New York-based Blackbird Foods has been acquired by Ahimsa Companies, a holding company with several sustainable protein startups in its roster.
Frozen plant-based food maker Blackbird Foods has been acquired by Ahimsa Companies, an investor on a takeover spree of alternative protein players globally.
The deal will help Blackbird Foods – which makes vegan pizzas and wings, seitan, and dairy-free cheese – expand its reach, enhance its manufacturing capabilities, and accelerate product innovation.
It is Ahimsa Companies’s third M&A deal since being founded last year, after its acquisitions of leading brand Wicked Kitchen (including subsidiaries Good Catch and Current Foods) in May 2024, and nugget maker Simulate last October.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but Blackbird Foods will continue to operate under its existing brand identity.
Courtesy: Blackbird Foods
Banking on the market for frozen vegan food
Blackbird Foods, founded in 2022 by Emanuel Storch and Mike Pease, has products in Target, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, and The Fresh Market, as well as restaurants like Screamer’s Pizzeria.
One of its flagship products is the pepperoni pizza, which it recently revamped with the help of industry giant Beyond Meat. The startup swapped its housemade pepperoni with the latter’s pea protein version, which it said was meatier.
In 2024, it raised $125,000 in a crowdfunding round on StartEngine, where it claimed to have recorded lifetime sales of over $11M. According to a filing with the SEC, the business made $4.47M in revenue in 2023, a 60% increase from the year before, which it attributed to increased distribution and velocity.
“We are eager to tap into Ahimsa’s extensive knowledge to strengthen Blackbird’s presence in the frozen aisle. With their support, we have ambitious plans for growth and exciting product innovations on the horizon,” said Pease.
While retail sales of plant-based meat suffered in 2024, they sold much better in the freezer than the fridge, according to market research firm Circana. Dollar sales of chilled meat analogues took a 17% dip in the 52 weeks to July 14, 2024 to reach $309M, while those in the frozen aisle only encountered a 6% loss, totalling $720M in sales.
Courtesy: Blackbird Foods
Ahimsa Companies leads plant-based consolidation era
Backed by investors including the Ahimsa Foundation, Ahimsa Companies’s business model involves taking over companies that can reshape the sustainable food industry. The holding company has noted that consolidation is “critical to the growth and success”.
As part of a roll-up strategy, Ahimsa Companies is looking at companies in the precision fermentation, cultivated meat, extruded pea protein, non-dairy alternative, and plant-based food segments, and has bought a 50,000 sq ft factory in Ohio to produce meat analogues.
“Ahimsa Companies shares our passion for plant-based innovation and animal-free food production. Together, we will continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in plant-based cuisine while maintaining the quality and authenticity our customers love,” said Storch.
Courtesy: Simulate/Green Queen
The acquisition comes after investment in plant-based startups fell by 75% in 2024, reflecting an overall hesitance in food tech funding among venture capitalists. It has played a part in the string of consolidation deals the sector has seen recently – in the UK alone, food and drink M&A activity was up by 29% in 2024.
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) may have changed its name to Humane World for Animals, but its animal-betraying, factory-farm-supporting policies remain. Join PETA and urge Humane World for Animals (formerly HSUS) to make a real change and step down from the board of directors for the humane-washing scheme Global Animal Partnership (GAP).
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Humane World for Animals Is a Factory Farm Apologist
Humane World for Animals (formerly HSUS), the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASCPA), and Compassion in World Farming are failing to prevent cruelty to animals. They have become apologists for factory farms by sitting on the board of directors for the humane-washing scheme GAP.
GAP uses misleading “animal welfare certified” labels to convince consumers that they’re buying the flesh and secretions of animals who were treated better than those on other factory farms, but marketing buzzwords mean nothing for animals raised and killed for food.
By supporting GAP, these organizations are allowing animals to be:
Routinely mutilated without any painkillers.
Forcibly manually impregnated.
Kept in factory farm sheds that are virtually indistinguishable from operations that aren’t “animal welfare certified.”
GAP’s welfare standards also allow companies to send sensitive, communicative pigs into C02 gas chambers at slaughterhouses, where they convulse and slowly suffocate for up to several minutes.
GAP is also phasing in the abysmally low standards of the “Better Chicken Commitment,” a humane-washing sham that allows chickens to continue to suffer mightily in vile, filthy, factory-farm conditions so the meat industry can profit.
Over 8 billion chickens are killed for their flesh in the U.S. each year. Most of these chickens, called “broilers” by the speciesist chicken industry, spend their entire lives confined in dirty sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, even when their flesh is labeled “Animal Welfare Certified” in grocery stores like Whole Foods. The intense crowding and confinement by the meat, egg, and dairy industries often lead to disease outbreaks, such as bird flu. When the birds are only 6 or 7 weeks old, workers cram them into overcrowded crates and truck them to slaughter.
Urge Humane World for Animals, the ASPCA, and Compassion In World Farming to Stop Supporting GAP
Join PETA in urging the Humane World for Animals (formerly HSUS), the ASPCA, and Compassion In World Farming to stop supporting factory farms and humane washing and start telling consumers the truth: Eating animals is never humane.Go vegan, it’s easy.
British vegan entrepreneur Heather Mills, founder of legacy brand VBites, on what’s going wrong for the plant-based industry – and how it can move forward.
Having spent decades in the vegan food sector and collaborating with a small group of like-minded individuals to raise awareness about the urgent need to protect animals, the planet, and our health, we were delighted to witness the tremendous growth in this movement over the past five years.
We would like to take credit for it – and we definitely should, as far as making the best products are concerned at VBites.
However, the real reason for the growth was the sale of three vegan/vegetarian food companies for hundreds of millions of dollars: Quorn, Daiya, and then the IPO of Beyond Meat (which took its market cap to $12B at one point).
At the time, I warned these companies that they should have their messaging ready for the pushback from the meat and dairy industry. Unfortunately, they didn’t listen and that huge $12B valuation dropped to under $500M for Beyond Meat.
The meat and dairy industry became afraid because they did not have ownership and control of the vegan market and the boom, and put out dreadful products that turned people off going vegan.
Investor interest must be retained
Courtesy: VBites
In the UK, at VBites, we thought about this and got ahead of the game by replicating famous brands and manufacturing vegan alternates for them, such as Applewood vegan cheese, Domino’s pizza cheese, and numerous other supermarket labels of meat- and fish-free products.
Had these companies that obtained hundreds of millions of dollars focused on working with meat and dairy companies to replicate their brands as white labels, as well as their own brand, the Gartner effect may not have happened.
That’s why we created the first vegan burgers and cheese for McDonald’s and Burger King.
Going forward, there is no other choice than to push the reduction of global warming, the cruelty of animals, and the improvement of health by going vegan.
The most important thing is that greedy corporate investors stay invested in these companies for the long term, for the future of their own children, the planet, and the animals.
It’s not just the profit – the sector will become very profitable – however, it needs time and investment, and it needs to be well spent. I find the big corporations waste so much money and that’s attributed to this downfall.
It’s all about the people
Courtesy: Diana Papini
Vegan startups mainly started with enthusiastic founders like myself. I had 30 years’ experience and made the same mistakes. However, I never had a huge investment.
A lot of these founders also were really knowledgeable in tech and brand marketing, but did not think of the bigger picture or understand how difficult it is to scale up kitchen products into large-scale, manufacturing products.
That requires a totally different expertise.
At the time, I contacted them and said: “Let us do the manufacturing for you, as we have the world’s largest 100% vegan manufacturing facilities and have been the experts for decades.”
They had no original IP and we suggested they get on with the genius of branding, but unfortunately, they ignored this and most of them went into administration.
We at VBites went through a similar situation when we were invested in, because the investors thought they knew what they were doing and didn’t listen to how to run a small family business. Bottom line, it’s all about the people.
We have our online supermarket called Alternative Stores, which is growing 55% per month. We have 2,200 products, including the most innovative boiled, fried and poached vegan eggs. We’ve also created an egg albumen to go into food application.
To help the smaller family businesses that have been used for their innovations, then copied, private-labelled and dumped out of the supermarkets, we don’t charge for these brands to put their products on our website. This way, they can test the market without mortgaging their house and putting themselves into debt.
We have turned our companies around by working directly on the factory floor with the people who have been with us for many decades. The problem with big corporates is that they sit in their ivory towers and most of them have never run a business from the ground up, so they need to listen to the founders.
And if the founders are not experienced, they need to listen to the financial expertise of those who know what they’re doing.
I believe that there will be another plant-based boom because there has to be. There is no other option.
More than 175 food businesses across Asia have committed to improving their sourcing policies in light of sustainability and animal welfare, supported by a US non-profit.
A total of 83 food companies committed to implementing improved sourcing and production policies across Asia in 2024, as a result of campaigning by sustainability NGO Lever Foundation.
This is in addition to the 95 such corporate policies secured by the charity in 2022 and 2023 from food companies based or operating in Asia, impacting production covering “several million farm animals per year”.
“We’re encouraged by the growing commitment from food companies across Asia to adopt more sustainable and humane sourcing practices,” said Lily Tse, corporate outreach manager at Lever Foundation.
“These 83 new corporate policies generated last year represent meaningful progress. By working closely with companies of all sizes, from major producers to local restaurants, we’re seeing real transformation in how food is sourced and produced in Asia.”
China plant-based partnerships in focus
Courtesy: Accor Group
Among the corporate policies Lever Foundation says it generated last year are 17 shifts towards improved production systems, and five pledges to significantly ramp up the use of plant-based foods.
According to its website, it has helped shift 29 million corporate meals to plant-based and prevented 82 million kgs of CO2e from businesses each year.
