% said the environment and 21% said their health – but 40% said animal welfare.
Animals were the most frequent main motivation for Veganuary participants.
Indeed, the data indicates that the messages inspiring the most dietary change are not about carbon emissions, but about animal cruelty. Almost nobody in the UK views common animal farming practices as acceptable, yet while cow burps are within the range of acceptable dinner party conversation, knives in throats typically are not.
Meat consumption largely remains a social norm but that may well be about to shift. The social tipping point whereby enough people adopt a new norm for it to catch on is estimated to be around 25%. In the UK, the number of people consuming meat-free diets is now up to 14%. Veganuary could soon nudge us towards a vital cultural tipping point.
Kidnapping and violence may be everyday things for fictional mob wife Carmela Soprano, but did you know that they’re horrifyingly real for mother cows? This year marks the 25th anniversary of the TV series The Sopranos, and PETA Honorary Director Edie Falco, famous for her role as Carmela Soprano, stars in our 2024 Super Bowl ad portraying the daily nightmare inflicted on mother cows in the name of cheese.
Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do: to nourish their young. Like humans, cows form strong maternal bonds with their babies and go to great lengths to protect them. On dairy farms, workers forcibly impregnate cows so they’ll produce milk, only to take their calves away from them—typically just hours after birth—so that humans can drink their milk instead. Mother cows often call out for their calves for days after these traumatic separations.
If someone doesn’t immediately slaughter the calves, the females are doomed to the same miserable fate as their mothers and the males are sold into the veal industry, condemned to be chained up and malnourished for the remainder of their short, miserable lives.
The dairy industry runs on cruelty. After stealing their calves, farmers hook mother cows up to milking machines at least twice daily so that they can steal their milk, too. They exploit cows’ reproductive systems through genetic selection, despite the negative effects on the animals’ health. They use artificial insemination, milking regimens, and sometimes drugs to force them to produce an unnatural amount of milk—today, the average cow produces more than four times as much milk as she would have in 1950.
PETA’s investigations into dairy facilities revealed that workers electroshock cows in the face, hit them with poles and canes, and abuse them in other ways. Once their bodies wear out from repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter.
PETA’s ad will run the Saturday before the Super Bowl on CBS during Late News in northern New Jersey, where The Sopranos was set. It will also air live on YouTube TV, delivering more than 5 million impressions to people watching instant replays, game highlights, and other Super Bowl– and sports-related content.
Those Who Want Respect, Give Respect
Whaddya hear? Whaddya say? You can live without cheese—but calves need their mother’s milk. The surest way to respect cows and spare them pain and misery is to stop buying cheese and other dairy items and go vegan today. When you choose vegan cheese, you use your power as a consumer to show that you won’t support this horrific cycle of pain.
The number of vegans in the UK has grown by 78%, reaching 2.5 million, according to an annual survey by Finder. This means 4.7% of adult Brits follow a plant-based diet – but separate research shows little understanding of climate language amongst the population.
While more people in the UK identify as vegan this year, there’s simultaneously a lack of understanding when it comes to language related to the climate crisis, according to two new studies.
As consumer awareness about the health and environmental implications of meat and dairy consumption and plant-based foods grows – helped by a string of new documentaries and a Veganuary campaign that is expected to break participation records yet again – more Brits are sticking to a vegan diet now than at any point in the last five years (at the very least).
But then again, despite this rise in education around the climate impact of animal-derived and plant-based foods – the former produce twice as many emissions as the latter – there is a disconnect when it comes to understanding climate and waste policy language. Terms like ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ are clearly understood by only a minority of adults in the UK.
More Brits are vegan, led by Gen Z and Londoners
Research by personal finance website Finder has found that the UK’s vegan population grew from 1.4 million in 2023 to 2.5 million this year – a 78% rise – accounting for 4.7% of the total adult population. It’s a shift led by Gen Z, 9% of whom identify as vegan, and millennials (8%). Unsurprisingly, given its reputation as one of the vegan capitals of the world, London is responsible for the highest share (6.8%).
The 2,000-person nationally representative survey also revealed that there are 3.1 million vegetarians in the UK – or about 5.8% of the total – a figure that has slightly decreased from last year, but largely due to many converting to plant-based diets. Meanwhile, three million adults are pescetarians, taking the number of people on meat-free diets to 8.6 million (16% of the adult population).
Courtesy: Finder
Moreover, a further 6.4 million plan to adopt some form of meatless diet – two million aim to be vegan, 2.4 million vegetarian, and 1.97 million pescetarian. While it’s unlikely that everyone will stick to their intentions, if they were to do so, the UK would have 15 million meat-free adults by 2025, which is 28% of the population.
Over a quarter of Gen Zers (26%) are meatless consumers, with another 26% intending to follow one of these three diets, which means over half of Gen Z Brits could potentially stop eating meat. Similarly, 22% of millennials don’t consume meat, and 17% plan to stop doing so this year. There’s an upward trend of meat consumption with age: 14% of Gen Xers, 12% of baby boomers, and just 4% of the silent generation are on meat-free diets.
London also has the most adults avoiding meat, with a fifth (21.3%) either identifying as vegan, vegetarian or pescetarian. Meanwhile, 18% are hoping to add to this figure, meaning 39% of Londoners could be giving up meat come 2025. But the southwest of England has the lowest number of vegans (2.8%) and overall meat-free eaters (11.3%), although Scotland ranks last in terms of people who intend to stop consuming meat this year, with only 6% planning to do so.
Courtesy: Finder
The results mirror research by the Vegan Society last year, which found that 41% of non-vegan men are interested in switching to plant-based diets, with those aged 25-34 the most likely to try. “It’s really encouraging to learn that a significant proportion of men are interested [in] going vegan, but we are aware there is still work to be done, not only to support the general public in adopting a healthy vegan lifestyle, but particularly men who are exposed to the pressures of traditional masculinity,” said Hannah Montgomery, campaigns manager at the charity.
Finder’s survey comes on the back of a tough year for plant-based food in the UK, with meat-free products among the worst-performing grocery categories, as sales declined by £38.4M. It was ascribed to inflation due to the cost-of-living crisis, with prices being driven up for most food categories, but affecting vegan products more. Companies like Plant & Bean shut down, while Meatless Farm and VBites came close. Many chains – such as Neat Burger, Clean Kitchen Club, Flower Burger and Veggie Pret – closed locations, and brands including Oatly, Nestlé and Innocent pulled products from shelves.
But the growth of cheaper private-label brands is a positive sign. “With UK data showing supermarket own-label sales grew twice as fast as branded goods last year, we’ve seen British supermarkets take the opportunity to help make plant-based food more affordable by launching a range of own-label products over the last few weeks, Helen Breewood, research and resource manager at the Good Food Institute Europe told Green Queen earlier this month. “Retailers are increasingly seeing the value of this market, and we hope this trend will continue beyond Veganuary.”
Brits unclear on climate-related terms
But while the number of vegans may be up, the amount of the UK population able to clearly understand what different claims around climate change mean is “worryingly low”. Another nationally representative survey – this time of 1,000 UK adults – by insights company Trajectory and communications agency Fleet Street reveals that only 25% of respondents thoroughly understand the term ‘green’, while 26% can define ‘sustainability’ and 32% ‘organic’.
Even some of the more commonly used terms are met with a lack of consumer comprehension, such as ‘environmentally friendly’ (35%), ‘locally grown/seasonal’ (40%), ‘single-use plastic’ (47%), ‘recycling’ (55%), and ‘net zero’ (59%). And other phrases have even lower levels of understanding among Brits, including ‘carbon offsetting’ (11%) and ‘circular economy’ (4%).
There is a clear correlation between understanding and favourability, with consumers feeling most positive about the terms they understand the best, such as ‘recycling’, ‘single-use plastic’, and ‘locally sourced/grown’. Plus, the younger demographic (aged 18-24) is more confident here – for instance, ‘sustainability’ was understood by 24% more youngsters than those aged 65+.
Courtesy: Marcus Spiske/Unsplash
And despite the confusion around some of the key terms, the analysis highlights the importance of effective communication: 90% of respondents believe it’s important for brands to talk about their sustainability initiatives, with 68% more likely to buy from a company with a clear climate strategy.
Meanwhile, 47% of consumers think brands have the biggest responsibility for delivering climate, and almost 48% feel companies are acting sincerely in their efforts. This veers into greenwashing territory, with a poll by the Chartered Institute of Marketing – covering 2,000 Brits and 1,193 online customers – last year revealing that two-thirds of consumers believe most brands are not being authentic when they talk about their environmental initiatives.
Government initiatives like the Green Claims Code, which lays out a six-point checklist to see if a business’s environmental claims are credible, and a ban on essential products linked to deforestation will help. So too will projects like the 2021-launched Provenance Framework, an open-source rulebook listing the criteria companies need to fulfil to make a true environmental claim, and avoid greenwashing and misleading consumers.
“While many businesses and brands are taking critical action to tackle the environmental crisis, it is clear from this research that communication is key and much more work needs to be done to engage consumers, starting with the language used – as a significant amount of it doesn’t appear to mean much to them,” said Fleet Street founder Mark Stretton.
“The lack of understanding around what many businesses would probably consider to be standard terms, such as ‘net zero’ and ‘environmentally friendly’, is striking, and indicates a level of disconnect between brands and consumers,” he added. “Many businesses are investing very heavily in sustainability, setting ambitious objectives in the process, but there is a big piece missing. There’s massive work to be done on the language used, and the more consumers understand, the more likely they are to positively engage with, and respond to what is clearly an enormous, generational issue.”
Funding future food innovations is crucial. As traditional VCs look elsewhere, it’s for the sector to welcome new and diverse sources of investment, from blended capital to redeemable equity.
By Sonalie Figueiras, founding editor at Green Queen Media and advisor at Better Bite Ventures, Mucake and Alwyn Capital, and Maximilian von Poelnitz, Venture Partner at Ajinomoto Corporate Venture Capital
Over the past five years, we have seen a food tech hype bubble building as generalist investors entered the space in droves attracted by the promise of backing climate solutions, the realization that the current food system faces existential challenges, hundreds of passionate mission-led founders, a handful of IPOs that made global headlines because of outsized returns, social media-fueled foodie trends and the promise of helping make the world a better, more environmentally-friendly place. More simply put, food innovation became sexy.
Over time, a disconnect formed between R&D initiatives and go-to-market strategies, and while new money flooded the space, deep sector expertise and long-term track records were hard to come by.
This culminated in the easy money and public stock market euphoria of 2020 and 2021 especially with Covid-led government cash infusions. By 2023, the bubble had burst, and over the past 12 months food tech companies have seen their valuations slashed, dozens of startups have disappeared from the space and the generalist money has moved on to new pastures like climate tech, with funding rounds drying up.
The pendulum has now swung back in favour of cash-infused investors and companies that are actively prolonging runway and driving a clear path to commercialization and profitability. This is problematic for deep tech companies in sectors like cellular agriculture and precision fermentation where there is still a lot of work to do to drive bench-scale applications to industrial and commercial scale distribution; many companies will struggle to move from the lab to the open market without access to capital.
Foodtech investing today: burned by hype
So what went wrong? Ultimately, investors were led to believe that food tech could behave like a tech business and that distribution was simple. There was a sense of ‘build it and they will come’. In 2019/2020, CAGR calculations also made for easy math given that alternative protein markets were growing at over 15% annualized and in some sectors like dairy at over 50%. This led to further media hype and many new /generalist investors jumping into the sector feet-first. Ultimately both the production and distribution math was challenged as startups continue to struggle to move from pilot scale to commercial scale. Further demand for innovative products driven by taste and texture will contribute to additional adoption but not based on the timelines that investors were originally sold.
Foodtech as an investment class: one brush cannot apply to all types
One of the most important “resets” to have occurred over the past 12 months has been investors recognizing that food businesses are not SAAS or technology companies. The term food tech really should not be seen as a catch-all but rather spans a wide variety of industries that include biotech, CPG and/or ingredient-focused R&D houses. This ultimately requires investors with deep expertise in each and a much more niche focus, and in certain verticals, a far longer time horizon for exit.
Except for a few innovation-led plant-based companies like Impossible Foods (precision fermentation-derived heme), Climax Foods (plant casein IP), or EQUII (protein-enriched flour), most plant-based food/meat companies are CPG plays and should be classified (and diligenced) as such. A CPG venture capital firm ultimately has a different investment thesis than a deep-tech fund.
While there is a long history of successful investments and M&A in the food space, the reality is that a Danone will never be a Google or an Apple in terms of market share and revenues – the food business simply does not have the same unit economics as software companies.
