NFL stadiums are upping their game when it comes to vegan eats, and we have the scoop on some of the most exciting menu items for the 2023 season. These top stadiums have been adding animal-friendly fare for compassionate football fans to enjoy while watching their favorite teams. Expanding options that are free of meat, eggs, and dairy is a real game-changer for countless animals, including loving pigs, intelligent chickens, and playful cows who are used by the meat, egg, and dairy industries.
So let’s kick off football season with 2023’s top five vegan-friendly NFL stadiums.*
Lumen Field (Seattle Seahawks)
Some of the options you can find at the Seahawks’ home field include the following:
You can also find other options that could be vegan—just confirm it at the concession stand and remove any nonvegan ingredients if possible. Try veganized versions of the following items:
Black bean tacos (order without cheese)
Tofu bánh mì (ask about mayonnaise)
Tofu noodle bowl (order without the marinated soy egg)
Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta Falcons)
Soar into vegan heaven at the home of the Falcons, where you can try these options and others:
Beyond vegan burger or sausage
Buffalo cauliflower wrap
Moe’s veggie burrito, veggie burrito bowl, or veggie nachos (order without cheese)
Vegan hot dog with baked beans and vegan cheese sauce
If you aren’t visiting one of these venues this season, don’t worry. Most stadiums around the country offer at least one vegan entrée, and many offer several. The San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium offers a vegan hot dog and two kinds of vegan burgers. Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and the Chargers, serves Beyond Meat sausages and vegan chicken nuggets, and the Minnesota Vikings’ U.S. Bank Stadium has a vegan sloppy joe.
And if you’re chowing down outside the stadium before or after the game, check out our guide on how to order vegan at chain restaurants.
*Note: Menu items and ingredients are subject to change. Always confirm that items are vegan when you’re at the concession stand.
Did your favorite team’s stadium miss the cut?
No need to feel down and out—there’s always next season. If you want to see a menu expanded, ask your hometown stadium for more vegan options. And if you’re watching the games from afar, check out our guides to football fare, vegan hot dogs, and vegan chicken wings.
Going vegan is the best thing you can do for animals, the planet, and your health. Order your free vegan starter kit to get started today:
Singaporean plant-based brand HAPPIEE! – a subsidiary of Growthwell Foods – has secured listings with UK retailers to introduce its vegan frozen seafood range to the market. The company’s plain and breaded seafood alternatives are already available at online retailer Ocado, and will launch at Tesco – the UK’s largest supermarket – next month.
Launched in 2022, the brand has already been available at multiple retailers and restaurants in Singapore with its range of soy-based chicken nuggets and popcorn. Now, it makes its UK debut with a range of vegan seafood – the country is Europe’s second-largest consumer of plant-based seafood – which includes breaded and plain shrimp, breaded calamari, and squid rings. Additionally, HAPPIEE! is also introducing one non-seafood alternative, a vegan lamb shawarma.
Capitalising on frozen
Courtesy: Growthwell Foods
All the seafood products contain tapioca, konjac flour and potato starch, and are free from soy, trans fats and GMOs. HAPPIEE!’s parent company, Growthwell, already has a portfolio of multiple plant-based food brands. It secured $22M in a Series A funding round in November 2021, while opening a new innovation centre to scale up research and development for plant-based meat and seafood.
The products are available for purchase at Ocado and will be on 364 Tesco shelves next month, before a more widespread expansion planned for January 2024. It comes as the frozen food segment sees continued growth in the UK. According to Tesco, 31% of British adults bought more frozen food at the end of last year, and they will continue to do so this year. Additionally, 19% who had not previously bought frozen food began purchasing it to save money.
“Our aim is to foster a continued shift towards eco-friendly choices, reducing our dependence on the seas for a sustainable future,” said HAPPIEE! commercial manager Rosie Bambaji. “We’re on a mission to bring genuine change to the category, filling in the gaps so that flexitarians and vegetarians aren’t missing out on their favourite dishes and cuisines.”
The problem with seafood
Courtesy: Growthwell Foods
HAPPIEE!’s UK debut comes during a host of other developments in the global plant-based seafood sector. South Korea’s Unlimeat debuted its upcycled vegan tuna this month, while startups like Konscious Foods, Bluu Seafood and Hooked Foods have all received funding this year. Meanwhile, two European brands received a €1.5M grant to create 3D-printed mycoprotein to replace seafood.
According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute, pound sales for plant-based seafood grew by 40% year-on-year in 2022 and as of 2021, there were over 120 companies in the alternative seafood space (which includes vegan, fermentation-based and cultivated seafood).
The seafood industry is rife with environmental and human rights issues. The growing demand for seafood has led to overfishing and, subsequently, higher greenhouse gas emissions, while the heavy fuel use by ocean fishery vessels also contributes to the climate crisis. The 2021 documentary Seaspiracy details the endemic issues attached to this sector.
“The average consumer is becoming more aware of animal welfare and sustainability,” Maarten Garaets, alt-protein managing director of seafood giant Thai Union, told Green Queen in May. “And this is becoming a more important part of the selection criteria when they are buying food, but this is still a very small group.”
He added: “Alternative seafood is a new category, with limited awareness, whereas meat is more established. However, seafood is bound to catch up soon. Health is less of a concern for seafood, whereas sustainability will be more of a lever.”
Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific has introduced 16 new dishes to menus on select long-haul flights, in partnership with local vegetarian restaurant Veda, part of the Ovolo Hotel Group. Running until June 2024, the range of meals is inspired by cuisines from North Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and is part of Cathay’s efforts to lower its carbon footprint.
Two years ago, Cathay Pacific announced its commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In a move that pushes the airline further towards that goal, Cathay’s partnership with Ovolo – the world’s first hotel group to go fully vegetarian – comes after several rounds of experimenting and taste tests.
Veda, Ovolo’s acclaimed vegetarian restaurant, is helmed by executive chef Raul Tronco Calahorra. He worked with Cathay’s culinary team to develop dishes that work just as well at high altitudes as they do on the ground. And it wasn’t as straightforward as transferring Veda’s dishes to in-flight meal trays.
The challenges of designing high-altitude meals
Courtesy: Cathay Pacific
“Designing a meal to be enjoyed at 30,000 feet comes with its challenges,” says Tronco Calahorra. “I had to consider everything from how tastebuds are affected at altitude, to cooking techniques.” A 2010 study by Lufthansa found that the combination of dry air and low pressure reduces our tastebuds’ sensitivity to sweet and salty foods by 30%. Around 80% of our perceptions of taste are due to smell – but the dryness at high altitudes impedes our odour receptors, which makes food taste bland.
This is why airline dishes need to be more strongly flavoured than those served at ground level, and Cathay Pacific said its culinary team worked together with Tronco Calahorra to set optimum seasoning levels for the new plant-forward meals.
The other issue is volume. “I needed to adapt my recipes to include ingredients that could consistently be sourced for potentially thousands of meals a day,” the Veda executive chef explains. “Can they get the same paneer I’m using, or the same tofu? The challenge isn’t the mass production – you can get a big pot and cook 1,000 litres of a sauce – but the assembly.”
And since cooking methods on plans are limited due to space, most of the food is prepared in Cathay Pacific Catering Services’ kitchens near its Hong Kong International Airport base.
The Premium Economy and Economy menus
Purple quinoa tabbouleh and roasted vegetable tagine with halloumi and pearl couscous | Courtesy: Cathay Pacific
All this has led to the creation of a menu that adapts some dishes from Veda’s menu, and features some completely new ones. While Veda is famous for its meat-free Indian food, the 16 dishes take inspiration from international cuisines, available in Premium Economy and Economy on select long-haul and ultra-long-haul flights from Hong Kong.
The Premium Economy menu has dishes like hummus with harissa-roasted cauliflower and pickled red onions, Keralan-style coconut curry with vegetables and cumin rice, roasted vegetable tagine with halloumi and pearl couscous, and Panang dry curry tofu with cashews and coconut rice. In Economy, you’ll find the likes of purple quinoa tabbouleh, Mediterranean potato salad, northern Thai classic Khao soi, as well as paneer makhani with cumin rice.
This isn’t Cathay Pacific’s first foray into plant-based and meat-free dining. In 2019, it became just the second airline globally to serve vegan meat on its in-flight menu (after Air New Zealand), teaming up with Hong Kong alt-meat giant OmniPork. And last month, it introduced meals containing plant-based pork by fellow Hong Kong brand Plant Sifu, famous for its konjac-based dumplings and dim sum.
“Cathay Pacific is not only a global top 10 airline, but also one of Hong Kong’s best-recognised enterprises for culinary innovation and quality,” Joshua Ng, co-founder of Plant Sifu’s parent company Good Food Technologies, tells Green Queen. “Our ‘taste-first’ and localised approach in product development separated us early on to secure this key partnership,” adds co-founder Dr Andrew Leung.
A step towards sustainability
Panang dry curry tofu with cashews and coconut rice | Courtesy: Cathay Pacific
While Hong Kong’s national flag carrier has previously offered plant-forward meals that didn’t need to be pre-selected, the new dishes offer passengers an even broader selection. “We want to ensure we are doing our bit to help preserve our environment, promote healthy eating and enhance the image of amazing vegetarian and plant-based dining,” says Ovolo founder Girish Jhunjhnuwala. “Our collaboration with Cathay Pacific aligns perfectly with this mantra and our Plant’d pledge, and our wider ‘Do Good. Feel Good.’ sustainability commitment.”
The collaboration is part of Cathay Pacific’s ‘The difference is in the detail‘ campaign, which aims to elevate its in-flight dining experiences and enhance its wellness and sustainability credentials and supports its long-term partnership with Hong Kong environmental charity The Green Earth, helping travellers “make better lifestyle choices for the planet”.
PETA is giving the Iowa State Fair a Staggeringly Worst Example Award for Climate, Cruelty, and Cholesterol Obliviousness, epitomized by its Deep-Fried Bacon Brisket Mac-n-Cheese Grilled Cheese and similar promoted dishes, its cattle barns, and its carbon footprint. The dishonor comes with a certificate of shame that calls out the fair for celebrating the meat and dairy factory-farming industries, which produce unhealthy foods that are linked to the top four killer diseases in Iowa and the rest of the U.S., that torment and kill animals in the process, and that contribute to the methane emissions that are a major cause of the climate catastrophe.
“The climate, cruelty, and cholesterol obliviousness on display with this deep-fried disaster prove that the Iowa State Fair kowtows to the animal agriculture industry while thumbing its nose at human health, the planet we live on, and the animals who pay with their lives,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges Iowans to wake up, smell the manure, and restructure the 2024 fair as one steeped in respect for all life, including that of future generations.”
The consumption of meat and dairy is linked to heart disease—the leading cause of death for Iowans—as well as diabetes, obesity, strokes, and various types of cancer. It’s also responsible for immense animal suffering: Cows and pigs raised for their flesh are confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements, and in the dairy industry, calves are torn away from their mothers within a day of birth so the milk meant to nourish them can be stolen and sold to humans. At slaughterhouses, the animals are shot in the head with a captive-bolt gun and hung up by one leg before their throats are slit—often while they’re still conscious.
