Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Purple Carrot’s partnership with Fable Foods, Gosh!’s new points-based packaging, and SimpliiGood’s spirulina-based salmon.
New products and launches
Plant-based meal company Purple Carrot has addedFable Foods‘s Pulled Shiitake mushrooms to its lineup, including the Bluff Bourguignon Stew and BBQ Burnt Ends kits.
Courtesy: Purple Carrot
US non-dairy creamer brand Laird Superfood has released a larger 750ml pack of its functional-mushroom-infused coffee creamers, which come in Unsweetened, Sweet & Creamy, Cinnamon and Vanilla flavours.
In the UK, ready-to-eat vegan food brand Gosh! has revamped its packaging with a new ‘Plant Points’ system aimed at supporting the goal of eating 30 plants a week. Each point denotes the inclusion of a fruit, vegetable, whole grain, legume, or seed, and each of the brand’s products has a minimum of six points.
Courtesy: Gosh!
To mark Earth Day (April 22), Dutch cultivated pork startup Meatable has joined forces with Food Tank, the United Nations Global Compact, and The Hunger Project to tackle climate change and global hunger through the food system.
Also in honour of Earth Day, Indian plant-based brand Blue Tribe – backed by actress Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli – has launched an Eat Green Initiative to promote sustainable eating. The weeklong campaign (April 22-28) sees employees and influencers share recipes made with the company’s products.
At the ongoing Expo 2025 Osaka, members of Japan’s Cultivated Meat Future Creation Consortium are showcasing 3D-printed cultured meat and an at-home marbled meat maker, aiming to commercialise the products by 2031.
Company and finance updates
Indian plant protein manufacturer Proeon Foods has secured a €1M grant from the Province of South Holland, as part of the European Regional Development Fund, for its EGGcellent project. The startup is working with precision fermentation firmVivici, Applikon Biotechnology, and Planet B.io to develop an egg alternative for industrial baking applications.
Relsus, a Singaporean producer of functional plant-based ingredients, has opened a commercial-scale manufacturing facility in Ujjain, India.
Courtesy: Quevana
In Europe, cashew cheese maker Quevana has opened a 2,400 sq m facility in Segovia, Spain, which will double its capacity to over 400,000 units of fermented dairy-free cheese each month.
Swiss vegan seafood startup Catchfree has raised $1.45M in seed funding to scale up production and commercialise its plant-based shrimp, fish burgers, and fish bites this summer.
Elin Roberts and Christopher Kong, the co-founders and co-CEOs of British tempeh startup Better Nature, have been named in the Art & Culture of Forbes‘s 30 Under 30 list.
Courtesy: SimpliiGood
Armed with a $4M grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, AlgaeCore Technologies‘s SimpliiGood has secured European approval to commercialise its spirulina-based smoked salmon alternative. It is now pursuing clearance in the US too, has pilots with several companies, and will launch its first products as part of private-label brands within the next six months.
Alternative protein think tank The Good Food Institute is experiencing a change at the top, with CEO Ilya Sheyman departing in June. Jessica Almy, senior VP of policy and government relations, will take over as interim chief as the organisation hunts its next CEO.
Californian vegan frozen foods maker Sunday Supper has expanded its executive team, adding Spencer Oberg as CEO, Matt Williams as head of sales, and Chris Hays as CMO, as it kickstarts a $2.5M seed funding round.
Meanwhile, the Canadian province of Nova Scotia has invested $5M in the newly opened Neptune Bioinnovation Centre in Dartmouth. The 4,738 sq m facility will offer precision fermentation and spray drying capacity, and is set to create over 2,400 jobs and contribute $334M to the region’s annual GDP.
Courtesy: Government of Nova Scotia
Event organiser Emerald Expositions has acquired the Plant Based World Expo and its media platform, Plant Based World Pulse, from JD Events for an undisclosed sum. The deal includes both the North American and European editions of the show.
Research and policy developments
Amid the hike in dairy sales in the UK, plant-based milk is also on the rise for the first time since 2022, with sales volumes up by 2.1% between February 2024 and 2025. Oat milk is the leader, with a 7.2% growth in that period – it’s set to take 40% of the non-dairy market this year, according to Kantar.
In related news, British bakery chain Gail’s has dropped the surcharge on soy milk after a Peta campaign, offering the alternative for free from May 21. However, it will still ask customers to pay 40-60p extra if they want oat milk.
Courtesy: Gail’s
The US Department of Agriculture has cancelled the $3B Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities programme that aimed to promote environmentally friendly farming practices. The revocation of the Biden-era initiative is part of the Trump administration’s sweeping climate rollbacks.
In Canada, meanwhile, candidates from all four major political parties will participate in an election debate about animal protection today (April 23), organised by a group of animal welfare organisations, including Animal Justice and World Animal Protection.
Courtesy: Kai Kitschenberg/Funke Foto Services
In its TrendTracker 2024 report, food giant Cargillfound that 73% of consumers want their governments to set stricter environmental standards for the chocolate supply, just as European plant-based chocolates and desserts grew by 25% annually between 2019 and 2023.
Swapping out red meat for plant-based alternatives and choosing non-dairy milks can help cut the average Australian household’s emissions by six tonnes a year, research by the George Institute for Global Health has found.
Courtesy: Technical University of Denmark
Finally, researchers from Novonesis and the Technical University of Denmarksuggest that the bacteria in lactic acid could help reduce off-flavours and degrade anti-nutrients in plant-based dairy products, enhancing their taste profile and nutrient bioavailability.
Neat, the vegan burger chain backed by Sir Lewis Hamilton & Leonardo DiCaprio, has shut its remaining UK locations, after a spate of closures over the last 18 months.
Popular plant-based fast-food chain Neat has closed its two remaining sites in the UK, where it originated in 2019.
The celebrity-backed burger restaurant – which has had over a dozen locations in four countries – now only has two sites remaining in Milan, following closures in London, New York City and Dubai over the last 18 months.
The closure of the Camden and Wembley stores in London will potentially affect 150 jobs, and follows a challenging financial period for Neat.
“We have no further comment at this time, other than to confirm that the business has taken the difficult decision to close its UK restaurants,” a company spokesperson told The Sun, which first reported the news.
Neat’s UK closure marked by mounting losses
Neat at the 2025 Met Gala afterparty | Courtesy: Neat
Previously called Neat Burger, the chain opened to much fanfare in 2019, with Formula One legend Sir Lewis Hamilton an early backer, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio and footballer Thibaut Courtois joining as investors in subsequent rounds.
The company has raised over $25M and was valued at $100M in 2023, when it charted a path for expansion both domestically and outside the UK. However, this followed years of Covid-19-related turmoil for hospitality and foodservice businesses, and Neat wasn’t immune to the fallout.
In 2022, the company posted a £7.85M loss, up by 145% from the £3.2M loss reported in 2021. (Its 2023 accounts are overdue by a month, according to the UK’s Companies House.
This led to the closure of five UK restaurants in 2023, halving its footprint in the country. The chain also shelved plans to open four more locations here. The company attributed the losses to a drop in footfall in London’s financial district and West End due to the rise of post-pandemic hybrid working patterns, as well as a decline in demand for food delivery.
“We believe that sometimes, taking a step back is necessary to make a bigger leap forward,” Neat said at the time. “We remain deeply committed to our mission of providing delicious, sustainable, plant-based dining, and are excited about our future growth prospects.”
While it had earmarked more restaurant openings in the US and Middle East, over the course of 2024, its existing sites in these countries shut their doors too. This was followed by the closure of Neat’s outposts in London Victoria and Soho, and the departure of co-founder and director Zack Bishti.
Vegan restaurant closures continue
Courtesy: Neat
It has been tough going for the restaurant industry, and plant-based concepts haven’t been spared either. In the UK, restaurants are closing at the fastest rate in a decade – over 1,400 eateries shuttering between September 2023 and 2024, a 19% increase from the period 12 months prior. Rising ingredient, utility and rental costs have put more than 10% at an “imminent” risk of closure, experts say.
Since 2024, vegan fast-food restaurants The Vurger Co, Frost Burgers, Donner Summer, and JJ’s Vish and Chips all closed their doors, while Flower Burger exited the UK market. Bristol-based group Oowie, which had been expanding with a vegan-only approach, is now focusing on growing its diner-style restaurants with meat. In October, it turned a plant-based location into one serving animal products.
That trend is being seen in the US too, with Hot Tongue Pizza, Elf Cafe, Burgerlords, Margo’s, and Sage Regenerative Kitchen all adding animal proteins to their meat-free menus. The latter wound down earlier this year, becoming one of a number of casualties in Los Angeles’s restaurant industry.
Neat’s UK closure is the latest example that even celebrity backing may not be enough to survive in this landscape. In LA, Matthew Kenney’s VEG’D and Kevin Hart’s Hart House shut their doors in 2024, while in the UK, Made in Chelsea star Verity Bowditch and YouTuber Mikey Pearce’s Clean Kitchen Club closed its last remaining site in January, nine months after introducing meat on its previously vegan menu.
Meanwhile, Deliciously Ella also closed its Plants by DE eatery in Mayfair following its acquisition by Hero Group in September, despite retaining the restaurant in the deal.
But in an encouraging sign, two months after Unity Diner – the vegan fast-food restaurant co-owned by animal activist Ed Winters (aka Earthling Ed) – announced its closure due to rising costs, it successfully negotiated a new deal with its landlord and reopened in its original location in East London.
Atlantic Natural Foods, the plant-based company behind Loma Linda and Tuno, has filed for bankruptcy months after withdrawing from a takeover deal by Above Food.
In the latest example of the financial challenges facing the plant-based industry, one of the US’s foremost vegan food brands has filed for bankruptcy.
Atlantic Natural Foods, whose portfolio of brands includes Loma Linda, Tuno, Chick’n, and Neat, sought Chapter 11 protection in the Eastern District of Louisiana earlier this month.
It comes five months after the company mutually terminated an agreement to be acquired by fellow plant protein maker Above Food, citing rising food inflation, supply chain disruptions, and the impact of Covid-19.
Bankruptcy filing follows withdrawal from acquisition deal
Courtesy: Atlantic Natural Foods
The roots of Atlantic Natural Foods have been around for a long time. The company itself was founded in 2008, predating giants like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, but Loma Linda was first established in 1890 by John Harvey Kellogg, the founder of Kellanova.
Atlantic Natural Foods bought Loma Linda from its parent (then called Kellogg’s) in 2014, and has since expanded to over 25,000 stores in the US, plus 30 other countries.
It sells canned plant-based alternatives like hot dogs, steaks, tuna and chicken from Tuno, Chick’n and Loma Linda (an umbrella brand that also offers plant-based meals). Additionally, it makes vegan egg and meat substitutes via its Neat line and a caffeine-free coffee alternative through the Kaffree Roma range, and has a dedicated foodservice brand called Modern Menu.
The company – which has manufacturing plants in Nashville and North Carolina in the US, and Bangkok in Thailand – hasn’t provided a specific reason for its bankruptcy filing. But it plans to reorganise its business over the next few months.
In its petition to the district’s bankruptcy court, it listed $10-50M in assets and $1-10M in liabilities, with 100 to 199 creditors.
The development follows Atlantic Natural Foods’s decision to pull out of an acquisition deal with Above Food, which was first announced in 2021. It was ascribed to the former’s “strategic realignment following a comprehensive evaluation of the evolving business landscape”.
Had the $30M deal gone through, Atlantic Natural Foods would have become part of Above Food’s sprawling portfolio of 120 plant-based meat, dairy and baby food products and 17 unique grains and proteins, which are distributed at over 35,000 retail points in 29 countries.
Financial hurdles drive M&As in plant-based sector
Courtesy: Atlantic Natural Foods
“Operating in the industry’s ever-changing landscape has not been without its challenges, but we remain steadfast in our commitment to resetting the standards for the years ahead,” Doug Hines, chairman of Atlantic Natural Foods, said after the agreement was terminated.
“We are drawing on tried-and-true food preparation and supply methods that have withstood the test of time to meet the needs of our global consumers,” he added.
The two companies said they would continue to maintain their collaborative ties, with Atlantic Natural Foods keeping its shares in Above Foods, while the latter will retain its interest in the Loma Linda owner.
“This strategy allows us to reinstate our commitment to returning the company to its core principles, products and consumer while carrying out our mission of creating healthy food for the world in 2025 and beyond,” Hines said.
Over half of Americans identify beef as the most polluting food, and many are open to eating plant-based – but they need policy changes to support the shift.
Americans are hurting over the cost of beef to their wallets, and many also seem to know about its cost to the planet, a new survey has found.
Beef is the most emissive food on the planet, generating twice as many emissions as the next most polluting food, dark chocolate. When asked to rank five foods based on emissions, 54% correctly identified beef as the top emitter.
That said, surprisingly, a fifth of respondents ranked vegetables as the top polluting food, and another 10% said tofu. This was followed by cheese (9%) and nuts (7%).
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Conducted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and Morning Consult, the survey involved over 2,200 adults to explore Americans’ relationship with food sustainability ahead of Earth Day.
It found that despite the confusion about the climate impact of food production – and the discontent around ultra-processed meat alternatives – nearly half of the respondents (46%) would consider a plant-based diet for the sake of the environment. They’re also willing to back policies that educate them and address the problem.
Consumers would eat plant-based despite climate confusion
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Globally, the overall food system is responsible for a third of all emissions. This is mainly due to animal agriculture, which accounts for nearly 60% of the sector’s GHG footprint. In fact, according to one study, meat and dairy production is the leading cause of climate change.
According to the survey, more than half (54%) of Americans don’t know what foods contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, while only 9% know for certain. A Millennial postgraduate man who hails from the west, votes blue, and earns over $100,000 is most likely to be able to tell you which food items pollute the planet.
The results are reminiscent of previous research demonstrating the disconnect between food and climate change in the US. In 2023, one poll showed that 40% of Americans didn’t believe consuming less red meat would help lower emissions, and months later, another survey found that 74% of them thought cutting out meat would have no impact on the climate.
However, the PCRM-Morning Consult research reveals that 16% of consumers would “strongly consider” eating a plant-based diet to reduce emissions, and another 30% would “somewhat consider” it. While Gen Z and Black adults are among the least likely to identify which foods are the highest emitters, they’re also the most receptive to eating vegan.
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
Americans want their government to step up
The pollsters believe the findings exhibit the need for public education about agricultural emissions, with Gen Z and Black adults again the most supportive of policy changes that increase awareness about this.
But this is likely easier said than done, considering the vast climate cutbacks that have already occurred under a president who has a hard time believing climate change is real. Meanwhile, in his quest to Make America Healthy Again, Robert F Kennedy Jr has been singing the praises of raw milk and beef tallow while attacking more sustainable plant-based alternatives for being ultra-processed.
The American public, though, agrees that federal food policies – like the national dietary guidelines – should discuss the impact of food on the planet. It’s a sentiment that 60% of the survey’s respondents agree with, and only 19% don’t. This has bipartisan support too, resonating with 77% of Democrats, 55% of independents, and 50% of Republicans.
Courtesy: PCRM/Morning Consult
It’s a pertinent question, since the scientists who advise the USDA on the dietary guidelines have recommended cutting back red meat and prioritising plant-based proteins instead. It remains to be seen whether the government adopts these measures later this year.
Most adults (59%) also agree that the government should incentivise livestock farmers to transition towards plant-based farming, a belief that rings true across party lines, income levels, races, and ages.
However, a carbon tax on meat and dairy farming – like the one Denmark will begin in 2030 – is much more divisive. Two in five Americans agree that the livestock industry should be taxed to help offset climate change, but the same number disagree too. And one in five are unsure or neutral about this issue.
According to PCRM, though, this has to do with the perception that those taxes will hurt their own pockets, underscoring that while planetary costs matter to Americans, their wallets likely matter more.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers This’s pasta partnership with Ugo Foods Group, Starday’s $11M Series A round, and a nomination for the Earthshot Prize.
New products and launches
London-based meat alternative startup This and Ugo Foods Group‘s vegan ravioli products are hitting supermarkets, with the Bacon & Cheese and Chicken & Pesto flavours now available at 250 Morrisons stores, priced at £6 for two packs.
Courtesy: This
UK plant-based milk maker Rude Health has introduced a clean-label iced coffee range in oat latte and mocha variants. The 750ml ready-to-drink Tetra Paks are available at Waitrose for £3.75, and Ocado at the end of the month.
Also in the UK, plant protein brand Tibah Tempeh has released a Smoky Block. It’s available for £3 per 220g pack at Ocado (from April 18), and Sainsbury’s and Waitrose at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, free-from snacking company Crave has expanded its lineup with a gluten-free, vegan Pink Cheetahs wafer biscuit, available at 480 Sainsbury’s stores for £2 per 100g.
Courtesy: Eurest
In more news from the island, Eurest – the corporate division of Compass Group, the world’s largest catering company – partnered with plant-based chef duo Bosh! for a new vegan smokehouse menu at Jaguar Land Rover‘s head office in Warwickshire.
Vegan meal kit brand Grubby has partnered with artisanal non-dairy cheese maker Julienne Bruno on a limited-edition Creamy Burrata-Topped Za’atar-Spiced Squash option for Easter.
Across the Atlantic, Fungi protein startup Nature’s Fynd, meanwhile, has launched Spicy Indian Fy Bites at Plantegalocations in New York City. They contain 14g of protein and 5g of fibre per serving.
Courtesy: Nature’s Fynd
Miyoko’s Creamery has rolled out a new flavour of its spreadable cashew cheese. The Jalapeño Plant Milk Cheese Spread can be found at Nugget Market stores for $6.99 per 8oz tub, with further retailers to follow this summer.
Vegan cheese giant Violife has partnered with James Beard Award finalist Dan Richer to launch the first-ever non-dairy pizza at his Jersey City pizzeria Razza. The Spicy Vegan Vodka Pizza is made with plant-based mozzarella shreds and on the menu until the end of the month.
Chilean food tech unicorn NotCo has expanded its partnership with Aeromexico to offer passengers in its Premier and Premier One classes a NotBurger with manchego-inspired NotCheese until May 31.
Courtesy: Vinker
Canada’s Vinker is bringing its vegan Korean Crispy Chick’n to the US, rolling out at Pop Up Grocer in Manhattan, New York.
Germany’s Loryma, a subsidiary of Crespel & Deiters Group, has launched Lory Stab, a stabilising compound of technically treated raw materials to replace eggs and dairy in baked goods.
Swiss plant-based meat leader Planted has announced former wrestler Christian Stucki as a brand ambassador for its upcoming BBQ campaign, alongside a new Paprika steak and listings at several new retailers in Europe.
Courtesy: Planted
In Hong Kong, plant protein producer Ferm by SpiceBox Organic has teamed up with food preservation specialist Ixon to launch a shelf-stable range of tempeh, vegan meatballs, and plant-based meat sauce for pasta.
And in India, Mumbai’s Bandra district is home to Pause Café, a new all-vegan 32-seater eatery serving continental dishes and desserts.
Company, policy and awards
Speaking of restaurants, US vegan taco chain Tacotarian has launched a franchise programme as part of its expansion strategy.
Courtesy: Starday
AI-powered plant-based snacking brand Starday has raised $11M in Series A funding to accelerate its retail expansion and partner with retailers and CPG brands to create bespoke products. It takes the company’s total funding to $20M.
Meanwhile, US precision fermentation manufacturer Liberation Labs has received a strategic investment from Saudi Arabia’s Neom Investment Fund to establish a local facility for Neom’s food company, Topian.