Investor Daniel Gluck wrote about these differences in a social media post: “CPG companies don’t scale as fast as tech, typically. Like tech, CPG focuses on creating and changing habits. But customers are more adventurous with apps on their phone than food on their shelves. Most retailers take on new products only 1 to 2 times a year. Customer adoption takes time and growth is slow.”
Wired journalist Matt Reynolds reports further: “Food isn’t like the technology industry, Reams points out. Food companies—even ones with a cool technological edge—do not grow like a software company, he says. Food companies operate on razor-thin margins, prices are volatile, and customers can be extremely picky about what they’ll put in their mouths. There’s also a scaling issue. Software companies can scale rapidly because getting their product to new customers costs almost nothing. It’s just a matter of duplicating lines of code, or hooking up a user to a centralized database that already exists. Food isn’t like that. Every extra plant-based burger requires more soy and pea plants that have to be grown, plus labor costs and processing time. Bigger factories and more efficient production will reduce the cost per burger, but scaling is a slow process that requires expensive physical infrastructure, with no guarantee that customers will buy those slightly-cheaper burgers once they’re made.”
That being said, liquidity events exist every year as large incumbents such as General Mills, PepsiCo, Netsle, or Unilever continue to be active in the space. The takeaway here is that this makes for a completely different investor base as and life cycle.
Food is not ‘frivolous’
With the challenges facing the industry, there continues to be an existential need for food tech solutions and productivity gains. The recent hype cycles in the industry and the failures that continue to gain media attention do not change the fact that the industry is solving a core problem: the very real issues facing our global food systems, which are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We cannot solve the climate crisis without evolving our food systems.
In a piece asking whether the venture capital model is broken, James Ledbetter writes of the sector’s frivolity problem: “Venture capital’s frivolity or lemming problem is not recently acquired. The Internet highway is littered with roadkill of venture-backed companies that would have been considered silly even if they had succeeded.” As we consider how the food industry can benefit from different funding structures and formats, it’s important to state that food, unlike many flash-in-the-pan apps, is anything but frivolous. Food is an essential part of human daily life and must be accorded the importance it merits.
Deeptech food: a longer game
Over the past five years, the term food tech has also come to mean a key focus on synthetic biology, precision fermentation, and even cellular agriculture. These represent sectors with very different capital requirements and investment horizons compared to a standard plant-based meat alternative product.
Deep-tech and cultivated meat/food tech companies have more parallels with healthcare technology given their long R&D cycles, some form of regulatory approval, and the need to plan distribution and supply chain effectively. More importantly, these businesses come with significant infrastructure needs whether through co-manufacturing agreements or a self-designed manufacturing hub. At each business milestone, the company or start-up requires different forms of capital that cannot be supported purely by the venture capital industry.
The key concern in the functional food tech industry is innovators moving from bench scale to pilot scale and then ultimately to commercial scale. Each stage requires a significant investment and technically the risk profile is reduced at each stage. In 2023, venture capital investors tend to shy away from deals where 50% of the capital is put into capex. Again, there are clear parallels with the traditional healthcare biotech inverter landscape. At pilot scale, food tech companies need access to other forms of capital as they begin to take what they created in a lab and bring it to market.
Ultimately, the industry is at a tipping point as it awaits better infrastructure, more project finance, and greater government support. Infrastructure projects do not lend to venture capital timelines. For investors, the next few years will involve increased consolidation and survival exercises by several larger startups. This will potentially be very good for a few early movers but still requires these businesses to find product market fit and commercial success.
Foodtech (esp deep-tech sectors like cultivated meat) has an investment horizon problem: VC exit timelines don’t match technology lifecycles. In the healthcare space, there is a mechanism for VCs to exit their investments as a new round of investors might join at the clinical trial stage. Ultimately food tech needs a milestone-driven approach that allows for other forms of patient capital to enter the investment pool.
So where do we go from here?
What’s clear is that the classic Silicon Valley VC model is not necessarily adapted to the needs of systemic food system change. To finance a transition to a less carbon-intensive, more resilient global food system that meets the needs of humanity ethically, sustainably and nutritionally, new types of capital are needed. Below we explore some of the possibilities.
Patient capital
Patient capital does not have a rigid definition, but generally, the term refers to long-term investments where investors are prepared to wait a considerable amount of time (3-5 years in some sectors, 10-15 years in others) before seeing any financial returns. For this reason, fund managers implementing a patient capital strategy will maintain their investments even if they’re seeing short-term losses for the fund. Pension funds and sovereign wealth funds are typical examples of patient capital. In recent years, patient capital has also come to be associated with impact investing. In this context, rather than maximising immediate returns for shareholders, the focus is on maximising the positive social or environmental impact of an investment, alongside financial gains. Non-profit investment fund Acumen, for instance, defines patient capital as “investment in an early-stage enterprise providing low-income consumers with access to healthcare, water, housing, alternative energy, or agricultural inputs.”
Both patient capital and venture capital seek a return on investment. Besides its longer time horizon, however, patient capital also has a higher risk tolerance than traditional forms of investment and can perhaps provide more follow-on investment in the event that a company enters a challenging capital environment.
Blended/public capital
Food is a commonwealth sector- we all need a better food system. Investing in food system solutions should involve commonwealth interests, including taxpayer money, and should be based on defined criteria around finding solutions to the biggest problems of our time such as bulwarking our global food system against the consequences of climate change.
We need more blended capital solutions, where public funds match private sector investment, effectively doubling funding rounds for young startups. Given food’s importance in society, governments should be actively participating in the future food sector and investing in innovation and talent. A great example of the successful deployment of blended/public capital is the Bpifrance story (Banque Publique d’Investissements France), the French government’s investment bank arm.
In an in-depth piece for Sifted, reporter Chris O’Brien writes about the success of ‘La French Tech’ being underwritten by Bpifrance:
“To understand the secret of France’s entrepreneurial boom, take a close look at state bank Bpifrance, an economic beast whose tentacles reach into every corner of this nation’s innovation ecosystem. Between direct and indirect investments, Bpifrance poured €1.6bn into French tech startups and venture funds in 2022 alone, up from €1.51bn in 2021…A closer look at the cap tables of the 120 companies reveals that 51 raised some kind of direct investment from Bpifrance, according to Dealroom…Even in Europe, where government investment in the economy is de rigueur, Bpifrance stands apart. And, a decade after its creation, its mission continues to expand with programmes to stop climate change and rebuild France’s industrial base.”
The ‘Shared Prosperity’ model and redeemable equity
Gutter Capital offers a model they dub “shared prosperity”, a model that “derives from 16th century maritime commerce…“Sailing crude vessels on treacherous routes from Europe to Asia and the Americas, early navigators risked death or capture on the high seas to deliver their cargo. As compensation, ship captains would take 20% of the profit from goods carried. Carried interest was born. Today, carried interest refers to how venture capitalists are compensated, taking 20% of the profits from the investments they make. Where sea captains risked life and limb to earn their keep, today’s venture capitalists enjoy the spoils of conquest while remaining safe on shore…The Gutter Infinity Fund will attempt to share the wealth by spreading both risks and rewards across the fund’s stakeholders…Our view is that founders are getting a raw deal,” Teran tells Fast Company, “so we’re putting our money where our mouth is and doing something about it.”
Food tech companies can also consider nontraditional equity structures such as redeemable equity. Can Atacik, founder of Alethina Impact Investments and Advisory, founding partner of ImpACTNOW Capital, and a venture partner of Venture Science talks about how climate entrepreneurs in particular can leverage redeemable equity to raise funding on alternative terms.
“Some climate founders may have a venture that doesn’t have a likely exit on a 10-15 year horizon (or exiting may not even be the right outcome). Keeping the business private long-term may lead to better business outcomes and climate impact, and founders may want to have the right to regain ownership over time.”
Redeemable equity enables founders to buy back ownership from VCs at pre-defined terms, which means investors can still have a compelling exit without forcing an IPO or acquisition. While the upside can be lower, a redeemable structure does mean greater downside protection than traditional VC.
An increasing (though small) number of startups are pursuing non-traditional equity models during fundraising. A German femtech team just raised a seed round that included the co-founder creating her own sustainable financing instrument, dubbed the Future Profit Partnership Agreement (FPPA). As reported here, she developed a “a mezzanine financial instrument that combines advantages of equity and debt capital and enables an appropriate return for investors…Instead of a conventional equity round, they offer a profit share. The agreement ends as soon as the return is achieved…Profits are a means to an end and are reinvested, used to cover capital costs or donated.”
Venture debt
With the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), there has been a significant uptake in financial services and banks targeting venture debt (the higher interest rate environment has helped as well). This is a form of financing that allows Series A and B startups to finance capex or other working capital needs even when they are cashflow negative or only at pilot stage from a revenue standpoint. In addition, we are starting to see project finance firms put up the capital for equipment especially if that equipment can be moved or re-used in the event of a default.
However, this form of capital still does not solve for the physical space constraints of creating an industrial food ecosystem. It also does not provide enough capital to truly build large-scale infrastructure and ultimately venture debt is still bound to a startup’s ability to raise its next round. As such it certainly can help a startup as it begins to commercialize but won’t provide the capital required for the industry to mature.
Low-interest government-backed loans
At a cellular agriculture conference last week, alternative protein think tank founder Bruce Friedrich underlined the importance of government support for the cultivated meat sector and he specifically cited low-interest government loans as a key mechanism to boost innovation and help startups scale in a nascent industry, highlighting how vital these loans had been for electric vehicle pioneers.
“Elon Musk says they would have failed twice, if not for long-term low-interest government loans. There is no solar industry, there is no EV [electric vehicle] industry, there is no biopharma industry, if not for governments helping the companies that can’t qualify for standard bank loans, giving them long-term low-interest loans,” said Friedrich. Low-interest government-backed loans have been notably absent as an option for future food founders. One reason for this? Food has not yet reached mainstream consciousness as a key climate concern. This needs to change, given the importance of adapting food systems to reach net global zero goals.
One could argue that no other sector matters as much as food if humanity is to continue to thrive amidst an increasingly acute climate crisis. As such, it’s critical to explore new types of financing and new invested capital formats to support the food tech sector and its community of innovators and entrepreneurs.
Sonalie Figueiras is a journalist, serial climate entrepreneur, longtime food systems change activist and the founding editor of Green Queen Media.
Maximilian von Poelnitz is a venture partner with Ajinomoto helping to set up their new $100m venture capital fund. He has deep experience in food, bio, and climate tech investing following his roles as an investment director and managing partner at DSM Venturing and New Territory Ventures respectively.
Californian CPG startup Voyage Foods, which makes ethical and eco-friendly pantry staples, has raised $22M in funding, and released the results of a life-cycle assessment that shows its cocoa-free chocolate produces up to 88% fewer GHG emissions from land use change than its conventional counterpart.
With a burgeoning portfolio of nut-free spreads, cocoa-free chocolate and bean-free coffee, Voyage Foods is doubling down on its eco credentials and potential with an independent life-cycle assessment (LCA) and $22M in funding, which brings total investment in the startup to $64M.
Participants in the latest funding round included Valor Equity Partners, Horizons Ventures, UBS O’Connor, and Level One Fund, among others. Voyage Foods – which sells nut-free hazelnut and peanut butters in over 1,400 retail locations, alongside cocoa-free chocolate for B2B partners and beanless coffee for foodservice – plans to use the capital to scale up manufacturing and develop and launch new products to the market.
Courtesy: Voyage Foods
Focusing on the chocolate alternative – made from a blend of grape seeds, sunflower protein, RSPO-certified palm oil and shea kernel oil – it commissioned ESG consulting agency Sphera to conduct a third-party validated, ISO-compliant LCA of its ingredient. The LCA claims Voyage Foods’ vegan milk and semi-sweet chocolate alternatives are “the most sustainable chocolates ever to come to market”.
How sustainable is cocoa-free chocolate?
The LCA reveals that the global warming potential (GWP) over 100 years for Voyage Foods’ cocoa-free milk and semi-sweet chocolates is 3.4kg and 3.25 CO2e per kg on average, respectively (depending on whether it’s made with shea butter or palm oil), versus 10kg and 8kg of CO2e per kg of conventional milk and semi-sweet varieties.
Electricity generation during manufacturing contributes to 59% of Voyage Foods’ carbon footprint, while the upstream burden of key feedstock to the process – shea butter, palm oil, and sugar – is responsible for a further 33%. As for conventional chocolate feedstock and raw materials make up 77% of the GWP on average, with the main material inputs being skimmed milk powder in milk chocolate (51%) and cocoa liquor in semi-sweet (65%).