The millions of pigs confined on Iowa farms produce 25 times more waste than Iowa’s human residents, and as a result of the associated runoff, Des Moines Water Works has battled for years to turn waterways contaminated with farmed animals’ waste into potable drinking water. And many Iowans are familiar with the stench that comes from the massive pig warehouses in the state but may not realize that it’s also deadly—air pollution from animal agriculture kills nearly 13,000 people per year in the U.S. alone, and the industry is a leading producer of the greenhouse gases that contribute to the climate catastrophe.
PETA offers a free vegan starter kit for those ready to make the switch to healthy, eco-friendly vegan eating.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Malaysian alt-protein startup Good Health Farm claims it has created the world’s first tempeh beef mince in Singapore. It looks, cooks and tastes like its conventional animal counterpart, and costs the same as certain premium varieties. The brand has also collaborated with Singaporean chef Forest Leong on a range of ready-to-heat local favourites made with its tempeh meat.
Founded in 2021 by a group of six entrepreneurs from Singapore, Malaysia and Australia who together have decades of experience growing food brands across Asia, the company says it is currently self-funded but told Green Queen it plans to open a seed funding round in September.
Good Health told Green Queen it is banking on a ‘cleaner’ label strategy – a global consumer survey by Ingredion last year revealed that more than half of consumers find it important for products to have a short ingredient list.
Good Health Farm’s plant-based mince contains a base of tempeh, textured soy protein and shiitake mushrooms, with vegetable oil, isolated soy protein, an unspecified thickener, flavourings, beetroot powder, soy sauce and sugar on top of that. That’s 11 ingredients – which if you are counting is nearly half of the ingredients in Impossible Foods’s beef mince, the market leader in Singapore.
The startup uses what it describes as “proprietary techniques and simple processing” to turn tempeh into plant-based mince and claims to be the first company globally to do so. Co-founder Andrew Fairlam told Green Queen that this manufacturing method offers the disruptive benefit of low-CapEx scaling, slashing the required investment to achieve mainstream production levels, and offering a viable and simpler alternative to the high-moisture extrusion that has become the norm for most plant-based meat brands.
Catering to the demand for locally produced food
Courtesy: Good Health Farm
When asked about customer feedback, the company says it tested its tempeh beef via a six-month foodservice trial in Kuala Lumpur. “Overall, we had great feedback from chefs and diners,” co-founder Fairlam tells Green Queen. “But it also gave us the opportunity to listen to negative feedback and make improvements prior to our retail launch in Singapore.
Good Health Farm’s partnership with Leong led to the company creating whole-food plant-based Asian cuisine meals like Mapo Tofu, Thai Basil Mince and Rendang Meatballs, which can be heated in five minutes, a key consideration for time-strapped professionals and parents looking for tasty, convenient dinner solutions. In a recent report, consulting firm Oliver Wyman wrote that “across the world, customers are seeking higher-quality food without having to prepare it themselves from scratch. This has contributed to the popularity of ready-meal takeaways and quick delivery, for which consumers have demonstrated a willingness to pay a premium.”
Fairlam says the brand is already working on more products: “We want to make it easy for more Asian consumers to swap to a plant-based diet, so we are working on some exciting product launches in the near future, which will include other meat types.”
Using a local food ingredient in tempeh, which is rooted in Indonesian food culture, is a savvy move in times when sustainability is top of mind for consumers. In fact, three in five people globally say they prefer purchasing food produced in their own country. This could be a marker for Good Health Farm – whose tempeh is sourced from local makers near its Ipoh, Malaysia base – to launch into Malaysia in the near future as well.
Tapping an opportunity in a tough market
Courtesy: Good Health Farm
The tempeh market itself isn’t as big as other vegan protein sectors. One estimate values tempeh at $4.2B globally, while the same analysis firm puts the plant-based meat market at over $49B. And while brands like UK-based Better Nature have showcased tempeh to a more global audience, tempeh hasn’t broken into the mainstream outside of Southeast Asia just yet.
The flavour factor may account for part of this. Tempeh is a fermented food that’s compressed into dense, chewy cakes filled with whole soybeans. Not everyone’s a fan of its strong, earthy flavour, but repurposing it into a more familiar flavour and texture – beef mince – could help Good Health Farm capture additional market share in the Asian market and beyond.
One thing the company has in its favor is the mince’s price point. At S$6.99 ($5.15) for each 240g pack, Fairlam promises that the brand’s tempeh beef is at par with premium beef in Singapore. It’s also nearly half the price of Impossible’s mince, and over a dollar cheaper than Quorn’s mince. In today’s high-inflation times, when consumers are facing ever-rising food prices, Good Health’s products could prove attractive.
Good Health Farm’s launch, which starts at online supermarkets Redmart and Lazada tomorrow, comes a week after a report found that alt-proteins must make up 50% of Asia’s total protein production by 2060 if the region is to decarbonise. “Our whole plant-based mince can appeal to mainstream shoppers across the region by making it easy for them to switch, and appealing to their core purchase drivers of taste, health and environment,” says Fairlam.
Echoing this sentiment, co-founder Yuen Ching Mok adds: “We believe our solution overcomes key barriers to the mainstream adoption of alt-protein across Asia, including naturalness, nutrition, great taste and affordable prices.”
It’s not tofu or tempeh and don’t call it plant-based meat. Newcomer-on-the-shelf Vegbloc looks to disrupt the protein on the plate of busy, climate-conscious folks who value health, taste and convenience.
When was the last time you put quinoa in your ramen? Or red lentils on your pizza? Or split peas in your stir-fry? Vegbloc promises to let you do all of that, and more. Designed to be a meat replacement – not imitation – this new kind of plant-based ingredient implores you to open up and expand your culinary imagination.
The thing about Vegbloc is that it isn’t interested in tasting like meat at all. But it’s also not a traditional protein source like tofu or tempeh – it’s its own thing. It’s an entirely new product format, and it’s exciting for people who want to experiment in their kitchens.
“We saw a gap for a convenient product that was nutritious enough to get picked up by health-minded shoppers, had an ingredient list that reassured the sceptical, and made it easy for people to cook with plants in a whole new way,” Vegbloc co-founder Simon Day tells Green Queen.
“It’s an innovative concept, but we’ve found it’s one that strikes almost everyone as a no-brainer,” he notes. “The product format is new, but the ingredients and process are based firmly in food heritage rather than novel science.”
Those ingredients? Quinoa, red lentils, split peas, flax and chia seeds, onion, sweet potato, mushroom, garlic, gram flour, rosemary, nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, mushroom powder, coriander, black pepper and salt. All wrapped up in a cylindrical sausage-like 250g (veg)block that’s cooked in the pack, eschewing the need for preservatives and achieving what Day calls a “decent shelf life” (not an “artificially long” one). He also confirms it can be frozen, should you want to extend its lifespan.
It is, in all senses of the term, clean label. A genuinely whole-food ingredient. And Big Meat will be mighty annoyed at that – it loves knocking the long ingredient lists of plant-based protein.
Courtesy: Vegbloc
A new way to cook
Another thing that would usually tick Big Meat off is that it doesn’t taste like meat. The old-protein lobby would be all over that – mocking it for its seemingly inferior flavour and texture to animal-based food. But then, it would be missing the point – because it doesn’t taste like tofu or tempeh either.
“The texture is not homogenous,” says Day. “As you eat Vegbloc, you recognise that you are eating quinoa, lentils, split peas and so on… It simply tastes and eats like the combination of wonderful plants it’s made from.”
And what is that taste like, I ask? “A delicious savoury flavour that deepens when it is browned through cooking,” Day answers. “It’s lightly flavoured with herbs and spices, but the umami hit really comes from the lentils and mushrooms.”
He adds that the British brand deliberately avoided over-flavouring the Original Vegbloc, because “we know so many people want a versatile ingredient that can slot into numerous dishes they already cook”. But for the ultra-curious, there are a couple of new flavours on the horizon that add a new dimension while retaining that valuable versatility.
Does Vegbloc also pass Big Meat’s protein test? Without revealing exact amounts, Day confirms that while Vegbloc is high in protein, it isn’t as high as some ingredients. But it does contain more fibre than tofu and tempeh, with an added hit of omega-3 thanks to the chia and flax.
Vegloc’s emergence comes at a pivotal point for plant protein. One of the industry’s giants, Beyond Meat, has seen sales decline by almost a third, while numerous brands have ceased operations, or come close to it. How do you pitch to a consumer base that has shown faltering faith in this sector over the last year?
“We are targeting people who are interested in their health, looking for whole food options, and don’t have the time to prepare a dozen plants from scratch at every meal,” says Day, outlining the importance of the ingredient’s quick-to-cook nature in an increasingly short-of-time consumer world. “We want people to drop it in their regular dishes – whether they contain meat or not – for a boost of nutrition, flavour and texture.”
Courtesy: Vegbloc
Adaptability is key
Vegbloc has been granted a Carbon Rating A by carbon calculator My Emissions, which aligns with greenhouse gas protocols and covers a product’s life cycle, including scope 3 packaging and transport emissions. This puts the new plant protein in the same bracket as tofu and, as Day happily points out, “obviously way ahead of mass-produced animal proteins”. A landmark study by Nature Food in July proved the environmental supremacy of plant-based food – vegan diets can cut emissions by 70% compared to meat-rich ones.
Day remains coy over the sourcing of Vegbloc’s ingredients, saying it’s “likely to change as we scale” – but hints at an adaptable strategy to keep its climate footprint down. “What’s exciting about the future of Vegbloc and our concept of a convenient ingredient made from a variety of plants is that there are so many amazing plants out there to use,” he explains. “We could use different recipes for different markets [and] target consumers in order to optimise for local growing capability, tastes and nutritional requirements.”
Vegbloc is planning for a January 2024 retail launch in its home market in the UK, before expanding into foodservice. While the product has garnered international interest, Day says the brand wants to prove the concept at home first to build the business sustainably.
Vegbloc feels like such a novel food ingredient, it throws out all convention. And you can’t predict its trajectory based on consumer surveys on plant proteins, since most automatically refer to alt-meat – like this Mintel report that found more than half of consumers want plant-based protein to taste indistinguishable from meat.
I ask Day whether he fears this ingredient is almost too unique to work. “We know we have a job to do to make it incredibly clear what Vegblock is and how to use it,” he admits. “But the huge groundswell of support and excitement we’ve received pre-launch has reassured us that we’re on to something.”
Is Vegbloc a round peg in the square alt-protein hole? Maybe, but that just might be exactly why it could work.
In time for World Plant Milk Day (August 22), PETA is taking over the Boardwalk with a messaging blitz that asks why so many people accept cruelty to cows on dairy farms but would never agree to harm the whales off the Jersey Shore, even though the two species are the same in all the ways that matter. Both nurse their young, have close bonds with their calves, interact in socially complex ways, and mourn when they’re separated from those they love.