Its impact in China is particularly notable. Lever Foundation partnered with IHG Hotels & Resorts Greater China to make 30% of the group’s offerings plant-based by 2025, a commitment that was matched a few months later by Dossen Hotel Group, and bettered by Orange Hotels, which pledged to convert 70% of its menus to plant-based options at 750 hotels.
Lever China also signed a strategic partnership with the Low-Carbon Hotel Development Institute, a state-affiliated organisation in China, to boost the adoption of plant-based foods in the country’s hotel industry.
These efforts come at a time when plant-based food is becoming more popular in local diets, making up a majority of the country’s protein supply. Polling shows that almost all (98%) Chinese consumers would eat more plants if they were informed about the benefits of a vegan diet.
China may be world’s largest meat consumer – making up 28% of the global consumption growth in the decade to 2023, with intakes set to increase further until 2030 – but experts suggest that half of all protein consumption in the country must come from alternative sources by 2060, if it is to decarbonise.
“The steady growth in corporate commitments throughout 2024 reflects the value of sustained engagement and clear communication for driving positive progress in the food system,” added Kertna Tharmaraja, communications manager at Lever Foundation.
Can Asian hospitality meet the sustainability moment?
Courtesy: Patarapong/Getty Images
The remaining 51 commitments generated by Lever Foundation in 2024 came from companies small, medium and large – including retailers, hospitality groups, bakeries, cafés and foodservice operators – to remove “particularly destructive practices” like caged farming from their supply chains.
Surveys by GMO Research show that at least three-quarters of consumers prefer cage-free eggs in markets like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines.
In South Korea, Accor Hotels has removed caged eggs from 90% of its operations, and will fully eliminate them by this year, with support from Lever Foundation. This would speak to the 79% of Koreans who believe businesses should use cage-free eggs, and 69% who’re willing to spend more on them in restaurants.
So far, about 40% of the corporate policies it helped introduce have been implemented, with the remainder set to be rolled out in the years ahead, within publicly announced timelines. Of the 83 companies, 77 are based in Asia, with the rest having headquarters in Oceania, Europe or the Americas.
“Lever’s approach of working closely with partners across the supply chain has helped facilitate practical, implementable change that aligns with both business goals and sustainability imperatives,” said Tharmaraja.
“The willingness of businesses to embrace better practices – from improved production systems to expanded plant-based offerings – reflects an encouraging shift in corporate priorities and consumer expectations.”
Courtesy: PwC
According to PwC, 43% of consumers in Asia-Pacific are making more eco-minded purchases, and a third are changing how they eat in line with planetary health. And 55% say they’ll spend more to stay at an environmentally friendly hotel, much higher than their counterparts in the rest of the world (around 40%).
Meanwhile, Lever’s venture capital fund, called Lever VC, recently announced the first close of its Fund II, which will deploy an initial $50M in early-stage agrifood tech startups. Among the first five startups to receive financing are Gavan Technologies (maker of plant-protein-based Savor butter), sweet protein innovator Oobli, and mycelium meat startup Mush Foods. To date, Lever VC has completed over 100 investments in the category.
Months after securing an exit for Deliciously Ella, founders Ella and Matthew Mills have acquired vegan ready meal leader Allplants out of administration under their revamped Plants brand.
Less than three months after it entered administration, British ready meal startup Allplants is back on the market, having been rescued by the founders of fellow vegan business Deliciously Ella in their bid to drive the conversation away from “ultra-processed meat alternatives”.
Ella and Matthew Mills, who sold Deliciously Ella to Hero Group in September, retained their Plants brand and restaurant in the multimillion-pound deal. While the Plants by DE eatery has since closed, the CPG label – launched as a sub-brand with Waitrose in 2022 – is now undergoing a refresh with the acquisition of Allplants.
“We are absolutely thrilled to share that today we have acquired the Allplants brand name and associated brand assets out of administration,” Ella Mills said in a statement. “We will bring together Plants and all plants to create something truly special – a new, natural, plant-based powerhouse.”
Instead of launching new products under the Allplants label, Plants will look to leverage the former’s social media following – it has nearly 200,000 followers across its accounts – to expand its reach.
The refreshed business will be led by managing director Kerry Atack, who has worked with Deliciously Ella since 2020.
Deliciously Ella founders tap into Allplants’s ‘enormous promise’
Courtesy: Plants
Set up by brothers Alex and Jonathan Petrides, Allplants has been around since 2016, selling vegan ready meals online and via retailers. It capitalised on the meal delivery boom a few years later during the pandemic-induced lockdowns, and when it made its retail debut in November 2022, it sold six million meals within the first three months.
Over the years, the company raised £67M from investors including professional footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs. But in the background, it registered losses of nearly £10M in the seven months to March 2023, which Jonathan ascribed to inflation, post-Brexit supply chain disruptions, rising interest rate, and the shift from the growth stage to the pursuit of profitability.
The business went into administration in November, making 65 employees redundant and working with Interpath to find a buyer. Now, it has become the latest in a line of plant-based companies that have been rescued from the brink, including Meatless Farm, VBites, Plant & Bean, and Mycorena.
Courtesy: Allplants
“When we started cooking in 2016, fewer than 1% of Brits ate vegan. Today, that number is over 6%, with millions more flexing and shifting towards plant-based,” said Jonathan, who has left the business. “Allplants was always about sparking that curiosity, nudging habits, and helping people taste the future.”
He added: “Putting so much goodness out into the world and being a part of this societal shift is something we can always be very proud of, and I feel privileged to have been involved in such an important movement – but there’s still a lot of progress to hopefully come.”
In her statement, Mills said: “Having spent the past 12 years building Deliciously Ella and Plants, we have long admired the Allplants brand, and the brand name has built remarkable consumer awareness across the UK. Unfortunately, the business ran into significant financial difficulty, and we know that the resulting administration has been an incredibly difficult time for the community, customers, suppliers, team members and investors.”
She added that Plants was “pleased to have signed an agreement” to acquire the brand name and assets: “We’re so excited to build an exciting future for this brand with such enormous promise.”
Ella Mills slams UPFs ahead of Plants brand refresh
Courtesy: Plants/Green Queen
Plants sells pantry staples like pasta, sauces, kombucha, soups, and frozen meals, which are available at Waitrose, Ocado, Whole Foods Market, and Zapp.
The brand will announce a packaging refresh in April, with phrases like “Real food”, “Real flavour”, and “100% natural ingredients” forming part of a new direction that looks to shift the discourse away from ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
These make up 57% of the average British diet, and while experts have warned against associating processing with nutrition, a backlash against UPFs has also led to plant-based meat products falling into disrepute.
Retail sales for plant-based meat were down by 6% in the UK in 2023, with volumes plunging further by 13%, while the country’s largest meat-free company, Quorn, posted pre-tax losses of £63M that year, a fourfold increase from the £15M it lost in 2022, just as more youngsters are increasing their meat intake (19%) than reducing it (16%) in the UK. Vegan ready meals, meanwhile, saw a decline of 20%.
The UPF pushback has given rise to whole foods like beans, tofu (now in 8% of British households, despite being a UPF too), and tempeh (with one tempeh maker the second-fastest growing meat-free brand last year).
Courtesy: Deliciously Ella
“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. We’re here to try and change that, and to reimagine the plant-based fixture with delicious, natural, quick wins for clever cooks,” said Mills.
It’s the latest example of vegan brands themselves attacking plant-based meat for being ultra-processed. Phil Graves, CEO of mycelium meat maker 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 Beyond Meat’s new products and cookbook, the US’s first corn milk brand, and a cultivated seafood tasting.
New products and launches
Plant-based meat giant Beyond Meat has expanded its steak lineup with Chimichurri and Korean BBQ-Style flavours, which are available at Sprouts Farmers Market. It has also launched a Go Beyond the BUzzer cookbook with the National Basketball Players Association, with recipes from current NBA players like Cade Cunningham, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
German alt-seafood startup Koralo is expanding into the US, and looking to partner with clients for its co-fermented microalgae- and mycelium-based Wellness New F!sh fillet and functional food ingredients.
Speaking of seafood, Canadian firm Konscious Foods has partnered with New York-based seafood purveyor Acme Smoked Fish, which will distribute its plant-based smoked salmon to delis, restaurants, bagel shops, and more.
Fellow Canadian food tech player The Cultivated B has launched multi-channel biosensors to monitor the growth and metabolism of cell culture and fermentation processes. The tech combines continuous tracking with AI-enabled real-time analytics to help enhance accuracy and speed.
Also in Canada, Odd Burger has secured a retail listing with Calgary Co-op, making its vegan frozen food lineup available at all 22 locations in Alberta.
Courtesy: Maïzly
Based in one of the US’s major corn producers, Indianapolis startup Maïzly has debuted a category-first corn milk, which it offers in original and chocolate flavours. Free from seed, nut or vegetable oils, it packs 8g of fibre per cup, and is available on its website, Amazon and select retailers.
Sweden’s Veg of Lund has secured a listing for its Dug potato milk product at 150 Carrefour stores in Spain, marking its debut in the country.
In Spain, supermarket chain Eroski, catering company Ausolan, mycelium firm Innomy, and the Leartiker Technology Centre have created desserts and snack bars made from fungal protein as part of the Delifungus project.
Iceland’s ORF Genetics and South Korea’s CellMeathosted a public tasting for cultivated shellfish meat at the Iceland Ocean Cluster, in an event attended by First Gentleman Björn Skúlason and agrifood minister Hanna Katrín Friðriksson.
Courtesy: Solar Foods
Italian algae startup KelpEat has launched high-protein crackers using Solein, the gas protein produced by Finnish firm Solar Foods. It was showcased at the Pitti Taste show in Florence this week.