Courtesy: Voyage Foods
Sphera found that Voyage Foods’ non-dairy milk chocolate produces 66% fewer GHG emissions from land use change and 84% fewer emissions overall compared to its conventional counterpart, while the cocoa-free semi-sweet chocolate reduces land use change emissions by 88% and overall GHG emissions by 81%.
If just 5% of the world switched to Voyage’s chocolates, it would be the equivalent of saving emissions from between 1.5 and 1.8 million cars annually. The results are even starker for blue water consumption, with Voyage Foods’ chocolates using 99% less water. It’s like saving between 500,000 and 1.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of water (if 5% of the population swapped conventional for cocoa-free chocolate).
The LCA suggested that even if the electricity requirements of manufacturing regular milk chocolates are halved and Voyage Foods’ versions are doubled, the former would still have a 58% higher GWP than the latter. When relying solely on wind power, the cocoa-free vegan milk chocolate will see its GWP results decrease by 53-58%, and the semi-sweet option by 55-61% (based on the use of palm or shea fats). It means Voyage Foods’ offerings will have a four to six times lower GWP than conventional chocolates if both are produced by wind power, versus 2.8 times if using non-renewable energy sources.
Courtesy: Voyage Foods
Why chocolate alternatives like Voyage Foods are important
As food commodities go, cocoa and chocolate are up there with the most problematic. Dark chocolate is the second-worst food (after beef) when it comes to supply chain emissions, while cocoa beans have one of the highest carbon opportunity costs, which is the amount of carbon lost from native vegetation and soils to produce food.
Chocolate is also linked to mass deforestation, thanks in large part to the widespread use of palm oil (which is part of Voyage Foods’ ingredients too, albeit one certified by the RSPO). In fact, the EU banned cocoa and chocolate linked to deforestation in June last year, while in the US, the Biden administration was sued in August to block imports of cocoa harvested by children in West Africa.
Plus, scientists have warned that cocoa trees are threatened – and a third of them could die out by 2050 – which could lead to a global chocolate shortage. This makes alternatives like the ones from Voyage Foods vital, and their sustainability credentials even more so.
“We are focused on addressing the environmentally harmful aspects of the chocolate industry and creating more sustainable, scalable, delicious counterparts,” said Voyage Foods co-founder and CEO Adam Maxwell. “Whether you’re looking at water use, land use, greenhouse gas emissions or deforestation, it’s clear that the production of traditional chocolate is problematic – and our cocoa-free chocolate is a much-needed solution.”
Courtesy: Voyage Foods
In 2023, the price of bulk cocoa rose to its highest in 50 years, as the commodity went through a 150 million lb global shortage. Voyage Foods says it provides manufacturers with supply chain and price stability that enables better margins, thanks to the use of cost-effective upcycled ingredients that are scalable.
This also allows CPG partners to provide consumers with eco-friendly, ethical chocolate with fair and stable prices, as Maxwell explained: “We’re proposing that food companies can make more sustainable and ethically sourced products at a cost that on the industrial side is significantly less than current alternatives.”
Plant-based milk brand Silk will air its first Super Bowl commercial at this year’s championship game next month, featuring MCU star Jeremy Renner on his return from a freak accident last year. But will it work?
Silk had made it to the Super Bowl. The Danone-owned alt-milk giant has been filming its Feel Planty Good commercial with actor Jeremy Renner, who is back on screens a year after he was involved in a horror snowplough accident, according to People.
It will make Silk just the third plant-based company to feature its products in a Super Bowl commercial. These spots are highly coveted and come with a hefty price tag, but given the eyeballs – over 200 million Americans are expected to tune in on February 11 – the payoff can be immense as well.
Hawkeye makes breakfast in Silk’s Super Bowl ad
Courtesy: Silk/Gage Skidmore/CC
On New Year’s Day 2023, Renner was crushed by a huge snowplough while helping a family member near his home in Nevada. The MCU actor broke 30 bones and spent two weeks in hospital, while also undergoing multiple surgeries.
Having spent a year in recovery, Renner’s first job back is with his daughter, and it’s for a product that helped him on his journey back to full health. The 53-year-old (who isn’t vegan) and his daughter Ava have just finished filming for Silk’s Feel Planty Good spot.
The commercial features the Avengers star making breakfast for Ava as he “dances, leaps and roundhouse kicks” his way through the kitchen, singing James Brown’s 1965 tune, I Got You (I Feel Good), in a cosy bathrobe.
Renner said partnering up with Silk was a no-brainer, given he used its products to make protein shakes during his recovery. He’s pictured sitting next to his 10-year-old with the Silk almond milk, and making a milkshake with the brand’s protein milk. “[Silk is] all about wellness, and I’ve gotten pretty into that because it’s forced upon me as a part of a lifestyle, which is great,” he told People. “I’ve become so healthy now.”
Courtesy: Silk
The commercial follows the launch of Silk’s Feel Planty Good campaign earlier this month, which challenges consumers to incorporate its products into their breakfast for seven days in a row. Teaming up with famous personalities like actress Vanessa Hudgens and NFL star Saquon Barkley, the company will share plant-based recipes to help customers along.
Will Super Bowl ads for vegan brands?
Silk’s Super Bowl commercial follows two other ads spotlighting vegan products in previous years. In 2018, Beyond Meat appeared in a 30-second spot to promote its collaboration with Carl’s Jr. The humorous 30-second ad featured a stereotypical Wild West cowboy attempting to adjust to modernity, doing yoga and eating plant-based meat. The aim was to normalise vegan meat as just another menu option.
And then came the infamous Oatly ad in 2021, where then-CEO Toni Petersson stood in a field of oats with a keyboard singing the ultra-catchy “Wow, no cow” song. It was one of the more polarising pieces of marketing: some found it weird and a waste of money, while others pointed out that the weirdness was the genius bit. It got people talking – Oatly really was all over social media – and that was the point.
While Silk’s ad seems to be taking a much more straightforward approach, it will hope that it pays off. Because Super Bowl commercials are lucrative and expensive – this year, a 30-second spot will reportedly cost companies $7M (and that’s before you account for the money you need to make the ad). And sure, $7M is a drop in the bucket for Danone, a company valued at $45.5B, but it’s still a significant amount to pour into half a minute of advertising.
But it’s doing so because Super Bowl spots can be influential. According to Kantar’s Creative Guardrails report, one ad on the night is 20 times more effective than a regular TV commercial. And it drives consumer demand: last year, Super Bowl ads drove a 6.4% increase in demand among viewers, especially amongst women, who accounted for a 21% rise, according to research by Veylinx.
However, there was a negative effect on Gen Zers (-1%), one of the target demographics for Silk’s ‘next-generation’ milk. And as Veylinx founder and CEO Anouar El Haj points out, “the short-term bump alone may not be enough to justify the $7M price tag”.
In the US, plant-based dairy saw a higher revenue than its conventional counterpart last year. As of mid-July, milk alternatives (7%) outpaced conventional milk (4.6%) on annual dollar sales (though unit sales for non-dairy milks declined at a higher rate than cow’s milk). And one analyst told the New York Times in 2022 that alt-milk could take up 30% of the total dairy dollar share by the end of 2026.
Silk, one of the market leaders, will hope to buck the trend among Gen Z NFL fans. All eyes on February 11.
Baltimore has become the first-ever US city to declare January as the official month of Veganuary, with Mayor Brandon Scott highlighting the planetary, animal welfare and health benefits of plant-based diets in his proclamation.
Veganuary 2024 has witnessed a new milestone – Baltimore, Maryland has become the first US city to declare January as the official Veganuary month, citing benefits for the climate, animals and human health.
The annual campaign challenges people to go vegan for the first month of the year, with the premise that it is ample time to be able to form a habit and stick to it. In its 11th year now, the movement has gone from strength-to-strength and is expected to break participation records yet again this year.
Baltimore’s proclamation came after a request by the Black Veg Society and Veganuary, with support from DefaultVeg. The city is home to the annual Vegan Soulfest (which was attended by 16,000 people last year) and ranked among the top 10 cities nationwide for the number of signups to Veganuary 2023.
In the proclamation document, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said the city is “committed to fostering a resilient, sustainable, and healthy community for its citizens”. He urged “residents, restaurants, retailers, and institutions to explore and continue to add plant-based options by default”, going on to point out the numerous benefits associated with veganism.
Honing in on health, climate and animal welfare
Courtesy: Veganuary
“Veganuary encourages and supports people and businesses alike to move to a plant-based diet as a way of protecting the environment, preventing animal suffering, and improving the health of millions of people,” wrote the mayor.
Research has revealed that animal agriculture accounts for 11-19.5% of all GHG emissions. And while the overall food system is responsible for a third of global emissions, 60% of these come from meat production). Emissions from animal-derived foods are twice as high as those from plant-based products, and one study revealed that veganism can cut emissions, land use and water pollution by 75%.
The proclamation noted the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendation that a global shift towards plant-forward eating is critical to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. A separate study has revealed that even a 50% switch from meat and dairy to plant-based alternatives can reduce emissions by 31%, halting deforestation and doubling overall climate benefits.
Scott pointed out that “heart disease, stroke and diabetes are among the leading causes of death in Baltimore”, before adding that research has shown that vegan diets can reduce the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity. Indeed, eating plants has been linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (and eating processed red meat is associated with a higher likelihood of developing it). Vegan diets and lower meat consumption have also been proven to reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes.
“Animals raised for food are often caged, overcrowded, and denied their natural needs in today’s factory farms,” the mayor added. Research has found that 10 billion animals – and 99% of all livestock – in the US are factory-farmed, which contributes to the 100-billion figure of animals killed for meat every year.
Growing support for Veganuary from US cities
Courtesy: Land of Kush
“Baltimore’s diverse restaurants, grocers, and farmer’s markets are increasingly delivering vibrant, healthy, plant-based foods,” the proclamation continued. This effort has been spearheaded by Black Veg Society’s Maryland Vegan Eats and can be evidenced through vegan eatery Land of Kush, a local favourite, which kicked off Veganuary with an anniversary party featuring specials, new menu samplings, and a resident artist unveiling. Then there are chains like &Pizza, which has added two new plant-based options with Daring Chicken.
“With Baltimore Mayor Scott’s proclamation, I’m sending many blessings that the city will pledge to go vegan in January and support local vegan and veg-friendly restaurants, as well as those around the state of Maryland,” said Naijha Wright-Brown of Black Veg Society and Land of Kush.”
She added: “We need to open the dialogue throughout our communities about health disparities, access to nutritional foods, environmentalism, and compassion for animals, especially in predominantly BIPOC ones. We will continue to partner with vegan and veg-friendly restaurants while organising our celebratory events such as the bi-annual Maryland Vegan Restaurant Month in March and August, the annual Vegan SoulFest, and more.”
Baltimore is far from the only city promoting plant-based lifestyles. Last year, New York City launched its first Vegan Dining Month to coincide with Veganuary. With plenty of vegan credit in the bank, the Big Apple is pushing plant-based meals into schools, hospitals and even jails – public schools have Plant-Powered Fridays, while jails have vegan meals for lunch or dinner at least one day a week.
Meanwhile, in 2021, the Berkeley City Council in California voted to divert half of the city’s spending from animal-based to plant-based foods by 2024, with a view to converting that into 100% and a pledge towards promoting vegan diets to tackle climate change.
In a similar move to Baltimore, Kirk Watson, the mayor of Austin, Texas, has officially declared January 2024 as Plant-Based for the Planet Month, with over 14 participating restaurants and 35 new menu specials across the city. “Our gratitude extends to the creative local restaurant partners helping us illustrate that eating more plant-based food is not only great for the environment and great for our health – but also delicious,” said Edwin Marty, food policy manager for the City of Austin.
“Would you like some vegan cheese with that victory dance?” Attendees of the Detroit Lions watch party at Ford Field on Sunday will get a tasty treat from a pair of giant bouncy “babies,” who’ll hand out free Babybel Plant-Based cheese snacks, reminding people that cow’s milk is for calves and that vegan nosh is a winning play for everyone.
When: Sunday, January 28, 4–6 p.m.
Where: Outside the entrance to Ford Field, 2000 Brush St. (at the intersection with E. Adams Avenue), Detroit
Credit: PETA
“Cows love their calves, and cow’s milk is meant for baby cows, not for humans,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages everyone to ditch dairy and opt for game day snacks with vegan cheese instead.”
In the dairy industry, calves are torn away from their mothers within a day of birth so that the milk meant for them can be stolen and sold to humans as cheese, yogurt, and other “products.” PETA’s investigations into dairy facilities have found workers electroshocking cows in the face, hitting them with poles and a cane, and abusing them in other ways. Once their bodies wear out from repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.