Cows are basically land whales, but instead of being allowed to explore, play, or raise families, they suffer daily on farms. In the dairy industry, calves are torn away from their mothers within a day of birth so that the milk meant to nourish them can be stolen and sold to humans. It’s standard industry practice to forcibly and artificially inseminate cows—workers insert an arm into the animals’ rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into their vagina—and to send them to slaughter once their bodies wear out.
“A cow produces milk for her young, just as a whale does for her own calf or a human does for her baby,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on everyone to show compassion to mothers of all species by choosing vegan milks made from soy, oats, almonds, or other plants.”
In addition to breaking up families and causing grieving mothers to cry out for days, the dairy industry is a major contributor to the climate catastrophe. In the U.S., emissions from cows are the primary source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere.
This ad will also run in Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Santa Barbara, California.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and offers a free vegan starter kit on its website. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
This morning, on World Plant Milk Day, actor, singer, and longtime vegan Kate Nash sent a letter on PETA U.K.’s behalf to Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan urging him to end the chain’s shameless surcharge on vegan milks.
“I’m currently starring in Coffee Wars, a movie in which my character, like me, is all about creating delicious coffee drinks that no animal had to suffer for,” writes Nash. “And while I love Starbucks coffee, it left a bitter taste in my mouth when I learned from my friends at PETA that customers who choose non-dairy milk still have to pay extra.”
In the dairy industry, calves are taken away from their beloved mothers so that the milk they produce for the calves can be sold to humans. Once the cows’ bodies wear out after repeated pregnancies, they’re sent to slaughter. The industry is also a major contributor to the climate catastrophe: Its emissions are the primary source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent in warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Starbucks has even admitted that vegan milks are better for the planet than dairy milk.
As Nash notes in her letter, the surcharge is not just harmful to animals and the planet but also unfair to the millions of people around the world who are lactose intolerant. Starbucks dropped the dairy-free milk upcharge in the U.K. at the beginning of 2022, and several U.S. coffee chains already offer vegan milks at no extra cost.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETAPodcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
MeliBio co-founder and CEO Darko Mandich tells Green Queen about the company’s pivot from precision-fermented to plant-based honey, its European launch, and an upcoming Series A funding round this autumn.
The startup burst onto the scene in 2020 promising a precision-fermented, molecularly identical honey, but pivoted to a plant-based product with its launch of Mellody, which contains a blend of vegan ingredients that is said to taste and perform just like honey. “Mellody is a result of our successful plant science commercialisation efforts,” Mandich tells Green Queen. “Most of what makes honey great comes from the kingdom of plants, and we figured that part perfectly.”
He adds that research and development on its original precision fermentation process is still ongoing, and going well. “It will empower us to go beyond the type of product we have right now, and set us [up] for success in launching many new products under the vision of creating the world where humans and bees thrive,” he says.
Asked about the shift from precision fermentation to plant-based ingredients for its first product, Mandich says it happened by accident. “We realised that our investors’ samples are becoming more sophisticated, to the point where chefs begged us to launch our plant-based honey,” he recalls. “We heard our customers loud and clear, and that’s how our pivot happened. It shortens our initial five to seven years’ timeline for product launch down to three years, which is great success.”
Mellody’s health credentials
Courtesy: MeliBio
In 2021, Green Queen writer Alessandra Franco found MeliBio’s flagship precision-fermented sweetener to “tastes, drips and spreads 100% like honey made from bees”, calling the product “revolutionary”. Mellody promises much of the same, with floral, bright and sweet tasting notes that are reminiscent of clover honey.
But how does it compare in terms of ingredients? Mellody’s plant-based honey contains fructose and glucose, complemented by a series of plant extracts (sumac, Fava d’anta, Indian trumpet flower, green coffee bean, chamomile, seaberry), gluconic acid and some natural flavours to replicate bee-derived honey.
It’s the first two that can often ring alarm bells for consumers. But Mandich allays those fears, saying: “Real honey made by bees is mostly fructose and glucose, and Mellody is matching that… And there are many upsides, and one of them is that Mellody is certified glyphosate-free.” Glyphosate is amongst the most widely used agricultural fertilisers, and traces can be collected by honey bees when they’re collecting nectar from flowers. This can pass into commercial honey.
He adds that Mellody contains powerful plant compounds that ensure there are no compromises from switching from bee-made honey to vegan honey.
Europe launch and Series A fundraise
Courtesy: MeliBio
MeliBio – named one of Time’s 100 Best Inventions in 2021 – announced last November that it’s gearing up for a European launch, having partnered with organic food producer Narayan Foods. The latter’s Better Foodie brand uses MeliBio’s tech to create a vegan honey product that will roll out in 75,000 stores in Germany and UK this autumn.
Around the same time, Mandich reveals to Green Queen that MeliBio will open a Series A funding round, with “substantial runway” to support its growth. “Our lean approach and CapEx-free strategy helped us avoid the need for gigantic capital influxes,” he says, adding: “No CapEx investments are planned from Series A funds, only growth and expansion.”
“We as a company take market testing and customer feedback as the most important drivers of our expansion strategy,” says Mandich. “We are currently omnichannel and collecting many insights that will empower us to pursue our specific channel that will scale post-Series A. As we are speaking, our paying customers are mid-sized B2B food companies and restaurants.”
Speaking of scaling up, MeliBio – which has raised $9.4M in total funding so far – has upped its production to 10,000 lbs per day. This is considered medium-scale in the honey industry – a major achievement for a three-year-old plant-based startup.
Currently, its products come with a slight premium price tag – a 360g jar of Mellody honey sets you back $45. But, while not inexpensive, it’s also certainly nowhere near the markup some ultra-premium honey varieties carry. And there’s good news for vegan honey fans: Mandich says 2024 will bring price parity with European and American honey types.
Next year, it also plans to onboard new consumers and continue its European rollout. Mandich says MeliBio’s focus is on Europe, the UK and the US in the short term, but doesn’t rule out an Asia expansion in the future. “Asia is [an] important market, and we are evaluating how to approach it,” he says.
Sustainable travel has never been easier. Food tours are a massive part of the travel industry – and now, many cities around the world offer day-long walking experiences for vegans and vegetarians. Here are six where you can enjoy the local fare without meat.
I don’t know about you, but there are two things I always really want to do when I’m on a holiday: go to the highest point of a city and take in the views, and check out all the local food. The latter has become tougher since I’ve been vegan, but there are a growing number of kind people who are helping me have my dream vacations.
These people take you to the best food spots in the city, where you can eat what locals eat. Whether that is automatically plant-based or has been made veggie, it all still tastes like it’s meant to. And all that aside, who doesn’t just love a good food tour?
Seville Vegan Tours
Runs Tuesday to Friday, €65 per person
Courtesy: Seville Vegan Tours/Instagram
Known for its incredible art, gushing buildings and romantic vibes, the Andalusian city of Seville has its very own vegan tour, where you can try out local Spanish favourites while taking in the history of your surroundings.
Seville Vegan Tours‘ walk starts at the Mercado de Triana and lasts 3.5 hours, taking you to four spots to try six different plant-based tapas (yes, you’ll get tortillas). There are also two local drinks: don’t miss out on the tinto de verano – it might have been exploding on the internet this summer, but Spaniards have been drinking it since the early 20th century.
The experience is a nod to the tradition of tapeo, which “consists of meeting friends to spend the afternoon sampling the tapas of different bars in a specific area of Seville”. Gastronomy is deeply rooted in Andalusian culture, and Seville Vegan Tours wants you to witness it.
Frying Pan Dubai
Price and availability on request
Courtesy: Frying Pan Dubai
So what if traditional Middle Eastern food is meat-heavy, completed with some of the world’s best produce? In Dubai, Frying Pan runs with the latter to offer a vegetarian version of its signature Middle Eastern food tour.
Frying Pan takes you away from the glitzy hotels Dubai has become famous for, instead putting you at the heart of Old Dubai. During the tour, you can feast on koshari, fatayer, stuffed falafels, foul medames and Egyptian crépes.
Desserts are, of course, part of the parcel. There are some classic sweet treats you get to try on this tour: kunafa, baklava, data paste bars, vegan-cream-dipped pistachio cookies and saffron ice cream. (You can turn the last one into a falooda too!)
Eat Like a Local Mexico
Runs Monday to Friday, $110 per person
Courtesy: Eat Like a Local Mexico
Home to Mexico City’s creative and culinary enclave, the Bohemian-inspired Roma Norte neighbourhood has loads of green spaces, museums, uber-hip mezcalerias and eateries – something for everyone. It’s also home to Mexico City’s vegan food tour, Eat Like a Local, which is a four-hour experience for plant-based culinary enthusiasts.
You begin at La Condesa, the city’s main square, for coffee and concha (a traditional sweet bread), followed by vegan tacos on the streets. Then you head to the famous flower market, Mercado Jamaica, for more street food and fresh produce.
Next, you visit a 100-year-old pulqueria to learn how the alcoholic drink is made, and sample curados (pulque with fruits). The tour ends either with ice cream at Condesa, lasting over 15 tastings and three pulque flavours. You truly do eat like a local.
A Mad Food Tour, Hong Kong
September 7 & 14, 575 HKD ($73.5) per person
Courtesy: A Spark of Madness
In this Asian vegetarian food tour, Simran Savlani, author of the cookbook A Spark of Madness, takes you to some of Hong Kong’s quaint and hidden spots. The walk has drinks, food and a lot of conversation about it.
The one-off tours will be in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun neighbourhoods this September. Hong Kong’s street food scene is legendary, so going with somebody in the know makes your life a lot easier. The tour promises visits to the island’s famed dai pai dongs (food stalls) and cha chaan tengs (Hong Kong-style diners).
Expect dumplings, bánh mìs, egg tarts, cheung fun and loads and loads of noodles.
Eat Like a Local South Africa
Price and availability upon enquiry
Courtesy: Eat Like a Local South Africa
Not the same company, but Cape Town’s very own food tour company offers a plant-based walking tour – a first for the city. The four-hour tour by Eat Like a Local operates on a private basis, making it all the more exclusive.
You start at Mustacchio Cafe on Kloof Street, the first of seven food establishments on the tour. Alongside the food at both iconic and hidden eateries, you’ll learn about Cape Town’s architecture and history too. There’s tea, coffee and kombucha, and tours with alcohol are also available, which will involve local beer and wine.
You’ll be able to have plant-based spins on local dishes like mushroom biltong (traditionally a dried cured meat), samoosas, koeksisters (fried plaited dough in syrup), vetkoeks and roosterkoeks (both types of bread). These are interspersed with some stunning global-inspired dishes, making it a truly complete experience.
Vegan Vacation Time, Florence
Runs Monday to Saturday, €90 per person
Courtesy: Vegan Vacation Time
A three-hour walk in the Tuscan capital, surrounded by gastronomic wonders that have taken the world by storm? It’s hard to resist this plant-based food tour in Florence.
Vegan Vacation Time is a Tuscany-dedicated website for plant-based holidays, which organises food and wine tours, as well as cooking classes and dinners for vegans. The food tour starts near the Grom gelato store on Via delle Oche – upon meeting, you have a cappuccino and vegan pastries to begin your day.