US manufacturing specialist SPX Flow has partnered with the Danish Agricultural Agency‘s Green Development and Demonstration Program’s LinkingOat project to advance oat-based product development.
Courtesy: Beneo
In Germany, plant-based functional food ingredient maker Beneo has opened a €50M pulse processing in Orbigheim. The 4,000 sq m facility also produces Palatinose, a ‘smart carb’ ingredient that promotes GLP-1 release.
Ramkumar Nair, founder and former CEO of mycoprotein startupMycorena, has established fungi protein firm Smaqo, with a direct-to-consumer focus.
In Spain, the National Centre for Food Technology and Safety‘s EATEX Food Innovation Hub has launched an Agrifoodtech Sandbox to offer companies a “controlled, forward-looking environment” to test breakthrough technologies and products operating at the edge of regulatory frameworks.
Courtesy: Opalia
Finally, Canadian cell-cultured milk maker Opalia has been nominated for the 2025 Earthshot Prize by Impact Entrepreneur.
Kraft Heinz has launched the first ready-to-eat vegan offering under its iconic Jell-O brand, a dairy-free version of its chocolate pudding.
Packaged food giant Kraft Heinz is for the first time diving into plant-based desserts, debuting an oat milk chocolate pudding as part of the Jell-O brand.
The company says it is hoping to cater to Americans with a milk allergy or lactose intolerance, as well as the four in five parents who have expressed interest in buying non-dairy desserts for their kids, arguing that current options on the market are limited and fall short on taste and texture.
It’s betting on oat milk – the fastest-growing plant-based alternative in the US – to address those shortcomings and veganise its signature chocolate pudding cups, which were first released nearly a century ago in the 1930s.
The new SKU, which comes as a 14oz pack of four, is rolling out at retailers nationwide, at a price of $3.99. In contrast, the dairy-based version retails for as low as $3.69 per 15.5oz pack.
Leveraging oat milk’s ‘skyrocketing’ popularity
Courtesy: Kraft Heinz
Best known for its gelatin-based desserts, Jell-O is finally foraying into animal-free products. While most of its pudding mixes are dairy-free, they’re meant to be mixed with milk at home.
Choosing chocolate as the first non-dairy pudding flavour was a strategic decision – it’s an homage to the range’s foremost and most well-known flavour. It is banking on the creamy consistency and mild flavour of gluten-free oat milk to recreate the signature taste and texture in a plant-based format.
According to Kraft Heinz, oat milk is “skyrocketing in popularity for desserts” thanks to these attributes, making it “the perfect solution” for the Jell-O pudding cups.
Aside from oat milk, the ready-to-eat product contains sugar, cornstarch, canola oil, alkalised cocoa powder, faba bean protein, and some flavourings, emulsifiers and stabilisers.
Each 99g serving contains 3.5g of fat (0.5g of which is saturated), 15g of added sugar – with the caveat that the FDA’s recent changes mandate the labelling of natural sugars in oats as added – 1g of fibre, and 2g of protein. In contrast, the original Jell-O chocolate pudding cups have 1.5g of fat (all saturated), 17g of added sugar, and the same amount of protein and fibre.
“As our fans’ diets and preferences change, we’re evolving our portfolio alongside them,” said Lauren Gumbiner, associate director of marketing desserts at Kraft Heinz. “Our chocolate pudding is a timeless classic, and now, thanks to our lactose-free and vegan oat milk version, we’re excited to give more families the opportunity to enjoy it.”
A vote of confidence for the non-dairy category
Courtesy: Kraft Heinz
In the US, milk is amongst the most common food allergies in kids, affecting 1.9 million children each year. Meanwhile, over 30% of Americans suffer from lactose intolerance – and that number is especially high among people of colour, rising to 65% of Hispanic Americans, 75% of Black Americans, 90% of Asian Americans, and 95% of Native Americans.
The prevalance of lactose intolerance has pushed many big companies to rethink their non-dairy policies, with coffee chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ removing the plant-based milk surcharge after facing class-action lawsuits. Even lawmakers have joined forces on a bipartisan bill that would make alternatives like soy and almond milk more accessible in school meals.
Meanwhile, pudding is one of America’s favourite desserts, consumed by over 40% of the population (a share that continues to grow each year), according to data cited by Kraft Heinz.
As parents showcase an interest in non-dairy options and companies become more allergy-friendly, the opportunity for plant-based desserts is ripe. These products have enjoyed a steady growth in recent years, with dollar sales up by 23% between 2021 and 2023.
And one research firm values that the global market for vegan desserts at $3.7B this year, predicting an annual growth of 8.5% to reach $8.5B in a decade’s time. This is what Kraft Heinz is banking on with the Jell-O oat milk pudding cups.
The food leader’s move is a ringing endorsement of the non-dairy category in the US. The discourse around ultra-processed foods and resurgence of raw milk has led to a 6% decline in plant-based milk consumption in the US, versus a 2% hike in cow’s milk last year. For one of the country’s largest food producers to launch a non-dairy version of a legacy product speaks volumes of the market’s potential.
It’s not the first classic Kraft Heinz has ‘veganised’ of late. Through its joint venture with Chilean food tech unicorn NotCo – called The Kraft Heinz Not Company – it has launched dairy-free versions of Kraft Singles and its signature mac and cheese. Outside the dairy world, the label has introduced egg-free mayonnaise and plant-based Oscar Mayer hot dogs too.
Eat Just is bringing its bestselling vegan egg to Europe after striking a distribution deal with Vegan Food Group, which is investing £11.5M ($15.2M) to ramp up production at its sites.
Just Egg – the pioneering vegan egg alternative from California’s Eat Just – is crossing the Atlantic following a partnership with Vegan Food Group (VFG), which has secured exclusive rights to manufacture and distribute the mung bean egg in Europe.
VFG is set to begin manufacturing the product in late 2025, and has pumped £11.5M ($15.2M) to build a fully automated line to produce Just Egg at its facility in Lüneburg, Germany (the largest dedicated plant-based factory in Europe), as well as boost automation and efficiency across its UK and German sites.
“European consumers clearly desire innovative, sustainable food options, and collaborating with VFG is key to meeting that demand effectively,” Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick told the Grocer. “This investment in the Lüneburg facility represents a crucial step towards making high-quality plant-based egg alternatives widely accessible to our global audience.”
Just Egg finally breaks Europe
Courtesy: Eat Just
Just Egg’s journey to Europe has been long in the making. In 2018, before it even hit supermarkets in the US, Eat Just agreed to a manufacturing and distribution deal with Italian egg supplier Eurovo. This was followed by a sales and distribution agreement with German poultry giant PHW Group a year later, with the liquid mung bean egg initially slated to launch by the end of 2019.
However, this was always subject to novel food regulatory approval by the European Food Safety Authority, whose expert committees deemed the product safe in October 2021.
Six months later, Eat Just received approval from the European Commission, meaning no other company was allowed to use mung bean proteins for egg alternatives in the region for five years, unless it goes through the same novel food process. At the time, the firm had teased a Q4 launch of the product.
Now, with the VFG partnership, the food tech unicorn is finally clearing all the hurdles that have hampered its European arrival.
Through its investment, VFG will enhance automation, extend shelf life, cut waste, and improve product quality at its facilities in the UK and Germany. It will also support retailers and foodservice partners with “next-gen innovation and operational excellence”.
“This partnership is a huge leap forward in transforming plant-based food across Europe,” said Matthew Glover, co-founder and chairman of VFG.
Avian-flu-fuelled egg crisis boosts Eat Just sales
Courtesy: Eat Just
The Europe announcement comes just as Just Egg sees “increases in sales like we didn’t see in the past” in the US, according to Tetrick.
The current bout of avian flu has wrecked the conventional egg industry in the US, with over 167 million birds culled since February 2022. Prices have continued to rise, reaching a record high of $6.23 per dozen in retail in March. In some cities, each egg costs $1 now.
With egg shelves empty, if Americans want eggs, they only have a few choices, Tetrick told Green Queen in February: “One, don’t eat them. Two, you know, have applesauce. Or three, have Just Egg.”
The company says it’s already sold the equivalent of 500 million chicken eggs and captured 99% of the market for alternatives in the US, and the egg shortage has brought about a windfall for Eat Just’s mung bean innovation. In January alone, Just Egg’s sales grew five times faster than in the past year, while 56% of shoppers returned to buy more (a three-point increase from 2024). Most shoppers (91%) putting it in their basket, meanwhile, are neither vegan nor vegetarian.
“We have some of the largest chains in the country reaching out to us – on the foodservice side, the convenience store side – saying they don’t know when this is going to end, and they want to bring in something that’s more reliable and more permanent, i.e., what we’re doing,” Tetrick said. “This is a real moment in time for the plant-based industry to prove that it’s up to the challenge.”
VFG CEO Dave Sparrow echoed this sentiment following its link-up with Eat Just, noting: “Our partnership with Eat Just marks a significant milestone, aligning perfectly with our ambition to transform plant-based food across Europe.”
Can Just Egg fill Europe’s egg shortage and appetite?
Courtesy: Eat Just
The egg crisis isn’t just restricted to the US – in Europe, the cost of eggs has reached its highest in at least a decade, reaching €268.5 ($292) per 100kg last month. But as people seek cheaper protein sources than meat, the demand for eggs continues to increase, even if supplies don’t.
At the same time, Europe’s plant-based egg market is set to grow by 40% annually to reach $3.88B in 2031, so the opportunity for disruptors like Eat Just is there. Here, it will compete with fellow vegan liquid egg producers Crackd (UK), Perfeggt (Germany) and Vegge (Italy).
That said, the industry isn’t without its challenges. British brand Oggs, known for its aquafaba, also marketed a liquid whole egg alternative, but it hasn’t been in stock in supermarkets for several months now. VFG’s Sparrow, though, is confident that Just Egg is up to the task. “There are other egg replacements on the market, but quality-wise, there’s nothing that can stack up against Eat Just,” he said.
Eat Just, which reformulated its mung bean egg to deliver greater flavour and functionality last year, will also take solace in the success of fellow American plant-based giant Beyond Meat, which entered the European market in 2018. While the vegan burger maker has had a tough couple of years, its foodservice partnerships in Europe have been a constant bright spot.
Meanwhile, another major plant-based player, Impossible Foods, is hoping to bring its ‘bleeding’ burger to Europe soon, having cleared key food safety assessments last year. It will now undergo a public consultation period before seeking final approval from the EU Commission and its member states.
French catering giant Sodexo is expanding its partnership with Greener by Default to roll out plant-forward menus at 400 hospitals in the US.
To help Americans stay healthier, spend less money, and be kinder to the planet, Sodexo is expanding its plant-heavy menus across all US hospitals it caters to.
To do so, it’s diversifying its partnership with Greener by Default, a behavioural choice agency that advocates for menus that prioritise plant-based food over animal options.
The expansion builds on the success of their campaign with NYC Health + Hospitals, which rolled out its ‘plant-based by default’ scheme at all 11 public hospitals in the city to great success. That initiative has served over two million patients since its 2022 launch, with a 90% satisfaction rate.
Sodexo’s menus position vegan meals as the default option for one meal per day at 131 hospitals already, but this will now be extended to an additional 200 hospitals this year, and bring the total to 400 by 2026.
“Our collaboration with Greener by Default is driven by our shared goal to advance and promote plant-based dining in hospitals across the US through effective choices,” said Molly Matthews, CEO of Sodexo’s healthcare and seniors divisions.
“We anticipate continued success of the plant-based menu expansion and its positive impact on our clients and their patients.”
Sodexo looks to replicate NYC success
Courtesy: Better Food Foundation
The New York City scheme saw plant-based meals become the preexisting option for patients. The first meal offered is the chef’s recommendation, and is always plant-based. If this isn’t accepted, they’re presented with an alternative vegan option. If that is rejected too, many other dishes are available.
Patients are presented with nutritional information to encourage healthy eating both during and after their stay, hospital TVs and screensavers include an appealing image of vegan food with text highlighting its health benefits, and tray carts pushed through halls are wrapped in imagery that promotes plant-based meals. When being discharged, patients also receive a vegan recipe book collected from hospital staff submissions.
All this has led to a 36% reduction in food emissions. And the savings don’t just come from carbon – the vegan dishes are 59 cents cheaper than meat-based dishes on average.
The success of this programme has spurred Sodexo’s expansion. Early data from another hospital already offering plant-based meals by default shows that patients have been eating 36% more vegan entrées, while their selection of meat-based mains has declined by 20%.
These numbers may be preliminary, but they suggest that even if 10% of the 290,000 meals Sodexo serves to patients daily shift from animals to plants, the caterer could transition more than 10 million meals a year.
The company argues its vegan meal programme preserves freedom of choice and provides an array of protein options for diners, with dishes including Cajun pastalaya, southwest potato breakfast bowl, and balsamic stuffed portobello mushrooms. It cites research showing that plant-based eating can “significantly lower” the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers.
“As a leader in healthy-outcomes-based menus and protocols through our Clinicia patient nutrition programs, we recognised the need for a partner like Greener by Default to support our efforts in educating teams, promoting our plant-based meal options, and extracting meaningful data for improved outcomes,” Matthews noted.
Plant-based meals scheme part of climate strategy
Courtesy: NYC Health + Hospitals
“The continued success of patient menus that position plant-based options as the default demonstrates how small, cost-effective shifts can have an outsized impact, while still preserving freedom of choice for diners and ensuring their access to nutritious, sustainable foods that don’t compromise on taste,” said Greener by Default co-founder and CEO Katie Cantrell.
The non-profit has teamed up with 18 hospitals and healthcare systems (both in the US and overseas) in the last year alone, developing plant-forward menus to help improve health and climate outcomes, decrease costs, and prioritise diner satisfaction.
Sodexo, meanwhile, has rolled out a similar initiative at 400 US universities via a partnership with behavioural science non-profit Food for Climate League and dietary change think tank the Better Food Foundation, using the latter’s DefaultVeg approach.
The caterer’s Good Eating Company had previously partnered with Greener by Default on a successful corporate pilot with LinkedIn, halving the carbon emissions of the social media company’s San Francisco office. The 12-week pilot saved 14,400 of CO2e by making two-thirds of the menu vegan, including opting for oat milk as the default coffee bar choice and flavour descriptors over words like ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ on menu cards.
All this plays into its climate targets. The company plans to lower emissions by 34% by this year (from a 2017 baseline) and make 70% of all its meals low-carbon by the end of the decade, as part of a wider goal to reach net zero by 2040.
A rising number of festivals are going meat-free amid a wider sustainability shift in the live music industry, a new report has revealed.
In a year when one British band set the Guinness World Record for the lowest-carbon concert of all time, more and more music festivals undertook sustainability initiatives to mitigate their impact on the planet.
Live industry sustainability non-profit A Greener Future (AGF) – which advised trip-hop pioneer Massive Attack on its record-breaking Act 1.5 festival in August – suggests that after transportation, food and beverages are the biggest contributors to an event’s emissions.
A new report by AGF – analysing 40 festivals from 16 countries – indicates that organisers recognise the climate impact of food and drinks, with a fifth of the festivals being fully vegan or vegetarian in 2024, a massive jump from 8% the year before.
On average, around 55% of the food at all these events was meat-free. And even after excluding fully meatless events, that share stood strong at 50%. The difference in environmental impact is stark – when discounting audience travel, food alone makes up over a quarter of the remaining emissions in festivals where meat is served, though this shrinks to less than 10% for vegetarian events.
This should come as no surprise, considering that meat and dairy production is responsible for up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, an impact twice as big as that of plant-based food.
Courtesy: A Greener Future
How did live music events fare for the climate in 2024?
AGF called the uptake of vegan and vegetarian food by the live industry a “promising sign”, noting how “industrial animal agriculture and food production are among the biggest drivers of climate change and nature decline, and form a major part of an event’s environmental impact”.
The research revealed that more than half (54%) of the festivals collected data on the food served, while 82% had a formal food and drink sustainability policy.
There was progress across other metrics as well. The average daily waste per person per day across all festival types was 0.8kg – in contrast, this amounted to 1.4kg per person in the EU in 2023. Waste management improved too, as recycling rates rose from 38% in 2022 to 49% in 2024, while almost a quarter (23%) of events had a food salvation or redistribution strategy in place.
Moreover, two-thirds of festivals implemented a reusable cup system across the event, while 70% introduced a ban on single-use plastic.
Meanwhile, a quarter of the festivals ran entirely on mains electricity, and 20% ran on biofuel derived from hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO). The use of the latter increased with the size of the festival, with nearly half of the energy at festivals with 50,000 or more attendees coming from HVO generators.
Courtesy: A Greener Future
The biggest culprit was audience travel, which made up between 34-90% of festival emissions, depending on its location, nature, and scale. The use of public transport, bikes and on-foot travel decreased in 2024 in favour of private cars and taxis. That said, electric cars were also slightly more common, though still representing a fraction of the total.
“There is room for improvement with regards to getting fossil fuels out of festivals and low-carbon travel, but we know how to do this and expect to see a rapid decline in diesel use in the coming years,” said AGF CEO Claire O’Neill.
“Festivals that work with AGF or apply for certification are generally environmentally aware and active,” she added. “Nevertheless, these results are promising, showing a trend towards decarbonisation and waste reduction.”
Bands and artists recognising the potential of low-carbon food
The report comes at a time when musical acts are growing increasingly conscious of their climate footprints. It’s why Massive Attack’s Act 1.5 festival sought to lay out a low-carbon playbook for the live events industry.
The festival featured 100% plant-based catering, an electric-powered stage, free electric shuttles and extra services in partnership with rail operators, and no car park. The brand prioritised local residents by giving them presale access and incentivised the use of public transport by offering access to a VIP bar and separate toilets.
Massive Attack and the organisers had a plan in place to prevent food waste, including redistribution and composting. People were encouraged to bring their own reusable cups for drinks, and all serveware was compostable. Additionally, no single-use plastics were allowed on site, either from traders or audience members.
Other artists are upping their sustainability game, too. Coldplay published a 12-point plan to halve their tour’s carbon footprint and successfully reduced its Music Of The Spheres Tour’s emissions by 59%, a figure it noted had been verified by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. Crucially, however, this did not take into account audience travel, the largest source of emissions for these types of events.
In terms of food, it’s common to see plant-based food options available at the concerts of some of the biggest artists in the world. Billie Eilish, a noted vegan, directed London’s O2 Arena to serve only plant-based food during her 2022 residency and followed it up by ensuring vegan food is available at all venues of her ongoing Hit Me Hard and Soft tour. San Jose’s SAP Center went one step further, offering a completely vegan menu for her October dates.
Even Taylor Swift – often (fairly) criticised for her use of private jets – served plant-based meat at some of her Eras Tour shows. (While it’s a welcome measure, it does very little to move the needle – especially when accounting for the emissions from her record-breaking world tour.)
“We are happy to see more festivals going plant-based as this is one of the single most important changes events can make to protect nature and tackle climate change, and costs nothing,” said O’Neill.
A rising number of festivals are going meat-free amid a wider sustainability shift in the live music industry, a new report has revealed.
In a year when one British band set the Guinness World Record for the lowest-carbon concert of all time, more and more music festivals undertook sustainability initiatives to mitigate their impact on the planet.
Live industry sustainability non-profit A Greener Future (AGF) – which advised trip-hop pioneer Massive Attack on its record-breaking Act 1.5 festival in August – suggests that after transportation, food and beverages are the biggest contributors to an event’s emissions.