Israeli startup Steakholder Foods has added a 3D-printed shrimp prototype to an expanding roster of alternative seafood products. The company plans to also introduce a hybrid version if costs allow.
A month after unveiling the world’s first 3D-printed eel alternative, Steakholder Foods has gained another ‘first’ with its new shrimp analogue.
The new innovation was created using precision printing on the company’s proprietary DropJet printed, which is designed specifically for fish and seafood analogues. It uses a shrimp-flavoured ink designed by its food tech team, and will hope to accelerate Steakholder Foods’ route to market.
Pondering hybrid seafood
Courtesy: Steakholder Foods/Canva
Steakholder Foods, formerly known as MeaTech, plans to roll out its seafood portfolio – which currently comprises a cultivated grouper fish fillet (in collaboration with Umami Meats), and the 3D-printed eel and shrimp – to future customers in two potential forms. The first would be a standard 3D-printed analogue, while it’s considering making hybrid seafood (a combination of plant-based and cultivated ingredients) as well, if it’s able to scale in a cost-effective manner.
“By unveiling a second new species of plant-based, 3D-printed seafood this month, we expect to position Steakholder Foods to sell and deliver its first DropJet printer in 2024, offering partners and customers a unique opportunity to benefit from the expanding global seafood market, while making the right kind of impact on the environment,” said CEO Arik Kaufman.
Speaking after the unveiling of the company’s eel analogue, Kaufman hailed its 3D-printing tech and potential as a hybrid seafood product: “Such versatility could significantly boost profitability for food companies and lead the way to a shift towards more efficient and sustainable practices in the industry. This product exemplifies the broader possibilities our technology offers our partners.”
It’s an approach vaunted by other entrepreneurs in the alt-seafood space too. Varun Gadodia, co-founder of India’s SeaSpire, told Green Queen in September: “We believe the category will be unleashed by the rise of biotech-driven solutions – [like] cell-based and synthetic biology – and aim to develop enabling technologies or solutions for hybrid seafood alternatives.”
Steakholder Foods, which has previously also unveiled a hybrid 3D-printed/cultivated steak, expanded its business model last year to serve as a B2B supplier of 3D bioprinters and bio-inks for alternative protein manufacturers. Its tech can create structured end products – whether that’s plant-based, cultivated or hybrid – to create realistic meat alternatives.
The importance of shrimp alternatives
Courtesy: Steakholder Foods
The company’s decision to expand its seafood lineup with shrimp makes sense when you consider that shellfish represents a $68B market. And just last year, 7.6 million tons of shrimp were harvested globally. But shrimp farming is associated with a host of different issues. Crustaceans like shrimp account for 22% of the total carbon emissions from fishing, despite making up just 6% of all the tonnage landed.
Meanwhile, a WWF report from last year revealed that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of shrimp and prawns amounted to potential economic losses of about $47M each year between 2015 and 2021. In fact, 26.4% of all shrimp fishing activities were potentially illegal and unregulated between 2016 and 2021.
The seafood species faces climate threats as well. Scientists have warned that pink shrimp could lose 70% of their habitats in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the century. Shrimp has also suffered from population declines, with with spawning population only an eighth of what it was in 1908. And there has been a collapse in Atlantic shrimp numbers too, thanks to climate-change-induced ocean warming.
Steakholder Foods says its heavy-duty printing solution can help meet growing demands through high-volume, efficient and sustainable production, offering a scalable, eco-friendly alternative to traditional shrimp farming. The aforementioned SeaSpire is working on a shrimp prototype as well. Meanwhile, other players in this space include Vegan Zeastar (Netherlands), Thai Union (Thailand), HAPPIEE! (Singapore) , Lily’s Vegan Pantry, Plant-Based Seafood Co. (both US) and Boldly (Australia).
Local diners just might think twice about chowing down on fried chicken after they see—and hear—“Hell on Wheels,” PETA’s guerilla-marketing campaign featuring a life-size chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on their way to a slaughterhouse, complete with actual recorded sounds of the birds’ cries and a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan.
When: Saturday, January 27, 12 noon
Where: Outside Chops City Grill, 837 Fifth Ave. S. (between Eighth and Ninth streets), Naples
The vexatious vehicle will debut outside Chops City Grill in Old Naples before moving on to confront diners at other chicken-centric restaurants, including Patinella’s Chicken Grill, The Rooster Food + Drink, Black Eyed Pig BBQ, MISSION BBQ, Chick-fil-A, and Off the Bone BBQ + Ribhouse.
“Behind every barbecued wing or bucket of fried chicken is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken to remember that the meat industry is cruel to birds and the only kind meal is a vegan one.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”— points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.
Ever the darling of the UK’s plant-based space – with a recipe book that sold faster than any other vegan cookbook ever – Ella Mills retreated from the limelight a few years ago. Her brand, Deliciously Ella, suffered setbacks from the pandemic too. But now, both founder and company are back in the headlines and .
“It was easier to be quiet,” said Ella Mills. “[Being silent] doesn’t feel good either but I found all the attacks a massive, massive adjustment.”
The 32-year-old entrepreneur was speaking to the Times ahead of the release of her latest cookbook, Healthy Made Simple, and her plant-based brand Deliciously Ella’s entry into the US. Beginning as a food blogger (then known as Ella Woodward), she “cured” her autoimmune disease through a whole-food plant-based diet. An heiress of the Sainsbury family, she became a household name in the UK as one of her generation’s clean-eating pioneers (a moniker she never assumed herself).
Now an author of eight cookbooks (with over 1.5 million copies sold), her 2015 title Deliciously Ella became the fastest-selling debut cookbook in the UK at the time, before her 2018 book Deliciously Ella: The Plant-Based Cookbook broke records as the fastest-selling vegan cookbook ever. These coincided with a growing retail and foodservice brand – with products in most supermarkets, as well as three cafés and delis in London – as Mills and her business partner/husband Matthew expanded Deliciously Ella’s empire.
But then came the online attacks. Mills’ huge profile was the subject of relentless trolling – as is unfortunately the case with most famous women – and led her to withdraw from the spotlight. “Until quite recently I really, really retreated because I felt overwhelmed,” she said. “I wanted to be essentially vanilla.”
Courtesy: Sophia Spring
Criticism for eating disorders and motherhood
Mills’ reputation as a clean-eating expert wasn’t a reflection of what she had ever said, but regardless, the entrepreneur and influencer was panned for it. “We’re not talking someone saying: ‘That recipe wasn’t for me’ or ‘I don’t like your jeans’ – it was much more personal than that, on steroids. It’s incredibly violating and you can only take so much of it,” she explained.
The bullying she faced was born out of two main problems. In 2016, a BBC Three documentary, Clean Eating’s Dirty Secrets, shed light on orthorexia, an eating disorder characterised by an obsessive pursuit of a healthy diet. Personalities like Mills – whose vegan recipes spanned sugar- and gluten-free with a focus on health – came under fire, with many blaming the entrepreneur (among others) for fuelling these issues.
This hit Mills – who had never used the term “clean eating” – hard. “I wrote clearly in the first book: ‘Do what works for you’, ‘Adapt it to suit your life’ – but that’s nuanced. You have to read it to see it,” she told the Telegraph in 2022. The criticism boiled down to “a few pieces that were just personal attacks on a young woman in her early 20s, who’d had a bad health problem”, she said.
This was in reference to her diagnosis of postural tachycardia syndrome (when getting up from sitting or lying down can cause an abnormally high heart rate) in the early 2010s, which confined her to constant hospital visits for four months and over two dozen medications. “I was on 25 different medications a day. Changing the way I ate allowed me to regain my health again. That’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and we’ve seen story after story from people where that has been the case,” she told the Times. “But no blanket rule applies to everyone for the rest of their life.”
This is an issue that she feels plagues attitudes towards healthy eating. “Healthy habits are challenging. Not one size fits all, but also not one size will also fit one person for the rest of their life,” she told the Irish Independent. “That’s a mad way of thinking and it’s why the conversation around healthy eating is so deeply frustrating, because people are on a bandwagon, off a bandwagon, instead of finding habits they can keep continuously, but also dip in and out of as ebbs and flows, and that’s even more so with kids.”
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
Motherhood was the other topic she encountered the internet’s vitriol for. Mills has previously spoken about her struggle with breastfeeding her first daughter, Skye, giving up after four months. Then, she put a picture of Skye on Instagram with a bottle in the background, which contained formula. “People went absolutely berserk,” she recalled to the Times.
They threatened to report her to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for feeding “artificial” milk to her baby, saying it’s illegal to promote formula. Many of them levelled accusations of lying and not trying everything. But it didn’t just stop at the breastfeeding – she was criticised for going back to work too soon (Mills returned to work four weeks after her child’s birth as “people relied on me”).
“I had her with me at a book shoot and it was ‘You’re a terrible parent’, ‘You’ll regret that for the rest of your life.’ It felt very loaded,” she said, calling it “by far one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done”.
In a piece for Grazia last October, she described how her mental health struggles were exacerbated after becoming a mother: “I saw myself as a failure, as unlovable, as someone that people couldn’t like. I’d take any negative feedback, no matter how minor or objective, as validation for that belief. I didn’t trust myself, and I think that lack of self-belief snowballed when I became a parent.”
Deliciously Ella goes global
Now, though, Mills is past all the pain. “For the first time in 32 years, I’m happy,” she wrote in Grazia. “I’m also present, I’m no longer scared of everything and I love parenting. I trust myself. I love myself – flaws and all – and I know that I have the tools I need to keep those foundations in place forever.”
And that dogged determination to succeed on a personal level has translated into the professional too, with Deliciously Ella going from strength to strength, despite some setbacks – two of the company’s cafés were closed pre-pandemic, and the third (in Mayfair) was turned into upscale restaurant Plants by DE, which struggled initially but is thriving now.
The retail brand’s numbers are staggering. With over 100 health-forward products – think energy balls, kombucha, granola, pasta and baked veggie crisps – the company has sold nearly 88 million units and is present in more than 10,000 stores across the UK and the EU. That equates to one Deliciously Ella product being purchased every second, according to the Times. And earlier this month, its products entered Asda and Co-op, meaning they’re stocked in every supermarket in the UK.
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
All this helped the business generate an estimated £25M ($31.8M) in revenue last year, according to Fortune. Now, it has brought its production in-house by purchasing a factory in Milton Keynes (and saving 27 jobs in the process) and is crossing the Atlantic with an expansion into the US – a huge undertaking. It’s not the first time Mills – who recently advocated for a tax on meat and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – has attempted to take the brand stateside, with plans in 2020 thwarted by the pandemic.
“It’s the biggest opportunity – and in lots of ways the biggest risk,” Mills said of the US expansion in an interview with Fortune. “It’s infinitely bigger and infinitely more complex. You can end up investing everything into the US, in terms of time and energy resources, taking it all away from the core market.”
What will help Deliciously Ella is the gap in Americans’ attitudes towards the kind of recipes Mills has built her fortune out of, and the products their supermarket shelves are stocked with. “[Americans] are up to a decade ahead of where we are in conversations around health and wellness,” Mills said, before adding: “Ingredient decks in the US are infinitely worse in terms of the level of artificial ingredients.”
A survey of 2,000 Americans published in October revealed that 67% of respondents would be willing to pay more for UPFs if they contained more nutritious ingredients that delivered better health benefits, irrespective of their household income. This is exactly the market Deliciously Ella is hoping to tackle. While it has started with a listing in health food retailer Thrive Market, the plan is to reach mass-market grocery stores.
It’s something Mills outlined to Fortune, saying: “In time, that’s what we’d like to do in the US – make these healthier options available everywhere.”
People experiencing menopause and perimenopause may benefit from taking a holistic approach to their health, including examining what they eat and how it may affect their bodies. Going vegan, eating a low-fat diet, and getting regular exercise can help manage hot flashes, mood swings, unexpected weight gain, and a variety of other symptoms.
Here are three ways going vegan can help you manage menopause.
1. Low-Fat Vegan Meals Are the Secret to Minimizing Hot Flashes and Other Symptoms
According to Neal Barnard, M.D., president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, women in Asia are less likely to suffer from hot flashes, likely because they consume much less meat and animal-derived fat than women who eat standard American diets.
Barnard says that women who eat high-fat foods have more estrogen activity than those who consume low-fat foods. During menopause, when the ovaries’ production of estrogen comes to a halt, women who eat high-fat foods experience a sudden and extreme drop in estrogen levels. This drop seems to be less dramatic—and the resulting symptoms are much milder or nonexistent—for women with lower estrogen levels.
Barnard believes that nonsmokers who eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, limit their salt and caffeine consumption, and get enough vitamin D are less likely to suffer from hot flashes, broken bones, vaginal dryness, and other symptoms of menopause.