Company and finance updates
Solar Foods has also reached a step closer to bringing its air-based protein to the EU market, after addressing inquiries from the European Food Safety Authority regarding the scientific opinion on its novel food application.
Courtesy: Heura
Spanish plant-based meat leader Heura has improved its B Corp rating by 18%, now scoring 111 points and securing the top spot for CPG food businesses with a turnover of over €1M.
NoPalm Ingredients, a Dutch producer of fermentation-derived oils and fats from upcycled agricultural sidestreams, has become the first company to scale such ingredients to industrial levels of 120,000 litres.
Israeli food tech startup SuperMeat has teamed up with Argentinian biomanufacturing firm Stämm to expand production of the former’s cultivated meat, which it says can be produced for $11.79 per pound. The partnership is supported by mutual investor Varana Capital.
Courtesy: Dror Varshavski
Canadian plant protein manufacturer Burcon Nutrascience has agreed to acquire a commercial-scale facility in Galesburg, Illinois, and will begin production in the first half of this year.
In the US, YC-backed blended meat startup Choppy (formerly Paul’s Table) has ceased operations nearly three years after it was established.
Californian alt-honey startup MeliBioearned $15,000 after winning Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition‘s NGT3 pitch slam contest for its precision-fermented honey.
Research, policy and awards
MeliBio‘s European vegan honey distribution deal with Narayan Foods is on the backburner, but the business is aiming to become profitable by the end of the year.
Courtesy: Imperial College London
In the UK, the University of Bristol and Imperial College London have voted to support the transition towards plant-based catering menus, joining a host of other institutes in the Plant-Based Universities movement.
Can targeted menu modifications ‘nudge’ people into picking plant-based items in restaurants? A new study by Bryant Research explores this question, based on trials run at Mumbai restaurant Gracias Granny.
South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs has unveiled its 2025 Agri-Food Fund Operation Plan, committing ₩55B ($38M) towards smart agriculture and food tech.
Courtesy: Gander
Food waste app Gander has been nominated for Prince William‘s Earthshot Prize 2025. The app operates in UK, Ireland, Australia and Brazil, and has saved about 40 million items of food from ending up in the trash.
Finally, the Freedom Food Alliance (FFA) has launchedFoodFacts.org, a fact-checking platform powered by an AI chatbot and expert-backed nutritional and health content. Disclaimer: Green Queem Media founder Sonalie Figueiras is an advisor at FFA.
With egg prices returning to sky-high levels in the US, it brings a major opportunity for plant-based and fermentation-derived alternatives. Can these companies capitalise on the moment?
You know things are serious when Waffle House starts upcharging you for every egg.
The all-day breakfast chain serves 272 million eggs every year; it has now added a temporary 50-cent per-egg surcharge on orders due to the bird-flu-induced national shortage.
The current wave of avian flu – in its third year now – killed more than 40 million chickens in the US in 2024, causing major supply problems and subsequently driving up prices. The peak may have been January 2023, when a dozen eggs set you back $4.82 in the supermarket – though current costs are agonisingly close.
The crisis is showing no signs of abatement – the number of chickens affected by the flu per month tripled in December, and increased further last month. That leaves an egg-shaped hole in grocery baskets and restaurant orders.
This is an opportunity made for sustainable egg protein startups, which are making egg alternatives with plant-based ingredients, as well as recombinant egg proteins from fermentation.
The egg market in numbers
Courtesy: CNBC
Retail chicken egg prices in the US reached $4.15 per dozen in December 2024, a 65% hike from 12 months prior, with consumers and restaurants paying up to $7.
Egg prices are projected to rise by another 20% in 2025, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The cost of eggs wholesale has already reached an all-time high. White shell eggs now cost $8 a dozen, obliterating the previous record of $5.46 in December 2022.
Inventories of shell eggs are roughly 15-16% below the five-year average, as per the USDA.
It’s not just the US – since 2019, egg prices have doubled in South Africa, and grown by 50-90% in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and Brazil.
In Australia, 1.8 million hens were culled last year as a result of the country’s largest avian flu outbreak. While that was eradicated, a new strain of the virus has appeared.
Courtesy: GFI
Plant-based eggs are a nascent market, making up just 0.5% of retail sales of vegan food in 2023. This amounted to $43M in dollar sales, a 5% decrease from 2022. Unit sales also dropped by 13%.
In the longer term, retail sales of plant-based eggs grew by 11% between 2021 and 2023, and unit sales were up by 8%. In comparison, unit sales of conventional eggs fell by 4% in this period.
Only 1% of US households buy vegan eggs; repeat rates have continued to increase, from 38% in 2020 to nearly half (48%) in 2023.
Courtesy: GFI
While the price gap between chicken-free and conventional eggs shrunk in 2022, a slight stabilisation in the latter’s supply widened it in 2023, with plant-based eggs costing over $8 higher per dozen. This disparity is set to narrow again as avian flu rages on.
One research firm suggests that in Europe, the plant-based egg market is expected to grow by 40% annually to reach $3.88B in 2031, showcasing the potential for these products.
In Asia, this market is set to expand even faster (73% annually) to reach $850M in 2028, led by China and India.
Courtesy: Data Bridge Market Research
The problem: Why egg prices are high
A long-running flu: At the root of the issue is H5N1, the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza that has led to the culling of nearly 158 million birds since 2022. This wave has been ongoing for much longer than usual – in the past, bird flu waves have only lasted for a season or so. Meanwhile, high animal feed prices (initially originating from Russia’s war on Ukraine) have contributed too.
Refreshing flocks is not a quick process: More than 1,550 commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by H5N1 in the last three years. Disinfecting and verifying the safety of a farm can be a lengthy process – and even when it’s deemed safe, it takes a new flock up to 16 weeks to start laying eggs.
Logistical challenges: The egg supply chain has not been spared by the logistical crises that have hit the global food industry. Transportation costs – especially for refrigerated items – have soared amid a shortage of truck drivers in the US and a hike in long-haul truck rates.
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
Cage-free policies: Almost a dozen states in the US – including California, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Washington – have introduced cage-free egg policies. Such anti-cruelty legislation sets minimum space requirements for hens, which reduces producers’ overall capacity.
Political pressure: Eggs have been a talking point in the US political sphere over the last year, with President Donald Trump criticising former President Joe Biden’s administration for failing to control the price hikes and promising to get them back to normal when he took over – in actuality, things have only gotten worse since the start of his second term.
Low supply, high demand: While supply has dwindled, Americans’ demand for protein-packed foods like eggs has increased. These consumers are increasingly swapping red meat for poultry and eggs, and 71% have named protein as the macronutrient they’re most interested in consuming.
What are chicken-free egg makers trying to solve?
Direct swaps for classics
Several startups offer liquid eggs or ready-to-eat versions of classic egg dishes that can be used as a 1:1 swap, and these tend to target CPG consumers who use eggs as part of their meals at home.
Perhaps the largest name is Eat Just, whose Just Egg comes in pourable and toaster formats and uses mung bean as a base – it can be used to make scrambles, omelettes and even baked goods, though it does come with a steep price tag.
As of late 2023, Eat Just indicated that its egg alternative captured 99% of the US vegan egg market and that by February 2024 it had sold the equivalent of half a billion eggs. The startup faces competition from brands like Zero Egg and Simply Eggless in the US, and international players such as Crack’d, Oggs, Perfeggt and Vegge.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Others, meanwhile, are moving past pourable formats to offer more novel options. Yo Egg, for example, makes vegan sunny-side-up and poached eggs with runny yolks, which can be boiled or fried. BeLeaf also makes hen-free fried eggs. And under it WunderEggs brand, Crafty Counter turns almonds and cashews into egg patties, boiled eggs, and deviled eggs.
In Singapore, Float Foods has developed a range of plant-based eggs for different applications, including poached, yolks, and XL omelette wraps, under its OnlyEg brand. Poached eggs are also a feature of Germany’s Neggst, as are sunny-side-ups, boiled eggs, and patties.
Courtesy: Le Papondu
French brand Le Papondu, meanwhile, is looking to take things a step further. While it has gone to market with egg patties, it’s working on a crackable whole egg in the background.
A bang for your buck
Most of these pre-prepared or pourable egg alternatives don’t actually undercut the cost of eggs, contributing to the price gap between plant-based and conventional versions. This is where powdered alternatives come in.
It’s the original egg substitute format and it continues to enjoy popularity, as illustrated by the number of brands in this space. As dried products that shoppers add water to, they are much more wallet-friendly, they can be packaged more minimally and they don’t require refrigerated transportation.
Courtesy: Acremade
Powdered vegan eggs are an ideal alternative for cash-strapped consumers in the egg-flation era. Brands like Peggs, Acremade, Orgran, Bob’s Red Mill, Vegg, and Sol Natural are filling this gap.
Like-for-like functionality
Some companies are targeting the bakery and CPG sectors with alternatives that perform like eggs in different products—estimates suggest that up to 40% of all eggs are used as ingredients in foodservice and food manufacturing.
For example, Follow Your Heart, Fabalish, and Eat Just all make egg-free, plant-based mayonnaise, and companies like Orgran, Oggs, and Egg’n’Up all offer substitutes for use in baked goods.
Courtesy: Eat Just
Others, including Revyve and ProteinDistillery, are using waste ingredients like spent brewer’s yeast – a byproduct of the beer industry – as fermentation feedstocks for microbes to produce egg protein alternatives for use in baked goods and meat analogues.
Meanwhile, some startups are using precision fermentation to make bio-identical versions of egg proteins without chickens. The Every Company makes EggWhite (which contains an ovalbumin equivalent), a transparent glycoprotein, and a whole egg; the startup has been granted three ‘no further questions’ letters from the FDA in the US and has applied for regulatory approval in the UK and the EU as well.