A new report by AGF – analysing 40 festivals from 16 countries – indicates that organisers recognise the climate impact of food and drinks, with a fifth of the festivals being fully vegan or vegetarian in 2024, a massive jump from 8% the year before.
On average, around 55% of the food at all these events was meat-free. And even after excluding fully meatless events, that share stood strong at 50%. The difference in environmental impact is stark – when discounting audience travel, food alone makes up over a quarter of the remaining emissions in festivals where meat is served, though this shrinks to less than 10% for vegetarian events.
This should come as no surprise, considering that meat and dairy production is responsible for up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, an impact twice as big as that of plant-based food.
Courtesy: A Greener Future
How did live music events fare for the climate in 2024?
AGF called the uptake of vegan and vegetarian food by the live industry a “promising sign”, noting how “industrial animal agriculture and food production are among the biggest drivers of climate change and nature decline, and form a major part of an event’s environmental impact”.
The research revealed that more than half (54%) of the festivals collected data on the food served, while 82% had a formal food and drink sustainability policy.
There was progress across other metrics as well. The average daily waste per person per day across all festival types was 0.8kg – in contrast, this amounted to 1.4kg per person in the EU in 2023. Waste management improved too, as recycling rates rose from 38% in 2022 to 49% in 2024, while almost a quarter (23%) of events had a food salvation or redistribution strategy in place.
Moreover, two-thirds of festivals implemented a reusable cup system across the event, while 70% introduced a ban on single-use plastic.
Meanwhile, a quarter of the festivals ran entirely on mains electricity, and 20% ran on biofuel derived from hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO). The use of the latter increased with the size of the festival, with nearly half of the energy at festivals with 50,000 or more attendees coming from HVO generators.
Courtesy: A Greener Future
The biggest culprit was audience travel, which made up between 34-90% of festival emissions, depending on its location, nature, and scale. The use of public transport, bikes and on-foot travel decreased in 2024 in favour of private cars and taxis. That said, electric cars were also slightly more common, though still representing a fraction of the total.
“There is room for improvement with regards to getting fossil fuels out of festivals and low-carbon travel, but we know how to do this and expect to see a rapid decline in diesel use in the coming years,” said AGF CEO Claire O’Neill.
“Festivals that work with AGF or apply for certification are generally environmentally aware and active,” she added. “Nevertheless, these results are promising, showing a trend towards decarbonisation and waste reduction.”
Bands and artists recognising the potential of low-carbon food
The report comes at a time when musical acts are growing increasingly conscious of their climate footprints. It’s why Massive Attack’s Act 1.5 festival sought to lay out a low-carbon playbook for the live events industry.
The festival featured 100% plant-based catering, an electric-powered stage, free electric shuttles and extra services in partnership with rail operators, and no car park. The brand prioritised local residents by giving them presale access and incentivised the use of public transport by offering access to a VIP bar and separate toilets.
Massive Attack and the organisers had a plan in place to prevent food waste, including redistribution and composting. People were encouraged to bring their own reusable cups for drinks, and all serveware was compostable. Additionally, no single-use plastics were allowed on site, either from traders or audience members.
Other artists are upping their sustainability game, too. Coldplay published a 12-point plan to halve their tour’s carbon footprint and successfully reduced its Music Of The Spheres Tour’s emissions by 59%, a figure it noted had been verified by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. Crucially, however, this did not take into account audience travel, the largest source of emissions for these types of events.
In terms of food, it’s common to see plant-based food options available at the concerts of some of the biggest artists in the world. Billie Eilish, a noted vegan, directed London’s O2 Arena to serve only plant-based food during her 2022 residency and followed it up by ensuring vegan food is available at all venues of her ongoing Hit Me Hard and Soft tour. San Jose’s SAP Center went one step further, offering a completely vegan menu for her October dates.
Even Taylor Swift – often (fairly) criticised for her use of private jets – served plant-based meat at some of her Eras Tour shows. (While it’s a welcome measure, it does very little to move the needle – especially when accounting for the emissions from her record-breaking world tour.)
“We are happy to see more festivals going plant-based as this is one of the single most important changes events can make to protect nature and tackle climate change, and costs nothing,” said O’Neill.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Bold Bean Co’s Ottolenghi collaboration, Beyond Meat’s new documentary, and Miyoko Schinner’s upcoming vegan cookbook.
New products and launches
British cult-favourite bean brand Bold Bean Co has teamed up with internationally renowned Israeli-British chef Yotam Ottolenghi to launch a new Queen Black Chickpea SKU. It can be found on both their websites, as well as Waitrose for £4 per 700g jar.
UK frozen foods retailer Iceland has expanded its collaborative lineup with TGI Fridays to include a melt-in-the-middle vegan burger and a returning sesame-glazed chicken strips SKU.
British fermented food brand The Cultured Collective is bringing its sauerkraut and kimchi to 183 Sainsbury’s stores starting today. The fennel, apple and dill sauerkraut retails for £4.50 per 235g jar, while the original kimchi is priced at £4.75 per 250g jar.
Hollywood Bowl Group, which operates the Hollywood Bowl and Putt & Play mini-golf centres in the UK, has introduced the Beyond Burger at all its 75 locations in the country. It will cost £6.79 and comes with fries (which are not vegan) or tortillas.
Plant-based giant Pulmuone has rolled out limited-edition packaging for some of its ranges for Earth Month, which will be used across its Pulmuone, Nasoya, and Wildwood brands.
Meanwhile, Disneyland restaurant Bengal Barbecue has addedImpossible Lettuce Wraps to its menu, pairing the pioneer’s plant-based meat with shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and water chestnuts. The dish is priced at $12.49.
Courtesy: Prime Roots
Mycelium-based whole-cut meat maker Prime Roots has expanded to Canada and will introduce its deli range – which includes ham, turkey, pepperoni, salami and bacon – at the Restaurants Canada Show in Toronto (April 9-11) and the Canadian Food Health Association fair in Vancouver (April 24-27).
US startup Oddball has debuted its vegan Jell-O alternative in mango, grape, double berry and pink grapefruit flavours. The jiggly fruit snacks are available on its website for $26.99 per six-pack, and will roll at Sprouts Farmers Market this month.
Courtesy: Better Nature Tempeh
Back in Europe, British tempeh brand Better Nature has rolled out its Organic Tempeh and Smoky Tempeh into 200 more Rewe Mitte stores in Germany, taking its footprint to 350 in the local region and over 1,300 across the country.
French plant-based meat leader La Vie has unveiled a new line of American sandwiches using its pork alternatives. Available at supermarkets nationwide for €3.49, the BBQ Lover (with bacon) and Ranch Lover (with ham) variants come encased in Viennois baguettes.
Courtesy: La Vie
Speaking of French retailers, Carrefour has partnered with Brazilian vegan food maker Vida Veg to add three vegan cheeses – mozzarella and two cream cheese flavours – to its own-label offerings in the increasingly health-conscious Latin American country.
Dairy-free cheese queen Miyoko Schinner has announced September 16 as the release date for her upcoming cookbook, The Vegan Creamery. It’s available for pre-order now ($26.99).
Courtesy: Ten Speed Press
Animal welfare non-profit Connect For Animals has launched a new mobile app to help advocates take action, discover local and virtual events, and meet other like-minded people.
Company and finance updates
Cultivated meat made it to national television in the US, with CBS NewsinterviewingMission Barns founder and CEO Eitan Fischer and product development director Daniel Ryan about the firm’s cultivated pork fat, which was approved for sale by the FDA last month.
Courtesy: Mission Barns/CBS
Canada’s n!Biomachines, a subsidiary of cell cultivation tech specialist The Cultivated B, has partnered with automation giant Siemens to showcase the Auxo V bioreactor at the 2025 Hannover Messe trade fair (March 31 to April 25), which aims to scale up alternative protein production more efficiently.
Across the Atlantic, British cultivated Wagyu beef maker Ivy Farm Technologies has appointed Gail Francis as its VP of commercial. She was previously the business growth director at Naylor Nutrition.
Courtesy: Ivy Farm Technologies
Also in the UK, vegan restaurant chain Herbivorous is shuttering all three of its sites in Manchester, Sheffield and York due to “increasing costs”
Two vegan startups have won grants under EIT Food’s Fast Track to Market Initiative, with Germany’s BettaF!sh earning €248,000 to launch salmon and tuna salad cans and a seaweed extract, and Austria’s Hooked Foods receiving €221,000 to introduce a Super Protein ingredient with 30-35g of protein per 100g.
Policy and research developments
A new study by CashNetUSA highlights how vegan food prices differ at Walmart stores across the US, with Arkansas being the cheapest (3.8% below the national average) and Hawaii the most expensive (34% above the mean).
Researchers at Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA) have created a toolkit to help food manufacturers improve the texture of products. They worked with meat alternative startup v2food to help it assess its work on enhancing its burger’s texture.
Ahmed Khan, a bioscience enterprise MPhil from Cambridge University, became the “first person to speak about cellular agriculture and cultivated meat” during a debate at the Cambridge Union.
Also speaking truth to power was Bernat Anaños, co-founder and comms chief of Spanish plant-based meat leader Heura Foods, who addressed the Congreso de los Diputados (the lower house of Spain’s legislative branch) about the need for a food systems transformation led by plants.
Finally, Toronto-based vegan salmon maker New School Foods has been named one of Canadian Business‘s Innovation Awards winners for 2025.
From animal-free egg salad to a milk alternative made from corn, here are the future food products that stood out most to our expert reviewer at Expo West 2025.
It’s that time of year again: when Anaheim, California is packed with out-of-towners, and they’re not all headed to Disneyland. Move over, Mickey Mouse – because it’s March, and the most sought-after attraction in town is New Hope’s Natural Products Expo West.
Expo West is the largest tradeshow for natural, organic, and healthy products in North America, aka the “Superbowl of CPG”, and it seems to be regaining the popularity it had prior to Covid-19.
With a revamped schedule – organisers dropped Saturday in favour of Tuesday through Friday only, with all halls open Wednesday to Friday, new buyers’ hours, and a community breakfast – this year’s show brought together over 64,000 attendees and more than 3,000 exhibitors.
While I walked the halls lined with rows upon rows of vendor booths, what struck me the most was how underrepresented the alternative protein sector seemed to be. There were noticeably fewer alternative meat brands. Apart from Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, stalwarts like NotCo, Hungry Planet, Better Balance, and Quorn were all MIA this year.
It’s disappointing but not surprising, given the state of the industry, the UPF narrative that is dominating the mainstream media, and the current political climate. There was a mix of excitement and concern in the air. Excitement about new consumer health requirements and concern about the impact of tariffs and inflation on the US economy. Still, I enjoyed reconnecting with familiar brands and discovering a few new ones.
The noteworthy trends I spotted this year centred around boosting protein in snacks, beverages and anything else people consume, a CPG focus on cleaner and healthier ingredient lists, ‘alt’ alt-milks like pistachio milk popping up everywhere, shrooms still reigning supreme (even in the form of gummies), and functional snacks and drinks abound – hydration, baby!
So, what caught my eye and tickled my taste buds at Expo West 2025? Here are my top 11 picks (in no particular order).
Beyond Meat’s mycelium steak fillet
Courtesy: Alessandra Franco
Beyond Meat unveiled its brand-new whole-cut mycelium-based steak at a Happy Hour on the second day of the show. As far as I’m concerned, Beyond very much delivered on its promise of a steak that “mirrors the texture, flavour, and experience of a premium USDA steak fillet”. The mouthfeel, texture, and flavour were all spot on.
The steak fillet is the latest effort from Beyond to attract health-conscious consumers, and I’m sure it’s going to do just that when it hits retail shelves this year!
What’s It Made Of? Mycelium, faba beans, and wheat. The full ingredient list is still under wraps.
Where Can I Buy It? Coming to selected retailers this spring.
Chunk’s Pulled Korean BBQ
Courtesy: Alessandra Franco
Chunk Foods debuted its four new Chunk Pulled varieties in Teriyaki, Texas BBQ, Korean BBQ, and Barbacoa flavours. They each come with chef-crafted simmer sauces, are super versatile, can be cooked or microwaved from frozen, and are ready in minutes.
I really enjoyed the pulled “meat” texture and taste of all four flavours, but my personal favourite was the Korean BBQ. It’s packed with that bold, sweet and savoury traditional Korean BBQ flavour and just the right amount of spiciness.
What’s It Made Of? Cultured soy, wheat protein, and coconut oil fortified with B12 and iron.
Where Can I Buy It? Coming to selected retailers later this year.
Wunder Eggs’s Eggless Salad
Courtesy: Alessandra Franco
For a limited time last year, Veggie Grill Next Level Burger had a Wunderful BLT-E on the menu, and it was made with Crafty Counter’s Wunder Eggs egg salad. I’m a huge egg salad fan, so of course I had it, and it was delicious.
The Wunder Eggs Eggless Saladcomes in Classic, Italian Herbs & Garbanzo, and Southwest Peas & Potatoes varieties. After trying all three, I can confidently say they’re all delicious. It turns out I’m more of a classic girl than I thought when it comes to my egg salad, and the original flavour is going to be a must-have-at-all-times in my fridge.
Bonus points for coming in a cup and ready to eat – add a few crackers, and you’ve got yourself a perfect on-the-go snack. The only con for me is that I’m going to need the foodservice tub size to satisfy my egg salad cravings!
What’s It Made Of? Almonds and cashews, Fabalish Foods upcycled aquafaba mayo, and a touch of seasonings.
Where Can I Buy It? Available in all Safeway and Albertsons stores across Washington and Idaho.
Confetti Snacks’s Black Truffle Mushroom Chips
Courtesy: Confetti Snacks
We have written about Confetti Snacks in the past, and I’ve heard a lot about the brand from my good friend Andre Menezes, who is a board member. Still, when I stopped by its booth, I didn’t expect it’d make this list. Boy, oh boy, was I wrong!
The Black Truffle Mushrooms, whole mushrooms dusted in just the right amount of black truffle, were so addictive I couldn’t put the bag down until it was completely empty. It’s a good thing I got two.
The Singapore-based CPG snack range gets bonus points for being made of upcycled ugly veggies, fruits, and mushrooms. What’s more, Confetti’s mission is to reduce food waste while fighting to end hunger and malnutrition, so it donates a portion of its snacks to some of the least affluent parts of the world. And speaking of reducing waste, its eco-sustainable booth was made up entirely of its snack boxes.
What’s It Made Of? ‘Ugly’ veggies, fruits, and mushrooms infused with Asian spices.
Where Can I Buy It? On its website.
MyForest Foods MyBacon
Courtesy: MyForest Foods
I may be a little late to the party here, but I had never tried MyForest Foods’s MyBacon before. The company makes its plant-based bacon from mycelium grown in indoor vertical farms, harvested in slabs, and sliced just like pork belly.
I had it plain as well as in a BLT, and it blew my mind. It was as decadent as I remember real bacon being, down to the texture, sizzle, and aroma.
MyBacon was also on my Expo West 2024 list too, making it a favourite for two years running.
What’s It Made Of? Five ingredients only: organic oyster mushroom mycelium, organic coconut oil, organic sugar, natural flavour, and salt.
Where Can I Buy It? Available online and in several natural food stores across the US, including Erewhon and Whole Foods.
Konscious Foods’s Sno’ Crab Cakes and Smoked Salm’n
Courtesy: Konscious Foods
Given that I’m a former seafood lover, I could not pick only one out of the two hottest newest products by Konscious Foods: Sno’ Crab Cakes and Smoked Salm’n.
Any self-respecting crab cake aficionado knows peppers – red or any other colour – have no place in a crab cake, which is why I absolutely loved these pepper-free vegan crab cakes. Just a pure, simple, honest-to-goodness vegan crab filling wrapped in a crispy golden-brown crust.
The Smoked Salm’n was at Expo West last year, too, but it’s now finally out in the market. The plant-based lox has a hickory applewood cold-smoked salmon taste that makes it indistinguishable from its animal counterpart. Whether you eat it on a bagel with cream cheese or roll it up with crème fraiche, you’ll get that perfect smokiness with a slightly salty kick.
What’s It Made Of? The star ingredient in both is konjac root.
Where Can I Buy It? The Sno’ Crab Cakes will be available at Whole Foods this June and Sprouts in July, with more retailers planned. The Smoked Salm’n is available at Zucker’s Bagels in New York City and on Goldbelly nationwide. Konscious Foods has partnered with the largest smoked salmon distributor across the US, Acme Smoked Fish Brooklyn, so you can expect to see it in retailers nationwide soon.
Food for Life’s Ezekiel 4:9 Whole Grain Pocket Bread
Courtesy: Alessandra Franco
Is Pocket Bread another name for pita bread? Yes, but this is in no way just another pita bread. Food for Life’s sprouted pita is tasty and full of nutritious ingredients. It’s not overly thick or dry like most pita breads out there, so it crisps up nicely in the oven, and I loved seeing the tiny pieces of carrot when I took a bite.
What’s It Made Of? Organic 100% stone ground whole wheat flour, organic fresh carrots, organic barley flour, organic millet flour, organic lentil flour, organic soy flour, organic spelt flour, yeast, and sea salt.
Where Can I Buy It? It’s available in retailers nationwide.
I’m not a chocoholic, but I was really impressed by Whoa Dough’s Brownie Batter Cookie Dough. You get the best of both worlds: cookies that are chewy and packed with that classic fudgy chocolatey flavour that chocolate lovers want from a brownie. The dough is also nut-free, gluten-free and bakes in minutes – you can even eat it right out of the bag!
What’s It Made Of? The star ingredient is chickpea protein.
Where Can I Buy It? It’s available in retailers nationwide and on its website.
Hodo Foods’s Thai Red Curry Tofu
Courtesy: Hodo Foods
I have tried a few Hodo products before, but none have become a staple in my kitchen so far. I wasn’t expecting to love the Thai Red Curry Tofu, but love it, I did!
It’s not too spicy, which means you don’t have to be a curry enthusiast to enjoy the bold Thai flavours, the saucy creamy texture, and that hint of zingy lemongrass and ginger.
What’s It Made Of? Tofu and coconut-cream-based Thai red curry.
Where Can I Buy It? It’s available at select Whole Foods Market stores and online.
Mori-Nu’s Plant-Based Imitation Crab
Courtesy: Dent Agency LLC
I may be the odd woman out, but I’ve always loved making seafood salad with imitation crab. When I spotted Mori-Nu’s plant-based imitation crab made by Morinaga Foods, I had to try it.
The umami flavour really stood out, and the shreddable texture makes it easy to use in anything from salads to sushi. It also comes fully cooked and ready to eat, with a one-year frozen shelf life.
What’s It Made Of? The main ingredient is pea protein.
Where Can I Buy It? It’s currently only available for foodservice, but it’s coming to Veganssentials.com this April.
Maïzly Corn Milk
Courtesy: Maïzly
Corn has always been a staple in Brazilian cuisine, and I grew up eating my share of corn everything – from flour to soups, puddings, and ice cream – except corn milk.
We have no shortage of alternative milk options, from pistachio to potato and watermelon seeds, so do we really need one more? I was a bit sceptical and unsure if it was going to taste like milk or, you know, corn. That is, until I tried it.
I definitely got the dairy milk mouthful and creaminess my taste buds require from any milk alternative. This is probably because, in addition to corn, it also contains chickpea and coconut, making it more of a blended corn milk.