Actors Gabrielle Union and Drew Barrymore shared how their bodies were affected by the onset of perimenopause symptoms, including unexpected and rapid weight gain in the stomach caused by the stress hormone cortisol. One solution: ditching dairy and other animal-derived foods.
Going vegan has helped countless people shed excess fat, especially around the midsection, where it can cause the most health problems. The American Heart Association recommends a diet rich in vegetables for managing the increased risk of heart disease that comes with menopause-related abdominal weight gain.
3. You Can Keep Your Bones Healthier With Calcium From Plants
Calcium is a key nutrient for maintaining bone health during and after menopause, when bone density begins to decrease due to lower levels of estrogen. While cow’s milk, cheese, and yogurts have previously been touted as calcium-rich options, studies have shown that dairy may do more harm than good.
A Harvard Nurses’ Health Study found that consuming two or more glasses of cow’s milk daily put people at higher risk for broken hips and arms than those who drank one glass or less per day. If you want to retain the calcium that you consume and keep baby cows with their mothers, try these vegan sources of calcium, which will strengthen your bones, not weaken them the way dairy does.
In addition to the many health benefits of a plant-based diet, going vegan also spares the lives of nearly 200 animals a year. Learn just how easy it is to make the transition by ordering a free vegan starter kit:
Following just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports detailing that individuals at the Halal Farms USA Inc. slaughterhouse in Shannon electroshocked and kicked a cow—and that staff also deprived goats of water—PETA sent a letter today to Carroll County State’s Attorney Aaron Kaney urging him to investigate and file appropriate criminal charges against those responsible.
According to the latest report, on September 21, 2023, a federal inspector saw a transport truck driver electroshock a cow, who had collapsed and was crying out, and kick her three times as another worker yanked her up by a nose lead—a “control tool” involving a ring or set of pliers inserted into the animal’s nose and attached to a rope or chain. Previously, in September 2022, an inspector documented that two goats were confined without water.
“At this hellhole for animals, workers mercilessly attacked a weak cow and gentle goats weren’t even allowed a few sips of water,” says PETA Vice President of Evidence Analysis Daniel Paden. “PETA is calling for a criminal investigation on behalf of these animals and urges everyone to help prevent animals from suffering in slaughterhouses by going vegan.”
Prior incidents at Halal Farms include one in April 2022, when a worker slit a goat’s throat and left her to bleed out—but then failed to notice when the still-conscious animal walked 20 feet away as she bled from her throat. PETA is now pursuing charges under state law because federal officials haven’t prosecuted any inspected slaughterhouses for acts of abuse since at least 2007.
I’m writing to request that your office (and a law-enforcement agency, as necessary) investigate and file applicable criminal charges against the individuals responsible for abusing a downed cow and depriving goats of water at Halal Farms USA Inc., located at 22 W. Badger St. in Shannon. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) documented the incidents in reports that the agency recently made available to the public. (See the attached table.)
According to the latest report, on September 21, 2023, an FSIS inspector saw a truck driver electroshock a downed cow—who was crying out—and kick her three times in the hindquarters. Meanwhile, a worker pulled the animal by a nose lead—a ring or set of pliers put into the animal’s nose and attached to a rope or chain. Previously, on September 7, 2022, two goats were confined without water. For more details on these incidents, please contact FSIS Office of Field Operations District 50 Manager Dr. Donald Fickey.
This treatment and deprivation may violate Illinois’ Humane Care for Animals Act, as 510 ILCS 70/3.01 states that no person may “beat, cruelly treat … or otherwise abuse any animal,” and 510 ILCS 70/3 requires that animals be given “a sufficient quantity of … water.” Please note that the FSIS’ reports carry no criminal or civil penalties and do not preempt criminal liability under state law for acts of cruelty to animals. Given that the FSIS hasn’t initiated a criminal prosecution of a licensed slaughterhouse for inhumane handling since at least 2007, charges under state law are these victims’ only chance at a measure of justice.
In addition, beyond the statute of limitations for these offenses, you may want to note that in April 2022, a worker slit a goat’s throat and put the live animal in a bleed tray but then failed to realize that the conscious animal had walked 20 feet away as she bled from her throat. The same month, 11 sheep and goats were found confined without water. In December 2021, an inspector found that the only water available for goats in a pen had frozen.
Chilean food tech startup NotCo has unveiled its latest marketing campaign, Not So Happy Animals, which highlights some uncomfortable truths about the meat industry.
“I might look like I’m happy, but my grin is not real.”
That’s the message NotCo is trying to advocate in its new advertising campaign. The Chilean startup makes chicken, beef and milk analogues through a proprietary AI tech, but is now expanding its AI prowess to enlighten consumers about the deceptive marketing and ills of the animal agriculture industry. When consumers scan a QR code on a logo with an animal – such as Chick-fil-A – it turns into an augmented-reality-powered jingle promoting plant-based diets.
The premise is: if you’ve ever seen a happy chicken, cow or pig on a logo, it’s really a facade. There’s a disconnect between what meat companies – fast-food chains, restaurants and manufacturers – sell, and what their marketing projects. And this extends to a disillusionment around how people see food: many aren’t aware of what goes into the meat they eat, or how it’s really produced.
That’s what Louise McKerrow, NotCo’s global marketing head, says. “Many people don’t understand the process that goes behind the food they eat every day; this campaign gives a glimpse into that,” she tells Green Queen. “We hope that we can start a proactive dialogue around the source of our food and urge consumers to make informed choices.”
NotCo blends facts with emotion to highlight animal abuse
To kick off the campaign, the company has produced a video with a catchy song that highlights a fictional fast-food chain, Smiley Chicken, the bird on whose logo comes to life alluding that underneath the exterior, “there’s a whole lot of pain”.
It moves to another restaurant called Red Burger, first tugging at the emotional with “Who could be happy becoming a meal?” and then complementing it with facts like “You’ll find a hundred cows in just one burger patty”. Then there are shots of eateries like The Rib King and a generic diner with window signs promoting ‘Glorious Meats’, before a focus on a pork restaurant called Don Carlo.
The ad illustrates many controversial elements of the meat industry, but the blatancy is deliberately punctured by the fact that it’s a song. For example, the pig at Don Carlo says: “I’d be so much happier if I didn’t have to die” – it might be a simple line, but it highlights the matter-of-fact nature of factory-farmed meat. Research shows that 94% of all animals on Earth live on factory farms, and at least 100 billion are killed every year for meat and other food products.
Next, the commercial takes us to a grocery store, where the chicken on the packaging of a retail brand called Happy Farm proclaims: “They turn me into nuggets. Oh, my bones, my eyes!” It’s a reference to the fact that much of a chicken nugget can contain pastified legs, backbones and wing tips without compromising its taste. This leads to a horse popping up from behind the chicken, saying: “And things you can’t imagine,” which is a nod to the 2013 horsemeat scandal in Europe.
The spot ends at Porkio, a Chinese restaurant, the pig on whose logo sings: “I might look like I’m smiling, but my grin is not real. Wanna cheer me up? Try a plant-based meal.” It’s swiftly followed by shots showcasing phones scanning these logos and offering viewers deals on NotCo products.
Using interactive AI-led messaging to nudge eating behaviours
Courtesy: NotCo
McKerrow reveals that NotCo has developed 20 different jingles tailored to individual logos – whether that’s on billboards, food menus, retail products, or elsewhere – all in different musical styles like rap, country, reggae, etc.
She remains tight-lipped when asked which specific brands the campaign targets (apart from Chick-fil-A, which the company identifies as “an Atlanta-based chicken company”). “The technology will scan and work for logos with animals in it. Of course, there are infamous logos that have animals – consumers will have to be on the lookout and find them in real-time. Logos without animals will not work with the technology,” she says.
The marketing executive is similarly mum when pressed on whether NotCo is concerned about backlash from the companies it’s “trolling”. “We are using this campaign as a means to educate consumers about the benefits of plant-based eating and ensure they make informed decisions when they look [at] what they want to consume,” she says.
“We are looking to shift the conventional narrative around what we consume and educate consumers about the benefits of plant-based foods,” McKerrow adds. “We are looking for consumers to use this as a means to make more educated decisions about what they are eating; even if they don’t always choose plant-based, we hope they will at least make their decision with more information at their disposal.”
It’s a clever way of using augmented reality and AI – given the latter’s links to speciesism, it’s a refreshing take on how AI can be used to raise awareness about animal welfare and plant-based foods. NotCo, which has just emerged victorious in its appeal to revoke a labelling ban imposed on its NotMilk packaging in Chile, is likely hoping the campaign will raise its profile to kick off what is “an exciting year for the brand” (it has already begun rolling out the famed vegan boxed mac and cheese with Kraft Heinz in the US).
It’s not the only vegan company that has used AI for marketing. In August, US brand Pleese Cheese unveiled a campaign filled with AI-generated images with the prompt ‘cheese farm’, leading to a host of whimsical illustrations depicting cheese as a flourishing crop.
British entrepreneur Heather Mills has secured a rescue deal for her plant-based brand VBites, buying the assets of the business from administrators for £1M and waiving nearly £5M of debt owed to her, a month after first announcing that the company was bankrupt.
Just a month ago, VBites entered administration and seemed likely to end its 30-year run. But in a surprising turn of events, the British plant-based company is back on the map.
Founder Heather Mills has fended off five competing offers to buy the assets of the collapsed business for £1M through her limited company Vegan Solo Consulting. As part of the deal, the entrepreneur has additionally waived £4.8M owed to her as a secured creditor, which will help secure a better return for all creditors, as first reported by the Grocer.
“I was devastated when the company was forced unnecessarily, with three days’ notice, into administration,” said Mills. “It was agreed between both shareholders that we would always give each other three months’ notice, knowing the figures 6 months ahead set for the company, so I was doubly shocked that it went straight into administration, even though I gave viable solutions.”
She added: “But I strongly believed the next-generation technology VBites had developed and the work it had done still had a huge role to play in assisting the transition of the food market to a healthier and more sustainable place.”
Heather Mills relocates, rebuilds staff base
Courtesy: VBites
Founded in 1993, VBites brought in Interpath Advisory in mid-December after struggling with cashflow issues, fundraising and a drop in consumer demand on the back of the cost-of-living crisis. According to documents filed by the company earlier this month, the business collapsed with a total debt of £8.37M, with trade creditors owed £1.86M and its 84 employees owed over £415,000 (they are expected to be paid back in full). The company owed money to 153 creditors, from food suppliers and packaging companies to lawyers and energy firms – at least part of this debt is set to be repaid.
Meanwhile, German firm Nature’s Richness Holdings (the new foods division of Pfeifer & Langen) holds 34% of VBites’ shares currently – it had purchased a 25% stake in 2021. Nature’s Richness was owed £2.5M at the time of administration, with repayment in full expected.
Mills, who owns the remaining 66% of the company’s shares through her firm Seckloe, was selected as the preferred bidder by Interpath as her offer “represented the best overall outcome for creditors of the company in the circumstances”. The asset-only deal included the plant and machinery, stock, IP and social media accounts. But it didn’t secure the jobs of the 64 employees who were retained to help with the administration, or the 20 let go at the time of appointing Interpath.
Some employees have since quit the business too, with CEO David Wood joining fellow British plant-based meat manufacturer MYCO as its chief in December. Mills said she was “not happy being told that many of my loyal and hard-working staff were losing their jobs” during the firm’s collapse. “I was cut out of everything,” she said. “This is why I have chosen to resurrect the company myself, at great personal expense, and take control of the operations, personally moving back to the northeast to ensure we are still able to make a positive contribution to the future of our global food economy.”
Millshe has already re-employed 40 staff members, and has expressed hope to continue rebuilding the company’s workforce, as its factories in Peterlee, County Durham and Corby, Northamptonshire remain operational. “We agreed a rent-free period at the Peterlee property in the administration with the landlord [which is Duo Renovations Limited, also owned by Heather Mills], which was contingent on the transaction being executed,” said Interpath Advisory.
“This facilitated the continuation of trade and subsequent ability to finalise a sale. As a condition of the executable transaction with the purchaser, Seckloe has agreed to waive the entirety of its debt of £4.8M in the administration, considerably improving the overall returns to creditors.”
VBites turns over a new leaf
Courtesy: VBites
VBites’ rescue is reminiscent of British alt-meat player Meatless Farm‘s story from last year – after announcing it was entering administration, the brand was saved by fellow plant-based meat player VFC. Since then, VFC has taken over pie manufacturer Clive’s Purely Plants too, before rebranding into the Vegan Food Group this month to expand its footprint as a holding company, with the aim of becoming “a vegan Unilever”.