Finland’s Onego Bio is using the same technology to produce its recombinant ovalbumin, Bioalbumen, and is awaiting FDA approval this year.
Courtesy: Onego Bio
Belgium’s Otro is also working on egg white proteins made via precision fermentation. And Germany’s Formo is set to launch a precision-fermented egg alternative (though their version isn’t bioidentical). Elsewhere, Israeli startups PoLoPo and Finally Foods are growing egg proteins inside potatoes via molecular farming.
While it’s still early days for many of these startups, there is a clear opportunity amidst what looks like continued supply, quality and price volatility for the global chicken-egg industry.
Tim Hortons is officially moo-ving on from its vegan upcharge! After hearing from PETA, Tim Hortons has confirmed it no longer charges extra for vegan milk in the U.S. and Canada. Find out how this move helps leave mother cows and their calves in peace, reduces the company’s greenhouse gas emissions, and earns a whole latte love from PETA and conscientious consumers.
Tim Hortons Is Now Offering Vegan Milk at No Extra Cost
Tim Hortons—one of the largest coffee chains in the world with more than 3,000 locations in Canada and nearly 700 in the U.S.—is the third major coffee chain to drop the upcharge in the last three months, following Starbucks in November 2024 and Dutch Bros Coffee in January. In thanks, PETA is sending the Toronto-based coffeehouse and restaurant chain assorted vegan chocolates.
Cows Suffer When Humans Steal Their Milk
Cows, like all mothers, produce milk only to feed their babies. In the dairy industry, cows are repeatedly forcibly inseminated—workers insert an arm into the cow’s rectum and a metal rod to deliver semen into her vagina. Newborn males are routinely slaughtered for veal, while female calves endure the same fate as their mothers until their bodies wear out and they’re killed for their flesh.
Make a Positive Change for Cows, the Climate Catastrophe, and Your Health
Given the chance, cows nurture their young and form lifelong friendships with one another. They play games and have a wide range of emotions and personality traits. But most cows raised for the dairy industry are intensively confined, leaving them unable to fulfill their most basic desires, such as nursing their calves, even for a single day. Plus, cows in the dairy industry belch out massive amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, fueling the climate catastrophe.
While cows suffer on these farms and the climate catastrophe grows, humans who drink their milk increase their chances of developing heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and many other ailments.
Start your day off right—with a cup of delicious coffee and vegan milk. A person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, dramatically shrinks their food-related carbon footprint, and slashes their risk of suffering from cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity.
Among the 22 new one-star UK restaurants in the 2025 Michelin Guide, Plates London stands out as the country’s first 100% vegan eatery to receive the honour.
Barbecued maitake mushrooms, a raw cacao gauteaux, and a mung bean and urad dal lasagna – these are some of the dishes that propelled Plates London to become the UK’s first vegan eatery to receive a Michelin Star.
Helmed by chef-owner Kirk Haworth, who founded the restaurant with his sister Keeley, Plates London was awarded a star in the 2025 Michelin Guide ceremony last night, making it one of 10 new eateries in the British capital to receive the honour.
Plates London joins a handful of plant-based establishments that have a Michelin star across the globe – it’s a distinction that’s hard to come by. Only five entirely vegan restaurants have been awarded a star, with eight designated as Bib Gourmand (recognised for good quality and value), while another 19 are “selected” (honoured for good cooking).
“We’ve always believed in pushing boundaries and this achievement proves that plant-based dining can stand proudly at the highest level of gastronomy,” Kirk and Keeley said in a joint statement, as per the Evening Standard.
A Michelin Guide inspector who visited the restaurant noted that chef Haworth was “clearly passionate” about his work: “As someone who’s going to eat plant-based food for the rest of his life, he’s on a mission to make sure it’s as delicious as possible.”
Plates London officially opened in its current Shoreditch location July 2024, shortly after Haworth won BBC show The Great British Menu. Months later, it appeared in the Michelin Guide, and now, it has received its first star.
Haworth has worked at some of the world’s most prestigious restaurants, including The French Laundry, Pied à Terre, The Square, and Quay Sydney – but he turned to a plant-based diet after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2016.
Having gained a Michelin star, ‘plant-based’ isn’t necessarily the tag Haworth wants to be known for. “I’m trying to get rid of the word ‘vegan’, really. It’s all about flavour, excitement, and innovation. We’re taking food to a new place of deliciousness,” he says, echoing the sentiments of several other chefs on the tyre manufacturer’s guide.
The Michelin inspector was left impressed by the “strong culinary technique underpinning all the dishes” at Plates London. “The depth and balance of the dishes was superb; each one came with layers of flavour and texture that all worked together in brilliant harmony,” they said.
“Kirk Haworth is a classically trained chef, and you can see that in his impeccably made sauces; what’s most interesting is how he has adapted this to plant-based ingredients in such a clever way.”
What’s on the Plates London menu?
Courtesy: Plates London
The restaurant changes its menu seasonally, and currently has several of the dishes Haworth presented on The Great British Menu. Like most high-end vegan eateries, there are no meat alternatives seen on the menu – instead, it’s all about produce and whole foods.
Plates London’s £75 seven-course menu begins with a kabocha squash and ginger soup with potato dumpling and herb pesto, followed by slow-cooked leeks with chestnut cream and a jalapeño-gooseberry dressing, and house-laminated sourdough bread with whipped spirulina butter.
“This glistening golden roll was warm and flaky, almost like a croissant in texture with its lovely crisp exterior and soft, slightly sweet interior,” the inspector explained. “The cashew-based butter was enhanced by warming spices and sharp redcurrants to cut through the richness.”
The menu then moves on to a barbecued maitake mushroom dish with black bean mole, kimchi, and puffed rice, and a mung and urad bean lasagna with miso and chive sauce.
Courtesy: Plates London
“After several Inspector visits to Plates in the last year, every one of us came out singing the praises of this exceptional mushroom dish,” noted the Michelin inspector. “The way each layer of flavour and texture married together here was a prime example of everything this kitchen is great at.”
This is followed by a supplementary dish (for an additional £15) featuring caramelised lion’s mane mushrooms, smoked shio koji, bread caramel, cauliflower cream and black truffle jus.
For dessert, the restaurant treats diners with a rice pudding ice cream with rhubarb, beets and mulberries, and a raw cacao gateau with coconut blossom ice cream, sour cherry compote, African pepper, toasted macadamia, and a raw caramel sauce.
Courtesy: Plates London
Which other vegan restaurants have a Michelin star?
“Since it opened, Plates London has been permanently packed – and not just with vegans. The restaurant is full of curious and discerning diners, who are here not because of their diets but because they’ve heard it’s one of the most exciting new restaurants around,” said the Michelin inspector.
“Yes, this is a groundbreaking, unique establishment within the UK’s dining scene. But more than that, it’s just a wonderful restaurant with Michelin-star cooking that could convince the most committed of carnivores.”
It’s a ringing endorsement from the acclaimed food guide, and a marker of its growing acceptance of plant-based cuisine. Plates London is one of very few vegan Michelin-starred eateries, but it’s a category that’s on the rise.
Courtesy: Eleven Madison Park
Perhaps most famous of all is Eleven Madison Park (EMP), which made its name as the world’s best restaurant via delicacies like a honey lavender duck, before doing a 180 and turning to a completely vegan menu (bar the tea and coffee service) in 2021. The New York City eatery retained its three Michelin stars in 2022.
Other that EMP, vegan Michelin-starred restaurants include Seven Swans in Frankurt (one star), KLE in Zurich (one star), and De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen, Netherlands (two stars). New York’s Dirt Candy and Madrid’s El Invernadero, both of which have one star, are vegetarian. And Mia, a one-star restaurant in Bangkok, offers a fully vegan tasting menu.
After revolutionising vegan cheese, Miyoko Schinner is leveraging her decades-long experience to teach everything plant-based at all nine University of California campuses.
Longtime animal rights activist, vegan dairy entrepreneur and plant-based chef Miyoko Schinner wants to change the food system. The whole darned thing.
“We are on the precipice of redefining what the food system could look like, and in order to understand that, we have to really dive deep into the current food system and understand every aspect,” she says.
“Not just the problem with animal agriculture, but the consolidation, the distribution system, the inequities around the world. Not just food deserts, but what food companies here are doing to impact food choices in developing countries,” she continues.
“As we try to redefine what a better food system could look like based on plants, we can’t just swap out the products. We have to really examine it from every angle and not repeat the mistakes that we’ve made in the past. And students are going to be the stewards of the future.”
Schinner is speaking to Green Queen from Berkeley, where she serves as a co-instructor on a new plant-based course at the University of California. Together with Brittany Sartor, who founded the programme, she is helping students advance the transformation to a plant-forward food system.
And where better do it than Berkeley, the hub of nouvelle American cuisine, and home to Alice Waters’s pioneering farm-to-table eatery Chez Panisse, which spearheaded the locavore food movement in the US.
“If you want to call Berkeley the birthplace for that type of movement, you can call Brittany the mother of this class, because she dreamed up this entire course and wrote the syllabus, and I’ve just joined at the last minute to help put some padding into it,” says Schinner.
The makings of University of California’s plant-based course
The University of California, Berkeley has a programme called Decals, a set of courses created and taught by students, covering topics not traditionally found in the institute’s coursework. When Sartor was a student at the Haas School of Business, she had an a-ha moment when she realised that “we’re not talking about plant-based alternatives” enough.
As she put together a syllabus for the class, she was on the hunt for a faculty sponsor. “I eventually connected with Will Rosenzweig, who teaches edible education,” she recalls. Rosenzweig had just happened to connect with a master’s student, Samantha Derrick, who was developing a course covering the public health aspects of plant-based foods.