The verdict? I’m sold. It comes in original and chocolate flavours, but it also has an infant formula. Bonus points for sustainability since corn is one of the world’s most abundant crops, requiring the least amount of land and water, which means it’s even more sustainable than oat milk.
What’s It Made Of? The main ingredients are non-GMO corn, chickpea protein, and coconut oil with added calcium and vitamins A, D, and E.
Where Can I Buy It? It’s available at select natural food stores in New York, and on its website.
Honourable mentions
Courtesy: Táche
Despite not making the top list, here are a few products worth mentioning in this Expo West 2025 review:
GoodPop’s Mickey Mouse Fudge n’ Vanilla Bar: The dairy-free ice cream bar is shaped like the beloved Disney character, made with vanilla oat milk and coated in a chocolate fudge shell. It tastes just as creamy and chocolatey as any conventional ice cream bar, so I’m sure it will be a hit with Disney fans, kids and adults alike.
Táche’s Single-Serve Pistachio Milk Latte: The vegan latte is made with Táche’s Original Pistachio milk and cold brew coffee. I’ve tried quite a few single-serve vegan lattes, but the nuttiness from the pistachio milk really makes this one stand out. Here’s hoping they’ll add a few more flavours, like vanilla and mocha, soon.
Eat Just’s Plant-Based Chicken: Most people are familiar with Just Egg – the vegan egg pioneer – and Good Meat, the first company to sell cultivated chicken anywhere in the world.
What do you get when you combine the two? Hands down the most realistic 100% plant-based chicken I’ve ever tasted. By using Good Meat’s tech platform, Eat Just nailed both the taste and texture of real chicken, but with plants. It was grilled and served plain, allowing the ‘chicken’ taste to really shine through.
If you’re thinking, “Do we really need one more plant-based chicken option?”, I say: just wait till you try it.
Hors concours: Mellody’s Plant-Based Honey
Courtesy: MeliBio
Top such list of mine would not be complete without Mellody’s bee-free honey. Ever since I first tried it, I’ve been a huge fan, and I add it to everything – from tea to yoghurt to cakes. Mellody is spot on when it comes to the texture, aroma, and complex taste of honey made by bees. I don’t know how it does this, but blessed bee!
Polling shows that health concerns are the biggest consumption driver in Brazil, potentially pushing 74% of its population to reduce or eliminate meat from their diets.
Brazil is home to JBS, Minerva and Marfrig, making it the world’s largest beef exporter and second-largest meat producer. 80% of all beef produced here is consumed domestically, accounting for 12% of global beef intake – per capita, only two other countries eat more beef.
Meat consumption – especially red meats like beef – is linked with a host of chronic diseases, including heart disease, obesity, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. In fact, the annual cost of treating conditions attributed to a diet heavy on processed meat in Brazil is $9.4M.
Brazilians recognise this risk, with 74% open to reducing their meat consumption out of health concerns, a new survey has found.
“It is encouraging to see that 74% of Brazilians are considering the possibility of reducing or eliminating meat consumption,” said SVB president Mônica Buava. “The survey confirms that there is a growing awareness about the impact of diet on health, the environment and respect for animals.”
Courtesy: Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira
Plant-based eating led by Indigenous and older populations
Conducted by the Datafolha Institute on behalf of the Brazilian Vegetarian Society (SVB), the research polled over 2,000 consumers in December, exploring dietary drivers in the country.
When asked if they’ve ever tried to stop eating meat, 22% of the respondents said yes, with women and residents in the northern part of the country more likely to do so.
Apart from health, there are other major drivers, too, with 43% saying they’re open to reducing or cutting out meat because of its impact on the environment. This is key since the food system makes up nearly three-quarters of Brazil’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Another 42% say they’d stop eating meat to protect animal welfare.
Meanwhile, 7% of Brazilians either fully or partially agree that they’re vegan, a share that’s similar amongst both women and men. People in the south are the least likely to follow a plant-based diet, as are those in the higher income brackets and Gen Z respondents.
People aged 60 and above more commonly eat a plant-rich diet (9%) than other age groups, and the same rings true for Indigenous populations (10%).
Courtesy: Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira
Latin America’s growing appetite for plants
While it is home to industry pioneers like NotCo and Future Farm, Latin America has typically lagged behind regions like North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific when it comes to building a domestic alternative protein ecosystem.
Recent data shows that this may be changing, with frequent consumption of meat-free food declining by at least five points in the latter three markets between 2023 and 2024. In fact, 15% of Latin American consumers now eat vegetarian food regularly, higher than the share in Asia-Pacific (14%) and North America (13%).
Further, Latin America is the region most open to meat analogues. It’s probably why retail sales of meat and seafood analogues in Brazil increased by 38% in 2023 (reaching $226M), with the country host to the largest Meatless Monday movement globally.
According to the Good Food Institute, 36% of Brazilians reduced their red meat intake between 2023 and 2024, mainly due to health detriments and high costs. Catering to these trends, there are around 240 meat-free restaurants in Brazil and over 3,200 establishments with at least one vegan option.
In fact, interest in plant-based eating has remained steady over the past few years here, with SVB-commissioned research from 2018 showing that 14% of Brazilians identified as vegetarian, and 60% indicated they would eat more plant-based food if it were cheaper.
That the climate argument resonates with over two in five Brazilians is a positive sign too. According to one study, a 40% cut in beef consumption between 2022 and 2050 in Brazil could prevent 65,000 sq km of deforestation and mitigate up to 2.8 gigatonnes of CO2e, representing a third of the world’s potential mitigation from dietary changes.
From meat-free dim sum to non-dairy pearl tea: a 2025 list of Hong Kong’s best vegan-friendly eats.
If you’re in Hong Kong and you happen to love food, you’re in for a good time.
The city’s historical cuisine is known for its Cantonese origins, with international culinary accents sprinkled all over.
It may be among the most prolific meat-eating regions globally, but as Asia’s World City, it’s also home to some of the best meat-free food on the planet. Hong Kong is a fast-moving, ever-evolving plant-based paradise, with meat-free eaters getting a taste of the island as much in fancy diners as they do at street food stalls.
Post-Covid, the vegan scene underwent some major changes, and many of the lists online are outdated. Since the first question people ask us when we say we work at Green Queen is “Where are the best vegan eats?”, we figured we owed it to our home city to create an updated list of the island’s best vegan-friendly restaurants.
About this list: This is by no means an exhaustive list; rather, it’s a curated, up-to-date snapshot of some of the city’s always-reliable, plant-based restaurants – all tried and tested by our team. The restaurants listed here are either vegetarian or vegan. We are not including some great non-veg spots to get plant-based food. Find some of those here. Hong Kong also has a great selection of Cantonese and Buddhist Chinese vegetarian cuisine (dozens, in fact), but that list would have been too long, and Happy Cow does a perfectly good job.
Vegan dim sum
Veggie Kingdom
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
For vegan dim sum (or yum cha as the locals call it), look no further than Veggie Kingdom. It’s a fully plant-based parlour that keeps to the tick-what-you-want tradition but modernises classic dim sum dishes to be animal-free. Try the shredded turnip puffs, the vegan shrimp dumplings, and the cucumber salad – but book in advance, because the restaurant is almost always full!
Veggie Kingdom has two locations: VIP Commercial Centre, 120 Canton Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, and 4th Floor, Kyoto Plaza, 491-499 Lockhart Rd, Causeway Bay.
LockCha
Courtesy: LockCha
Another great restaurant for local food is LockCha, a vegetarian tea house and dim sum restaurant with tons of options for vegans. It’s slightly pricier, but it’s worth it. Go for the bean curd rolls, stay for the siu mai and pan-fried rice roll with XO sauce (a Hong Kong original).
LockCha has two locations: G06-07, Block 01, Tai Kwun, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, and The KS Lo Gallery, Hong Kong Park, 10 Cotton Tree Drive, Admiralty.
Date night
Japanese Isoya
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
Just a short walk away from Wan Chai station, Isoya is a Japanese restaurant that puts the ‘fine’ in ‘fine dining’. A perfect date spot, the meat-free establishment has a tasting menu that can be made vegan upon request. While some dishes change seasonally, we loved the tofu tasting plate, the veggie sushi, and the life-altering tomato sashimi. Reservations recommended.
Isoya is located at 83 Wan Chai Rd, Wan Chai.
Cantonese-French at Emerald
Courtesy: Emerald
How about some modernist Cantonese-French cuisine? Emerald has you covered for date night, with some truly inventive plant-based dishes to keep you interested. Think iced king oyster mushrooms with yuzu-wasabi soy sauce, seafood fried rice with laksa and XO sauce, OmniPork dumplings in soup, and vegan foie gras balls with truffle sauce. And if that wasn’t enough, diners can also enjoy vegan tiramisu and golden crispy oat milk.
Emerald is located at 6/F, M88, Wellington Place, 2-8 Wellington Street, Central.
Pan-Asian at Root Vegan
Courtesy: Root Vegan
For a more casual vibe, Root Vegan is the place to be. The establishment offers a mix of Cantonese and pan-Asian dishes, with most dishes changing seasonally. We’re big fans of the khao soi with soy drumsticks, which is permanently on the menu, as well as their dairy-free, eggless cakes.
Root Vegan is located at Shop 102-103, 1/F Sunwise Building, 112-114 Wellington Street, Central.
Desserts and brunch
The Cakery and Maya Bakery
Courtesy: The Cakery
Owned by entrepreneur Shirley Kwok, The Cakery and its sister chain Maya Bakery are two of our favourite places to find vegan sweet treats. The former has a host of options for diet-inclusive cakes and desserts (from a Dubai chocolate cotton cake to a Biscoff cheesecake), while the latter specialises in baked goods, savoury brunch options, and coffee (we’re big fans of the vegan egg tarts, pineapple buns, and the fish-free tuna mayo croissant).
The Cakery has five locations across Hong Kong, including in Admiralty, Wong Chuk Hang, and Tsim Sha Tsui. Its sites in IFC Mall on Finance Street and PCCW Tower in Taikoo Place also feature Maya Bakery.
LN Fortunate Coffee
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
For a calming vegan brunch with the sweetest staff, you’d be hard-pressed to find something better than LN Fortunate Coffee. Yes, it does good coffee – but the real stars are the dishes. This 100% plant-based establishment is the only place we’ve found that offers a classic Hong Kong French Toast, sans animals – and it doesn’t disappoint. We also loved the bubble waffles and the hot dogs (with a jumbo tofu sausage).
LN Fortunate Coffee has two locations in Hong Kong: 30-34 Kwai Wing Road Shop 107, 1/F, Edge, Kwai Chung, and 118 Second Street, Sai Ying Pun.
18 Grams
Courtesy: 18 Grams
One of Hong Kong’s original specialty coffee roasters, 18 Grams serves only vegetarian fare, and has a host of options for plant-based visitors (plus free swaps for oat or almond milk). Try the oat milk piccolo, the tofu-avocado bagel, and the all-day breakfast – the menu does change seasonally, so you can always expect great vegan breakfast grub here.
18 Grams has three locations: City’super, B1/F, Times Square, 1 Matheson Street, Causeway Bay, Shop C, G/F, Hoi To Court, 15 Cannon Street, Causeway Bay, and City’super, Shop 204-214, 2/F, New Town Plaza, 18 Sha Tin Centre St, Sha Tin.
Vegan Bubble Pearl Tea
Mother Pearl
Courtesy: Mother Pearl
Yet another entirely vegan spot, Mother Pearl is truly the mother of all pearl teas, with the power to turn bubble tea haters into members with subscription cards. The Instagram-ready aesthetic is one thing, but the flavours and textures really take you on a journey – all with homemade plant milks. With every season, the chain brings out new must-try innovations, but menu stalwarts like Crush on Gold, Soul Full of Sunshine, and Glimpse of Sunburst will blow your mind.
Mother Pearl has three locations: 25 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central, Shop 3, On Hing Mansion, 2-4 Tai Wong Street East, Wan Chai, and Shop No M31, MOKO, 193 Prince Edward Rd W, Mong Kok, Kowloon.
Nuttea
Courtesy: Nuttea
While we’re on drinks, be sure to give Nuttea a try. There’s no boba here, but the star of the show is the five-nut cream. The beige, airy cream can top any of the extensive teas and chocolate drinks on the menu, lending a creamy, Nutella-like flavour (but somehow with no chocolate). It’s addictive, and you can also buy a whole cup of just nut cream (wink wink).
Nuttee has seven locations in Hong Kong, including in Kwai Fong, Tai Po, Shek Mun, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun, Tsim Sha Tsui, and Admiralty.
All-day eateries: vegan pasta, burgers and wraps
Treehouse – multiple locations
Courtesy: Treehouse
A fantastic vegetarian chain with build-your-own bowls and wraps, burgers, and desserts that make it the perfect eatery for lunch on a busy workday, or a quick dinner before your nightlife plans. The menu is heavily focused on whole-food plant-based eating, with our favourites including the Willow bowl, the Reef burger, and the double chocolate chip-macadamia cookie.
Treehouse has five locations, including in Central, Taikoo Place, Causeway Bay, Quarry Bay, and Tsim Sha Tsui.
Years Group – multiple locations
Courtesy: Anay Mridul/Green Queen
Rather than being a chain or singular eatery, Years is a restaurant group with several vegetarian establishments scattered across the city, each with its own theme and cuisine, spanning a mix of local and international. Try the double cilantro Impossible cheeseburger at its original namesake site, the chipotle-avocado sushi volcano at Wanaka, the Japanese yuzu tofu steak bento at Here, and the Sichuan mala cilantro spaghetti at Here.
Years has six restaurants across the city: Years (Sham Shui Po), The Park (Sham Shui Po), Friends (Tsuen Wan), Be (Hung Hom), Here (Taikoo Shing), and Wanaka (Wan Chai).
Veggie4love
Courtesy: Veggie4love
Bringing more international vibes is Veggie4love, which is designed as a San Francisco eatery from the 1950s. This is the place to get your burger and milkshake fix (we recommend the I Am Fabulous beetroot-cashew-lentil burger and the secret shake), but it’s also great if you’re craving dishes like a vegan bibimbap, a gado-gado salad, or plant-based chicken rice.
Veggie4love is located at 10/F, 11 Stanley Street, Central.
Thai Vegetarian Food
This unassuming eatery in Kowloon is all about no-frills dining. It has an extensive menu of Thai classics, all of which is completely vegetarian and of course, highly adaptable for vegans. Try the fried monkey head mushrooms, the pomelo salad, the tom yum, and the longan juice.
Thai Vegetarian Food is located at Cheong Wong Building, 28A South Wall Rd, Kowloon.
Spanish plant-based meat leader Heura Foods and French vegan whole-cut specialist Swap Food have teamed up to launch a Suprême chicken fillet in three European markets.
With an aim to “revolutionise the plant-based fillet experience”, Heura and Swap (formerly Umiami) have linked up to introduce a whole-cut chicken breast.
The Suprême fillet is rolling out in over 2,000 supermarkets in France (including Carrefour, Leclerc, Monoprix, Intermarché, and Super U), 1,000 stores in Spain, as well as retailers in Portugal. It enables Heura to expand its product range and Swap to enter the mass retail market in Europe.
“The biggest challenges aren’t solved alone,” Laurent Gubbels, global head of content at Heura, told Green Queen. “While it might be natural to see other plant-based companies as competitors, that’s not how we see it. We see them as mission partners. When we collaborate, when we improve the offer together, everyone wins: the market, the companies, the consumers, the planet, and the animals.”
He added: “From the moment we met Swap, we knew this could be one of those rare, game-changing moments.”
Christel Delasson, VP of sales and marketing at Swap, said: “We have joined forces with a common goal – to break the mould by offering products that appeal equally to meat lovers, flexitarians, vegans, and vegetarians. With this launch, our expertise can reach a wider audience and introduce more consumers to a new way of enjoying plant-based food.”
Bidding adieu to dry vegan chicken
Courtesy: Swap Food
The new fillet boasts a clean-label, additive-free recipe with 20g of protein per serving, offering nutritional values “comparable to a traditional chicken fillet”. It also has a Nutri-Score rating of A. It’s made from water, soy protein (22%), sunflower oil, natural flavours, pea protein flour, citric acid, and salt.
“A product like this was missing from the plant-based market, a fillet that’s remarkably close to chicken in both taste and texture, made with just seven natural ingredients,” said Gubbels. “All the good, but without trans fats, cholesterol and filled with fibre. It’s something truly unique.”
He continued: “Thanks to the complementarity of our expertise, we were able to co-develop a product that combines natural ingredients, pleasure, and accessibility, on a European scale.”
The “tender and juicy” product is manufactured in France, and can be breaded, grilled, fried or braised, and aims to provide home cooks with both indulgence and an easy-to-prep ingredient. Both brands are leaning into the textural characteristics, noting that solving the “dryness” of vegan chicken was one of the main reasons they collaborated.
“We wanted to make you believe it was just like chicken. Same shape. Same taste. Same crispiness,” the brands said in one marketing poster. “But we failed to recreate… chicken’s dryness. Our fillet is juicy. Tender. Enjoyable. A real shame, honestly,” they added ironically.
Courtesy: Heura Foods
Research has shown that Europeans want their vegan chicken to be more tender and have a uniform texture. However, only 18% are avoiding animal products today, and taste is a detractor for 37% of these consumers when it comes to plant-based meat.
That said, 29% of them are cutting back on meat, presenting an opportunity for brands that can meet consumer preferences. In France, too, while the government continues to battle plant-based meat, six in 10 citizens aren’t familiar with vegan alternatives to meat, and nearly half (44%) feel they don’t taste as good.
It’s why the Heura-Swap chicken is targeting not just vegans, but flexitarians and meat-eaters too. “This collaboration allows us to continue offering excellent products without compromise, with superior nutritional quality and a positive impact on the planet,” said Heura co-founder and CEO Marc Coloma.
Swap targets home market with Heura link-up
Courtesy: Swap
The companies called the collaboration a “turning point” for each of their European ambitions. Swap, which has raised $107M so far, uses its Umisation texturising platform to produce whole-muscle replicas of conventional fillets like chicken and fish. This involves a technique that transforms plant proteins into structured fibres without high heat or pressure.
The technology allows the startup to produce plant-based meat with minimal ingredients, with the chicken using eight ingredients and no artificial flavours, colourants or texturisers.
It operates a 14,000 sq m facility in the Alsace region, which can produce 7,500 tonnes of plant-based meat annually, eventually rising to 20,000 tonnes.
Last year, it entered the US foodservice sector, with its chicken fillet appearing on the menu of several Chicago eateries, including Majani, The Chicago Diner, Spirit Elephant, Soul Veg City, Duke’s Alehouse, and Clucker’s Charcoal Chicken.
Swap Chicken was the recipient of a Tasty Award by sensory-based research firm Nectar last month, signalling that more than half of taste-testing omnivores found it to taste the same or better than animal protein.
Heura teases chicken burger and two ‘game-changing’ launches
Courtesy: Heura
Heura, meanwhile, claims it’s responsible for four of the five bestselling vegan products in Spain. In 2023, it grew sales by 22%, reaching €38.3M, and it’s charting a path to profitability this year.
Having raised €88M to date, its products are available in more than 20,000 stores in 20 countries. After Spain, France is its second-largest market, where its sales hiked by 88% in 2023. “With over 2,000 points of sale, French consumers will now have access to this new innovation,” Coloma said of the Suprême chicken fillet.
“It also meets the expectations of French consumers, who are increasingly incorporating plant-based foods into their diets,” he added. Indeed, despite the lack of familiarity, a quarter of French people eat meat and dairy alternatives weekly, and 14% do so several times a week – a three-point increase from 2022 and 2023.