VBites has previously stated similar intentions, hoping to turn northeast England into the “Silicon Valley of plant-based foods” after buying the Peterlee site – a former Walkers crisp factory – in 2019. Last year, Mills rescued Boston, England-based meat alternatives manufacturer Plant & Bean too, but it was amidst VBites’ cashflow loss.
In a statement announcing the administration, Mills had blamed a combination of “corporate greed and poor management”, increasing ingredient and energy costs, misinformation about the plant-based industry, the cost-of-living crisis, and the “current state of the manufacturing economy” in the UK. “It is unsurprising and inevitable that where profits are to be made, amorphous corporate entities will follow and unfortunately their practices too often undermine the entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility and agility of movement that saw plant-based entrepreneurs have so much success,” she explained.
“There is too often a tendency to treat their investments as short-term experiments and opportunistic flights of fancy, embalm them in restrictive governance and then either walk away or enforce a takeover when the market hits a bump,” Mills added. “There is a balance – we need capital to grow, but it needs to be well-intended capital and it needs to be married with strategic vision and belief in a brighter future.”
The 56-year-old criticised certain celebrities who have backed the meat and dairy industries, but “should take their responsibilities as influencers much more seriously” – actresses Aubrey Plaza and Queen Latifah have both come under fire for featuring in dairy commercials. “The plant-based industry needs to take a lead from the dairy industry in unifying its voice, but as a force for good and promotion of the facts – as opposed to a litany of lies and misinformation,” Mills said.
“We also need to work harder to demonstrate the long-term profitability of plant-based farming and manufacturing to the meat and dairy industries. If you want to enter the house, you need the keys – and working with the incumbent players in our food sector is the only way to effect meaningful and sustainable change.”
The UK plant-based sector has been hit hard: inflation made meat-free among the worst-performing grocery categories last year, with sales down by £38.4m, and volume falling by 4.2%. Despite that, it’s still Europe’s second-largest vegan market. And as the sector consolidates, some believe it could bounce back this year. With 140+ products in 28 countries – including vegan sausages, burgers, fish fingers and cheeses – VBites will be hoping to be a part of that.
“We have already developed a version 2.0 of plant-based food – soon to launch – that we believe will be a market mover, and will help all of those people attempting to make a flexitarian or plant-based transition to achieve their goals more easily, both with variety and deliciousness,” revealed Mills.
“Watch this space,” she added, alluding to the brand’s subtly new logo. “VBites is turning over a new leaf.”
Following recently obtained federal reports documenting workers repeatedly striking pigs with paddles at Premium Minnesota Pork in Luverne, PETA fired off a letter this morning to Rock County Attorney Jeff Haubrich calling on him to investigate and file applicable criminal charges against the workers responsible.
According to the reports, on August 14, 2023, a federal agent saw a transport truck driver for the slaughterhouse hit a pig in the face twice with a paddle. The inspector intervened, only to be cursed at by the driver. That followed a similar incident on October 26, 2022, in which an inspector saw a driver use a paddle to strike a pig up to six times before attempting to push the animal with his knee. And on December 19, 2022, a worker raised his foot to “hit” and/or push a “reluctant” pig.
“This slaughterhouse is hell on Earth for animals, where workers wielded paddles and even their own foot as weapons to harm vulnerable pigs,” says PETA Vice President of Evidence Analysis Daniel Paden. “PETA is calling on the county attorney to step in and prevent more illegal suffering by bringing appropriate charges—and reminds everyone that the only humane meal is a vegan one.”
PETA points out that pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, and other animals feel pain and fear and value their lives, just as humans do. The group is pursuing charges under state law because federal officials haven’t prosecuted any inspected slaughterhouses for acts of abuse such as those at Premium Minnesota Pork since at least 2007.
I’m writing to request that your office (and a law-enforcement agency, as necessary) investigate and file applicable criminal charges against the individuals responsible for repeatedly striking two pigs—including in the face—and kicking a third one at Premium Minnesota Pork LLC, located at 1174 County Hwy. 4 in Luverne. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) documented the incidents in reports that the agency recently made available to the public. (See the attached table.) According to those reports, the following occurred:
On August 14, 2023, an FSIS inspector saw a driver strike a slow-moving pig in the face twice with a paddle. After the inspector “yelled at the driver to stop,” the suspect cursed at him or her.
On December 19, 2022, an inspector saw a slaughterhouse worker raise his foot and “hit” and/or push a slow-moving pig, prompting the official to “immediately yell[] for him to stop.”
On October 26, 2022, an inspector saw a truck driver strike another slow-moving pig with a paddle five to six times and then attempt to push the animal with his knee.
For more details on these incidents, please contact FSIS Office of Field Operations District Manager Dr. Dawn Sprouls at 515-858-5076 or dawn.sprouls@usda.gov.
This conduct appears to violate Minnesota Statutes § 343.21, which prohibits overdriving and cruelly beating animals. Please note that the FSIS’ reports carry no criminal or civil penalties and don’t preempt criminal liability under state law for acts of cruelty to animals. Given that the FSIS hasn’t initiated a criminal prosecution of a licensed slaughterhouse for inhumane handling since at least 2007, charges under state law are these victims’ only chance at a measure of justice.
Carvel is bringing Oatly vegan ice cream to more than 300 of its stores across the U.S. The new oat milk–based options are available in Carvel’s classic soft serve, iconic Flying Saucer Sandwiches, creamy shakes, ice cream scoops, and frozen dessert cakes.
Flavors include Oatly Strawberry, Chocolate, Mint, and Cold Brew soft serve and Cookies & Cream and Chocolate Peanut Butter scoops. Varieties and availability vary. Check with your local store to see which options are offered near you.
This exciting news follows Carvel’s 2022 launch of oat milk–based ice cream cakes in Publix grocery stores. We’re thrilled that the iconic brand has made additional nondairy options available to its compassionate customers.
Choosing nondairy treats helps spare loving, playful cows, who are used for their milk. Instead of allowing cows to nurse their own babies, the dairy industry tears calves away from their mothers shortly after birth. Then, workers steal their milk so that it can be sold. Leave the milk to the cows, and choose treats that don’t hurt animals.
Going vegan is the best thing you can do for animals, the planet, and your own health. Order a free vegan starter kit to start making the change today:
Dear everyone: Please think twice before sharing a TikTok video about mini cows. Despite what these videos portray, a mini cow isn’t a “pet” and buying one is irresponsible and could have severe consequences.
Share the Facts Instead: 6 Reasons Why No One Should Buy a Mini Cow
They’re bred to have health issues.
Much like “purebred” dogs, mini cows are bred to look a certain way, which can result in a range of health issues and even fatal abnormalities. Breeds that carry the “chondro” gene—which causes shortened limbs—can suffer from breathing difficulties, arthritis, enlarged joints, lameness from poor feet, or heart aberrations.
Mini cows are also susceptible to bloating and grass tetany—a highly fatal disease caused by low magnesium levels in the blood. Additionally, breeding can produce a severe genetic defect known as “bulldog dwarfism”—characterized by a protruding tongue, tiny legs, and a flat face—which typically results in abortion or stillbirth.
Some breeders purposely stunt their growth.
Breeders exploit mini cows for one reason only: profit. Some breeders keep calves malnourished so that they appear smaller.
Mini cows aren’t as miniature as you might think.
A full-grown mini cow can range from 500 to 650 pounds—at least seven times the weight of a large dog.
Mini cows have highly specific needs.
Scrolling through mini cow TikTok videos won’t show you that caring for them is a long-term, demanding, and expensive commitment that most people aren’t prepared for.
In addition to a spacious multiacre pasture with adequate fencing, shade, shelter, proper nutrition, and fresh water, mini cows need vaccinations, hoof maintenance, deworming treatments, and other routine care from a specialized large-animal veterinarian. Cows are also herd animals, so they need to be in the company of other cows to thrive.
Impulse purchases can wreak havoc on shelters.
Families who impulsively buy mini cows as gifts may soon realize that these animals, who can live for as long as 25 years, aren’t easy to care for. Because most shelters—which are already overflowing with animals—don’t have the resources to take them in, mini cows may end up neglected or abandoned.
Countless cats, dogs, and other companion animals await adoption from shelters already—so every time someone buys an animal from a breeder or pet store, another one loses a chance at finding a home.
Buying a mini cow sets a bad example.
Exploiting a mini cow as a “pet” teaches impressionable children that living, feeling beings are objects to be bought and discarded when the initial novelty wears off. Cows are emotional, intelligent animals who love their families, just as we do.
Mini Cows Need Respect, Not ‘Views’
Did you know that cows form long-term friendships and mourn their dead? Some of them hold grudges against their adversaries. These curious, gentle animals don’t want to be exploited as “pets” or killed for food or clothing. If you want to show love to cows, steer clear of breeders and go vegan:
To combat misinformation, ease consumer confusion and offer balance to the discussion around plant-based meat and ultra-processed foods, Green Queen has published a free, comprehensive resource guide on the topic in an easy-to-use FAQ format.
Are all plant-based meats ultra-processed foods? How often should you eat vegan meat alternatives? What are the limitations of the NOVA classification? What does research get wrong about these subjects?
If you’ve ever had a similar concern about the food you eat, you’re not alone. For years, everyone has been asking questions about plant-based meat, ultra-processed foods (or UPFs), and whether the former falls into the latter category.
In a consumer landscape flooded with contradictory dietary information in the media, misinformation on social networks, and unverified claims by online influencers, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and confused. Take this UK poll from last year, for example, where 70% of the 2,127 respondents hadn’t heard of UPFs before the survey. And while 21% said a “healthy, balanced diet” shouldn’t include UPFs, there was a lack of understanding over which foods can be classified as such.
It’s important to provide clarity on the topic. After all, UPFs make up 57% of an average Brit’s diet, and up to 80% when it comes to children or people with lower incomes. And it’s not just the UK, of course: 73% of the US food supply is made up of these foods. According to estimates, UPFs comprise 60% of an average American’s daily calories, and 70% of what the country’s children eat.
Jenny Zegler, director at Mintel Food & Drink, highlighted the public confusion in November, telling FoodNavigator: “34% of US adults say highly processed food is the top concern… there’s a need for clear communication to help consumers make informed decisions about how processed and ultra-processed food and drink fit into their diets. Processed food isn’t necessarily something we can avoid. Almost every single thing in the grocery store is processed somehow.”
One of those things that have come under increased scrutiny is plant-based meats, whose critics have knocked their ingredient lists and ‘overprocessed’ nature. But unlike most UPFs – especially the processed red meats they intend to replace – meat alternatives typically contain a high amount of dietary fibre, are free of cholesterol, and are low in saturated fat, sugar and calories.
To dispel the myths and provide a comprehensive outlook of the subject, Green Queen founding editor Sonalie Figueiras, in collaboration with researcher Marlana Malerich and scientist Alice Johnson, have published the ultimate resource for UPFs and alt-meat products. Presented in the form of FAQs, they touch upon a wide variety of questions, and provide science-backed, fact-based information to inform readers about how UPFs work, why they aren’t all the same, and how they’re connected with plant-based meats.
What are ultra-processed foods?
Courtesy: colorcocktail/iStockPhoto
But wait, what are UPFs in the first place? In 2009, researchers from Brazil led by nutrition and public health professor Dr Carlos Monteiro proposed a framework to classify edibles into four subgroups, called the NOVA classification. The first group contains unprocessed or minimally processed foods, which includes fresh, frozen and dried produce, milk and plain yoghurt, natural spices, legumes, grains, nuts and seeds, as well as foodstuffs like pasta, couscous, flour, fungi, meat and fish.
The second category – “processed culinary ingredients” – comprises elements derived from the first group or from natural sources, such as seed, nut and vegetable oils, butter, salt, sugar, vinegar, maple syrup, and honey. Meanwhile, the third group contains processed foods, defined as those produced by adding these culinary ingredients to unprocessed foods or made using baking, boiling, canning or non-alcoholic fermentation, for example. These can contain non-cosmetic additives that enhance shelf life or prevent bacteria: think fresh bread and cheese, canned vegetables, fruits in syrup, cured meats, salted nuts, etc.
The final category – you guessed it – is UPFs, which constitute industrial formulations and techniques like extrusion or pre-frying, combined with cosmetic additives and often using substances of little culinary use, such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils or modified starch. Most ice creams, cereals, flavoured yoghurts, and – of course – plant-based meats all fall into this category. These products are omnipresent in our diets and food system but are often confused with ‘processed’ food – a category most food falls into. The flour, white rice and olive oil you cook with are all processed to some degree, but they’re not classed as UPFs.