“And he said: ‘You guys should just join forces create this multidisciplinary course that covers all aspects of the food system: public health, climate, environment, animal welfare,’” says Sartor, who describes herself as a “long-term vegan”.
She and Derrick combined to introduce two courses under the Plant Futures programme, one of which was a single-unit crash course called Introduction to Plant-Centric Food Systems. The class hosted dozens of guest speakers – Schinner among them – and has now evolved into the new three-unit course available to all nine University of California campuses.
The online-only course, funded by the Office of the President, already has around 55 students enrolled. It covers several critical modules, spanning Climate & Environment, Health & Nutrition, Animal Welfare, Social Impacts, Innovation, Policy & Law, Behavioral Change, Media, and Plant-Forward Cooking.
Students from all diets, all over the world
Courtesy: Plant Futures
The Plant Futures programme is part of a growing trend of apprenticeships and university courses focusing on plant-based food and alternative proteins. This summer, for example, the Austrian government will launch a vegan and vegetarian culinary apprenticeship, as part of its green economy plan. Schinner herself has been teaching an online vegan cheesemaking course too.
The plant-based course at the University of California was partly born out of growing student demand, with interest in these foods on the rise across generations. Sartor believes sustainability and the climate argument hold the most weight with the youth, while the older generations are in it for health or animal welfare reasons.
“Not everyone’s vegan or vegetarian either,” notes Schinner. “It is an incredibly international group of students. We have students from all over the world – people from Asia, Africa, just everywhere.”
The team has partnered with over 60 organisations and brands, including Grener by Default, Mercy for Animals, Califia Farms, Tofurky, and Beyond Meat.
“Thankfully, there’s a ton of amazing non-profits that have been working in this space for a while. And so there are great partnerships there. In terms of startups, we really want them to be mission-aligned,” says Schinner. This could involve a non-vegan company working to develop a plant-based product.
For example, one of the projects students have worked on was to help Bel Group reformulate its iconic Babybel cheese through a dairy-free formulation, making it less grainy and more colour-identical to the original.
The expansion of the course to all campuses also coincides with the introduction of the Plant-Forward Cooking module. It’s also an evolution of the mini-cooking sessions from the one-unit class. “We got course feedback from the students that that was one of the most valuable things. They never – in their high school or college classes – learned how to cook.
“And I think especially with like, plant-based cooking, people are just like hesitant. They think it’s going to be harder, and so I’m excited for that throughout the course.”
Sartor likened it to the “documentary effect”, referring to popular films like Cowspiracy and The Game Changers, which influence people to give up meat or dairy. “Some people look at documentaries maybe as being biased or not reputable, where I think being part of an accredited curriculum at a university has an added layer of reputation to it.”
Trump administration will ‘create a landscape we haven’t witnessed’
Courtesy: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC
We’re talking about food systems transformation at a time when it is perhaps more polarising than ever before. Scientists the world over have said we need to grow and eat less meat to lower emissions, land and water use, and food insecurity.
Animal protein has become part of a culture war in the US of late. Carnivore diets and raw milk have become major points of discussion, Elon Musk has sung the praises of beef on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and lobby groups and mostly Republican lawmakers have attacked alternative proteins as ultra-processed foods that should be banned.
The impact? Sales have continued to slow over the last two years, as has investment in startups. Venture capital flowing into the sector was down by 27% last year, with cultivated meat – the target of legislation in more than a dozen states – witnessing a 40% dip.
Courtesy: GFI
“The industry is in a period of self-examination right now, trying to figure out what’s going on,” says Schinner, who built one of the sector’s most successful companies in Miyoko’s Creamery, subsequently exiting in 2023. “What is the direction we should be going in? Are we making the right products? Are we addressing the right audience, and is this something that should be sold with huge money or not?”
On Donald Trump, she says: “It’s hard to know where the current administration is going to be with this. But, we can only guess that there are going to be limitations to certain initiatives. I think anything that’s technologically based that’s going to threaten potential industrial animal agriculture is going to be seen as a threat.”
She adds: “That’s going to create a whole new landscape that we hadn’t previously witnessed as much […] and we’re going to have to dive deep into how we can get the industry to grow in this landscape.”
Products aren’t the be-all and end-all
Courtesy: Plant Futures
Schinner believes we “can’t conflate products with the future” of the plant-based sector. “We’re just focused on the sales of products that we’re making, and that doesn’t reflect the entire picture,” she explains.
“The whole world’s not going to go vegan because there’s Beyond Burger, right? But they might go vegan if we promote a plant-rich diet,” she says. “We put all our eggs in that basket and threw a lot of money at it and assumed that that was what was going to create conversion. I’m not convinced of that.
“We have to change food culture,” she adds. “You can’t just change what we put on the shelf […] So the evolution of the human being has to go along with it if we’re going to make that change.”
I ask Schinner what mistakes the food system has made historically. “I’m going to say white saviour mentality,” Schinner responds. “What we did in developing countries, with protein in Africa, with formula, patented GMO seeds that went into places like India and robbed communities of food sovereignty.”
“That’s when the food system is focused on profits rather than actually feeding people. And so I wonder, as the plant-based industry is focused just as much on growth, IP protection and consolidation, whether or not we could be making the same mistakes that could jeopardise the health and the wealth of people in other parts of the world, as well as here in the US.”
Sartor notes that our food system has changed rapidly, even just in the last century or two and suggests it can change again. “There’s definitely a chance that it will change rapidly over the next 200 [years],” she says.
“I don’t think it’s probably feasible to say everyone will go vegan, but I do think that people are going to realise that how we’re doing animal agriculture right now is not sustainable. It’s literally just not sustainable for even the farmers themselves.
“Inevitably, there’s going to be a shift away from as many animal products as our population grows, because it’s just… it has to.”
Upcoming cookbook takes ‘whole new approach’ to vegan cheese
Courtesy: Celeste Noche
Schinner is the original vegan dairy queen. She made her name as the chef-owner of Now and Zen, an all-vegan eatery in San Francisco in the late 1980s, and the founder of plant-based dairy startup Miyoko’s Creamery, whose products are available in over 20,000 retail doors.
But legal disputes over trade secrets and IP led to her departure from the company in 2022 – she no longer has any involvement in the business, which installed Stuart Kronauge as its new CEO in 2023.
Schinner has been focusing on Rancho Compasión, the animal sanctuary she opened a decade ago, which educates about 50 kids each week about humanity and the food system. A prolific author, she is about to release her seventh cookbook, The Vegan Creamery, this September.
“I’m really excited about it, because it’s a whole new approach to making everything from milk to cheese to ice cream using all kinds of ingredients that I know,” she says. It’s not just all cashews – there are cheeses made from watermelon seeds, or a vegan halloumi from mung beans.
“I have recipes in the book where I actually coagulate the plant milks, separate the whey, and then the curds are pressed and over time, they melt into one smooth cheese,” she reveals. “So there’s some techniques in there that are unique, haven’t been seen before, and I am not applying for patents.
“I am sharing the recipes with the world, hoping that it will encourage more people to embark on this path. Hopefully, it will be the book that launches 10,000 vegan cheese companies.”
Scientists in the U.K. are pushing for a ban on boiling lobsters and crabs because their recent study confirms crustaceans feel pain—but don’t we already know that?
A Needless Experiment: All Lobster Suffering Is “Avoidable Suffering”
The scientists who are calling for a ban on crustacean boiling are pointing to the U.K.’s Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (WATOK), which makes it illegal to cause “any avoidable pain, distress, or suffering” to protected animals while killing them. According to their letter, because lobsters are considered “sentient” by U.K. law, it should be illegal to boil them alive.
However, the scientists who are calling for a ban on crustacean cruelty subjected crabs and lobsters to painful experiments to, once again, prove they feel pain.
Many other scientists and studies have already determined that lobsters, like all animals, can feel pain. When kept in tanks, they may suffer from stress associated with confinement, low oxygen levels, and crowding. According to some scientists, lobsters may feel even more pain than we would in similar situations—like being boiled alive.
Thankfully, it’s easy not to cause any “avoidable suffering” to crabs and lobsters; Don’t eat them.
It’s Selfish to Eat Shellfish: Go Vegan Today
Like dolphins and other animals, a lobster uses complicated signals to explore their surroundings and establish social relationships. They take long-distance seasonal journeys and can cover 100 miles or more each year, assuming they manage to avoid the millions of traps set along the coasts. Many lobsters and crabs are killed by their most formidable predator: humans, who consume tens of millions of them each year in the U.S. alone.
To help end the suffering of crabs, lobsters, and all other animals used for food, go vegan today!
Inside Johnston’s Packers Slaughterhouse of Horrors
Look in his eyes. The terror is unmistakable.
New secretly recorded video footage provided anonymously to Animal Justice reveals rampant cruelty at a pig slaughterhouse in Canada. Pigs frantically try to escape death. See for yourself.
Pigs Seen Screaming, Fighting for Their Lives, Trying to Escape
The whistleblower video reveals violations of animal “welfare” regulations:
Pigs thrashed around as workers attempted to stun them
Workers botched the stunning procedure
Animals were in excruciating pain as they were shackled and sliced open
Terrified pigs desperately tried to flee
Workers disregarded pigs’ suffering
Workers slit pigs’ throats often while they were still conscious
Pigs were hung up to bleed out—often while still alive
Workers prodded, kicked, and hit pigs
Terror is seen in the pigs’ eyes as they watch others die—knowing they’re next
Who Pigs Are
Pigs are friendly and highly social animals. They are also loyal and intelligent—some experts say they are even smarter than dogs. Pigs are naturally clean and avoid soiling in their living areas. When not confined to factory farms, pigs spend hours playing, basking in the sun, and investigating the world with their powerful noses.