The Spanish startup is now working on vegan cold cuts, cheese, and pasta as well, aiming to tackle a wider range of categories with nutrient-dense alternatives and entice a larger share of consumers dissatisfied with ultra-processed foods. “They’re currently in development,” said Gubbels. While he did not share a timeline, he suggested that they have already undergone some taste tests.
This is Heura’s second launch this year, following the chicken chunks it introduced in February. “This month, we’re also launching a ‘chicken-style’ burger, and two more game-changing products are lined up for summer,” he revealed.
“2025 will be a transformative year for Heura. Last year was all about laying the foundation – we didn’t launch new products, but we developed patents and improved our current products. And this year, we’re set to see the results. Our goal is clear: to become profitable and prove to the world that a plant-based meat company can stay and succeed.”
Austrian 3D-printed seafood startup Revo Foods has witnessed rapid growth since opening its mycoprotein facility in September, and its CEO believes vegan seafood has a communication issue.
There is no inherent desire for most consumers to switch to fish-free seafood or think they “really need an alternative” to salmon, tuna, and the like, highlighting the industry’s communication problem, according to the CEO of one innovative startup.
“The plant-based industry had a dogma that if you replicate meat 100%, consumers will come, and I don’t think this is true anymore,” says Robin Simsa. He heads up Austria’s Revo Foods, which uses 3D printing and mycoprotein to make seafood analogues.
“I believe people care less about a one-to-one replica, but rather [they care about] a good protein source (like mycoprotein), prepared in an engaging and attractive way,” he says.
“There needs to be something desirable about our products, and this can be either nutritionally or based on ‘fun’ or ‘cool’ concepts, from longevity to crazy products where people think: ‘Why does this exist?’”
This is why Revo Foods has labelled its vegan seafood differently – it stopped selling a ‘Salmon Filet’ long ago. “Now, we sell a fermented fungi protein, which is ‘Inspired by Salmon’. A small change in wording, but it shifts the focus to a completely different highlight.”
The change in positioning has worked and then some. “We only opened our new production facility in September 2024, and since then, sales have been increasing 250% compared to the previous year,” Simsa says. “March was one of the best months in terms of sales since our beginning.”
In the US, vegan alternatives make up just 1% of the overall seafood market. They account for a similar share in the wider plant-based market too. In Germany and the UK, meanwhile, the sales value of alternative seafood grew by 10% from 2022-23, with units up by 6%.
Revo Foods is now “moving forward quite nicely”, thanks to new product releases, including the marinated filets it launched last month, and its latest product, a mycelium-fuelled take on black cod.
Titled ‘El Blanco – Inspired by Black Cod’ (in keeping with its communication strategy), the whitefish alternative will be available in Austrian and German supermarkets this month.
New tech helps Revo Foods speed up product development
Courtesy: Revo Foods
Revo Foods’s latest seafood analogue has been produced with a new 3D extrusion technology at its production site, dubbed The Taste Factory, with an output of several tonnes per month.
Its computer-guided models transform unstructured proteins (like mycoprotein) into products with aligned, heterogeneous fibres. The integration of fat into the protein matrix is key, leading to a ‘flaky’ texture reminiscent of black cod.
The startup says it uses mycoprotein because it has a neutral taste and highly desirable nutritional profile. It contains all essential amino acids, has a high protein digestibility score, and is rich in fibre and low in carbs and saturated fat.
Mycoprotein can also double in biomass every five hours, making it one of the most efficient sources of protein on the planet. “Our salmon filet took us four years to develop. This new product took us three months,” Simsa says, outlining the proficiency of its continuous production system.
“We have built a foundation where we can test new product iterations quickly, and El Blanco is a prime example of this. We had four new products developed in this direction, and El Blanco was most desirable to many people in taste tests,” he adds.
“Our new 3D extrusion process really allows us to be super quick with product development and testing, which is exciting because the food industry is not normally known to be fast, and this gives us some new opportunities with more ‘obscure’ concepts in the future that might work amazingly, or might flop big time. We will announce some of these developments soon.”
Courtesy: Revo Foods
A vegan alternative cheaper than ‘the real thing’
Aside from mycoprotein, El Blanco contains microalgae oil, which is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. The high fat content is a “source of pleasure”, says Simsa, which makes it taste like “fresh whitefish”. “We also add a marination to make it easier for people to just fry it in their kitchen without too much preparation,” he notes.
Encouragingly, the mycoprotein alternative is 25-30% cheaper than conventional black cod, which he calls a “rather expensive fish species” – a 110g unit in Austria and Germany retails for €3.99 ($4.30). This is important considering that cost has become the top purchase driver of seafood for 55% of Europeans, whose at-home consumption declined by six percentage points between spring 2021 and autumn 2024.
“We upscaled our production capacities in recent months and implemented a new extruder system, which could increase the output at our production site, which greatly benefits us in terms of production costs,” Simsa explains when asked how Revo Foods manages to undercut the cost of black cod. “We now run with two production shifts.”
The startup has raised over €10M ($10.8M) so far, and closed a €1.2M ($1.3M) investment round in January with existing and new investors. It will now extend this in a crowdfunding campaign on FunderNation to reach €1.5M ($1.6M).
In addition to El Blanco, it will release another new “ambitious” product in two weeks, which will follow its strategy of spotlighting mycoprotein instead of solely trying to mimic seafood. It won’t make “any comparisons with animal-based products”, but rather target a “performance/fitness group with a designer product optimised for nutrients”, says Simsa.
“We already sell in France, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the UK and other markets together with local distributors,” he adds. “In 2025, we will also start some exciting new partnership projects to bring our products forward in different geographies.”
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Ajinomoto and Solar Foods’s latest product launch, Unity Diner’s return, and a new meat-free omakase experience in Hong Kong.
New products and launches
Japanese food giant Ajinomoto‘s Atlr.72 brand has released its latest product range featuring Solar Foods‘s Solein gas protein in Singapore. The Flowering Ice Creams come in vanilla and mochi (which contains dairy), chocolate and lemon peel, and salted caramel and nuts (both non-dairy) flavours, and can be found at the brand’s food truck.
Courtesy: Atlr.72
Nurasa, the sustainable food innovation platform owned by Temasek, will unveil NuFood Concept Studio, an innovation platform designed to speed up the commercialisation of healthier products, at the FHA-Food & Beverage 2025 event in Singapore (April 8-11). Here, it will showcase a blended meat product made with Quality Meat‘s Q Protein, featuring lower cholesterol and higher fibre.
In the UK, Earthling Ed-owned Unity Diner is returning to London just two months after shutting down. The vegan restaurant had successful negotiations with its landlords, allowing it to open doors again later this week (April 4). It will also open a carvery on April 20.
Meanwhile, plant-based leaders Beyond Meat and La Vie have collaborated on a joint marketing campaign with a new ad, with the brands offering a BBQ burger recipe and directing consumers to Honest Burger to try the Bacon Plant 2.0.
San Diego-based CV Sciences Inc has expanded its plant-based portfolio with Lunar Fox Food Co, a new brand that sells animal-free alternatives to meat, cheese, and eggs. It’s also the owner of vegan egg and cheese maker Cultured Foods.
Courtesy: Lunar Fox Food Co
Seafood chain Wintzell’s Oyster House has introducedPlant Based Seafood Co‘s Mind Blown range to its menu. It will offer vegan oysters, crispy fried shrimp, and crab cakes as salad toppings, entrées, and sandwich fillings.
Brooklyn-based upcycled snack brand B-Sides has launched vegan Crunch Puffs made from the leftover pulp from oat milk production. They’re available in Cheddar, ranch and jalapeño flavours, and can be found on its website, Amazon, or independent retailers in New York City.
Courtesy: Planet A Foods
German cocoa-free chocolate player Planet A Foods has expanded in three markets ahead of Easter: it’s co-launching eight products featuring ChoViva with chocolate maker Abtey in France, two innovations with retailers Lidl and Penny in Germany, and a new offering in the UK in collaboration with Wawi Schokoladen.
Fellow cocoa-free chocolate maker Foreverland has released a 240g Easter egg featuring its carob-based Choruba alternative, in collaboration with chocolate giant Dulciar.
Courtesy: Foreverland
Israeli 3D-printed meat producer Redefine Meat has gained a listing at Rami Levy Hashikma Marketing, the country’s third-largest retail chain. Its New-Meat lineup of steaks, sausages, kebabs, and shawramas are available at all 57 branches.
Hong Kong restaurant Niwa has introduced a Vegetarian Omakase Menu, featuring 14 items – from a tofu-pickle wafer and balsamic vinegar tomato to black truffle somen and mushroom sushi – for HK$780 ($100).
Courtesy: Niwa
And in more good news for vegans in Hong Kong, famed meat-free dim sum restaurant Veggie Kingdomhas opened its second site at Causeway Bay for perfect plant-based yum cha.
Company and finance developments
In a sign of the cultivated meat industry’s scalability potential, Australia’s Vowclaims to have broken a world record by harvesting 20,000 litres of cell culture through its Andromeda bioreactor.
Courtesy: Differential Bio
Fellow Munich-based startup Differential Bio has emerged from stealth with €2M ($2.2M) in pre-seed funding to advance its Virtual Scale-up Platform for biomanufacturing firms, which combines advanced microbiology, lab automation, and artificial intelligence.
French vegan seafood brand Olala! has ceased operations after three years, citing a lack of sufficient turnover. The company said it hadn’t found its market, and its industrial model needed a market dynamic.
After completing its purchase of a 26-acre piece of land in Jefferson, Wisconsin for $777,000, Finnish precision fermentation firm Onego Bio is expected to spend $250-300M to build its new facility for animal-free egg proteins, set to be operational in 2028.
Courtesy: Melt&Marble
Swedish precision-fermented fat producer Melt&Marble has hired veteran pharma leader Tue Hodal as its first CTO, and Paulo Teixeira (formerly at Mycorena) as product manager.
Californian biotech startup Triplebar has announced Shawn Manchester as its new CEO, who has been promoted from his role as COO. He takes over from outgoing chief Maria Cho.
British vegan meal startup Planty, meanwhile, has appointed Samuel Rodriguez as head chef and Mimi Phillip as a freelance development chef – both used to work at rival firm Allplants, whose assets are now split between Plants (by Deliciously Ella‘s founders) and Grubby.
UK vegan charity Viva! has hit its £400,000 crowdfunding target and secured screenings in 300 cinemas for its 62-second Dairy is Scary ad.
Policy and awards
Speaking of British non-profits, The Vegan Society has announced Libby Peppiatt as its new CEO. She will take over from interim chief Abbey Mann on May 14.
Also in the UK, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology has awarded £1.4M to the Food Standards Agency to support a new innovation hub for foods made via precision fermentation, another step towards novel food leadership for the country.
Courtesy: NYC Health + Hospitals
New York City’s Health + Hospitals programme has now served over two million plant-based meals to patients since it began in 2023, with 900,000 dishes served in 2024 alone. The initiative has a 90% satisfaction rate, and has reduced emissions by 36% and costs by 59 cents per meal.
Finally, mycelium protein maker 50Cut (formerly Mush Foods), which is focused on blended meat, has been named the 2025 FABI Favorites Award Winner at the National Restaurant Association Show.
Califia Farms has launched a line of summer-coded fruity drinks using coconut cream, tapping into the growing trend for flavoured plant-based milk.
Los Angeles-based Califia Farms is going back to its juice roots with its latest product range. The plant-based milk company has introduced Creamy Refreshers, which combine fruit juice with coconut cream, for a summery take on non-dairy coolers.
First debuted at Natural Products Expo West this month, the four-strong lineup is available nationwide at Target, Albertsons and Kroger, with each 48oz bottle priced at $6. They will also appear during Weekend 1 at Coachella, courtesy of The 818 Outpost hosted by Kendall Jenner’s tequila brand.
“Over the last 15 years, Califia Farms has loved experimenting with the endless possibilities of plants. Creamy Refreshers is a perfect example of how that innovation unlocked something new, delicious, and fresh,” said Califia Farms CMO Suzanne Ginestro.
Califia Farms targets thirst for lower-sugar juice
Courtesy: Califia Farms
The dairy-free refreshers are said to have less sugar than leading competitors, and are targeting Gen Z and millennial cohorts, who drink more juice than other Americans, according to Califia Farms. This was “evidenced by the cascades of social media moments showing influencers’ fun beverages treats throughout the day”, the brand said.
In the past year, nearly two-thirds of US consumers consumed juice weekly, and concerns around ingredient use are prominent. GlobalData research shows that sugar reduction claims are the most popular benefit in the non-alcoholic beverage space.
Each of Califia Farms’s refreshers mixes coconut milk with real fruit juice, cane sugar, coconut water, stevia leaf sweetener, natural flavours, and more. The Key Lime Colada contains 8g of sugar per 8oz serving, the Strawberry Creme and Piña Colada refreshers have 9g each, and the Orange Creme version has 10g of sugar.
“Today’s consumer embraces mindful indulgences, and we’re proud to bring a new little sweet treat to retail shelves,” said Ginestro. The refreshers will help Americans beat the heat while mitigating the reason why that heat exists in the first place – dairy’s impact on the planet is much higher than plant-based alternatives.
These are the latest in a host of new products launched by the company in recent weeks. In December, it launched single-serve matcha and chai lattes (made from a base of almonds), which contain 40% less sugar than average coffee and tea blends on the market.
Last month, it expanded its clean-label range in the UK with a three-ingredient Simple & Organic lineup, starting with almond and oat milk. And to celebrate its 15th anniversary, it introduced a limited-edition Birthday Cake almond creamer this month, alongside a pistachio-almond creamer, organic cashew milk, and espresso-blend cold brew.
Flavoured plant-based milks are all the rage
Courtesy: Diageo
Califia Farms’s refreshers come at a time when innovation is ripe in the plant-based milk sector – and it likely needs to be, considering that a third of Americans still haven’t found a non-dairy product that meets all of their needs.
Sales of milk alternatives were down by 5% last year, but sales of multi-ingredient milks and coconut milk were up by 10% and 28%, respectively. And while nearly half of American households buy plant-based milk, companies are looking to further encroach upon that share with innovative new products.
Flavoured alt-milk products are a good opportunity here, and Califia Farms has recognised that with the new fruity refreshers. For example, Diageo this month released two non-dairy versions of its popular Baileys cream liqueur. Made with oat milk, they’re available across the US in Coffee Toffee and Cookies & Creamy variants.
Kate Farms, meanwhile, deep-dived into flavoured products with its Kids Nutrition pea protein shakes, which come in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla variants, and contain 27 vitamins and minerals. Similarly, Elmhurst 1925 has come out with vanilla-flavoured pistachio and cashew milks in recent weeks.
This trend transcends the US. In the UK, Continental Wine & Food has launched Lacey’s Vodkashake, a line of dairy-free cream liqueurs available in strawberry and banana flavours. Alpro, meanwhile, introduced a caramel barista milk made from soy and oats.
And this month, Oatly released vanilla and caramel oat milks at Nordic coffee chain Espresso House. They’re part of its iKaffe range (the regional name for its barista edition) and available in both hot and cold drinks.
British vegan food brand Deliciously Ella’s latest campaign attacks ultra-processing, which is now among plant-based meat’s biggest pain points.
“Consumers en masse aren’t just asking: ‘Is it plant-based?’ but: ‘What’s actually in it?’”
These may have been the words of Jason Rosenbaum, co-CEO of US startup Actual Veggies, but they speak to a wider shift in the meat-free ecosystem.
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have been the talk of the food industry in recent months, with consumers largely attempting to shift away from such products out of health and nutrition concerns. One segment that has deeply felt the impact is plant-based meat.
While attacks from the meat industry are expected, brands making these analogues are in the crosshairs of other vegan producers too.
In the UK, Deliciously Ella is leading this shift. A pioneer of healthy plant-based eating, founders Ella and Matthew Mills recently sold the firm to Switzerland’s Hero Group (though they remain at the company). And as it looks to expand its footprint, the company has kickstarted a new marketing drive targeting UPFs.
Deliciously Ella looks to clear the hurdles for Brits’ UPF shift
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
This month, Deliciously Ella launched ‘Choose Ultra-Processed Free’, a bus campaign aimed at helping people “make healthier food choices by swapping UPFs for whole, natural foods that are both accessible and incredibly delicious”.
Across 40 London buses, in retailers across the city, and on social media, the company is encouraging Brits to shift away from UPFs. As part of the drive, it gave away 50,000 of its “UPF-free oat bars” across the capital and has launched a free e-book full of recipes and tips, called Less Processed, More Delicious.
“Ever picked up something in a shop, thinking it was a healthy choice, only to turn it over and find a list of ingredients you don’t recognise? You’re not alone,” the company writes in the book.
UPFs make up 57% of the average British diet, and up to 80% when it comes to children or people with lower incomes. Likewise, around two-thirds of calories consumed by adolescents in the country come from these foods.
“The result? A national diet made up mostly of products far removed from simple, whole food ingredients – often packed with emulsifiers, preservatives, and industrial additives. And for many of us, that means feeling increasingly disconnected from our food and how it makes us feel,” said Deliciously Ella.
Courtesy: EIT Food/The Grocer
A government survey in June 2024 found that ultra-processing is the second biggest food concern in the UK (after inflation), with 77% of people saying so. A separate survey found that 53% of them are in favour of a tax on UPF producers, if the revenues are directed to funding fresh produce for low-income families.
However, over half of Brits find UPFs cheaper and more convenient than whole foods, and only 48% of them go out of their way to buy unprocessed foods that require preparation.
In a nod to this obstacle, Deliciously Ella notes that “easy swaps, flavour-packed meals, and small sustainable changes” can collectively make a big difference: “Eating well shouldn’t mean spending hours in the kitchen or giving up the foods you love.”
UPF concerns have directly impacted plant-based meat
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
The e-book outlines that UPFs are “often designed to be irresistibly moreish, making us crave more”, and tend to be lower in fibre, vitamins and essential nutrients, and higher in sugar, salt, and trans fats. It cites research linking these foods to chronic conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.
While it’s true that many products considered UPFs – like sugary sodas, salty snacks, or packaged cakes – don’t exactly carry a health halo, other UPFs aren’t actually bad for you.
This is a distinction many experts have been keen to make: the level of processing doesn’t have anything to do with how nutritious a product is. What matters is the actual nutritional content, such as sodium, unsaturated fat, sugar, and so on. Products designated as UPFs can still rank high on the Nutri-Score scale, or the traffic light system adopted in the UK.
But the backlash against UPFs has had a spillover effect on plant-based meat too. Retail sales for these products were down by 6% in the UK in 2023, with volumes plunging further by 13%. The country’s largest meat-free company, Quorn, posted pre-tax losses of £63M that year, and this continued in 2024 too. Meanwhile, more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) in the UK.
Courtesy: Allplants
Whole foods like beans, tofu (now in 8% of British households), and tempeh are gaining market share, while sales of vegan ready-meals – considered a UPF – plunged by 20%. That said, the Millses’ revamped Plants label offers a range of ready-to-eat meals, and recently acquired the brand name and assets of plant-based meal startup Allplants.
Ella built her wellness empire on healthy eating, and has been looking to capitalise on the anti-UPF push. “The plant-based category should be synonymous with real, nourishing food, yet for too long it has been dominated by ultra-processed meat alternatives, a trend now in steep decline,” she said after the Allplants deal. “We’re here to try and change that, and to reimagine the plant-based fixture with delicious, natural, quick wins for clever cooks.”