The discourse around UPFs has amplified since British infectious diseases physician Dr Chris van Tulleken‘s book, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food, came out in April 2023. Here, he suggests that large food companies are pushing consumers towards an increasingly processed diet.
Experts have found that UPFs can raise the risk of heart disease, stroke, obesity, type 2 diabetes, breast and colorectal cancer, and hypertension. But some have pushed back against a simplistic black-and-white perspective on these foods, calling them necessary to feed the world and arguing that the lack of an agreed definition spurs confusion about what is or isn’t a UPF.
Others have noted that the NOVA system is based on the degree of processing of a certain food, but does not speak to nutrition. A study published in The Lancet last year adds further nuance: basing its findings on the dietary and disease history of 266,666 people in seven European countries, it suggested that some UPFs can be good for you.
Green Queen’s ultimate list of FAQs about ultra-processed foods
Graphic by Green Queen Media and Robbie Lockie
It’s in this vein that Green Queen partnered with food and climate researchers Marlana Malerich and Alice Johnson – with support from Amy Williams, digital communications manager at the Good Food Institute – to create the evidence-backed FAQ resource, allowing consumers to break down the intricacies and make informed dietary decisions, specifically around alt-meat.
“One of the most common questions we get from our Green Queen audience is about whether plant-based meats are healthy,” said Figueiras. “Expressing the nuance around plant-based meats and ultra-processed foods can be tricky, which is why we wanted to create this comprehensive FAQ guide to cover all the possible questions on the topic with answers that are balanced and backed by the scientific literature.”
The guide covers everything you need to know about the subject – from UPF definitions, limitations of and alternatives to the NOVA classification system, and nutritional profiles and ingredient composition of plant-based meats, to the origin of the UPF and alt-meat debate (including who is funding media campaigns on the topic).
“Existing research suggests that plant-based meat products have favourable health benefits, especially when used as a substitute for animal analogues,” says Malerich. “However, the nutrition content varies depending on the brand and ingredients.”
Johnson adds: “Whilst further scientific studies are needed on novel protein sources, preliminary findings suggest that choosing plant-based alternatives over conventional meat could offer benefits for a variety of reasons.”
With consumers becoming increasingly aware of the links between diet, health and the environment, understanding the true nature of UPFs and plant-based meat is paramount. Green Queen’s guide serves as an essential tool for health enthusiasts, food industry professionals, regulators and reporters alike.
Emirates Airlines will soon unveil new options as part of its ‘vegan vault’ of in-flight meals, taking its total offering of recipes to over 300. It comes after the carrier witnessed a 40% increase in demand for onboard plant-based dishes.
Emirates, which is one of two flag carriers of the UAE, has witnessed a surge of 40% in year-on-year consumption of plant-based meals (when adjusted for passenger volumes). To meet the growing demand, it will add a host of new recipes to what it calls its ‘vegan vault’, which has over 300 meal options overall.
In terms of absolute numbers, Emirates served over 450,000 vegan meals in 2023, versus 280,000 in 2022 – that’s an increase of over 60%, but when measured in line with passenger volumes, this changes to 40%. In some regions, though, consumption of vegan meals has exceeded the growth in traveller numbers – for example, the Middle East showed a significant additional hike of 34%, while Africa accounted for an extra 4%, and Southeast Asia an added 5%.
Major boosts in demand were also noted on Emirates routes to China, Japan and the Philippines, while the largest rise in vegan meal consumption occurred in Economy Class.
Championing local ingredients alongside global brands
Courtesy: Emirates
The airline has an array of suppliers from all over the world, but also supports local ingredients. Its kale and lettuce come from Bustanica, the world’s largest hydroponic vertical farm, which was created as a joint venture investment through Emirates Flight Catering. At Bustanica, produce like arugula, mixed salad greens, and spinach are grown without pesticides, herbicides or chemicals. These leafy greens can be enjoyed in certain dishes by First and Business Class passengers.
Apart from that, the carrier sources plant-based proteins from Californian giant Beyond Meat, soy protein from Singapore and UAE-based Arlene, Qianye tofu (a pressed variety made from soy protein instead of whole soybeans) from Japan, organic dark vegan chocolate fromLinnolat in France, plant-based margarine from MeisterMarken in Germany, vegan curry paste from Thailand-based Pantai, and almond milk from Italian brand Koita, among many others.
If you’re in Economy, you can enjoy dishes like chickpea crepe with carrot, peppers, mushroom and tomato concassé, textured pumpkin frittatas, tofu tikka masala, coconut mousse with mango compote and a chocolate pudding with cocoa soil. Premium Economy members can opt for meals such as jackfruit curry with basmati rice or a squash chestnut stew, followed by a chocolate tofu cheesecake or raspberry parfait with orange compote.
Travellers in Business Class have the choice between roasted cauliflower with ancient grains, caramelised pear and lovage pesto, or a warming ragout of Asian tofu and shitake mushroom with glass noodles. For dessert, think tropical coconut pineapple cake or a chocolate cheesecake with a dark chocolate cigar and strawberry compote.
Finally, Emirates elevates its plant-based culinary game even further with in-flight meals like polenta cake with thyme mushroom ragout, sautéed spinach and a root vegetable jus, or aubergine curry with charred rice, turmeric potatoes, and coconut and mint chutney. Plus, there are inviting sweet treats like rhubarb tempered with strawberry charlotte, Chantilly cream and raspberry tuille, or warm chocolate fondant with salted caramel sauce and whipped cashew cream.
Interest in vegan in-flight meals is sky-high
Courtesy: Emirates
While its ‘vegan vault’ might be getting new recipes, Emirates has been offering plant-based meals since the 90s. At the time, requests for these dishes were focused on specific routes like Addis Ababa, where vegan meals are required at certain times of the year by those practising the Ethiopian Orthodox faith, and other regions where multiple faiths encourage plant-based diets.
However, the surge has been rapid in recent years, with vegan meals gaining popularity on the airline’s flights to and from the US, Australia, and some European and Asian nations. Particularly in the last decade, the carrier has noted a sizeable rise in interest towards vegan dishes. It’s not just passengers that have become more drawn towards this diet – many of its staff members are in the same boat, with the airlines introducing vegan food for its cabin crew in 2018.
In 2022, Emirates launched a gourmet vegan menu for First and Business Class to cater to passengers’ evolving demands, whether that was for vegan meals, or just a “healthy and light meal choice while travelling”. And later this year, Emirates will launch a selection of new vegan main courses, snacks, pizza, as well as desserts – including the likes of chocolate pecan cake, pistachio raspberry and raspberry tonka cake.
Emirates’ vegan push mirrors the direction of many other airlines. Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific is a leader in this space, offering a huge range of plant-based meals through partnerships with local businesses. Other carriers, like Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, American Airlines, Qantas, Virgin Atlantic, and Korean Air are just some of the flights where you can get a plant-based meal in certain classes though it’s worth noting that none of them has as extensive a menu for vegans as the Dubai-based flag carrier. Emirates flies high above the rest.
Diners in Fort Myers and Cape Coral just might think twice about chowing down on fried chicken after they see—and hear—“Hell on Wheels,” PETA’s guerilla-marketing campaign featuring a life-size chicken transport truck covered with images of real chickens crammed into crates on their way to a slaughterhouse, complete with actual recorded sounds of the birds’ cries and a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan.
When: Saturday, January 20, 12 noon (Fort Myers), and Thursday, January 25, 12 noon (Cape Coral)
Where: Outside Ford’s Garage, 2207 First St., Fort Myers, and McDonald’s, 1222 Cape Coral Pkwy. E., Cape Coral
The vexatious vehicle will debut outside Ford’s Garage on First Street in Fort Myers before moving on to confront diners at Wings and Rings, Pollo Tropical, Zaxby’s, PDQ, Buckett’s Wings & More, and Patinella’s Chicken Grill. The following week in Cape Coral, the truck will ruffle feathers at McDonald’s on Cape Coral Parkway E. before moving on to Wendy’s, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Buffalo Wild Wings, Popeyes, Chick-fil-A, Wingnuts, and other restaurants.
“Behind every barbecued wing or bucket of fried chicken is a once-living, sensitive individual who was crammed onto a truck for a terrifying, miserable journey to their death,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ truck is an appeal to anyone who eats chicken to remember that the meat industry is cruel to birds and the only kind meal is a vegan one.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”— points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness.
PETA sent a letter to Jerome County Prosecuting Attorney Sam Beus today asking him to investigate and file appropriate criminal charges against the workers responsible for striking and electroshocking a cow—and twice shooting a conscious steer in the head—at the True West Beef slaughterhouse near Jerome.
A damning, just-released U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report reveals that on August 8, 2023, a USDA inspector witnessed workers repeatedly jabbing a cow with rattle paddles—rigid oars filled with noisy beads—before electroshocking the animal five times with a prod as she cried out. The inspector stopped the employees, whose actions were apparently captured on video by the slaughterhouse.
On July 19, 2023, an inspector witnessed a worker shoot a steer in the head with a captive-bolt gun but fail to stun the animal, who moved his head “multiple times” from side to side before the worker rendered him unconscious with a second shot. The inspector noted that the first unsuccessful attempt had left a hole over the steer’s sinus cavity.
“At this hellhole for animals, workers tormented an already terrified cow and a steer spent his last moments in agony as he remained conscious after being shot in the head,” says PETA Vice President of Evidence Analysis Daniel Paden. “PETA is calling for a criminal investigation on these animals’ behalf and urges everyone to help prevent others like them from suffering by going vegan.”
PETA is pursuing charges under state law because federal officials haven’t prosecuted any inspected slaughterhouses for acts of abuse since at least 2007.
I’m writing to request that your office (and a law-enforcement agency, as necessary) investigate and file applicable criminal charges against the individuals responsible for repeatedly striking and electroshocking a cow—and severely wounding another—at True West Beef LLC, located at 6206 U.S. 93 near Jerome. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) documented the incidents in reports that the agency recently made available to the public. (See the attached table.)
According to those reports, on August 8 an FSIS inspector saw two workers repeatedly prodding a cow in the torso and hindquarters with rattle paddles. One of the workers repeatedly electroshocked the animal on the hindquarters, causing her to cry out. A third worker then electroshocked the cow three more times, causing her to call out repeatedly. The FSIS inspector intervened, halting the employees’ actions, which were evidently captured on video by the slaughterhouse.
On July 19, an inspector saw a worker shoot a steer in the head with a captive-bolt gun but fail to stun the animal. The animal “purposeful[ly]” moved his head—which had a hole over the sinus cavity—“multiple times” before the worker ended his pain with a second shot. For more details on these incidents, please contact FSIS Office of Field Operations District Manager Dr. Robert Reeder at 303-236-9788 or robert.reeder@usda.gov.
This conduct doesn’t represent the otherwise exempt “humane slaughter of any animal … raised as food” and thus appears to violate Idaho Code § 25-3504, which prohibits cruelty to animals. Please note that the FSIS’ reports carry no criminal or civil penalties and don’t preempt criminal liability under state law for acts of cruelty to animals. Given that the FSIS hasn’t initiated a criminal prosecution of a licensed slaughterhouse for inhumane handling since at least 2007, charges under state law are these victims’ only chance at a measure of justice.
Belgium is halting the establishment of guidelines against plant-based meat labelling after continued disagreement among stakeholders, but its higher VAT on milk alternatives is hurting the sector, especially one homegrown brand.
The plant-based labelling war in Belgium is – for now – over, with ‘vegetarian steaks’ and ‘vegan burgers’ all fair game after the country’s lawmakers failed to reach a consensus on the subject.
Following political discussions dating back to 2022, economy minister Pierre-Yves Dermagne has announced that the government has halted its process of establishing guidelines on the labelling of meatless food products, owing to widespread disagreement on the topic.
But while that may be good news, Belgium’s stance on plant-based milk taxes is worrying, and – in the case of the company – potentially fatal.
Why Belgium has paused its plant-based meat labelling guidance
Courtesy: Getty Images/Groen Limburg
In 2020, the EU decided to vote against a proposed labelling ban for plant-based meat products, which led to a working group comprising Boerenbond, the National Union of Butchers, Bacon Butchers and Caterers, the General Farmers’ Syndicate, the Federation of Meat Producers, ProVeg International, and others, which sought to develop “clear guidelines” for plant-based labels. The group used the common argument of consumer confusion, arguing that companies can’t use meat-related terms for alternative products.
It sparked discussions that have lasted years, as well as backlash from plant-based advocacy groups the Good Food Institute Europe, the European Vegetarian Union, and ProVeg. They have urged the Belgian government to reject these guidelines, claiming that they disrespect consumers and endanger market unity in the EU.