Yet, in slaughterhouses like Johnston’s Packers, these animals are treated as mere commodities—and forced to endure terrifying and painful deaths.
Canada’s Failing Animal Protection Laws
Despite existing animal “welfare” regulations, the Canadian pig slaughter industry operates with little oversight, allowing routine abuse. The failure to enforce even the most basic care shows that animals desperately need our help.
You Can Help End This Cruelty
Every person has the power to make a difference. When we refuse to support the pork industry and go vegan, we can help dismantle this cruel food system. And since compassionate, cruelty-free options are widely available, taking a stand for animals is easier than ever.
Juicy Marbles, known for its plant-based whole cuts, has released Meaty Meat, a high-protein, high-fibre lamb analogue in the US.
Slovenian plant-based meat maker Juicy Marbles is building on its North American launch with a new marbled lamb product that features nearly 70% of the dairy recommended intake of protein, and 40% of fibre.
Marketed as Meaty Meat, the lamb is currently only available in the US and Canada, and is sold in 180g packs of two. It contains 26% soy protein concentrate, complemented with sunflower oil, natural flavours, red beet juice, and minimal amounts of pea protein concentrate, apple extract, salt, and vitamins and minerals.
It’s the startup’s first launch since the initial introduction of its Baby Ribs with edible bones, and is a marker of its expansion plans in North America, where it plans to roll out its whole cuts in retail this year.
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
Giving Americans what they want
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.
Research shows that most vegan analogues fall short of meat-eaters’ taste expectations. And among the Americans either likely to buy meat alternatives or still undecided, their taste and texture would only convince 16% to drive to the supermarket to purchase them.
Known for its quirky marketing, Juicy Marbles describes the Meaty Meat as a “cosy, sensual, hearty, and whimsical” product that will transport eaters to a place far away. “Take a whiff, and you’re gambling with a band of spice traders in a smokey yurt on the steppes of Mongolia. Take another, and retreat to the candle-lit warmth of a snowy inn where the barmaid, Helga, is cooking a mean shepherd’s pie,” the brand says on its website.
And in October, a report by 84.51° (the market research division of Kroger) showed that high-protein is the most prized nutritional attribute in food products for its shoppers, with clean ingredients another major priority – Juicy Marbles is making a play here too, highlighting that the new vegan lamb contains “no thickeners, binders, or preservatives”.
Juicy Marbles’s cheapest product yet
Juicy Marbles first came to market in 2021, and has since expanded to 3,500 European stores, with listings in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Lidl, Waitrose, Whole Foods Market, Billa, Migros and more.
Its product lineup includes a whole-cut lion, a thick-cut filet, and bone-in ribs, and have impressed consumers and expert panels globally. The ribs were anointed the Most Innovative Vegan Product at PETA’s 2023 Vegan Food Awards, and the brand was named Champion in the plant-based meat category at The Grocer’s 2023 Food and Packaging Awards. And last year, its sales jumped after a mention on Netflix’s You Are What You Eat documentary.
The new lamb is designed to be versatile – it can be pulled apart for tacos and wraps, sliced into strips for salads and sandwiches, or cut into chunks for rice bowls and noodles. It cooks in eight minutes and, according to the company, “opens up an entirely new world of cuisine to home chefs who’ve grown weary of beef, chicken, and pork alternatives”.
Courtesy: Juicy Marbles
Meaty Meat is also Juicy Marbles’s cheapest product yet, costing 26% less per ounce than its other offerings – this will be key to attracting more consumers, since the affordability of plant proteins is becoming more and more important for Americans. For some, it even trumps flavour.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Eleven Madison Park’s new vegan hot honey, Beyond Meat’s new steaks, and Kite Hill’s post-Veganuary dairy-free campaign.
New products and launches
Famed New York City restaurant Eleven Madison Park has released a private-label version of MeliBio‘s Mellodyplant-based honey. Launched under the Eleven Madison Home label, the hot honey is made from plant extracts and red habanero chillies, and is available on its website for $28 per 375g jar.
Courtesy: Beyond Meat
Beyond Meat has expanded its vegan steak lineup with chimichurri and Korean-style BBQ flavours, which are available at Sprouts Farmers Market.
In the UK, Singapore-headquartered HAPPIEE! is taking on McDonald’s with its plant-based alternatives, launching a new truck with HAPPIEE Meals featuring its vegan scampi right in front of the Golden Arches.
US alt-dairy producer Califia Farms has brought its Simple & Organic range of three-ingredient plant-based milks to the UK, starting with almond and oat milk in Waitrose.
Courtesy: Califia Farms
Now owned by Oddlygood, British plant milk brand Rude Health has introduced a chilled soy milk with added calcium. Available from February in Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Tesco, the four-ingredient offering contains 120mg of calcium (or 15% of the daily recommended intake) per 100ml.
Meanwhile, TiNDLE Foods has brought its vegan chicken to all Call a Pizza locations in Germany, where it will be part of menu items like crispy tenders and juicy burgers.
In the Netherlands, Unilever-owned meat-free brand The Vegetarian Butcher has revamped its beef mince, rolled out tender beef stripes, and relaunched its Cordon Blij and Little Willies SKUs at Albert Heijn.
Courtesy: The Vegetarian Butcher
And agrifood firm Jaouda has launched Nabatlé, Morocco’s first homegrown plant-based milk brand. It’s available in three varieties: oat, almond, and coconut.
Company and finance updates
Dutch retailer Ahold Delhaize has set a ‘protein split’ target to achieve 50% of its protein sales from plant-based foods across its European operations by 2030.
Also in the Netherlands, AI-led food waste scanner startup OneThird has raised €3.5M ($3.6M) in Series A funding and appointed Henrike Langbroek as CEO.
Courtesy: OneThird
Danish biotech firm Enduro Genetics has secured €12M ($12.4M) in a Series A round to expand its “synthetic addiction” technology to boost yields and lower costs of microbial bioproduction across industries like alternative proteins, green fuels, bioplastics, and specialty chemicals.
British cocoa-free chocolate company Win-Win has named Mark Golder as its new CEO. He has previously worked at Bosh!, Ripple Foods, and Rhythm 108.
European firm The New Originals Company has acquired Dutch tofu maker SoFine Foods and its production facility in Landgraaf.
Courtesy: SoFine Foods
Now that Veganuary is over, plant-based dairy brand Kite Hill has launched a Dairy-Free February campaign, after a survey found that 36% of Americans would consider trying more plant-based products if they had more information about their health benefits.
North Carolina startup Biomilq, which specialises in cell-based breast milk bioactives, has filed for bankruptcy amid a protracted IP dispute.
Speaking of legal battles, precision fermentation leader Perfect Day has ended its dispute with co-manufacturer Olon, with the case voluntarily dismissed and each entity paying its own legal fees. It’s now on the hunt for a new CEO, following the exit of interim chief Narayan TM.
Courtesy: Perfect Day
Positioning cultivated meat as a direct alternative rather than a substitute, German cultivated meat startup MyriaMeat has developed pig muscle tissues from pluripotent stem cells that exhibit spontaneous contractions.
Israel’s Vanilla Vida has completed the first scaled harvest of vanilla plants grown via an indoor farming system, which cuts the growing time in half and delivers higher yields than vanillin.
Finnish precision fermentation startup Onego Bio has completed a successful large-scale bakery run with its animal-free egg protein, producing cookies, muffins and cakes.
Courtesy: Halle Redfearn/LinkedIn
Swedish oat milk giant Oatly has announced a plan to readjust the ratio of its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) – instead of one ADR representing one ordinary share, the change would see each ADR represent 20 ordinary shares.
In more news from Sweden, dairy giant Valio has teamed up with food tech startup Melt&Marble to use its precision-fermented fats in a variety of “next-generation plant-based products”.
Policy, research and awards
Environmental action charity WRAP and the International Food Waste Coalition have joined forces to launch WRAP EU in an effort to tackle food waste in Europe.
Courtesy: WRAP EU
As part of the WIDERA ERA Talents call, the EU has invested €3M in a project to develop new types of plant-based proteins from Turkish staple crops like chickpeas, lentils, and other legumes. The four-year APRISE project is led by the Middle East Technical University, and the investment falls under the Horizon Europe scheme.
In Canada, the government of Nova Scotia has invested over C$1M to expand the Verschuren Centre, a precision fermentation facility in Cape Breton. The capital will create skilled biomanufacturing jobs, help enhance automation, and increase its client capacity.
Replacing meat with plant-based and fungal alternatives can reduce total cholesterol by 6%, LDL cholesterol by 11%, and body weight by 1% in eight weeks or less, a new study has found.
Courtesy: Senara
German cultivated milk producerSenara has been shortlisted for the 2025 edition of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, after being nominated by the WWF.
France’s Jay&Joy has secured €2M and acquired fellow vegan artisanal cheese maker Les Nouveaux Affineurs to expand its presence across Europe.
Just over 18 months after it was rescued from insolvency, Paris-based vegan cheesemaker Jay&Joy has turned its fortunes around with new funding and a takeover of its main rival.
The firm has secured €2M in investment and taken over fellow Parisian plant-based cheese startup Les Nouveaux Affineurs, which itself had a turbulent year in 2024, forcing it to halt production.
The deal will double Jay&Joy’s production capacity – adding an Ivry-sur-Seine site to complement its facility in Lacroix-Saint-Ouen – as well as its product portfolio, while keeping the Les Nouveaux Affineurs brand intact and retaining its 10 employees.
It will allow the companies to “create a veritable industrial scale-up with extensive product and technology portfolios”, according to Les Nouveaux Affeneurs founder Nour Akbaraly. He has now transitioned into the role of chief operating and innovation officer at Jay&Joy.