Deliciously Ella’s new marketing campaign is the latest example of vegan brands themselves attacking plant-based meat for being ultra-processed. Phil Graves, CEO of US mycelium meat startup Meati, recently told Green Queen that people shouldn’t have to choose between factory-farmed meat or “ultra-processed plant-based options that have a long list of ingredients you can’t pronounce”.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Impossible Foods’s beef slider rollout, the New York Mets’s new vegan sandwich, and Grubby’s vegan meal kits for B Corp Month.
New products and launches
Impossible Foods has introduced its latest product, Beef Sliders, exclusively at Walmart stores. The mini vegan patties are available as a six-pack for $7.48.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
Plant-based startup Daily Harvest has launched a USDA-certified Organic Pea Protein Powder with 24g of protein per 120-calorie serving, which would cost roughly $2.
Tex-Mex chain Pancheros Mexican Grill has rolled out a Tofurizo on its menu, which includes sautéed peppers and onions, paprika, cumin, cayenne, and chilli powder. It’s available at all locations nationwide.
With the Major League Baseball season underway, catering giant Aramark‘s Sport + Entertainment division has introduced a vegan pulled BBQ jackfruit sandwich (with a plant-based pretzel bun and coleslaw) at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets.
Courtesy: Aramark
In the UK, meal kit startup Grubby has partnered with leading plant-based players Oatly and This, nut butter maker ManiLife, and ingredient brand Belazu on a special range of recipes for B Corp Month. These include Creamy White Sausage Ragù Linguine, Greek Mushroom Pastitsio with Cucumber Salad, and Pesto Courgette Tarts with Tomato & Basil Salad.
Speaking of Oatly, the oat milk giant has released two new flavours of its iKaffe range (as its barista edition is known in the Nordics) at coffee chain Espresso House. The vanilla and caramel barista milks are available in both hot and cold drinks at stores in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
Courtesy: Oatly/Espresso House
Scottish nutrition brand Vybey has expanded into the snacking category with plant-based Complete Nutrition bars in chocolate brownie, raspberry white chocolate, and mint chocolate flavours. Each 80g bar contains 20g of plant protein.
And French supermarket E.Leclerc has launched a Végé line under its own-label brand, Marque Repère, which comprises 45 animal-free alternatives priced similarly to their conventional counterparts.
Company and finance updates
Indian plant-based nutrition startup Nourish You has raised ₹16 crores ($1.8M) in a Series A funding round led by SIDBI Venture Capital. The parent company of alt-dairy brand One Good, the firm will use the funds to scale operations, launch new products, and expand into new markets, including Australia, Europe, and the US.
Courtesy: Nourish You
Israeli cultivated meat pioneer Aleph Farms has raised $29M in new funding, as part of a larger tranche of financing it expects to close in the coming months. The firm reportedly slashed its valuation in the latest round.
Further Foods, a subsidiary of Canadian cellular agriculture firm Cult Food Science, has signed an R&D supply agreement with a cultivated meat company to develop its Noochies!line of pet food treats, which it will showcase at the Global Pet Expo this week (March 26-28).
Courtesy: Veronika Dvorakova
Also in the cultivated meat space, Californian pioneer Upside Foods has conducted a fresh round of layoffs as it restructures to focus on commercialisation and scale. It is currently awaiting regulatory approval for its second cultivated chicken product in the US.
Catering company Sodexo has announced that it is on track to halve its food waste in the UK and Ireland this year (compared to 2017 levels), five years ahead of schedule.
Courtesy: Sodexo
Belgian food group Vandemoortele has agreed to acquire the European spreads and margarine business of US producer Bunge for an undisclosed sum, which includes several plant-based brands.
The Plant Based Foods Institute has appointed Sanah Baig, former senior policy advisor for agriculture and nutrition at the White House, as its new executive director. She will join the organisation in June.
Policy and awards
The Plant-Based Treaty is working with the Red Cross to provide plant-based food options to people during emergencies and disasters in Los Angeles.
British startup Potina, which makes banana oat milk for kids, has won IFE Manufacturing‘s Clean Label honour, awarded in partnership with the Institute of Food Science & Technology.
Discount retailer Lidl and the ProVeg Incubator have kickstarted a Cheese Alternative Innovation Competition, where participants will pitch their plant-based products to Lidl. Winners will get a listing under the retailer’s vegan private-label brand, Vemondo, in Germany.
Indian cultivated meat startup ClearMeat has struck a partnership with the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM), to scale biotech and food tech innovations and leverage their combined expertise and resources to drive the sector forward.
Courtesy: Catastrophy
Finally, Singaporean jewellery brand Catastrophy, which makes ethical jewellery for cat lovers and donates 10% of all proceeds to animal welfare organisations, has received The Vegan Society’s Vegan Trademark, a world-first for a jewellery line.
New Zealand-based cauliflower ice cream startup EatKinda is moving operations away from its home country to focus on the US amid scaling challenges.
EatKinda, the New Zealand startup making dairy-free ice cream from cauliflower, is withdrawing from its home market and shifting focus across the Pacific.
The firm’s products sold out at Hell Pizza locations four weeks after being launched, and are currently available at 120 Woolworths stores. But it has faced challenges in scaling up its operations domestically, which has impeded its growth plans.
“Right now, we’re producing manually, hand-filling each tub, which results in high wastage and inefficiencies. It’s simply not a sustainable model for scaling,” explains co-founder and CEO Mrinali Kumar.
“New Zealand, with a population of just five million, has limited manufacturing options for a niche product like ours, making it difficult to produce at the volume and cost needed to grow further.”
This compelled Kumar EatKinda to look outwards, landing on the US as its next destination. Here, “viral social media content” has helped the brand attract significant interest, according to Kumar. “Following this momentum, we built an email sign-up list, where thousands of US consumers have expressed a strong demand for our products, particularly in the natural retail channel,” she says.
“EatKinda was always meant to be a global brand, and this decision to step back from New Zealand retail and foodservice is the best short-term move to ensure we can have a much bigger long-term impact,” she adds.
Courtesy: EatKinda
US manufacturing ‘more sophisticated’ than New Zealand
EatKinda was founded in 2020 after Kumar and her co-founder Jenni Matheson at a Startup Weekend event as strangers and worked on the cauliflower ice cream concept, which came third in the competition.
This was followed by two years of R&D, after which they landed on a recipe featuring a base of cauliflower, glucose, sugar, coconut oil, and pea protein. The ice creams are available in chocolate, strawberry, and mint chocolate flavours.
But despite experiencing “incredible growth” in New Zealand, as Kumar puts it, it’s a “small market with limited manufacturing options”, which has resulted in an “inability to scale”. Activity in the country’s manufacturing sector suffered from its longest contraction since 2009 over the last two years, and only just reversed the trend this month.
Kumar says EatKinda’s social media reach – it has 37,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok, with some videos receiving more than a million views (and one surpassing five million) – has proven demand for its cauliflower ice cream globally. “We funnelled this traction into direct consumer engagement, and the response has been incredible,” says Kumar.
“At Expo West, we saw firsthand how excited people are about a truly unique, sustainable, and allergen-friendly ice cream. Buyers, investors, and industry leaders loved the taste and were eager to see it enter the US market,” she adds. “Interestingly, we originally thought we’d need to reformulate for American tastes, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, our flavours and level of sweetness are already a hit.”
Plus, the US has “more sophisticated manufacturing facilities and openness to innovation”, paving the way for its market entry here.
Courtesy: EatKinda
EatKinda gears up for fundraise to support US move
EatKinda has high hopes for the US, given the demand it says it has witnessed. But this comes with its own challenges. Sales of dairy-free ice creams have kept falling in recent years, reaching $351M in 2023 (a 14% drop from 2021), according to SPINS data crunched by the Good Food Institute. The volume of vegan ice creams shifted has plunged even faster in this period (-22%).
But for Kumar, the market for allergen-friendly, plant-based options in the US is “undeniable”, with a quarter of Americans having a food allergy. “And that doesn’t even include those who are vegan or plant-based,” she says.
That said, she acknowledges the reality that “consumers still won’t settle for anything less than great taste”. Research shows that a third of Americans have been buying fewer plant-based products because they don’t like how they taste, highlighting a key hurdle for manufacturers in the space.
“The plant-based category is still evolving, and while we’re making strides, there’s work to be done in perfecting the balance between flavour and price. That said, we’re not backing down from the challenge,” says Kumar.
Courtesy: EatKinda
EatKinda is kickstarting a seed funding round to support the US launch, and is in talks with potential partners. “The US market is already familiar with cauliflower as an ingredient, thanks to the success of cauliflower pizza bases and snacks. That openness to innovation makes it the perfect place to scale EatKinda,” she notes.
This doesn’t mean EatKinda is out of New Zealand for good; its home country remains part of the long-term strategy. “New Zealand is home for both Jenni and me. We’ve built an incredible community of loyal EatKinda lovers, and we would love to bring our ice cream back in the future,” says Kumar. “This short-term pivot allows us to build toward that bigger goal in a way that’s sustainable and scalable.”
She adds: “Over the past few days, we’ve received so many messages of support – as well as requests from customers as our ice cream starts disappearing from shelves. That response means the world to us, and it reinforces why we started this journey in the first place.”
Danone-owned plant-based dairy giant Alpro has announced that it is moving to a 100% local supply for its oat milk lineup in the UK, powered by a multimillion-pound investment to expand its capacity.
The UK’s leading plant-based milk company, Alpro, is switching to 100% British oats for its oat milk range, as part of a drive to support local farmers, lower emissions, and boost its plant-based offering.
The company is working with Navara oat mill in Kettering, less than 10 miles away from its own factory, and sourcing from farmers within an 80-mile radius of the mill.
“We know that people like to buy from brands that support local businesses. Moving to 100% British Oats at Alpro in the UK means we can invest more in local businesses – like our farmers and our local oat mills – bringing a new quality recipe to our customers that tastes great,” Tom Kerr, head of plant-based at Danone UK & Ireland, told Green Queen.
Danone has made a “multimillion-pound investment” to support the shift and expand its existing footprint at the Kettering facility to make way for new tech to enable its British oat production, explained Kerr.
“This includes upgrades to utilities and new production equipment. Some 58 million litres of the British Oat Drink are planned to be produced annually in Kettering, equating to a quarter of the site’s production of plant-based drinks,” he said.
Alpro’s new 100% British Oats line is now available in the original and no-sugars versions, which feature a new recipe high in fibre and enriched with calcium, iodine, and vitamins D2 and B2. Other oat milk products will be updated by the end of the year.
Local sourcing will cut food miles, won’t affect prices
Courtesy: Alpro/Green Queen
Unlike other countries where almond and soy milk captures consumer interest more, oat milk is the most popular non-dairy alternative in the UK. Sales have jumped by 77% in the last five years, reaching £275M as of January, according to Circana data cited by Alpro.
Today, oat milk makes up 39% of all plant-based milk sold in the UK (up from a quarter in 2020). It means Brits purchase half a million litres of oat milk every day. But only 1% of this is guaranteed to come from 100% British oats.
It’s part of the reason why Alpro is investing in the localised supply chain, which will “significantly increase the percentage of British oats” in the growing oat milk market, and give consumers a greater opportunity to buy local.
“Previously, we were sourcing our oats from Europe. Our move to local sourcing will significantly cut our food miles,” said Kerr. “We will be looking into the exact impact of this on our emissions in the coming months.”
While he did not disclose whether the move impacted its costs, and on-shelve prices are independently set by retailers, he confirmed that its recommended price “will not be more than our previous recipe”.
The new recipe was formulated after a 2024 Kantar survey cited by Alpro found that half of UK plant-based shoppers are driven by health considerations. “Health is at the heart of everything we do, and we work to offer healthier nutrition to consumers in the most sustainable way possible,” said Danone UK & Ireland president James Mayer.
“As a pioneer and global leader in plant-based nutrition, plant-based drinks are a key part of our strategy to boost growth by focusing on developing products that deliver on both health and taste,” he added.
Kerr said Alpro’s barista oat milk will be switched to the 100% British recipe later this year, but the move won’t affect its oat yoghurt. Oats also form the base of Alpro’s This Is Not Milk range, which more closely mimics conventional dairy, but he revealed this “has been discontinued in the UK”.
British oat farmers stand to benefit from Alpro’s move
Courtesy: Alpro
Danone’s latest investment followed a £41M injection by Alpro in the Kettering facility, which saw the installation of new equipment to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and water usage.
This factory has now rolled out a new production method for its oat milk, which sees the oat grains ground into flour before being blended with water and other ingredients, including fibre and vitamins.
“The investment will boost capacity and production at the Navara Mill, bringing substantial benefits to the local community both in Kettering, and further afield,” said James Skidmore, managing director of Navara Oat Milling.
Alpro argues that the switch to local sourcing will benefit farmers through a new revenue stream for their oats, which are traditionally used for porridge, cereals, flapjacks, and other foods.
“The rise in the use of plant-based food ingredients has certainly brought changes to the farming industry – however, this exciting new investment by Danone has opened up more opportunities for oat farmers to broaden the products they produce and markets that they grow for,” noted Skidmore.
“When businesses back British agriculture, farmers have more options for their crops, leading to increased resilience and potential for growth,” he added.
While plant-based milk sales have fluctuated in the UK, they grew by 1% in January, against declines in semi-skimmed and skimmed milk. Alpro, meanwhile, recorded a 2% hike in sales in 2024, with its £160.3M turnover making it the second-largest brand in the overall UK milk sector.
Listen, I’m a vegan. I’ll be the first one to say: I wholeheartedly agree. Reducing or eliminating your meat consumption is an important way to fight factory farming. Being vegan is an important part of who I am and how I try to live out my compassion for animals. However, as a former meat-eater and a current proponent of the animal welfare movement, I will say that promoting veganism as the only way forward is actually hurting our cause.
That’s because changing your diet isn’t the only way to fight factory farming – and it might not even be the best way.
Instead of beating themselves up for not quite being able to give up cheese (and then doing nothing about it), what if any omnivore could do just as much good to fight the factory farming system for about the same cost as a streaming service subscription?
This isn’t theoretical. It costs the average omnivore just $23 a month to do as much good for animals as going entirely vegan. How? Because the most effective charities fighting factory farming have figured out how to create massive change for pennies on the dollar. Think of it as carbon offsets, but for animal welfare (let’s call it ‘diet offsetting’) – which is far more impactful than most people realise.
What is diet offsetting?
Courtesy: Compassion in World Farming
Diet offsetting is less complicated than it sounds: anyone can make a rough inventory of the animal products they eat and which animals those products come from. Then find charities working to improve those specific animals’ lives by tackling factory farming. Animal Charity Evaluators can help you identify the most effective charities that won’t waste your donations. Or, for an even simpler approach, you can use FarmKind’s offset calculator that handles the math and charity selection automatically, and lets you make a direct donation (100% of which goes directly to the chosen charities).
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that for most people (and animals), diet offsetting is a better option than going vegan. Despite decades of campaigns like Meatless Mondays and Veganuary, only about 5% of US adults identify as vegetarian or vegan – a number that hasn’t budged since 2012. Underneath that headline number lies a revealing pattern: 84% of people who’ve tried a plant-based diet report having given up, most commonly within the first year.
It would be an exaggeration to say that it’s impossible to persuade people to make dietary changes. Interventions based on appeals to preventing animal suffering have, at least a self-reported, impact on how much people eat animal products. Despite the fact that most of the discourse around animal agriculture focuses on environmental issues, it seems that, at least in the UK, the most prominent reason people go and stay vegan is animal welfare.
The big problem is that, overall, trends are definitely in the wrong direction. Per capita meat consumption in the US, with a few blips along the way, climbed from about 113 kgs per person in 1971 to about 126 kgs by 2021. While the global average is tiny by comparison, 43 kgs per person, it has risen much more sharply over the same 50-year period (from 27 kgs).
While some climate consolation can be taken from the fact that beef is no longer the most commonly eaten meat in the US, this has been a welfare disaster.
This is because cheaper poultry has replaced beef. Relatively speaking, beef cows have far fewer bad lives than chickens, which are almost exclusively farmed in highly concentrated operations. It also takes far more individual chickens to feed people the same amount as a cow. So, we’ve swapped raising a smaller number of cows with higher welfare for raising billions of chickens in some of the worst conditions experienced by land animals on the planet.
The evidence is clear: individual diet change is not delivering the kind of transformation we need to end the moral atrocity that is factory farming. On the contrary, things are getting worse.
Stressing individual action holds movements back
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
But here’s the good news: while the strategy of individual dietary change has failed to deliver, a different approach has been quietly revolutionising how animals are treated in our food system. Strategic advocacy organisations have made huge gains here.
Take The Humane League’s cage-free campaign as an example of what strategic advocacy can achieve. In just 15 years, it has convinced more than 2,400 companies – including corporate giants like Walmart, KFC, and Taco Bell – to commit to cage-free eggs. The result? The percentage of US hens living cage-free has skyrocketed from 4% to around 40%.
Let that sink in: billions of chickens will no longer spend their lives confined in wire cages so small they can’t even spread their wings – spaces literally smaller than a sheet of printer paper. And here’s the kicker: achieving this transformation costs just 85 cents per chicken. This is what effective systemic change looks like.
This is where the real opportunity lies: instead of the uphill battle trying to get people to cut back on their meat or go plant-based, we could channel that energy into supporting the organisations that are already transforming the system.
Of course, some animal advocates bristle at this suggestion. I’ll admit, when my co-founder and I first had this idea, I had a moment of pause. There’s something that feels wrong about being able to simply write a check to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Shouldn’t we be asking people to engage more deeply with the ethics of their food choices, not less? After all, many activists believe that changing individual diets is the gateway to deeper engagement with animal welfare.
But, historically, emphasis on individual action has often held movements back, not helped them.
Consider this revealing parallel: in the early 2000s, one of the biggest promoters of the ‘carbon footprint’ – the idea that we should all obsessively measure and reduce our personal impact on global warming – was none other than oil giant BP. By shifting the conversation from corporate responsibility to consumer choice, BP masterfully deflected attention from the real drivers of climate change.
The meat industry is playing from the same playbook. While we debate the ethics of holiday dinners, they’re spending millions lobbying against basic animal welfare laws, pushing through “ag-gag” legislation to criminalise whistleblowers, and running sophisticated PR campaigns that paint factory farms as idyllic family operations. They’ve even tried to make it illegal to call plant-based products “milk” or “meat” – not because consumers are confused, but to maintain their monopoly on how we think about food itself.
This is why we need to shift our focus to systemic change. Instead of letting the industry keep us arguing about personal food choices, we should be supporting the organisations that are pushing for better regulations, fighting harmful agricultural subsidies, and holding these companies accountable for their practices.
The best part about offsetting? People will actually do it
Courtesy: Paralaxis/Shutterstock
Some critics argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements, like cage-free eggs, actually entrenches factory farming by making it seem more acceptable. They say we need to push for complete abolition, not small changes that might make people feel better about eating meat.
This strategy inevitably draws criticism from abolitionists within the animal rights movement. They argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements – like cage-free eggs – actually entrenches factory farming by making it more palatable to consumers. Better conditions, they say, just ease people’s consciences while leaving the fundamental system intact. We should be pushing for complete abolition, not compromises that might make people feel better about eating meat.