Vegan versions (whether automatically or tailored) of local food all feature too – think breads, pizza, cheese, salami, vinegars and olive oil – leading you to a plant-based bistro. Come for the wine tasting, stay for more Italian food (Tuscan bean soup, anyone?), and go along for the vegan gelato to end your morning on a high.
Often described as a food writer, I tend to see Kennedy as a food thinker. Her unique writing style is full of questions and complicated discussions. She does not peddle in easy answers and tidy solutions. Her From The Desk of Alicia Kennedy Substack, which boasts close to 30,000 subscribers, is a favorite among many luminaries in the food world, and rightly so. It’s one of those newsletters I read as soon as it lands in my inbox. Every issue never fails to challenge and teach, both things I am desperate for as I wade through the depressing echo chambers of social feeds and clickbait journalism that defines our media diet in contemporary times. Kennedy is a mainstream reader’s academic. She humanises her discourse with personal experience and a large dose of empathy.
After devouring her new book, No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating (published on August 15), I sat down with the San Juan-based Kennedy on Zoom to talk about why she wrote it, how the pandemic and her move to Puerto Rico changed the book’s premise, how we can fix our broken food system, the role of food in US culture, and why lifestyle media writers are a key part of helping us change how we eat.
We begin by addressing the elephant in the room. Green Queen, as a platform, chronicles the world of food tech and future food solutions that Kennedy’s work is often critical of.
Kennedy’s view on food tech, or ‘tech meat’ as she terms it in the book, is more nuanced than folks might think, and during our discussion, she acknowledges that plant-based meats and alternatives can help people transition from meat-heavy diets (at one point in the book, she writes: “I don’t discount the significance of these as a stop-gap measure”) – though she is clear that they are not to her taste and she finds many of of the supply chains of these products problematic. She also sees it as her responsibility to push boundaries in the conversation about building a better food system and fight the inevitability of a tech-based approach.
“I think it’s important to rhetorically take a very strong stance, especially when market forces tend to be the driving engine of how things change, and to say: ‘How can we push back against this idea that this is inevitable, or that this approach is inevitable?’
“Can we use food technology in a way that is beneficial? Sure. But that also doesn’t kind of trample on the notion that we also need farmers. And we also need to support regional agriculture and make things sustainable in multiple ways.”
I confess to her that one thing I worry about in the space is a lack of people who truly love food and more specifically, cooking. And how can we really change food culture and eating culture without coming from a place of love for food?
She concurs: “I used to work in a magazine that did a conference called Food Loves Tech – they were really trying to get into that space. And my sense was, there’s just not a love for eating here. And that’s what really troubled me about it.”
How food figures in American culture
We talk more about the difference between a European worldview of food and a US one, as well as the American approach to ethical veganism, which Kenney admits has always been a struggle for her. “Even when I was vegan, before I went vegetarian, it was just very difficult to square, this sort of: it’s only about the animals, the food doesn’t matter.”
Kenney’s work is rich with the fight against exploitation of any kind, not just against animals. As an example of the selectiveness of such an ethical framework, she points to foods like cashews and palm oil – a staple for many vegan prepared foods – whose supply chains are mired in human rights issues and deforestation, respectively.
This is rooted in how most Americans deal with food. “[Most] people don’t,” says Kennedy. “It’s very niche, basically, to really concern yourself with food in the US. It’s like it’s an affectation. It’s not a given, it’s not cultural. It’s seen as very elite to care about your food and to make things from scratch. And to cut out meat, or to be conscious of meat is seen as an elitist thing. The idea isn’t everyone deserves good food that’s been raised properly with ecology in mind and where the worker was paid well. The idea is: McDonald’s is good, because it’s cheap.”
This elicits a disconnect whereby people don’t see good food as part of good politics or as necessary for a healthy society, she continues.
“It’s seen as just an elite idea, and it’s very difficult to get around that obviously, because better food is expensive. It’s such a challenge to have these conversations in a lot of spaces because a lot of people, especially in the US, do not regard food as a significant piece of life, livelihood and culture.”
‘No Meat Required’: a celebration of plant-based eating past and future
This was one of her motivations to write the book, for an audience “that doesn’t believe that vegans or vegetarians care about food”.
The book chronicles the many pioneers and movements of plant-based eating in the US, rich in joy, deliciousness and plenty from chefs to writers to activists. Kennedy rails against the idea that a diet without meat, dairy and eggs is one of deprivation. Part of the book’s purpose is to show her audience that there are ways to develop a future where “while not everyone is vegan, and maybe there is still small-scale animal agriculture, we’re not eating 274 pounds of meat per capita every year”.
The book’s premise shifted somewhat from the proposal she sent her publisher in June 2020, after she moved from New York to Puerto Rico and lived through the pandemic. She originally was looking to write a “straight-up vegan cultural history”, but as she started grappling with food access and food sovereignty after the move, and watched the labour issues in the meat processing industry unfold during the pandemic, she decided to go broader.
Rather than just cover the history, she wanted to question it. “Let’s look at this history of folks who have not eaten meat for various reasons. And what can we learn from how to approach the future from them? And how can we approach the future where it is good for everybody and we’re taking into account not just our personal wellbeing, but climate change, labour rights, and yes, animal welfare?”
She adds: “For me, the goal isn’t the end of animal agriculture completely. The goal is the end of industrial animal agriculture because I think that needs to be the focus. And then we can have those conversations later, where, you know, you’re arguing about whether you should eat meat or whatever.
“I mean, do I believe there’s such a thing as humane slaughter? Of course not. But at the same time, I recognise that there are people who really do believe that that exists, and that’s okay. And so many people have health problems that require that they can’t be on a diet without meat. And so I’m not trying to say everyone has to do this, I’m saying industrial animal agriculture and the way that this happens in the US is a major problem.
Should everyone be vegan?
In an ideal world, should everyone be vegan, I ask her? “I think, at the end of the day, it’s a personal decision. I don’t think there’s a ‘should’. ‘Should’ is a patriarchal word,” she notes, explaining that she does not see it as her place to tell others what to do.
That said, the philosophical and political thesis of veganism still resonates. As she says in an interview with the online magazine Dirt earlier this year: “I stand by veganism as a response to corporate food and industrial agriculture. But a lot of being vegan comes with the sense that you’re supposed to be evangelising for it, and I just can’t evangelise anymore.”
Kennedy has written previously about being targeted by extreme vegans for her more nuanced views. Today, she describes herself as a vegetarian. She will eat oysters and local farmer eggs, as well as the occasional artisanal cheese.
People often want absolutes from her. Kennedy is comfortable living in the grey, and rejects the notion that she has to have all the answers. She has grown to eschew limiting identifiers and labels. She worries that being too binary about diet preferences and obsessing about labels is what keeps people from feeling like they can make small, good changes in their lives, because it seems like it’s going to require an identity shift.
“The reason people get defensive when the question of not eating meat comes up is because you have to make a massive change to your life, you have to change your identity, you have to become this thing. You have to have a marker on the way you eat, and be either a vegetarian, a vegan, plant-based, a flexitarian. People are very hesitant to put identity markers on themselves in that way.”
How do we eat when the world is burning?
When it comes to how we should eat, Kennedy is far more interested in questions that are holistic in scope. According to her, the question should be: what is right for you, your, your ecosystem, your culture, your way of style of living? What’s the best you can do? What does the best for you in that situation?
She acknowledges that this is, of course, complicated: “So I’m here in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I’m on an island, an archipelago in the Caribbean, a colony of the United States. The best thing I can do here, and especially as a vegetarian, is: I buy from local farms, I buy from local bakers, I really minimise the amount of imported goods that we consume. And I cook like freaking every single day! I’m supporting local agriculture. I’m minimising the miles that things are travelling to get here, and I’m supporting local food artisans, or local chefs when I’m not cooking. And I don’t eat meat, because I don’t want to. That’s just the best I can do.”
I ask her if she thinks we all have a responsibility to engage with how our food is produced, and actively make the most sustainable and ethical choice in our context, as she says. What about those who are too tired? Or struggling with survival? Or those simply looking for nourishment and nothing more? And what of those who are simply not interested?
“This isn’t an individual problem. And I think that taking that burden off of people is important because yes, it has these individual dimensions, it has personal dimensions. But at the end of the day, these are political and economic problems. We should be able to go to the store and say: ‘I’m buying a can of coconut milk, and no one was exploited.’ And we can’t do that.”
Credit: Alicia Kennedy
The role of food and lifestyle media in cultural shifts
We talk more about how we can bring about such a cultural shift in how we eat and what’s on our plate when “the system is set up for people to continue to feed into this bad system that exploits everybody”, as she puts it – and the conversation turns to the role of the media. Kennedy zeroes in on lifestyle writers in particular, whom she believes have a duty to get the mainstream ready for such a shift.
“I think the role of lifestyle media right now at this very big crisis point is to get people ready for big shifts, and you don’t have to do that in a way that’s scary. You don’t have to be like: ‘Hey, if you don’t stop eating all this meat, the world’s gonna end.’ But how do you get people ready by just making it look delicious? And look good?”
She notes that not enough is happening in the food media space on this front, compared to fashion media, for example, where she sees very positive action with influencers and writers helping consumers get out of the fast-fashion cycle and consider alternatives, which food folks can learn from.
Where does foodtech fit it?
We end up back on the subject of food tech, which regularly makes media headlines. Kennedy says it’s the narrative itself that she finds problematic, this idea that a plant-based burger or lab-grown meat can solve all the issues in our food system.
I tell her the US mainstream media in particular seems to have blinkers on when it comes to plant-based meat and alternative protein reporting. Most of it concerns itself with just a handful of companies, including Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.
With over 1,000 companies in the space globally, should all plant-based companies be brushed together with one narrative? I bring up companies using jackfruit, mushrooms and fava beans. Isn’t it a good thing for people to eat a wider range of plants?
She agrees: “There needs to be more diversity in how bigger media is addressing plant-based foods.”
But for Kennedy, who enjoys cooking and, in many ways, sees the act of cooking as a way to fight the exploitative industrial food system we must endure, these products feature much in her kitchen. “They absolutely do have a role and if they make cooking things like jackfruit and mushrooms more accessible, that’s great,” she notes, but she is hesitant to endorse market change on its own as the only way to shift how we eat.
This idea that a market change will make political change is what bothers her – we have to look at both simultaneously. “Are we going to use these products to change culture? While we seek the necessary political changes to end industrial animal agriculture? And make a better world?”
At the end of the day, she says, everyone – vegans, vegetarians, conscious omnivores, food-tech folk – can agree on one question: how do we get rid of factory farming?
A group of celebrities have supported an open letter by UK charity Generation Vegan (GenV), which calls for the Prince William-helmed Earthshot Prize to add a category recognising those who are advancing a shift to a plant-based food system. The co-signees have pledged to match the £1M prize fund awarded to winners of the current five categories.
The Earthshot Prize, founded in 2020 by Prince William and Kate Middleton’s The Royal Foundation, awards £1M each to initiatives that protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive oceans, build a waste-free world, and fix our climate. The open letter says that despite the incredible achievements highlighted, “these five Earthshots fall short of what’s fundamentally necessary to preserve our planet”.