Greener pastures after a rough road for both brands
Founded a decade ago by Mary Carmen and Éric Jähnke, Jay&Joy was among France’s plant-based cheese leaders, having previously secured listings in 1,900 stores nationwide and customers in seven other countries.
But in early 2023, it stopped production after cases of listeriosis were linked to its cheeses. The halt in sales forced the company into receivership, before it was bought by an investment consortium including César Augier (a former sustainability associate at McKinsey) and VC firm High Flyers Capital, which led a concurrent €2M fundraise for the firm.
Augier took over as CEO and restarted production soon after, reestablishing Jay&Joy’s distribution channels and stepping up its expansion efforts both domestically and overseas. And after a turbulent 2023, the company saw revenues hike by 90% last year.
Courtesy: Les Nouveaux Affineurs
Les Nouveaux Affineurs, meanwhile, faced several challenges to its business in 2024, and had therefore been in talks with Jay&Joy for several months. “In the course of our discussions with César Augier, we understood that beyond being competitors, our companies shared strong values and a common ambition: to accelerate the development of plant-based food in Europe,” Akbaraly wrote on LinkedIn.
The takeover expands Jay&Joy’s offering from seven to 15 products, with its existing cheeses like Jean-Jacques and Janis (alternatives to Maroilles and feta, respectively) now complemented by Les Nouveaux Affineurs’s innovations such as L’Affiné d’Albert, La Bûche, and more.
“We will also continue our development in concert with Jay&Joy rather than in competition, and will strengthen our presence alongside the major cheesemakers,” wrote Akbaraly.
Latest investment will fuel new product launches and expansion
Jay&Joy plans to introduce four new products this year, including a mozzarella in May and two formats exclusive to foodservice. “When it comes to foodservice, there is a real demand from consumers, but also corporate decarbonisation targets with deadlines more or less distant. In the ongoing food transition, cheese is absolutely key,” said Augier.
Jay&Joy’s dairy-free cheeses already appear at sites of major hospitality companies like Hilton, Novotel, and Bvlgari Hotels. It is now also in advanced discussions with distributors like Transgourmet and Pomona, as well as catering giant Sodexo.
Courtesy: Les Nouveaux Affineurs
This expansion will be supported by the €2M it has raised in its latest funding round, which was supported by existing investors including the Demeter and Beyond Impact funds. “This integration is a key step in our entrepreneurial ambition. With Les Nouveaux Affineurs, Jay&Joy is asserting its business ambitions to create a genuine French champion in the plant sector,” said HappyVore co-founder Cédric Meston, a fellow investor in Jay&Joy.
“Our ambition is to strengthen our presence in Europe and increase our impact with increasingly high-quality products that meet consumer expectations,” added Augier.
Non-dairy cheese now makes up 3.6% of Europe’s plant-based market, and was the fastest-growing vegan category in France, where its sales grew by 34%. That said, it is a tough and crowded market, dominated by players like Violife, Sheese and Bel Group’s Nurishh, but failing to meet many consumers’ expectations on taste and texture.
Within the alt-dairy world, Indian superfood brand Nourish You bought One Good, UK-based The Compleat Food Group (formerly Winterbotham Darby) took over vegan cheesemaker Palace Culture in late 2023, and Finland’s Oddlygood acquired Planti and Rude Health. And just last month, US artisanal vegan cheese brand Vertage Foods was snapped up by fellow plant-based firm Misha’s Inc.
In its 11th year, participation numbers for Veganuary reached an estimated 25.8 million globally. And now, the organisation is bringing a vegan campaign for March to China.
Participation in Veganuary broke records again in 2025, with around 25.8 million people pledging to ditch meat, dairy and eggs this January.
While the organisation has official campaigns in 20 countries, these figures come from YouGov surveys in 11 of its core countries (across Europe and the Americas), and represent a 3% uptick in participation from the 2024 campaign.
Veganuary arrived at the number by assessing the YouGov polls (which involved around 15,500 people) and current population estimates for each of the nations, noting that it no longer measures participation by the number of email signups “as many people take part without officially registering through the website”.
The organisation will now bring the monthlong concept to more people in March, when it’s launching a sister campaign to encourage plant-based eating in China.
Multi-sector support key to Veganuary’s success
Courtesy: Veganuary 2025
Since it was introduced in 2014, Veganuary has become a cultural phenomenon, attracting more and more people every year. Its success has been built on collaborations with celebrities and influencers who have spread the word far and wide – this year’s partners included actor Woody Harrelson, chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Great British Bake Off contestant Freya Cox, and social media star Giuseppe Federici.
The campaign has also benefitted from policy support. For example, the City of West Hollywood voted in favour of a resolution to promote Veganuary to residents, staff, and businesses, and Mayor Chelsea Lee Byers announced a Veganuary proclamation in a council meeting yesterday.
Also in the US, over 40 employers in media, education, solar, and manufacturing joined the Veganuary Workplace Challenge. And more than 50 restaurants celebrated Veganuary in New York City alone.
Brands and retailers, meanwhile, came up with new products to appease the demand for vegan food, whether in the form of new ice cream flavours from Salt & Straw, tofu innovations from Squeaky Bean and Cauldron Foods in the UK, or 28 meat-free products from Lidl GB.
Courtesy: Lidl
The continued support from businesses, celebrities and policymakers is notable, given that plant-based meat has become embroiled in a culture war, thanks in part to its association with ultra-processed foods and misinformation campaigns from Big Meat.
“While there is some debate over the health aspects of plant-based meat, the environmental benefits of plant-based protein are undeniable, and this is what is drawing more and more people to choosing plant-based foods as part of their effort to reduce their climate impact,” Veganuary’s head of policy and communications, Toni Vernelli, told Green Queen ahead of this year’s campaign.
“We’re also seeing more interest in whole food plant-based cooking,” she added, which was highlighted in recipes in its 2025 Celebrity eCookbook. “These offer the best of both worlds – health and environmental benefits, plus great flavour and texture to ensure they are satisfying as well as doing good.”
Veganuary heads to China in March
Courtesy: Veganuary
Veganuary has been expanding from its January-only presence recently, after finding evidence of long-term change in participants’ diets. Six months after the 2024 campaign, 27% of participants remained fully vegan, while 54% were eating half as much meat and dairy as they were before the challenge. Only 3% of people said it had no impact on their long-term choices.
So in April, Veganuary announced a host of mini-campaigns to complement its January flagship, starting with a Choose Chicken-Free Week, followed by Choose Fish-Free Week, BBQ Month, and Choose Dairy-Free Week.
Now, it is taking the monthlong concept to China with Mangchun Sanyue (Vegan Spring March or V-March), a campaign co-developed by the China Vegan Society. The 31-day drive is identical to the January challenge, but the first month of the year isn’t an ideal season for lifestyle changes for everybody.
Lunar New Year falls between late January and early February (this year, it occurred on January 29). To accommodate the Chinese calendar, the team at the China Vegan Society came up with V-March as a twist on Veganuary.
Over 50 businesses have already committed to participating in the March campaign by launching or promoting plant-based products, and many more are expected to join.
Courtesy: ProVeg International
“Inspired by the amazing transformative power Veganuary has shown in changing people’s lifestyle for the better, we hope V-March will open up opportunities for people in China and others of Asian descent around the globe who observe the lunar New Year,” said Jian Yi, founder and CEO of the China Vegan Society.
Alternative proteins are on the rise in the East Asian nation, with its population eating more protein per capita than Americans now, and mostly from plants. Both national and local governments are promoting plant-based and novel foods, with Beijing now home to the first cultivated meat and fermented protein R&D centre. And a 2024 survey suggests that when Chinese consumers are informed of the benefits of a vegan diet, 98% say they’ll eat more of these foods.
“China boasts extraordinary plant-centred culinary traditions. We have more reasons than ever to celebrate those traditions amid all the health, ecological, and ethical crises we are struggling with today,” said Yi.
Nestlé has partnered with Oatly to unveil a limited-edition Nespresso blend tailored specifically for the latter’s barista oat milk.
In an effort to boost its barista oat milk, Swedish giant Oatly has teamed up with Nestlé to create Nespresso pods to be used “with oat milk only”.
The new coffee capsules, made exclusively for Nespresso Vertuo machines (they use a different capsule design from the standard Nespresso machines), are only available for a limited period. Their “biscuity” tasting notes are designed to be a “perfect pairing” for Oatly’s barista edition and would appeal to the growing number of consumers using plant-based milk.
“We’re delighted to have worked with the experts at Nespresso to finally bring to market a coffee capsule that was tried and tested, especially for the millions of oat drink lovers out there,” said Toby Weedon, barista development director at Oatly.
Cashing in on the alt-milk boom
Courtesy: Nespresso
The two brands note that people are increasingly turning to plant-based milk for reasons spanning environment, health, animal welfare, and taste. In the US, nearly half (44%) of households bought milk alternatives in 2023, while more than 35% did so in Germany, Spain, and the UK. Asia-Pacific, meanwhile, is the largest market for these products, recording $13.4B in revenue that year.
This growth is ascribed to several factors. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the world’s population suffers from lactose malabsorption. At the same time, awareness around the environmental impact of dairy is on the rise – Oatly’s barista version, for example, generates up to 76% fewer emissions than cow’s milk.
Consumers are turning to milk alternatives for their flavor, as evidenced by the 19% of American plant milk purchasers who buy conventional milk aswell. Oat milk, meanwhile, has surged in popularity, thanks to its relatively neutral flavour and superior functionality in coffee, compared to other plant-based counterparts.
The Nespresso Oatly Barista Edition Coffee is described in press materials as “creamy, biscuity and indulgent”. Nespresso blended, roasted, and ground coffee beans in a way that could harmonise with the natural sweetness of oats. When paired with Oatly’s oat milk, the new espresso gives off a sweet, cereal-like aroma, complementing its smooth texture, low bitterness, and light body.