But this argument ignores how successful social movements actually work. Take child labour: it wasn’t eliminated in the US overnight. The path to abolition began with seemingly modest reforms – limiting working hours, requiring breaks, and restricting the most dangerous jobs. Each small victory built momentum for bigger changes.
Moreover, while we work towards evolving the food system away from cruel and destructive practices like factory farming, incremental changes make an immediate and meaningful difference for animals suffering right now. A hen who can spread her wings, scratch in the dirt, and dust bathe isn’t living in ideal conditions – but she’s significantly better off than one confined in a tiny cage. To dismiss these improvements as mere window dressing is to ignore the very real suffering we can prevent today.
But, the strongest argument for offsetting is also the most simple: people will actually do it.
For most of us, writing a check is a much easier ask than changing your entire diet – which means more people will actually help. The numbers bear this out: about 14% of Americans already donate to animal causes each year – almost three times as many people as identify as vegetarian or vegan. Imagine what organizations like The Humane League could achieve if we channelled more of our energy into funding their successful campaigns instead of arguing about personal food choices.
Right now, billions of animals are suffering in factory farms while we debate what’s on our plates. The fastest path to ending their suffering isn’t waiting for everyone to go vegan – it’s empowering everyone who cares about animals to make a difference, whether they eat meat or not. The system won’t change because we all become perfect ethical consumers. It will change because we organised, funded, and fought for that change.
Whether you’re reading this as a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore, or total carnivore – remember, you don’t have to change your diet to make a difference in the systemic fight against factory farming (which hurts us all). Just make sure you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
Listen, I’m a vegan. I’ll be the first one to say: I wholeheartedly agree. Reducing or eliminating your meat consumption is an important way to fight factory farming. Being vegan is an important part of who I am and how I try to live out my compassion for animals. However, as a former meat-eater and a current proponent of the animal welfare movement, I will say that promoting veganism as the only way forward is actually hurting our cause.
That’s because changing your diet isn’t the only way to fight factory farming – and it might not even be the best way.
Instead of beating themselves up for not quite being able to give up cheese (and then doing nothing about it), what if any omnivore could do just as much good to fight the factory farming system for about the same cost as a streaming service subscription?
This isn’t theoretical. It costs the average omnivore just $23 a month to do as much good for animals as going entirely vegan. How? Because the most effective charities fighting factory farming have figured out how to create massive change for pennies on the dollar. Think of it as carbon offsets, but for animal welfare (let’s call it ‘diet offsetting’) – which is far more impactful than most people realise.
What is diet offsetting?
Courtesy: Compassion in World Farming
Diet offsetting is less complicated than it sounds: anyone can make a rough inventory of the animal products they eat and which animals those products come from. Then find charities working to improve those specific animals’ lives by tackling factory farming. Animal Charity Evaluators can help you identify the most effective charities that won’t waste your donations. Or, for an even simpler approach, you can use FarmKind’s offset calculator that handles the math and charity selection automatically, and lets you make a direct donation (100% of which goes directly to the chosen charities).
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that for most people (and animals), diet offsetting is a better option than going vegan. Despite decades of campaigns like Meatless Mondays and Veganuary, only about 5% of US adults identify as vegetarian or vegan – a number that hasn’t budged since 2012. Underneath that headline number lies a revealing pattern: 84% of people who’ve tried a plant-based diet report having given up, most commonly within the first year.
It would be an exaggeration to say that it’s impossible to persuade people to make dietary changes. Interventions based on appeals to preventing animal suffering have, at least a self-reported, impact on how much people eat animal products. Despite the fact that most of the discourse around animal agriculture focuses on environmental issues, it seems that, at least in the UK, the most prominent reason people go and stay vegan is animal welfare.
The big problem is that, overall, trends are definitely in the wrong direction. Per capita meat consumption in the US, with a few blips along the way, climbed from about 113 kgs per person in 1971 to about 126 kgs by 2021. While the global average is tiny by comparison, 43 kgs per person, it has risen much more sharply over the same 50-year period (from 27 kgs).
While some climate consolation can be taken from the fact that beef is no longer the most commonly eaten meat in the US, this has been a welfare disaster.
This is because cheaper poultry has replaced beef. Relatively speaking, beef cows have far fewer bad lives than chickens, which are almost exclusively farmed in highly concentrated operations. It also takes far more individual chickens to feed people the same amount as a cow. So, we’ve swapped raising a smaller number of cows with higher welfare for raising billions of chickens in some of the worst conditions experienced by land animals on the planet.
The evidence is clear: individual diet change is not delivering the kind of transformation we need to end the moral atrocity that is factory farming. On the contrary, things are getting worse.
Stressing individual action holds movements back
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
But here’s the good news: while the strategy of individual dietary change has failed to deliver, a different approach has been quietly revolutionising how animals are treated in our food system. Strategic advocacy organisations have made huge gains here.
Take The Humane League’s cage-free campaign as an example of what strategic advocacy can achieve. In just 15 years, it has convinced more than 2,400 companies – including corporate giants like Walmart, KFC, and Taco Bell – to commit to cage-free eggs. The result? The percentage of US hens living cage-free has skyrocketed from 4% to around 40%.
Let that sink in: billions of chickens will no longer spend their lives confined in wire cages so small they can’t even spread their wings – spaces literally smaller than a sheet of printer paper. And here’s the kicker: achieving this transformation costs just 85 cents per chicken. This is what effective systemic change looks like.
This is where the real opportunity lies: instead of the uphill battle trying to get people to cut back on their meat or go plant-based, we could channel that energy into supporting the organisations that are already transforming the system.
Of course, some animal advocates bristle at this suggestion. I’ll admit, when my co-founder and I first had this idea, I had a moment of pause. There’s something that feels wrong about being able to simply write a check to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Shouldn’t we be asking people to engage more deeply with the ethics of their food choices, not less? After all, many activists believe that changing individual diets is the gateway to deeper engagement with animal welfare.
But, historically, emphasis on individual action has often held movements back, not helped them.
Consider this revealing parallel: in the early 2000s, one of the biggest promoters of the ‘carbon footprint’ – the idea that we should all obsessively measure and reduce our personal impact on global warming – was none other than oil giant BP. By shifting the conversation from corporate responsibility to consumer choice, BP masterfully deflected attention from the real drivers of climate change.
The meat industry is playing from the same playbook. While we debate the ethics of holiday dinners, they’re spending millions lobbying against basic animal welfare laws, pushing through “ag-gag” legislation to criminalise whistleblowers, and running sophisticated PR campaigns that paint factory farms as idyllic family operations. They’ve even tried to make it illegal to call plant-based products “milk” or “meat” – not because consumers are confused, but to maintain their monopoly on how we think about food itself.
This is why we need to shift our focus to systemic change. Instead of letting the industry keep us arguing about personal food choices, we should be supporting the organisations that are pushing for better regulations, fighting harmful agricultural subsidies, and holding these companies accountable for their practices.
The best part about offsetting? People will actually do it
Courtesy: Paralaxis/Shutterstock
Some critics argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements, like cage-free eggs, actually entrenches factory farming by making it seem more acceptable. They say we need to push for complete abolition, not small changes that might make people feel better about eating meat.
This strategy inevitably draws criticism from abolitionists within the animal rights movement. They argue that pushing for incremental welfare improvements – like cage-free eggs – actually entrenches factory farming by making it more palatable to consumers. Better conditions, they say, just ease people’s consciences while leaving the fundamental system intact. We should be pushing for complete abolition, not compromises that might make people feel better about eating meat.
But this argument ignores how successful social movements actually work. Take child labour: it wasn’t eliminated in the US overnight. The path to abolition began with seemingly modest reforms – limiting working hours, requiring breaks, and restricting the most dangerous jobs. Each small victory built momentum for bigger changes.
Moreover, while we work towards evolving the food system away from cruel and destructive practices like factory farming, incremental changes make an immediate and meaningful difference for animals suffering right now. A hen who can spread her wings, scratch in the dirt, and dust bathe isn’t living in ideal conditions – but she’s significantly better off than one confined in a tiny cage. To dismiss these improvements as mere window dressing is to ignore the very real suffering we can prevent today.
But, the strongest argument for offsetting is also the most simple: people will actually do it.
For most of us, writing a check is a much easier ask than changing your entire diet – which means more people will actually help. The numbers bear this out: about 14% of Americans already donate to animal causes each year – almost three times as many people as identify as vegetarian or vegan. Imagine what organizations like The Humane League could achieve if we channelled more of our energy into funding their successful campaigns instead of arguing about personal food choices.
Right now, billions of animals are suffering in factory farms while we debate what’s on our plates. The fastest path to ending their suffering isn’t waiting for everyone to go vegan – it’s empowering everyone who cares about animals to make a difference, whether they eat meat or not. The system won’t change because we all become perfect ethical consumers. It will change because we organised, funded, and fought for that change.
Whether you’re reading this as a vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, omnivore, or total carnivore – remember, you don’t have to change your diet to make a difference in the systemic fight against factory farming (which hurts us all). Just make sure you’re putting your money where your mouth is.
Unilever has agreed to sell The Vegetarian Butcher to fellow plant-based meat business Vivera, with the deal expected to be completed by Q3 2025.
Four months after it first emerged that Unilever was planning to offload The Vegetarian Butcher as part of its portfolio shakeup, it has accepted a non-binding offer to sell the business to fellow Dutch meat-free company Vivera.
The latter – itself owned by the world’s largest meat company, JBS – submitted a binding offer for an undisclosed sum to acquire The Vegetarian Butcher. The deal is subject to the usual closing conditions, regulatory requirements, and consultation processes, and expected to be completed by Q3 this year.
Unilever, which bought The Vegetarian Butcher in 2018, said the brand no longer aligned with the requirements of its wider portfolio, and the divergence made a sale the best option. It enlisted Piper Sandler to handle the transaction.
The wider picture, though, is that this is part of the CPG giant’s Growth Action Plan 2030 (GAP2030). It intends to clear out brands collectively worth around £1B in annual sales, sharpening its focus on its 30 ‘power brands’ – like Hellmann’s, Dove, Knorr, and Surf – which represent over three-quarters of its turnover.
“I believe that The Vegetarian Butcher is poised for even greater success in the next phase of its journey under new ownership that is dedicated to plant-based meat replacements,” said Unilever Foods president Heiko Schipper. “This focused expertise will support the brand in its ambitious goal to become the ‘Biggest Butcher of the World’.”
Unique supply chain and tech needs necessitated sale
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
One of the world’s leading plant-based meat makers, The Vegetarian Butcher was established in 2007 by Jaap Korteweg – a ninth-generation livestock farmer – and politician Niko Koffeman. In 2016, it co-produced a line of vegetarian meatballs with Unilever under the Unox soup brand, and was purchased by the CPG behemoth two years later as it looked to capitalise on the boom in meat-free eating.
The Vegetarian Butcher’s products are available in 55 countries and over 40,000 retail locations, as well as restaurants and chains like Burger King and Subway. According to Unilever – which spent over £8M on a marketing push for the brand in 2019 – the plant-based meat maker has delivered “strong double-digit growth on average” since the acquisition, although Reuters reported that it only records around €50M in annual sales and is loss-making.
The Vegetarian Butcher’s chilled and frozen products require a “distinct supply chain and sourcing model”, which made it “less scalable” within Unilever’s broader portfolio, the group said. It added that the plant-based business’s innovations were driven by a “unique set of technological and R&D capabilities” that differed significantly from the needs of its broader product range.
“We are very excited for The Vegetarian Butcher to be joining forces with Vivera, as it will bring the opportunity to combine our strengths and deliver even greater value to our partners and our consumers,” said The Vegetarian Butcher CEO Rutger Rozendaal.
Courtesy: Vivera
Vivera is one of Europe’s oldest and largest vegan meat producers, having been around since 1990. It was initially part of the Enkco Foodgroup, whose flagship brand was a namesake meat maker. But the group sold the Enkco business to focus solely on the plant-based enterprise in 2017, paving the way for strong growth. This led JBS to acquire Vivera in 2021.
Today, Vivera’s products are available in over 27,000 supermarket stores across 25 European countries. Its retail and private-label portfolio and in-house technologies are “complementary” to The Vegetarian Butcher, the firm said.
“We join forces to create a great purpose-driven company with many talented and highly motivated people. Acceleration of the protein transition is more important than ever and we look forward to inspiring more people to eat more plant-based,” said Vivera CEO Willem van Weede.
The Vegetarian Butcher eyes success as Unilever shakeup continues
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
Change has been fast afoot at Unilever in recent months. The group has also begun demerging its ice cream units in India and Indonesia, and will list global brands like Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s on public markets this year. The latter is in a spat with its parent company over the ouster of CEO David Stever last month, with Unilever accused of removing the executive over his political activism.
The CPG company is also looking to sell a number of its Dutch food brands, including Unox and Conimex. And speculation about the future of brands like Colman’s, Marmite, and Pot Noodle has been rampant since the departure of CEO Hein Schumacher, who only took over in July 2023 and masterminded the GAP2030 strategy focused on “doing fewer things, better and with greater impact”.
Schumacher, who has been replaced by CFO Fernando Fernandez, said the board was keen to “step up the pace of our strategy execution and realise swift value creation underscored by a change in leadership”.
Unilever has additionally scaled back a number of its key climate goals, a break from its reputation as one of the world’s ESG leaders. The company recorded a 1.9% hike in turnover in 2024, reaching €60.8B. Its power brands led the way with sales growth of 5.3%. Meanwhile, the group’s food business made up 22% of its 2024 revenue. At €13.4B, this was second only to the personal care segment.
“Market growth, which slowed throughout 2024, is expected to remain soft in the first half of 2025,” Schumacher said last month. “The steps we have taken in 2024, including the launch of our refreshed GAP2030 strategy, further reinvestment in our brands and strong innovation pipelines leave us better positioned to deliver on our ambitions in the years ahead.”
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
There had been scepticism about Unilever’s ability to find buyers for The Vegetarian Butcher at the right price, and some had (correctly) suggested it could appeal to trade buyers like meat producers looking to diversify into plant-based alternatives.
“This marks a significant step towards becoming one of the largest and most influential companies in the plant-based industry, making us uniquely positioned towards further accelerating the global shift to tasty and healthy plant-based solutions,” said Rozendaal.
The deal comes amid a downturn in investment in plant-based food (by 75% in 2024) and faltering sales, resulting in a number of mergers and acquisitions in the past year, including Ahimsa Companies’s takeover of Wicked Kitchen, Simulate, and Blackbird Foods, the separate deals for ready meal brand Allplants by Deliciously Ella’s founders and Grubby, and Misha’s Inc’s purchase of vegan cheese producer Vertage, among others.
McDonald’s Canada is trialling the McVeggie, featuring a patty that ditches plant-based meat for vegetables.
After the Beyond Burger failure in Canada, McDonald’s is banking on vegetables for its latest meat-free main.
The Golden Arches is testing the McVeggie at 37 locations in British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick until April 14, gathering feedback from diners to inform a potential national launch.
It comes six years after the fast-food chain introduced the P.L.T. (Plant, Lettuce, Tomato) sandwich in Canada, featuring a Beyond Burger. The patty was tested in September 2019, before a wider 12-week trial in early 2020 – but it failed to break through and was eventually discontinued.
Now, McDonald’s is hoping that a vegetable-forward burger will capture consumers who don’t eat meat or are looking to cut back – two in five (39%) of Canadians say they’re eating less red meat, and another quarter would be willing to do so.
McDonald’s ‘uniquely Canadian’ meat-free burger
Courtesy: McDonald’s Canada/Green Queen
If you’ve ever been to a McDonald’s store in India, Brazil, Australia or New Zealand (among other places), you probably know that the McVeggie has been around for a long time.
Each is distinctly unique to its local market, and the Canadian McVeggie is no different. The breaded, deep-fried patty includes a blend of vegetables like soybeans, carrots, green beans, zucchini, peas, broccoli and corn, mixed with seasonings and topped with lettuce and a mayo-style sauce.
The latter contains eggs, so the McVeggie isn’t vegan – this was the case with the P.L.T. too, which came with mayo and cheese.
The McVeggie is available in a spicy habanero variant, which swaps the mayo-based sauce for a creamy habanero spread currently used in the Spicy McCrispy burger (this also contains egg).
“While our guests may have tried similar sandwiches at McDonald’s globally, our McVeggie is uniquely Canadian,” said Jeff Anderson, senior manager of culinary innovation at McDonald’s Canada. “We’re always looking for new opportunities to innovate and build on our menu, and the McVeggie will give even more guests the opportunity to enjoy that delicious McDonald’s flavour Canadians know and love.”
McDonald’s Canada CMO Francesca Cardarelli added: “We know more people in Canada than ever before are looking for new flavours and for variety on our menus. Our goal is to continue to offer new and exciting choices to meet these needs. And the McVeggie does just that.”
Can the McVeggie help McDonald’s attract meat reducers?
Courtesy: McDonald’s Canada
The launch of the McVeggie stemmed from McDonald’s internal research, which revealed that around 35% of Canadians have food limitations – whether due to an allergy or personal preference – and about half of the time, it’s these consumers who decide where the group they’re dining with go to eat.
“The market is evolving and we’re listening to what guests are telling us,” Anderson told the Toronto Star. “So you’ll see this is a veggie-first patty. It’s one of the things we’re getting to learn. What we found from the McDonald’s consumer is that they might not be able to come to us for religious reasons or cultural reasons, and we’re looking at something that fits within that.”
Cardarelli told The Canadian Press that the Beyond Meat burger “wasn’t quite what consumers are looking for”, echoing comments from McDonald’s US president Joe Erlinger last summer.
The American executive had said the McPlant – as the Beyond Meat sandwich is known outside Canada – was “not successful” in the markets it was tested in, and that there were no plans on bringing it back. Experts, however, have called it an issue of “marketing malpractice”, rather than a lack of consumer demand.
This can be evidenced in Europe, where the McPlant has shone. When it was launched in the UK and Ireland in 2022, it was so popular, that McDonald’s introduced a Double McPlant months later. Successful trials in Germany and the Netherlands also led to a nationwide rollout, with the latter adding four new vegan products in 2023 (including a McPlant variant).
That said, meat alternatives are still low on the priority list for Canadians, 60% of whom don’t consume these products; though with more consumers looking to reduce red meat, and McDonald’s Canada receiving an F grade in a ranking of vegan-friendly restaurant chain menus, veggie burgers may be a shrewd move.
“As this is our first test of the McVeggie, we’re using this opportunity to gather insights and guests’ feedback so we can continue delivering on our commitment to serving great tasting, quality food we know Canadians will love and enjoy,” said Cardarelli.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Benexia’s new chia seed milk, Violife’s campaign with Chrishell Stause, and Holy Carrot’s upcoming restaurant in London.
New products and launches
Chilean company Benexia has launched what it says is the first milk alternative made from whole chia seeds. Launched under its Seeds of Wellness brand, the Chia Milk is available at Costco and on Amazon in the US for $27.99 for a six-pack.
Courtesy: Benexia
Speaking of the US, Kate Farms‘s Kids Nutrition shakes are making their national retail debut at Target. The pea-milk-based products come in chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla flavours, and contain 27 vitamins and minerals.
Alt-dairy giant Violife has launched a Creamy Confessions campaign to support the launch of its lentil-based Supreme Coffee Creamers, featuring celebrities like Chrishell Stause (Selling Sunset, The Traitors), Bozoma Saint John (The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), Sasha Farber (Dancing with the Stars), and more.