“We are big supporters of the Earthshot Prize, and at GenV, we are working towards the exact same aims,” says GenV CEO Naomi Hallum. “However, there seems to be a blind spot when it comes to animal agriculture and its devastating impact on the earth, air, water and climate. That’s why we are asking the Earthshot Prize council to introduce this essential sixth prize fund category for 2024, and why we would be delighted to donate the £1 million prize fund to the winner.”
Plant-based for the climate
“Producing food through animals is inefficient, wasteful, dangerous, and driving us towards climate catastrophe. It is the cause of unimaginable and unnecessary suffering for billions of animals, of zoonotic diseases, and dangerous antibiotic-resistant diseases,” says the letter.
“Furthermore, it works against every Earthshot goal on your list. That’s why we must revolutionise our broken food system if we want to save our planet.”
According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock farming contributes to 14.5% of all carbon emissions, and a recent report by the Nature Food journal found that vegan diets can cut emissions by 70% compared to meat- and dairy-heavy ones.
The open letter adds that animal agriculture is the leading cause of wildlife extinction, deforestation and loss of biodiversity, and will account for half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 at the current growth rate.
GenV points to a line by Sir David Attenborough – an Earthshot Prize council member – in his 2020 Netflix documentary A Life on Our Planet to emphasise its point: “We must change our diet. The planet can’t support billions of meat-eaters.”
This is echoed by comments from British actor James Moore, one of the celebrities who support GenV’s open letter. “Our current food system is not only a cause of mass suffering to animals, it is also a threat to the future of our planet,” he says. “That’s why it is so important that Earthshot introduces a sixth prize category and helps create a global plant-based food system.”
A celebrity-backed cause
The 23-strong group of celebrities that signed the letter includes Oscar winners Dame Emma Thompson, Olivia Coleman and Mark Rylance, alongside actors, singers and activists like Annie Lennox, Sharon Osbourne, Alicia Silverstone, Gemma Whelan and Chris Packham.
“With innovation in plant-based foods and cultivated meat advancing rapidly, NGOs working to support public and private behaviour-change initiatives, and decision-makers at all levels piloting and enacting policies that support a transition to more planet-friendly food systems, the potential to positively transform our world through diet is too great to ignore,” GenV says in the letter.
“Yet the people behind these solutions are not receiving the recognition they deserve, nor the support they need to create systemic change and global impact.”
There has been a gap in media coverage about climate change and the impact of food and agriculture on the environment. A report by Faunalytics and Sentient Media found that 93% of climate-related reporting has no mention of animal agriculture, despite the latter being a major contributor to the climate crisis. This is also highlighted by a funding gap – research shows that only 4.3% of global climate goes to agrifood systems, which are responsible for nearly a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
This could explain why there isn’t yet a category dedicated to plant-based diets in the Earthshot Prize. But GenV and its co-signing celebrities are imploring the fund to change that. “Earthshot rewards people who are working to heal our planet so adding a plant-based category is a no-brainer,” says Osbourne.
An international PETA campaign hitting Whole Foods stores has arrived in Vancouver, Canada, where a vivid image of a chained macaque from a PETA Asia investigation has popped up at a bus shelter across from the company’s Robson Street location. The ad warns shoppers not to buy coconut milk obtained from Thailand, where forced monkey labor is pervasive.
Even after learning that Thailand’s coconut-picking industry is fueled by the labor of endangered pig-tailed macaques—many of whom were illegally snatched from their forest homes as babies—Whole Foods continues to sell Thai coconut milk. Several companies that produce coconut milk brands sold by Whole Foods were named by industry workers as having sourced coconuts obtained via monkey labor.
In the Thai coconut-picking industry, it’s common for handlers to fit monkeys in rigid metal collars. Humans use chains and leashes to choke and control the animals. Some even pull out the monkeys’ canine teeth so that they can’t defend themselves. Because the industry and the Thai government lie about their systemic reliance on forced monkey labor, it’s impossible to guarantee that any coconut milk from Thailand is free of this abuse.
With this new ad campaign, PETA is calling on Whole Foods to sell coconut milk only from countries where monkey labor isn’t used, such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines. But these anti-speciesist spots at bus stops are just one way that we’re attempting to persuade the company to make the conscientious choice to ban Thai coconut products.
At head-turning protests across the country, PETA “monkeys” in prisoner costumes have dumped wheelbarrows full of humanely picked coconuts outside Whole Foods stores.
On June 14, 2023, six PETA members were arrested inside a Whole Foods location in Washington, D.C., while holding a sit-in to protest the company’s sale of coconut milk from Thailand.
Special Delivery: PETA Lobs Coconuts at Whole Foods Execs Over Forced Monkey Labor
Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel and the company’s nine regional presidents received some unusual gifts from PETA. We sent each of them an armload of human-picked coconuts along with a letter urging them to ban Thai coconut milk from Whole Foods’ shelves.
Here’s What You Can Do to Help Monkeys
Always check the labels on coconut milk products, and whether it’s in a can, a box, or other packaging, if it reads, “Product of Thailand,” leave the item on the shelf.
Please urge Whole Foods to stop supporting the cruel Thai coconut-picking industry:
South Korean plant-based meat producer Unlimeat has partnered with US vegan egg brand Just Egg to unveil products using the latter’s folded egg format. The collaboration will result in a vegan kimbap, which will go on floors in Gangnam in September, followed by an American-style breakfast sandwich.
A week after announcing the launch of its plant-based tuna range, Unlimeat has announced a brand license agreement with the world’s largest vegan egg brand. Kimbap – a Korean dish made by rolling ingredients in seaweed – will be made plant-based using Just Egg’s folded format and Unlimeat’s sausage patty.
Following the 100% Plant Protein Bomb Kimbap’s Gangnam launch in September, when it will be available for sale and delivery, the brands will also introduce a plant-based breakfast sandwich, which will feature a Koran-style Tteokgalbi (grilled short rib) patty by Unlimeat, vegan cheese and folded Just Egg. The patty will have a soybean protein base and gets an umami flavour profile through alliums like onions, garlic and spring onions.
Plant-based boom in South Korea
Unlimeat and Just Egg’s breakfast sandwich | Courtesy: Unlimeat
Veganism is growing in South Korea. The Korean Vegetarian Union said that in 2020, there were around half a million strict vegans in the country – a threefold increase from a decade ago. Similarly, 1.5 million people followed vegetarian or plant-forward diets, while nearly 20% of the population (around 10 million) estimated to be flexitarian.
Unlimeat was launched in 2019, using proprietary protein extrusion developments to make slices of plant-based BBQ beef from upcycled waste ingredients. In 2021, its parent company Zikooin announced plans to build one of Asia’s largest plant-based meat factories, and last year, it entered the US market through online channels. And now, its product portfolio includes vegan pulled pork, jerky, beef mandu (a Korean dumpling), mince, pepperoni, sausage and tuna.
Just Egg entered the Korean market in 2021, followed by an egg shortage owing to a bird flu outbreak. The Avian flu hit over 100 farms in the country and led to the culling of more than 16 million chickens, sending egg prices skyrocketing by up to about 70%.
The Californian food producer capitalised on this opportunity by launching its mung-bean egg first to foodservice, through a distribution partnership with the bakery café chains Paris Baguette and Paris Croissant.
Egg consumption and a viable alternative
Courtesy: Just Egg
South Korea is also among the countries with the highest egg consumption in the world. As of 2020, one estimate found that on average, an individual consumes 250 eggs annually in the country. And according to Future Market Insights, the egg alternatives market is projected to reach over $1.5B by the end of 2026, growing 5.8% from 2016.
Vegan egg substitutes can also be much better for the environment. Just Egg claims its liquid egg alternative uses 98% less water, 83% less land and has 93% fewer carbon emissions than conventional eggs.
“We are excited to collaborate with Just Egg, a food tech company with a mission to create a healthy, safe, and sustainable food system,” said an Unlimeat representative. “As this collaboration unites brands with the same beliefs, we hope to develop a variety of products using Just Egg’s offerings and Unlimeat’s plant-based substitutes. This will serve as an opportunity to expand the range of choices for consumers who enjoy vegan options.”
Industry think tank the Good Food Institute has called South Korea a “global hotbed of alternative protein innovation”, with companies like CellMeat, Lotteria, Armored Fresh and Yangyoo some of the leaders in alt-protein. The country’s cellular agriculture industry is also developing fast, with the Cellular Agriculture Support Center opening earlier this year and 28 of its cultivated meat stakeholders signing an MoU to advance the industry.
Singaporean vegan egg startup Hegg – a subsidiary of Howw Foods – has entered into a distributorship agreement with the nation’s largest egg distributor, Dasoon. The move is designed to expand the presence of Hegg’s Eggless Egg in local supermarkets, and open more offline channels for the brand’s other plant-based egg products.
The collaboration has led to the debut of Hegg’s vegan Eggless Egg in cold-storage outlets across Singapore. The powder – which is made from canola protein, edible gum and potato fibre – has 6.4g protein per 10g serving and can be used in baking, steaming and frying, apart from regular egg applications.
Consumers can buy it at S$4.50 for a 50g pack (equivalent to five servings) in the egg section of supermarkets,as well as on online channels like Lazada, Shopee and Hegg’s own website (where a 500g pack is also available).
Plant-based eggs in Singapore
Courtesy: Hegg Foods
Hegg was launched in 2021 by food tech startup Howw Foods, which uses a proprietary artificial intelligence platform called RE-GENESYS to develop its plant-based products. The company secured S$3M in a pre-Series A round to advance its R&D capabilities and commercialise Hegg in 2021. Hegg also released an Eggless Kaya – a type of southeast Asian coconut jam – in partnership with local coffee chain Killiney Kopitiam in 2022, and added a third product, an Eggless Mayo, to its lineup last month.
Hegg isn’t the first plant-based egg company in Singapore. Float Foods has been retailing its vegan whole egg substitute OnlyEg since 2020. It received a development grant in 2021 to help further commercialise the product and has also filed a patent for the egg alternative. Last year, it launched Asia’s first vegan tamagoyaki and partnered with meal kit brand DayDayCook in Hong Kong. The startup, which closed a $1.6M oversubscribed seed funding round in 2021, also collaborated with many restaurants in Singapore this Veganuary to push OnlyEg into foodservice.
Singapore’s 30 by 30 Initiative
Courtesy: Hegg Foods
Both brands are part of a growing list of companies supporting Singapore’s 30 by 30 initiative, which aims to locally produce 30% of all food consumed by 2030 to reduce the island nation’s reliance on imports and boost its food security. Launches like Dynamic Foodco’s Dynameat brand, TiNDLE’s new vegan chicken pieces, and HerbYvore’s plant-based cheese support this initiative.
Vegan egg substitutes can be much better for the environment. While there are no specific numbers for Heggs’ products just yet, similar products have fared much better than traditional eggs in climate-related criteria. For example, UK-based aquafaba brand Oggs, which is marketed as an alternative to egg whites, has 72% fewer emissions than chicken eggs. And US producer Just Egg claims its liquid egg alternative uses 98% less water, 83% less land and has 93% fewer carbon emissions than conventional eggs.