“We feared that very restrictive guidelines regarding permitted vegetarian names would seriously compromise the accessibility and promotion of vegetarian food – which we really need to work on in the context of the fight against global warming,” said Green MP Barbara Creemers. Touching upon the consumer confusion aspect, she added: “What is the worst that can happen? That you come home with a bowl of vegetarian chicken cubes when you thought it contained real chicken?”
Creemers was told by Dermagne – who, alongside agriculture minister David Clarinval and state secretary for consumer protection Alexia Bertrand, was responsible for this issue – that there would be no new Belgian guidelines on plant-based meat labels. “There is still great dissonance between the various stakeholders regarding the guide with guidelines that has been drawn up,” Dermagne said, according to Nieuwsblad.
The guidelines that were drawn up were actually discussed at the cabinet level too. “But there is no political consensus on its publication, which I think is a shame,” the economy minister added.
“Whilst the process for developing the guideline has not officially changed, we believe it is unlikely to get any further before the next election [in June],” said ProVeg Belgium communications manager Fien Louwagie. “We hope that, post-election, the new Government acknowledges that consumers are simply not confused by plant-based foods carrying ‘meaty’ names and abandons the development of the guidelines altogether.”
Other European countries have been successful in efforts to ban the use of meat-related terms on plant-based products, most recently France and Italy. Similar discourse is ongoing in Poland. Meanwhile, Switzerland ruled against such a legislation, with a court announcing that such labels aren’t deceptive to consumers.
Discriminatory taxes leave local alt-milk brand reeling
Courtesy: Tiptoh
While the halting of the process is a positive sign for plant-based advocates, Belgium’s “fiscal discrimination” against plant-based milk is a major hurdle. Currently, most drinks are subject to excise duties and packaging taxes, which amount to 22 cents for sweetened and 17 cents for unsweetened beverages. Three products are exempt from these, though: cow’s milk, soy milk and rice milk.
However, some companies aiming to come up with even more climate-friendly alternatives to rice or soy (such as pea or oat) are finding it difficult to understand why they’re treated any differently. One of them is pea milk maker Top Toh, which last year faced a bill of €30,000 in overdue excise duties, followed by a fine of €10,000.
“I had no idea we had to pay excise taxes,” Tip Toh founder Arnaud Muylaert told De Tijd. “That invoice was a very unpleasant surprise. €40,000 is a lot for a company with a turnover of €200,000.” He added: “Why does the government impose excise duties on other plant-based drinks such as oat, almond and pea milk? Especially since [they focus] on sustainability?”
The unexpected bill has forced Tip Toh to raise its prices, with its products now costing €3, which puts it at a major disadvantage, considering soy and dairy cost about €1.20 for the same amount, while most alt-milks are priced below €3. While finance minister Vincent Van Pethegem has confirmed he’s reviewing the exemption for milk, any change isn’t imminent as it would need a change in law, and will be a task for the next government.
That has left Muylaert and Tip Toh in a state of bother. “I am concerned about the survival of our company,” she said. “We can pay the excise duties, taxes and fines thanks to recently obtained subordinated loans of €180,000. But I would rather use that money for innovation and growth. We wanted to hire our first employee, but we had to cancel those plans.”
The entrepreneur has been in touch with the cabinets of lawmakers and spoke to Sammy Mahdi, president of the CD&V party. “They told me they support me, but still nothing happens. I never expected that the government would oppose our project,” he said.
It’s not just small startups that are calling for a change. Danone, parent company of Alpro, Europe’s leading plant-based dairy producer, is also in the same boat. “There needs to be harmonization,” said Danone communications and sustainability director Nathalie Guillaume. “Our society is undergoing a sustainability transition. A flexitarian diet of dairy and plant-based alternatives is the future. The price must be accessible. Therefore, there should be no discrimination in the valuation of both types of milk drinks.”
Courtesy: GFI Europe
Belgium isn’t the only country with disproportionate taxes on plant-based dairy. In Germany, vegan alternatives are charged 19%, versus 7% for dairy (though there are calls for parity), Hungary has a 22% levy on plant-based and 5% tax on conventional dairy, while Italy similarly imposed 22% and 4%, respectively. The Netherlands, meanwhile, is going backwards: it previously carried an identical VAT rate of 9%, but new rules mean a 196% increase in alt-milk taxes (except soy).
But Belgium can follow the lead of the Czech Republic, which closed the gap between the tax laid on cow’s milk and plant-based alternatives – both now carry a 10% levy. Greece has also reduced its plant-based milk VAT from 24% to parity with cow’s milk (13%) now. There’s a lot resting on Belgium’s upcoming elections.
Leading Australian plant-based meat maker v2food has acquired ready meal brands Soulara and MACROS for an undisclosed sum to expand its portfolio, in a sector flooding with M&A activity.
Aussie alt-meat leader v2food has expanded its portfolio with the acquisition of local ready-meal brands Soulara and MACROS, which will help broaden its distribution reach beyond in-person channels via its proprietary D2C e-commerce platform.
Founded in 2019, v2food makes meat analogues like burgers, mince, sausages and schnitzels using soy protein. Now, though, it is diversifying into whole-food plant-based options with the acquisition of Soulara, which offers an extensive range of nearly 40 ready meals. This is an extension to v2food’s own ready-to-eat line, launched in 2022, helping cater to a broader audience and evolving preferences.
“We know consumers have diverse needs when it comes to adopting a plant-based diet,” said Sean Bone, commercial manager at Soulara. “Soulara has carved a niche for itself with its focus on delivering meals designed by our team of chefs and dieticians to ensure best-in-class taste, nutrition and value.”
Courtesy: v2food
The deal will see Soulara and MACROS be combined under a new entity called Flexitarian Meal Solutions, selling between 50,000 and 100,000 meals per week, a v2food spokesperson confirmed. While they declined to comment on the financial or restructuring aspects of the deal, they acknowledged that while MACROS isn’t a plant-based business, v2food is “excited to explore how to incorporate more plant-based protein solutions in the range to appeal to the growing number of flexitarians in Australia”.
Catering to Australia’s diverse flexitarian and vegan consumers
Founded in 2017 as Freshara, Soulara claims to be Australia’s first plant-based ready meal subscription, with its broad lineup catering to specific consumer needs like high-protein dishes and calorie-controlled meals, alongside both veggie-forward and seitan-centric options. Some of the highlights include a Supercharged Satay, Spaghetti Veganese, African Peanut Stew, and Balinese Mie Goreng.
“We are excited to unite Australia’s number one plant-based ingredients company with Australia’s number one plant-based ready-made meals brand,” said v2food CEO Tim York. “We know consumers want to eat more plant-based products in their diets, but some of the barriers to making this change are concerns around taste and how to cook them – by adding Soulara to our portfolio, we can further demonstrate how easy and delicious meat reduction can be.”
Courtesy: v2food
This is a pertinent point when you look at v2food’s latest launch. At SXSW Sydney in October, it unveiled RepliHue, a new colour system for plant-based meat. The company argues that most plant proteins remain the same shade before and after cooking, but through its tech, these can shift hues from raw-looking to brown-grey at the same time and temperature as their conventional counterparts do.
This creates a ‘bleeding’ effect, the same aspect Impossible Foods banks on with its genetically modified soy-derived heme ingredient. RepliHue is derived naturally from red algae and other plants, and has the ability to consume carbon dioxide and use light for energy. v2food argues that its innovation also improves the taste and texture of alt-meat, which is a crucial consideration for Australians – a 1,039-person YouGov poll from October revealed that taste is the number-one factor influencing food choices for meat-eaters, flexitarians, vegans, vegetarians and pescetarians alike.
"v2food's expertise in plant protein is the ideal complement to Soulara’s vegetable-forward approach, as we strive together to provide a well-rounded menu for consumers seeking a plant-based lifestyle," said Bone. While the jury's out on whether Australians are looking to go vegan, they certainly are eating less meat (though still a very high amount).
Last year, a 3,016-person study by Queensland’s Griffith University found that nearly a third (32.2%) of Australians had reduced their meat consumption over the previous 12 months. Crucially, 71.3% said they either eat completely meatless diets, mostly vegan or have some plant-based dishes in an overall omnivorous diet – and 45.6% reported eating plant-based meat sometimes.
Vegan acquisitions ramp up as industry looks to consolidate
"As the plant-based movement continues to gain momentum, v2food is excited about the endless possibilities this acquisition brings for the brand, its consumers, and the wider community," stated York.
It speaks to the increased amount of M&A activity and consolidation in the vegan industry recently. In as recently as October, for example, All G Foods spun off its alt-meat brand Love Buds, which merged with Fenn Foods’ vEEF to form The Aussie Plant-Based Co. But this isn't a trend limited to Australia, which (alongside New Zealand) had the highest alt-protein investments in Q1 2023.
Courtesy: Love Buds
In October, Finnish alt-dairy brand Oddlygood acquired Nordic brand Planti, making it the market leader in vegan “spoonable snacks” in Sweden and cooking products in Finland. The same month saw US company Superlatus enter an agreement to buy plant-based dairy and egg company Spero, months after it agreed to purchase precision fermentation dairy leader Perfect Day's consumer brands under The Urgent Company umbrella. Also in October, German food conglomerate Pfeifer & Langen earned a majority stake in sausage-maker-turned-alt-meat brand Rügenwalder Mühle.
A month later, British artisanal vegan cheese maker Palace Culture was taken over by The Compleat Food Group (formerly Winterbotham Darby), which owns fellow plant-based brands Squeaky Bean and Vadasz, while Canada’s Protein Powered Farms bought Lovingly Made Ingredients, the plant protein extrusion facility built and previously owned by Meatless Farm.
Courtesy: The Vegan Food Group
In December, Indian superfood brand Nourish You acquired alt-dairy startup One Good, in one of the country's largest plant-based M&A deals. And just earlier this month, vegan burger chain Next Level Burger purchased restaurant group Veggie Grill (alongside its Más Veggies taco chain) to expand its footprint to 27 locations. This came at the same time the UK's VFC turned into a holding company called the Vegan Food Group to step up its acquisitions, on the back of its purchase of Meatless Farm and Clive's Purely Plants last year.
The flurry of activity is explained by the industry outlook of Andy Shovel, co-founder of UK plant-based meat brand THIS. "We’re now at a stage where the sector is consolidating and poor-quality brands are coming out the market, with more brands consumers can trust and shelves that are way easier to navigate," he told Green Queen in October.
v2food an outlier in the global plant-based sector
Courtesy: v2food
v2food's strategy mirrors that of the Vegan Food Group, according to Simon Eassom, executive director of Aussie alt-protein non-profit Food Frontier. The company is already the most-funded business in the plant-based Industry down under, having raised AU$185M ($138M) following Series B and B+ rounds in 2020 and 2021, respectively. It also has a multinational deal with Burger King, which uses its beef in the Rebel Whopper in the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and, of course, Australia (under the Burger King franchise Hungry Jack's).
“Its acquisition of direct-to-consumer brand Soulara adds another channel in its go-to-market strategy," said Eassom. "We wouldn’t be surprised if there are further announcements from them in the ready meal space, and their push into the service sector with pies and other utility products ensures that v2food is consolidating its position as a major food producer."
He added: “v2food is doing something that few, if any, other major plant-based companies are doing anywhere around the world: branching into all channels with offerings to suit and doing it via mergers and acquisitions."
PETA’s bipartisan mascot “Chris P. Carrot” is on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, where he’ll give attendees at the first primaries of the 2024 election season some food for thought as he urges presidential hopefuls and voters to “EAT ME!” and go vegan for three good reasons: to stop harming animals, to bolster human health, and to protect the environment. Chris P. Carrot will kick off his lifesaving campaign that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions pumped out by the meat, egg, and dairy industries on Friday evening at the Candidate Q&A with Rep. Dean Phillips at Brothers Cortado in Concord.
Left: Chris P. Carrot at the Asa Hutchinson rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. Right: Chris P. Carrot at the Nikki Haley rally in Adel, Iowa, on Sunday. Credit: PETA
“Animal agriculture is a killer, spewing methane that’s destroying the planet, hardening humans’ arteries with cholesterol, and sending billions of animals to their deaths,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s Chris P. Carrot is urging candidates and voters to go vegan before it’s too late—and we have free downloadable vegan starter kits for all.”
According to the United Nations, about a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food production, and the largest percentage of these emissions come from the meat and dairy industries. PETA notes that growing water-intensive crops just to feed animals raised for food consumes more than half the water used in the U.S. and that up to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon is linked to meat production, either for grazing or for growing food for cows. Vegan foods—such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, nuts, and lentils—require less energy, land, and water.
Chris P. Carrot will be traveling to candidates’ events around New Hampshire throughout the weekend.