Courtesy: Violife
The Plant Based Seafood Co. – known for its Mind Blown label – has launched two new brands. Hills Bay Classics focuses on crab cakes and a ‘seafood extender’, while Smash It is centred around health and GLP-1 support.
Speaking of marine products, New Zealand-based Nutrition from Water has released Marine Whey Golden 35, a clean-label algae protein designed for bakery and dairy applications.
Courtesy: Vegan Minerals
Likewise, Los Angeles-based Vegan Minerals has introduced Calcea, a plant-based calcium ingredient sourced from red algae. Apart from the bioavailable calcium, it provides magnesium, over 70 essential trace minerals, and 16 amino acids, while offering superior absorption thanks to a natural honeycomb structure.
France’s HappyVore has released a vegan ham with a Nutri-Score A rating, and a score of 84 out of 100 on nutrition product scanning appYuka. A Saveur de l’Année (Taste of the Year) 2025 recipient, it contains 20g of protein per 100g from peas and beans and is available at Carrefour.
Courtesy: The Raging Pig Company
In Germany, The Raging Pig Company is leaning into the smash burger trend with a new plant-based patty for restaurants. It’s made from peas and mushrooms and is available via select foodservice distributors.
In a bid to revitalise plant-based meat and seafood, Dutch family business Schouten Europe has rolled out Power Bites and Sea Bites as its latest product innovations.
Courtesy: Better Nature Tempeh
Meanwhile, UK-based Better Nature has enhanced its tempeh recipe to boost the protein content from 19g to 22g per 100g serving, which is the same as three eggs, up to 400g of butter beans, or two-thirds of a chicken breast.
Chinese vegan protein brand Starfield is showcasing its diverse range of products, including the Poki Salad Bar, vegan bacon strips, and dairy-free cheese at the 2025 International Food & Drink Event (IFE) in London.
Courtesy: Holy Carrot
And London-based vegan restaurant Holy Carrot is bringing its Michelin Guide-approved vegetable-forward concept to the East End with a new location in Old Spitalfields Market, which is set to open by the end of the year.
Company and finance updates
Solar Foods, the Finnish company known for its gas-based Solein protein, has signed two MoUs with international customers to supply 6,000 tonnes of the ingredient per year. Additionally, it has announced a factory investment plan that could be Europe’s largest emission reduction project.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Finnish precision fermentation firm Onego Bio has completed the purchase of a 25.9-acre piece of land in Jefferson, Wisconsin for $777,000. Located at the Food and Beverage Innovation Campus, it will build a facility that will produce animal-free egg proteins equivalent to six million hens, and be operational in 2028.
Germany’s Formo, a fellow precision fermentation player working on dairy and egg proteins, has received a €1M ($1.1M) bioeconomy grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and partnered with Brain Biotech to advance strain development and bioprocess optimisation.
Courtesy: Formo
In Portugal, cultivated seafood maker Cell4Food has partnered with agrifood R&D specialist CoLab4Food to co-develop products and enhance their safety and nutritional values.
Meanwhile, Swedish cultivated meat startup Cellevate has appointed biopharma veteran Christel Fenge at CTO to turbo-charge its effort to commercialise its Cellevat3d nanofibre cell culture solutions.
Courtesy: Meatable
Another cultivated meat company, Meatable, has hired two more meat industry veterans. Former Tyson Foods executive Maiko van der Meer has joined as the director of commerce, and Cargill and McCormick alum will join Eugene Leong as its Asia head in May.
AI protein discovery platform Shiru and plant biotech platform GreenLab have teamed up to commercialise novel food proteins for CPG applications using the latter’s corn expression system.
Policy developments
Peet’s Coffee has become the latest coffee chain to remove the surcharge on non-dairy milk, joining the likes of Starbucks, Dunkin’, Tim Hortons and others after campaigning from Sir Paul McCartney and charities like Peta.
Californian alternative protein pioneer Eat Just and its cultivated meat subsidiary, Good Meat, has agreed to pay $4.4M as part of its legal settlement with bioreactor supplier ABEC.
Courtesy: Eat Just
UK supermarket Morrisons has switched suppliers for its own-label coconut milk after a Peta Asia investigation exposed forced monkey labour in Thailand’s coconut industry. The product will now be sourced from Peta-verified Merit Food Products.
EIT Food and Mars Petcare have selectedBioscienZ and Cremer Sustainable Nutrition as the winners of their Fiber Valorisation for Pet Food Challenge. They will now develop proof-of-concept studies to drive sustainable ingredient innovations, with the potential to develop long-term collaborations.
Slovenian whole-cut meat analogue maker Juicy Marbles has released Pork-ish, the second product in its Meaty Meat lineup, its cheapest offering ever.
Building on its new Meaty Meat range, Juicy Marbles has released a whole-cut pork analogue that boasts a Nutri-Score A rating and high protein and fibre content.
Available on the company’s website, it’s said to be the “first whole cut of pork in the plant-based category”, and is a follow-up to Lamb-ish, which was launched last month as the first offering in the Meaty Meat lineup. They are precursors to the brand’s retail launch in the US.
Both products are 26% cheaper than Juicy Marbles’s most accessible cut of plant-based meat yet, priced at $10 per 180g pack. While the whole-cut aspect would speak to consumers looking for better-tasting meat alternatives, it’s also keying into demand for more nutritious products, with 36g of protein per serving.
‘Deliberately ambiguous’ product to take on tofu
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
Founded in 2019 by Luka Sinček, Maj Hrovat, Tilen Travnik and Vladimir Mićković, Juicy Marbles began with whole-cut beef steaks made using patent-pending ‘reverse grinder’ tech that mimics the muscle texture and marbling of conventional steak.
It layers plant protein fibres on top of each other to replicate animal tissue, helped by deposits of hardened sunflower oil. The effort aims to solve two of plant-based meat’s biggest pain points: taste and texture. A recent survey saw meat-eaters describe vegan alternatives as juicy 62% less often than conventional meat, while only 30% like the average meat-free product.
Notably, that research did not include whole cuts like the ones offered by Juicy Marbles. With the Meaty Meat range, it is hoping to build on the hype created by its initial products (such as a whole-cut lion, a thick-cut filet, and bone-in ribs).
The range is positioned as a “new kind of kitchen staple” to rival tofu as a go-to option for home cooks. The company suggests that, like tofu, the products have a “deliberately ambiguous shape”. The Meaty Meat lineup can be sliced, chunked, shredded or cooked whole to add juiciness and up to 2.5 times more protein than tofu to any dish.
“Mimicking real cuts too closely can limit their perceived versatility in the kitchen. That’s why we went deliberately ambiguous with Meaty Meat’s shape. We wanted to give our customers more freedom while shifting the perception of plant-based whole cuts in general,” said Sinček.
“By focusing only on what people love most about Marbles: meaty texture and flavour, and nothing else – we hope we can give people permission to experiment with whole cuts in all kinds of recipes.”
Juicy Marbles looks for a cleaner label
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
The new range is also reflective of Juicy Marbles’s commitment to shifting its portfolio to a cleaner-label recipe, called Marble 3.0.
Pork-ish has a base of water and soy protein, natural flavours, and sunflower oil, with small amounts of pea protein isolate, red beet juice, yeast extract, salt, apple extract, and vitamins and minerals. It has a complete amino acid profile, 11g of fibre (nearly 40% of the daily recommended value) per slab, and is fortified with iron, zinc, selenium, and B vitamins.
“We’ve always been frustrated by how light plant-based ‘alternatives’ can be on essential nutrients, like protein, iron, and B12. Beyond taste and texture, people want nutritionally sensible food that helps them reach their daily nutrition goals and that they can cook for their families with confidence,” said Maj Hrovat, who is the R&D chief.
“If we want plant-based meats to be a viable alternative, they have to get close to matching the nutritional profile of meat – with a sensible ingredients list. Marble 3.0 is our cleanest, most nutritious recipe yet, and will be our standard going forward.”
According to the company, the Lamb-ish product was sold out in 24 hours in the US, and the newest innovation is “quickly flying off the shelves”. It now plans a retail release in the EU and the UK too, alongside a supermarket rollout stateside.
Juicy Marbles is one of several companies working on whole-cut meat analogues, which experts say offer a more attractive gateway into plant-based eating for omnivores. These firms include Chunk Foods, Prime Roots, Redefine Meat, Project Eaden, Meati Foods, and Planted.
British trip-hop band Massive Attack’s music festival in Bristol last summer produced the lowest emissions of any concert ever, according to a new report.
Nearly seven months after Massive Attack hosted 32,000 people at a music festival it hoped would serve as a playbook for low-carbon live music, a new report suggests it succeeded in doing so.
The concert was named Act 1.5 after the 2015 Paris Agreement, where world leaders pledged to keep post-industrial temperature rises below 1.5°C, and featured an electric-powered stage, 100% plant-based catering, and no car park.
All this helped Massive Attack cut energy emissions by 98% compared to a standard outdoor live music event (lowering on-site electricity emissions by 81% versus a show running on diesel generators), and food emissions by 89%. In fact, in absolute numbers, offering exclusively vegan dishes rendered the largest reduction in emissions (26,800 kg of CO2e).
Courtesy: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
“This show proved to be the cleanest, greenest festival event ever staged – but in terms of popular take-up of clean practices, it feels like we and others working on this stuff are attempting to create smart productions within dumb regulation,” said Mark Donne, lead producer of the Act 1.5 show.
Carly McLachlan, associate director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which published the report, added: “A willingness to do things differently was demonstrated by the audience and crew members alike.”
How Massive Attack cut out carbon
Courtesy: Horace Downs
The music festival was Massive Attack’s first home concert in five years, and took place at Clifton Downs in its home city of Bristol. The trip-hop band created the concept based on a separate Tyndall Centre report it commissioned in 2021, adopting a number of measures to make it the most climate-friendly live music event, and lay out a blueprint for other acts to follow.
To reduce transport-related emissions, local residents were prioritised with presale access to tickets, and encouraged to walk, cycle or take public transport. For those travelling, Massive Attack incentivised them to use trains, offering access to a VIP bar and separate toilets.
The band organised free electric shuttles to and from the two main train stations in Bristol, as well as five special trains from rail operator GWR for people to travel back home after the concert. In fact, the gig venue had no car park.
Further, Massive Attack reduced the number of trucks it used to carry equipment to the venue and between the festival stages, going from six to two – and these were electric-powered. The entire site was powered by renewable energy through Ecotricity’s electric batteries.
Meanwhile, all the food served at Act 1.5 was plant-based, a key focus for the organisers since food and drink represent the second-largest source of emissions at festivals, making up over a third (35%) of the carbon footprint.
The festival also had a food waste prevention plan in place, including the redistribution of surplus food and the composting of food waste. Bars encouraged people to bring their own reusable containers, while all serveware was compostable. And no single-use plastics were allowed on site, either from traders or audience members.
Taking the low-waste strategy further, Massive Attack banned glitter and disposable vapes too, and installed compostable toilets, with some of the event’s waste sent to a firm that extracts phosphorus from urine.
Aviation emissions in focus as plant-based demand surprises promoters
Courtesy: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
These measures allowed the band to massively attack the event’s emissions, with the electricity supply highlighted as a key lever of success. “Avoiding post-combustion products by not having diesel or HVO generators is likely to have improved on-site air quality,” the report said.
While the full impact of transportation is difficult to calculate since the organisers didn’t have data on how every audience member travelled, a sample survey of 7% of the concertgoers was used to make estimates. Only 5% of people took a flight to or from Bristol for the gig, while about 35% used a car or van, and about a third were locals.
“As is common, air travel is the highest single contributor to the overall emissions impact of the show,” the report revealed. To showcase just how much it impacts an event’s footprint, the 5% of concert visitors who flew in were responsible for 64% of the transportation emissions. Conversely, locals only accounted for 1% of this share.
It’s why the artists travelled to Bristol via coach or ferry (from Paris, Dublin and Glasgow), lowering travel emissions by 73% compared to a standard live music event.
“If fans are encouraged to tour the world to see their favourite artists, this sector can simply forget about hitting any emissions reduction targets, let alone Paris 1.5°C compatibility. There’s a huge question now for tour planning, but also for media and promoter marketing campaigns high on the glitz of epic summer tours that normalise leisure aviation,” said Massive Attack frontman Robert del Naja.
Courtesy: Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
The food situation caused some controversy because demand far outstripped supply, leading to long queues and hour-long wait times for some attendees. The report explained that this was because the local promoters didn’t realise the audience’s greater interest in food over drink (atypical for such festivals), and assumed that vegan options may not appeal, and therefore incorrectly assumed that demand would be low.
Massive Attack apologised for this after the show and the Tyndall Centre pointed to a silver lining here: “This helped to demonstrate that demand for plant-based food could be relied upon and so any initial concerns about making the switch from meat-free to plant-based were unfounded.”
Comparative assessments found that its food emissions were 89% lower than a regular concert where 30% of dishes contain red meat, another 30% feature white meat and only 10% are plant-based.
Governments need to step up to decarbonise live music
Courtesy: Robert Del Naja/Instagram
Massive Attack had set out to create a playbook for other artists and bands to follow around the world, and the success of the concert is now there for everyone to see.
“This proof-of-concept show could change the landscape for outdoor festivals. It demonstrated that there are real opportunities for promoters, providers, local authorities and central government to create the conditions for the UK to lead the world in super-low carbon events,” said McLachlan.
More and more artists are trying to limit the environmental impact of their shows. Coldplay published a 12-point plan to halve their tour’s carbon footprint and successfully reduced its Music Of The Spheres Tour’s emissions by 59%, a figure it noted had been verified by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. Crucially, however, this did not take into account audience travel, the largest source of emissions for these type of events.
Courtesy: Coldplay
Billie Eilish, who is famously vegan, directed London’s O2 Arena to serve only plant-based food during her 2022 residency, and last year worked with LA Metro to increase subway services to her album launch venue (although fans still would have needed to drive to get to a station). For her ongoing Hit Me Hard and Soft tour, the singer set up Eco Villages as part of a raft of sustainability efforts.
Even Taylor Swift has served plant-based meat at some of her Eras Tour shows. While it’s a welcome measure, it does very little to move the needle – especially when you consider her emissions from the record-breaking world tour.
Donne, Act 1.5’s producer, explained where things can improve. “Music fans showed quite categorically that they are up for taking the train if there are reliable services available and they can get to the station post-show – but those arrangements are unnecessarily bureaucratic, with dysfunctional timings that must be made simpler,” he said.
“High-polluting power sources like diesel that dominate the festival world, creating huge amounts of greenhouse gas and toxic air pollution for those that live near festival sites, or work on them, are cheap and abundant.”
He continued: “Central and local government must address this urgently, either via regulation or a deterrent tax. Clean technology is ready – it just needs to be facilitated; fans want clean shows, that’s very clear. The challenge for promoters and government now is to meet that need.”
Meat-eaters find most plant-based alternatives inferior to animal protein in taste and texture, but some industry-leading products show how to bridge the gap.
Vegan meat alternatives have a taste and texture problem, and it is what’s keeping omnivores and flexitarians away, according to sensory testing by Nectar, a non-profit initiative focused on accelerating alternative protein transition through taste.
In its second annual Taste of the Industry report, the organisation conducted a blind test of 144 plant-based analogues with over 2,600 meat-eaters. Only 30% of participants liked the average meat-free product, compared to the 68% who liked conventional meat. Across all 14 categories, 46% said they ‘liked’ or ‘liked very much’ the leading vegan products.
Courtesy: Nectar
Off-flavours, a weird aftertaste, mushiness, and off-colours were some of the biggest weaknesses identified in the tested products. On the plus side, 20 of the plant-based leaders were rated the same or better than their animal-derived counterparts by at least half the taste-testers, providing an R&D roadmap for the rest of the industry.
Investment in R&D offers strong returns – Nectar’s research found that the leading products in each category capture a 28% market share, versus just 18% for other offerings. In fact, for every 5% increase in the share of consumers rating plant-based meat as the same or better than conventional meat, sales of the former grew by $1.5M.
Plant-based burgers, nuggets and fillets most appealing to meat-eaters
Courtesy: Nectar
The analysis revealed that meat-eaters tend to find vegan burgers, nuggets and meatballs more appealing than bacon or hot dog analogues – the better-performing categories have five to 15 times higher market penetration.
“These leader products are outperforming average products primarily in flavour,” says Nectar director Caroline Cotto. “Also, plant-based chicken as a category is winning in R&D over pork and beef, with no chicken products showing a big gap in liking between the average plant-based product and the leader product.”
“Our research shows that the biggest opportunity for plant-based products to catch up to their animal counterparts is on texture. For some categories, like nuggets, burgers, turkey, etc, mimicking texture is significantly easier than for other categories, like bacon, bratwurst, and whole-cut steak,” she says.
“The balance of fattiness and chewiness in bacon, the snap of a bratwurst casing, and the tender but firm chew of whole-cut steak are all textural elements that require further R&D if plant-based products want to meet omnivore consumers’ expectations in these categories,” adds Cotto.
Courtesy: Nectar
While the analysis didn’t look at chopped steak products like the ones offered by Beyond Meat (and recently Impossible Foods), for whole cuts, reducing the off-flavour and aftertaste, mushy texture, and dryness and toughness are the biggest opportunities.
At the same time, the research suggested that people prefer unbreaded chicken fillets over strips or chunks. “One of the biggest R&D opportunities across all categories was juiciness [or] tenderness,” explains Cotto. “That played out in this category clearly where perhaps the smaller pieces have more problems retaining their moisture.” FIllets were rated as juicy or tender about 1.5 times more.
Further, strips and chunks were found to have weird aftertastes or off-flavours more frequently than fillets, which Cotto says could be because Nectar tested some of the lower-performing brands instead of industry leaders here.
The best plant-based meat brands, according to meat-eaters
Courtesy: Nectar
Nectar is also launching the Tasty Awards to celebrate innovation in the category, with the winners announced at a ceremony in San Francisco today. They honour brands that were found to be the most-liked in its tests, with products that over half of omnivores say taste the same or better than animal protein.
A total of 13 companies won an award across the categories, with Impossible Foods the biggest winner (with wins in six categories). Brands seem to be performing the best with burgers and unbreaded chicken fillets, categories where five companies won an award each.
This includes Heura, Meati Foods, and Swap – a sign that consumers are perhaps more inclined towards ‘clean’ labels and short ingredient lists. However, Cotto clarifies that the actual base ingredients don’t have a large impact on purchase intent.
“Our research found that coconut oil had the best consumer perception, over seed oils like canola or sunflower, but relatively no impact on taste,” she explains. “Mushrooms and mycelium were conceptually appealing ingredients to consumers, leading to a positive change in purchase intent, but products with these ingredients actually had lower overall liking ratings.”
Courtesy: Nectar
Cotto suggests that “taste parity is on the horizon”, but “no plant-based products in this year’s study” achieved parity with or outperformed an animal product. She reiterates that texture innovation is the most important lever for plant-based leaders to catch up with animal proteins.
“Plant-based products were described as juicy 62% less often than the animal, leading to decreases in liking of 1.1 points – increasing tenderness and reducing mushiness are meaningful secondary priorities,” she says.
Meat-free offerings were found to be savoury 35% less often and have a weird aftertaste or off-flavour five to six times more often than animal proteins. “These differences were associated with a 1.5- to two-point liking gap between animal and plant-based products,” says Cotto, noting that flavour is the “biggest opportunity for plant-based as a whole to improve”.
“We think it’s important for the industry to raise the standard of the average plant-based product because the average product was generally disliked,” she says.