Meanwhile, about two-thirds of Singapore’s eggs are imported, which means a shift to locally produced, more climate-friendly alternatives is imperative for the 2030 target. And products like Hegg’s Eggless Eggs are building a planet- and people-friendly food system.
US animal-free cheese producer New Culture has announced that it has successfully scale-up its precision fermentation process to manufacturing levels, claiming it can now produce 25,000 pizzas’ worth of cheese per batch. The San Francisco startup claims it’s the world’s first animal-free casein and the first to be produced at this scale using precision fermentation.
The company’s announcement marks a milestone in the precision fermentation sector – no other company that we have reported on has been able to achieve this scale of production for animal-free casein. New Culture says this will reduce manufacturing costs by 80% and production capacity to reach price parity with conventional mozzarella in three years when it predicts its annual casein volumes to reach more than 14 million pizzas’ worth of cheese.
When asked about exact production figures such as how many kgs of casein the company had produced to date and how much casein was in every kilogram of its mozzarella, New Culture Marketing Director Priya Kumar said via email: “We’re not ready to share details about exact casein quantities or yields, but scaling animal-free casein production capacity to hundreds and thousands of kilograms comes with a number of technical challenges and our team has proven to be the first to do it.”
Pressed on the size and number of fermenters New Culture is running – and whether this was a co-manufacturing facility – Kumar reiterated the aforementioned 25,000 figure and confirmed the brand worked with an external partner to make the jump from pilot level to manufacturing. Dry powder yields per liter of fermentation were not disclosed either.
Green Queen also asked about what other ingredients make up the company’s mozzarella, in addition to the casein powder. According to Kumar, “To make our cheese, we take our animal-free casein protein and add water, fat, a touch of sugar, vitamins, and minerals to match the profile of animal-based mozzarella as closely as possible.”
In terms of the chemical composition, she added: “The nutritional profile of our cheese is very similar to conventional, animal-based cheese. However, unlike conventional cheese, ours is free from cholesterol, lactose, and trace hormones and antibiotics because we don’t use any animal-derived ingredients.”
New Culture’s precision fermented mozzarella launched at Pizza Mozza earlier this year | Courtesy: New Culture
New Culture, which secured a $25M oversubscribed Series A funding round in 2021, launched its animal-free mozzarella at Nancy Silverton’s iconic Los Angeles restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza, in May. This marked its first foray into food service, with Silverton praising the ‘integrity’ of the product.
Dairy developments in precision fermentation
There are approximately 30 precision fermentation companies working on dairy worldwide, and most, such as Perfect Day and Remilk, are focused on producing whey protein. Only a handful are working on casein, which is much more challenging to produce but a crucial part of what makes cheese stretch and melt. As New Culture co-founder Matt Gibson told FoodNavigator in 2021, whey “only makes limited cheeses” like ricotta and cream cheese, while casein allows you to make any kind of cheese with traditional cheesemaking processes. Further, Gibson said that scaling up casein production via precision fermentation is more difficult than whey protein manufacturing.
Commenting on the news, Irina Gerry, CMO of Change Foods and vice-chair of the Precision Fermentation Alliance, whose startup is focused on making casein, told Green Queen: “It’s an exciting proof point for the category. Animal-free casein is very challenging to produce and New Culture appears to be making great progress toward commercialisation. Of course, challenges remain. Driving down costs, securing reliable scaled manufacturing capacity, securing distribution and gaining consumer acceptance are among them. This is, however, a significant milestone for the company, and the industry as a whole.”
Last year, Change announced an agreement to build a first-of-its-kind commercial manufacturing plant in the UAE, which could have the capacity to replace the output of more than 10,000 dairy cows.
New Culture’s animal-free mozzarella cheese | Courtesy: New Culture
Austrian startup Fermify, India’s Zero Cow Factory, and Paris-based Standing Ovation have all received investment in the last year or so to develop their precision-fermented casein protein. Meanwhile, US startup Nobell Foods, which makes soy-derived casein protein using molecular farming, is gearing up to launch its first product.
With almost $4B in total investments, fermentation is a burgeoning category with positive consumer interest. In March, a survey by Perfect Day, Cargill and the Hartman Group found that 77% of US adults are willing to try precision fermentation products once they understand its benefits. Similarly, Formo teamed up with the University of Saskatchewan in May for a landmark study, which revealed that 79% of UK dairy consumers are seeking cheese produced from microbes.
“Our world-class team at New Culture has solved a string of incredibly complex technical challenges in order to produce our animal-free casein at this scale,” said New Culture co-founder and chief scientific officer Inja Radman. “We are redefining the boundaries of what’s possible in dairy in a way that isn’t being done anywhere else.”
In what is a burgeoning plant-based category, vegan seafood undergoes a whole-food twist with Canadian startup Seed to Surf, which uses vegetables as its primary ingredient. Founded in 2020, the brand makes tinned snow crab and smoked whitefish from mushrooms and celeriac root in a clean-label formulation responding to consumer trends.
A global consumer survey by Ingredion last year revealed that more than half of consumers find it important for products to have a short ingredient list, with 71% willing to pay more for brands people are willing to pay more for brands reformulating to cleaner labels and natural claims. Further research showed that nearly half (46%) would pay 20-30% more for such products.
The value of clean-label food is higher than ever. And it’s that mindset that Seed to Sturf aims to tap into with its whole-vegetable alt-seafood. The company’s snow crab is made from enoki mushrooms and smoked whitefish from celeriac root, with the aim to “celebrate vegetables for what they are”. It eschews high-moisture extrusion and shear cell tech – commonly used in alt-meat processing – and instead works with plants in their natural setting to create its whole-food plant-based products.
Championing vegetables for vegan ‘seafood with roots’
Courtesy: Seed to Surf
The brand has worked with food scientists to develop its products’ seafood flavours, and the vegetables are said to be cooked using retort technology, a process that uses heat and pressure to extend shelf life, during the canning process. The products only contain six or fewer ingredients – the vegetables are paired with sunflower oil, sea salt, seaweed (kombu and kelp) and natural flavourings, while the celeriac root whitefish also has lactic acid. It means the products are also gluten-free and allergen-friendly, which is a big win for a plant-based meat alternative.
The snow crab is described as tender, savoury and sweet, while the smoked whitefish is said to be smoky, flaky and packed with umami. The company says preserving and preparing whole vegetables “can offer intriguing new takes on the premium tinned seafood you’d find at top restaurants and high-end grocers”, while the inning aids a shelf-stable, low-energy storage option and recyclable packaging to boot.
“We found that these two vegetables really took on and enhanced that seafood experience that people might know well,” Seed to Surf co-founder Alexandra Bergquist told FoodNavigator. “Our mushroom crab is amazing in a crab dip, while the smoked whitefish is great on a bagel. [Consumers] should try these products in the best way possible. [It’s] setting them up for success.”
A rapidly evolving alt-seafood sector
Courtesy: Seed to Surf
Industry think tank the Good Food Institute reported a 40% year-on-year increase in pound sales for plant-based seafood in 2022. And as of 2021, there were over 120 companies in the alternative seafood space (which includes vegan, fermentation-based and cultivated seafood).
Surf and Seed is joined by a host of other brands making vegan alternatives to seafood, which is an industry rife with environmental and human rights issues. The growing demand for seafood has led to overfishing, which, in turn, means higher greenhouse gas emissions, while the heavy fuel use by ocean fishery vessels also contributes to the climate crisis. The 2021 documentary Seaspiracy details the endemic issues attached to this sector.
“The average consumer is becoming more aware of animal welfare and sustainability,” Maarten Garaets, alt-protein managing director of seafood giant Thai Union, told Green Queen in May. “And this is becoming a more important part of the selection criteria when they are buying food, but this is still a very small group.”
He added: “Alternative seafood is a new category, with limited awareness, whereas meat is more established. However, seafood is bound to catch up soon. Health is less of a concern for seafood, whereas sustainability will be more of a lever.”
In the US, 95% of foodservice operators expect increased or stable sales of vegan food and beverages in the next year, with 76% aiming to continue or increase the number of plant-based meat options, according to a new report by industry body the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA). It’s in line with consumer sentiment, who have upped their plant-based intake and reduced their meat consumption.
The PBFA’s State of the Marketplace Foodservice Report states that nearly half (48.4%) of all restaurants in the US currently offer plant-based options on their menus, with a 62% increase in plant-based menu items over the past decade. The shift has stemmed from a growing acceptance of vegan food among consumers, with a greater awareness of their health, environmental and animal welfare benefits.
It follows another report by the PBFA earlier this year, which found that the US plant-based market grew by 6.6% from 2021 to 2022, reaching $8B. “The plant-based foods industry’s momentum and resilience – built on robust consumer demand – is evident across 2022 retail and e-commerce sales and foodservice performance,” Julie Emmett, VP of marketplace development at the PBFA, said at the time.
Consumer trends on plant-based eating
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report revealed that more than four times as many Americans increased instead of decreased their plant-based consumption, while a third say they’ll eat more vegan foods over the upcoming year. Overall, a third of consumers in the US use plant-based dairy alternatives at least once a week, followed closely by alt-meat.
When it comes to setting, around a quarter of home meals are entirely plant-based, compared to 19% of those eaten outside. And consumers are twice more likely to try plant-based foods in retail settings than foodservice ones, due to factors including convenience, cost and perceived health benefits. This follows the 27% year-on-year growth in plant-based retail sales in the US in 2021.
Meanwhile, 43% of consumers agree that the availability of plant-based food and beverages enhances the restaurant experience – a sentiment that was most prevalent among Gen Z and millennial consumers. The former demographic has a higher proportion of vegans, vegetarians and pescatarians, with 35% falling into the category of ‘meat limiters’.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
This is highlighted by recent product launches. Taco Bell introduced a vegan Crunchwrap in June, Chipotle added two plant-based options to its Lifestyle bowls as part of its ESG goals for 2023, while Charley’s Steak House collaborated with Chunk Foods to offer the latter’s plant-based whole cut on its Orlando menu.
Plant-based menu options at restaurants
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
Four times as many foodservice operators plan to add plant-based meat to their menus than those who say they’ll remove it, while 8% who currently offer none plan to add vegan alternatives. The reluctance to add a plant-based meat substitute to menus is based on many considerations, including a lack of demand (53%), higher costs (46%), a higher difficulty in predicting demand and purchasing needs (33%), and vegan food not fitting the brand’s image (20%) – as well as factors like food waste and labour requirements.
But within the operators who do incorporate plant-based food into their menus, the fast-casual segment – which often caters to younger generations and those seeking healthy meals on the go – leads the way with nearly 70% menu penetration, followed by mid-scale and casual dining restaurants. Fast-casual chains Fine dining restaurants, meanwhile, are at the bottom of the list.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
In terms of food types, plant-based seafood and egg options have increasingly been featured on foodservice menus, seeing a 57% and 52% year-on-year growth, respectively. In February, Israeli startup Yo Egg debuted its vegan poached eggs at six Los Angeles eateries, before launching into Veggie Grill stores nationwide. And California’s Impact Food debuted its raw sushi-grade plant-based tuna at Bay Area restaurant Onigilly.
Meanwhile, coconut milk is the leading dairy alternative used owing to its versatility, followed by almond milk. But menu presence of alt-milk is still low, given that more than half of Americans will visit or pay more at establishments that feature specific plant-based dairy alternatives.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report also found that plant-based promotions and limited-time offerings receive higher uniqueness ratings from consumers compared to animal-based counterparts. There is precedent here with McDonald’s, which trialled the McPlant for a limited time before introducing it to the permanent menu, and Shake Shack, which launched its limited-edition Vegan ShackBurger in London in 2020, and debuted its vegan burger in permanent menus in the US earlier this year. Meanwhile, Impact Food struck a deal with Pokeworks for a limited-edition poke bowl in June.
The importance of inclusivity
“The focus of foodservice operators has shifted from simply offering a separate ‘vegan menu’ to creating inclusive dining experiences that highlight the abundance of plant-based choices available,” says Hannah Lopez, director of marketplace development, foodservice at PBFA.
Across all age demographics, the PBFA says there’s a stronger preference for the terms ‘plant-based’ and ‘dairy-free’ compared to ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’. The clear labelling and intentional placement of plant-based food menu options at restaurants is essential for consumer awareness and inclusivity. It echoes a report by food awareness organisation ProVeg International last week, which expressed a preference for ‘plant-based’ over ‘vegan’ on menus.
According to the PBFA, this trend suggests that consumers are open to limiting their animal product consumption without completely eliminating it. It says nearly three-quarters of Americans are interested in blended animal- and plant-based proteins, like pasta dishes with plant-based proteins and dairy cheese. While only about 20% of operators currently offer such dishes, 30% show interest in exploring this idea. This concept has already penetrated the retail sector globally, with brands like Momentum Foods, Mush Foods and Nanka all offering hybrid plant- and animal-based meats.
Courtesy: Plant Based Foods Association
The report notes that inclusive menus are paramount: “As foodservice operators lean into menu innovation and expansion, having plant-based foods as staple menu options and ingredients will allow for more inclusive and wide-ranging customer bases, and a greater feeling among guests that their values, interests, and tastes are being served.”
In a January webinar, the PBFA presented data showing that 60% of US restaurants see plant-based as a long-term trend. This sentiment is mirrored by Jennifer DiFrancesco, director of culinary innovation at Sodexo Campus, which has committed to making its catering menu 50% plant-based by 2025. “Having plant-based foods isn’t a buzz or a trend, it’s a need and a demand that we deliver with creativity and flavour,” she says, adding: “Inclusive options are key – having the 1:1 animal to plant entrée makes it approachable, relatable, and tempting to try.”
The PBFA says it’s clear that the foodservice industry offers stability and reliability as a platform for plant-based food companies seeking long-term success in a rapidly evolving sector: “Key opportunities exist for companies and operators alike to forge meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships to give consumers what they want: delicious, affordable, healthier, and more sustainable plant-based options.”
On Saturday, PETA will reel in would-be restaurantgoers with a free giveaway of Cavi-art’s vegan caviar near the group’s new sky-high appeal—and close to several fish-selling eateries, including Captain D’s and Mr. Snappers Fish and Chicken—to remind everyone to choose vegan, fish-free options that prevent fish from being impaled, crushed, suffocated, cut open, and gutted, all for a fleeting taste of their flesh.
When: Saturday, August 12, 12 noon–1:30 p.m.
Where: At the intersection of Edgewood Avenue N. and Commonwealth Avenue, Jacksonville
“Fish are intelligent, complex individuals who feel pain and fear just as humans do,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s giveaway will get people hooked on delicious vegan fare that leaves marine life in peace.”
Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals—including female sturgeons, who are often cut open while they’re still alive so that their eggs can be removed for caviar—daily suffering and a terrifying death every year; reduces their own risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer; and shrinks their carbon footprint.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview, and offers a free vegan starter kit on its website. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
On Saturday, just in time for the 34th annual Long Beach Jazz Festival, PETA will point to animal agriculture as a leading cause of the climate catastrophe with a flying banner that reads, “Getting Hot? So Is the Planet. Go Vegan.” According to the United Nations, about a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food production and the largest percentage of those emissions come from the meat and dairy industries.
“Raising and killing animals for food drives the climate catastrophe and causes tremendous suffering,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is asking everyone to help remedy the planetary crisis with eco-friendly vegan eating at the festival and beyond.”
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 cattle. Vegan foods—such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, nuts, and lentils—require less energy, land, and water to produce, and a widespread shift to vegan eating would drastically reduce humans’ negative impact on the environment.
Every person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals each year daily suffering and terrifying deaths and reduces their own risk of developing heart disease and cancer. PETA’s free vegan starter kit can help those looking to make the switch.
PETA’s banner will take off around 12 noon and circle from Rainbow Lagoon Park to the east end of Long Beach for two hours. Nearby vegan restaurants include the award-winning Seabirds Kitchen, national chain Veggie Grill, The Grain Cafe, and Vegan Pizza LB.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
As visitors flock to the 36th annual American Institute of Architects (AIA) Houston Sandcastle Competition on Saturday, PETA will send beachgoers a sky-high message with its own design on building a positive future for all—pointing out that animal agriculture is a leading cause of the climate catastrophe with a flying banner that reads, “Hot You, Hot Planet! Go Vegan. PETA.” According to the United Nations, about a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are linked to food production and the largest percentage of these emissions come from the meat and dairy industries. Our futures will be washed away like castles in the sand if we continue to eat our way to an unlivable world.
“We humans must get our heads out of the sand and deal with the reality that meat and dairy consumption is a major driver of the climate catastrophe,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is asking everyone to take personal responsibility for the planetary crisis by going vegan before it’s too late, and we have free vegan starter kits to help.”
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 cattle. Vegan foods—such as fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, peas, nuts, and lentils—require less energy, land, and water to produce, and a widespread shift to vegan eating would drastically reduce humans’ negative impact on the environment.
Every person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals each year daily suffering and terrifying deaths, reduces their own risk of developing heart disease and cancer, and drastically shrinks their carbon footprint.
PETA’s banner will fly over East Beach at 1923 Boddeker Rd. for two hours, beginning at 12 noon.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
Months after Switch Foods inaugurated the UAE’s first plant-based meat manufacturing facility in Abu Dhabi, consumers can now find its vegan kebabs, minced meat and burgers at retailers across the capital. It comes in the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, where it pledged to promote plant-based foods, and is hosting the UN climate summit COP28, which is confirmed to serve mostly vegan food.
In April, Switch opened a 20,000 sq ft facility in Abu Dhabi’s Khalifa Industrial Zone – the first to make vegan meat alternatives in the country. Now, it’s launching the nation’s first locally produced vegan products into the retail market.
Switch’s lineup includes kebabs, koftas, soujouks, minced meat and burger patties in varying sizes, with all products being GMO-, soy- and gluten-free. The range is allergen-friendly and halal-certified, and can be found at retailers including Carrefour, Organic Food Café, Grandiose, Geant, Union Coop, Sharjah Coop, Al Maya, Abella and Spinneys in Abu Dhabi. Switch’s products are also available on online platforms like Talabat, Careem, Kibsons and Noon.
A 250g pack of minced meat costs 14 AED ($3.81), while a 240g pack of the soujouk is priced at 19 AED ($5.17). Meanwhile, a four-pack of burger patties is 34 AED ($9.26), and 240g of kebab meat comes to 20 AED ($5.45). These prices, while not super cheap, are still affordable when compared to imported plant-based meat.
Switch founder and CEO Edward Hamod said: “It has been a true pleasure to witness the excitement and willingness of the leadership and management of prominent retailers and online platforms across the UAE to support locally produced and sustainable foods like the ones we produce at Switch Foods.”
Courtesy: Switch Foods
Plant-based boom in the UAE
2023 is also the UAE’s Year of Sustainability, part of which is a push to promote plant-based eating in the country. Later this year, the UAE will also host COP28, and it has famously announced that this year’s conference will serve predominantly plant-based food.
The company’s launch, along with COP28’s decision, is in line with consumer sentiment in the UAE – 44% of its residents are open to substituting meat and dairy with vegan alternatives.
The country has already seen multiple overseas plant-based producers enter the market in recent years. In 2021, US giant Impossible Foods made its Middle East debut at Dubai World Expo, while Singapore-based TiNDLE also launched in this region for the first time at 20 UAE restaurants.
Neighboring nation Saudi Arabia has also been actively promoting more plant-based foods – officials from the Saudi Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture are co-developing alt-protein products with locally sourced plants.
Sparked by a simple question by his daughter during a pizza-making bonding session, Pleese Foods co-founder Kobi Regev input the words ‘cheese farm’ in an artificial intelligence (AI) art app. The result was a series of whimsical images depicting cheese as a flourishing crop and being grown on trees. The maker of Pleese Cheese, the allergen-free vegan alternative, Pleese Foods blends future-facing tech with culinary innovation.
Regev was inspired by a McDonald’s ad that featured a playful garden with French fry bushes and Big Mac trees, after his daughter asked: “How can cheese be made from plants?” Pleese Foods wants to redefine the art of storytelling through the lens of AI – and bringing a cheese farm to life through AI visualisations is a pretty good way of doing it.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
An AI-powered vegan cheese farm
Regev imagined an entire cheese farm where it grew alongside other traditional crops, with the generated images showcasing trees sprouting cheese, fields bedecked with massive cheese wheels, cheese crops being picked by a crop harvester, and farmers processing the harvested cheese. One visual showcase a plantation of cheese adjacent to a lush green landscape of traditional crops – in a striking metaphor mirroring how plant-based cheese can exist and help farmers thrive.
“My daughter’s question opened a gateway to blend AI technology with creative curiosity,” said Regev. “The AI-generated visuals of cheese growing on a farm encapsulate the spirit that drives Pleese Foods.” The company says it wants to cultivate a multisensory approach through its products, and wants to emphasise its commitment to inclusivity and accessibility.
Pleese Cheese, which is said to melt and stretch like dairy cheese, is free from nuts, seeds, soy and gluten, instead leveraging a proprietary blend of fava beans and potato protein. It helps make the plant-based cheese allergen-friendly, ensuring people suffering from food allergies or health concerns can still enjoy their share of cheese.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
How vegan brands are tapping into AI
In an age of wacky, innovative marketing – like Impossible Foods’ latest campaign and Nobell Foods’ semi-hypothetical Pizza Futures magazine – Pleese Foods’ AI-powered promotional drive is another shift from stereotype. And as the tech grows more popular and becomes mainstream, this could be a marker for many future vegan and alt-protein commercials.
“I’m someone with an abundance of imagination but no artistic prowess,” noted Regev. “In the past, realising my creative visions visually would have entailed significant costs and weeks of revisions. AI transformed this, enabling me to bring my imagination to life within hours.”
But the use of AI isn’t just restricted to marketing – it can actually extend to product development, and that’s what really highlights its true potential. While Pleese Cheese has creatively implemented AI to imagine a world thriving on vegan cheese, many plant-based brands are using AI as their central product development driver.
Courtesy: Pleese Foods
Most famous is Latin American food tech brand NotCo, which uses AI and machine learning to find the best plant-based alternatives for animal products. The patented AI tech has a name, Giuseppe, and is the brains behind the company’s alt-milks, mayo and burgers. Similarly, Singapore’s Howw Foods uses AI to make Hegg, its vegan powdered egg product.
Many producers have also collaborated with AI firms to develop plant-based products. Bel Foods – the French cheese giant behind the ultra-popular Babybel – has partnered with California’s Climax Foods to make vegan foods, while industry giant Danone is working with Californian AI firm Brightseed to discover hidden nutrients and compounds in plant crops. Similarly, mycelium meat producer Meati teamed up with AI company PIPA to accelerate and expand its understanding of the health and nutrition benefits of its nutrient-rich products.
The potential of AI may be beyond imagination, but Pleese Foods’ own imagination has its own marketing potential.
If you eat fish, other animals—including whales and turtles—suffer and die, too. That’s the new message from PETAmaking waves on local pedicabs, pointing out that fish aren’t the only victims of the fishing industry—millions of other animals, known euphemistically as “bycatch,” also die on its hooks and in its nets every year.
“Dolphins, sea turtles, birds, sharks, and other animals are all collateral damage to fishers and big trawlers alike,” says PETA Senior Vice President Colleen O’Brien. “PETA reminds everyone that all aquatic animals deserve respect and that going vegan is the only way to eat sustainably.”
PETA notes that eating sea animals contributes to the decimation of ocean ecosystems. Worldwide, nearly 10% of marine species are at risk of extinction, and for many of the world’s 86 cetacean species, death by fishing gear is one of the biggest threats to survival.
Fish are now known to feel pain as acutely as mammals do, have long-term memories and the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror, and communicate with each other using squeaks, squeals, and other low-frequency sounds that humans can hear only with special instruments, yet they’re impaled, crushed, suffocated, or cut open and gutted, all while conscious. More fish are killed for food each year—billions in U.S. waters alone—than all other animals combined.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a list of delicious vegan fish options, such as Gardein’s f’sh filets, Sophie’s Kitchen’s Fish Fillets, and Good Catch Plant-Based Crab Cakes, as well as a free vegan starter kit.
The ads are on Charleston pedicabs through August and will pass by several seafood dining destinations in the downtown area.
Plant-based newcomer Recreate Foods has appointed Michael Salem, creator of Burger King’s Impossible Whopper, as its president. Previously the curator of Kevin Hart-owned restaurant Hart House‘s menu, he joins a vegan chicken brand that faces stiff competition in an increasingly populated category – and he’s betting on taste and texture.
Founded earlier this year, Arizona-based Recreate Foods’ vegan chicken range – which includes filets, tenders, nuggets and grounds made from pea protein – is crafted by chefs to prioritise high quality.
A premium brand in an overpopulated category
The US plant-based chicken sector is over-congested and highly competitive – there are around 20 brands making vegan nuggets alone. Just last week, Californian alt-nugget startup Nowadays announced it is ceasing operations amid a continued decline in plant-based meat sales in the US.
But Salem believes Recreate Foods’ positioning as a high-end company separates it from the crowd. “What clearly differentiates Recreate from others in the category is it’s simply a delicious chicken-based analogue,” he told trade publication Food Dive. “And we’re not a value-oriented brand, we’re a premium brand.”
He doubled down on this aspect by explaining the producer focuses on flavour and texture – two key components of concern about plant-based meat for consumers. “A lot of these big companies have a ton of resources, they have a lot of passion, they have a ton of exposure and media, but they don’t really necessarily have a great product,” said Salem.
“The ethos that we operate under as a company is that we’re not a science-based company. We’re not in the business of creating formulas. We’re in the business of creating delicious recipes.”
Photo: Recreate Foods/Instagram
From Burger King to Recreate Foods
Salem was the head of culinary development at Burger King for four years, and found his love for the plant-based category after launching the vegan Impossible Whopper burger exactly four years ago (8 August 2019). He called the unique impact of product launches one of the industry’s main attractions: “Not to trash the product launch of McCafé – it was a great launch – but it didn’t really change the world.”
He added that some brands prioritise virtue over quality: “We start to see companies position themselves as ‘It’s the right thing to do’ or really leaning in on vegans to kind of shame you into doing the right thing.”
However, he was also quoted as saying: “In the plant-based category, a product can be profitable, creative, incremental, and make perfect business sense. But more importantly, and more impactful for me, is it can have a tremendous impact on the pressure that we’re putting on livestock.”
During the launch of Hart House, he had a similar response: “I’ve seen too many animals die. I’ve been too guilty about the food I’ve been serving the community, making people really unhealthy for a long time, and I just don’t think it’s necessary. I think this is really the future of fast food, so that’s why I took the gig. I just thought it was an incredible chance to really make a difference and leave a legacy on food service and an industry that’s been so good to me.”
Whether it’s virtue- or flavour-first, the jury’s out on how a premium player will perform in an oversaturated and sales-hit category, but Salem is up for the challenge.
Prolonging what CEO Ethan Brown called “the most difficult period” for the plant-based giant, year-on-year sales at Beyond Meat fell by 30.5% to $102M, with a $53.5M net loss. The company has now reduced its full-year revenue forecast and walked back its earlier goal of becoming cashflow-positive in the second half of 2023. Brown ascribed the grim Q2 results to diminishing demand and problematic health perceptions of Beyond’s products.
After entering this year on an optimistic financial note – with its Q1 2023 earnings (while down year-on-year) exceeding Wall Street projections – Beyond had expected sharper revenue growth in the second half of 2023. But it has now reduced its full-year forecast from $375-415M (predicted in Q1) to $360-380M, giving up hope of achieving positive cashflow in the second half.
Beyond cites “greater-than-expected consumer and category headwinds and their anticipated impact on net revenues” as the reason for this. However, the company added it remained “firmly focused on achieving cash flow positive operations, including increased cost containment, and expects meaningfully reduced cash consumption for the balance of the year”.
The alt-meat giant – which laid off 19% of its staff last year – said gross profit was $2.3M in Q2, which meant a gross margin of 2.2%. This is an improvement from the previous year – a $6.2M loss and a negative gross margin of -4.2% – which Beyond attributes to lower materials costs, lower inventory reserves and lower logistics costs per pound. This was partially offset by higher manufacturing costs and lower net revenue per pound, and it represents a decline from the Q1 gross margin of 6.7%.
Beyond hit by fall in consumer demand for plant-based meat
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown called it “the most difficult period for the business” | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond’s Q2 results come amid a growing decline in demand for plant-based meat alternatives. A new Mintel survey of 1,400 US consumers suggests that only 20% followed a meat-reduced diet this year, with inflation causing 53% of consumers to try fewer new foods like plant-based substitutes. Participants cited taste (48%), nutrition (35%), cost (34%), texture (24%) and processing (21%) as their primary concerns against alt-meat.
It suggests that the category suffers from negative perceptions – reflecting Beyond CEO Brown’s comments on an earnings call to investors, against whom Beyond is facing a class-action lawsuit. “There is a considerable gap between the strong health credentials of our products and a broader counternarrative that is now afoot, and this gap appears to have widened,” he said, as reported by AgFunderNews.
“As was the case during the ascent of plant-based milk, this change in perception is not without encouragement from interest groups, who have succeeded in seeding doubt and fear around the ingredients and processes we use to create our and other plant-based meats,” he added. “Nor is it without contribution from well-meaning yet misguided comparisons of our products to kale salads, versus the animal-based meats they are intended to replace.”
He pointed to the company’s new There’s Goodness Here ad campaign, which subtly responds to years of targeted ads by meat industry interest groups against plant-based meat. The new ads highlight alt-meat’s positive impact on the environment, water and land use, energy footprint, as well as health and farmers. They also focus on a reduced ingredient list for the Beyond Steak, which is also the first meat product – animal- or plant-based – to be certified by the American Heart Association.
The aim is to alter consumer perceptions shaped by coordinated negative messaging against plant-based meat. It also keys into what people want: the Mintel report found that 30% of flexitarians avoid vegan meat alternatives because they are overproduced.
“If you look at Beyond Steak,” said Brown, “it’s absolutely delicious – you have such high levels of protein and a gram of saturated fat… Those things matter when the consumer is willing to come in. But if there’s a kind of cloud over the sector, those things matter less. So our number one goal is to lift that cloud.”
The Europe-US perception divide
With Beyond Steak, the company hopes to quell consumer concern about alt-meat’s health benefits and overprocessed ingredient lists | Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond’s international retail revenue was down by 15.6% year-on-year, while foodservice sales saw a more modest decline of 0.9%. But in the US – its home market – retail sales fell by 38.5%, while foodservice saw an even larger drop of 45.4% in the same period. Brown alluded to the differences in consumer perception between the US and Europe: “Consumers are very concerned about climate and the environment in Europe, government is concerned about it, and institutions are concerned about it.”
But in the US, plant-based food consumption is “more driven by health”, and there’s been a decline in the health perception of this sector. He cited a Food Marketing Institute study that found 50% of Americans believed plant-based meats were healthy in 2020, compared to just 38% in 2022. This echoes a 2023 Newsweek poll that showed 40% of Americans don’t believe eating less would help lower carbon emissions, which is in contrast to research that shows a vegan diet can cut emissions by 75% compared to a meat-heavy diet. “We now have to do the heavy work as an industry to fix that.”
He pointed to the “clear nutritional advantages” of Beyond Steak and other products compared to conventional meat. These include “no cholesterol, lower levels of saturated fats, the absence of antibiotics, hormones, and other veterinary drugs, the absence of carcinogenic compounds such as heterocyclic amines, and the absence of precursors to TMAO, a compound that researchers have associated with heart disease and certain cancers”.
Ethan noted that “while older people aren’t necessarily wrapping their minds” around their food’s impact on the climate, younger Americans are. He referenced how 44% of US foodservice provider Aramark’s residential dining menus at 250+ colleges and universities will be plant-based, while Sodexo’s commitment to make 50% of its college campus menus plant-based by 2025. “So the trend really is here.”
And it’s what keeps Brown optimistic. Despite Beyond Meat’s decline in year-on-year sales, quarterly revenue actually increased by 11%, ending a five-quarter streak of continuous revenue decline. Referring to the cut in its full-year revenue forecast, the CEO said: “We nevertheless expect a modest return to year-over-year top-line growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, and – relative to the first half of 2023 – a meaningful reduction in cash consumption and an increase in gross margin.”
While the plant-based industry has faced a slump, cost plays a big part. Like many branded products, Beyond’s alternatives are relatively expensive. A 2023 Kantar report suggests that while plant-based food brands have seen a 10% drop in sales, private-label supermarket offerings have grown by 14% in the last year. And reaching price parity with the conventional products Beyond Meat replaces is one of its top priorities in the coming months.