“At Nespresso, we’re all about taste and we’re on a mission to make sure that every coffee lover out there can create their own perfect cup, just the way they like it,” said Karsten Ranitzsch, global head of coffee at Nespresso. “We know more and more people are reaching for plant-based drinks when preparing their favourite coffee recipe, which is why we are thrilled about our partnership with Oatly.”
Oatly’s barista expansion continues
Courtesy: Nespresso
The Oatly-Nespresso coffee pods are available in more than 15 countries, including the US, the UK, China, and Australia. They can be bought on Nespresso’s website or at its boutiques in these locations. In Canada, Nespresso is hosting immersive takeovers at several of its boutiques, running until the end of this month.
The Nestlé-owned brand already dominates the coffee pod market, but collaborating with Oatly will broaden its appeal to a wider set of consumers. The division recorded $6.4B in sales in 2023, but weaker demand in Europe led to a 1% decline in the first half of 2024.
It’s a nod to its sustainability efforts, an ever-lasting issue in the world of coffee capsules, which produce 576,000 tonnes of waste every year. The company spends over $35M annually on a pod recycling system, but only 32% actually gets recycled globally. While the composition of this new capsule isn’t anything new, offering it as an oat-milk-exclusive product could at least lower emissions at the household level, if people stick to the recommendation to use oat milk instead of dairy.
For Oatly, the partnership is a way for the brand to reach more households with its barista oat milk, which has already become the default oat milk at numerous specialty coffee shops across the world. Nearly 10 million US households owned a Nespresso machine in 2023, and data suggests that 400 Nespresso drinks are consumed every second worldwide.
“Thanks to its neutral taste, Oatly Barista Edition brings out the best flavour in coffee. It’s why it is used by professional baristas and embraced by coffee enthusiasts all over the world,” said Weedon.
Oatly has been actively innovating with its barista milk to bolster sales. Over the last year, it has launched several new formats of the product, including an organic version, 1.5-litre and 500ml cartons, a refrigerated pack, a 20ml jigger for travel, and a Lighter Taste edition for light-roasted coffee.
The Oatly barista jigger has also landed on the menus of travel operators like LNER, Avanti West Coast, British Airways, and Swiss International Air Lines.
“Oatly has been focussed on expanding the Barista family over the last few years, bringing a number of new innovations and formats into market that offer convenience to both buyer and supplier,” an Oatly spokesperson told Green Queen last month.
Self-heating vegan Hanwoo beef, plant-based octopus legs and Beyond Lamb were among the winners of the 2025 ProVeg Food Innovation Challenge.
Student-led teams across Asia-Pacific have won big at the fifth edition of the ProVeg Food Innovation Challenge, working in conjunction with some of the world’s leading future food companies.
This year’s winners have explored uncharted territory, creating innovations like plant-based lamb for Beyond Meat and Hanwoo beef for CJ Foods using local and innovative ingredients such as mung beans, konjac, rice bran, microalgae, duckweed, and wolffia.
The contest involved Unilever, Mars, Beyond Meat, CJ Foods, Charoen Pokphand Foods (CPF), DaChan, Monde Nissin, and Thai Union, which presented the innovation topics students needed to address with their products. The first prize winner received $3,000, with those coming in second earning $1,500 and third getting $1,000.
Already the world’s largest market, Asia is set to be home to half the world’s population by 2050. The region is a culinary trendsetter, but as part of the Global South, it is much more adversely impacted by the climate crisis.
The continent will likely account for half of the global increase in beef and poultry consumption by the end of the decade, and 70% of global fish intake. To keep up with this demand, farms will need to increase their output by 60-70% versus a decade ago, a task growing harder by the day, thanks to the expansive land use and high emission of animal protein production.
Experts have identified alternative proteins as crucial to decarbonising Asia’s agrifood sector, free up land, and drastically reduce water and resource consumption. They will also be key in addressing hunger and food insecurity in Asia-Pacific, which already impacts 800 million (or 10% of the global population) of its inhabitants.
In Southeast Asia, research suggests a major knowledge gap around plant-based meat, with nearly half (44%) having never heard of it. But there are clear opportunities for the sector – particularly if these products were more affordable, nutritious and tasty than conventional meat. In China alone, 98% of poll respondents say they’re willing to add more vegan food to their diets once told their health benefits.
Asia-Pacific is also home to over 200 alternative protein startups, but with younger consumers leading the demand for low-carbon foods, Gen Z and Alpha are poised to disrupt the sector with novel offerings. Pairing them with proven industry successes – as the ProVeg competition had – is a marker of the collaboration needed to propel the future food economy.
Hanbap
Position: First Prize Partner company: CJ Foods Universities: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (Australia), Wageningen University & Research (Netherlands)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
Hanbap answered CJ Foods’s call to create premium vegan meals inspired by Koran classics, which satisfied local tastes and the demand for healthier food.
This team of students developed a self-heating lunch box featuring vegan Hanwoo beef – an animal-free version of one of the rarest and more expensive beef cuts (due to its high marbling) – rice, and local vegetables, with a wooden spoon.
The beef was created with texturised pea proteins, oleogels and red microalgae, and made use of precision fermentation technology.
Burstatic
Position: Second Prize Partner company: Thai Union University: Institut Pertanian Bogor University (Indonesia)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
Based in Bogor, Indonesia, the four-strong team of Burstatic created Bomb Bites!, an innovative ready-to-eat plant-based product.
This was in response to Thai Union’s call for convenience meals targeted to young urban Asian consumers, using its vegan seafood products – like tuna, shrimp or crab – as the base ingredients.
VegVenture
Position: Second Prize Partner company: CPF Universities: AgroParisTech (France), University of Newcastle Australia, University of the Sunshine Coast (Australia)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
A modern twist on a Chinese classic, VegVenture’s team created a plant-based Peking Duck Wrap Kit with a durian filling, dubbing it Bao Bei Duck.
Working with CPF’s brief to develop a range of healthy and nutritious vegan ready meals to be sold in convenience stores, these students blended crispy plant-based duck with “bold flavours” in a format they said is convenient, sustainable, and ideal for busy, health-conscious consumers.
VeggieAlgaeSeafusion Sauce
Position: Second Prize Partner company: Unilever Universities: Ocean University of China, New York University (US)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Unilever is also the parent organisation of meat-free leader The Vegetarian Butcher (for now). It tasked students to create a new generation of products for the brand.
The final winner of the $1,500 prize, the team at VeggieAlgaeSeafusion Sauce used microalgae as a raw material. It added savoury peptides extracted from a Chinese seaweed called Porphyra, alongside a seafood flavour to develop a rice dressing.
They also used bursting purls to lock in the flavour substances and provide a unique sensory experience to diners.
Baa-yonders
Position: Third Prize Partner company: Beyond Meat University: National University of Singapore
Courtesy: ProVeg International
Working with a brief from one of the world’s largest plant-based meat makers, students at the National University of Singapore created a new product for Beyond Meat.
This is based on the concept of ‘light eating’, and tailored to meet the taste preferences and use cases unique to Asian consumers.
Baa-yonders’s answer was a marbled plant-based lamb, created with duckweed and Asian-inspired ingredients. It is aimed at flexitarians and Gen Zers, bridging the gap in vegan lamb options while addressing its high carbon footprint.
Natugi
Position: Third Prize Partner company: Thai Union University: Ho Chi Minh University of Technology (Vietnam), University of Hohenheim (Germany)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
Another team following Thai Union’s innovation topic was Natugi, developing a convenient, vegan sticky rice meal with the company’s fish-free tuna and shrimp products.
The team said that many urban Vietnamese students skip breakfast due to time and budget constraints, so its offering could help provide balanced nutrition and a sustainable food option for busy youngsters.
Teamo
Position: Third Prize Partner company: Mars University: Bogor Agricultural University (Indonesia)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
Confectionery giant Mars had issued a call for a new vegan snack product lineup that leveraged abundant plant resources and crops well-known to Asian consumers, which would be launched under an existing brand or a new label that advances its chocolate, snack and ice cream portfolio.
The all-Indonesian group of Teamo came up with a winning solution, creating a chocolate made from the whole cacao fruit, filled with okara (the pulp from tofu production), tempeh, and chocolate paste.
With a proposed price of $2 per 50g bar, it’s aimed at health-conscious women, featuring 30% of the daily recommended value of iron and fibre in Indonesia, and 35% of protein.
World Peacemakers
Position: Third Prize Partner company: CPF University: Jiangnan University (China)
Courtesy: ProVeg International
The final third-prize winner of this year’s challenge was a team called World Peacemakers, which worked on CPF’s call for healthy, convenient vegan ready-meals.
The Chinese team leveraged microalgae protein, plant polysaccharides and 3D-printing technology to create plant-based, high-protein octopus legs, providing what they called a “nutritious, tasty and sustainable alternative to seafood”.
Peanuts, potatoes and pistachios are just some of the ingredients taking on the established order of plant-based milk, which remains the most popular vegan category globally.
Nearly half of Americans are drinking plant-based milk now, and most of them aren’t vegan. They like these products first and foremost for their taste, followed by their health benefits, not to mention for intolerance/allergy reasons. In Europe too, more than a third of consumers in several countries are now consuming milk alternatives.
The category is dominated by four base ingredients: almond, oat, soy, and coconut. But with alt-milk the most profitable plant-based product category across the world, challenger brands are aiming to take a slice of the non-dairy pie with newer milk bases to upend the dominance of the Big Four.
Think watermelon seeds, pistachios, buckwheat, and even potatoes. These plant-based milk products aim to keep the sector fresh and give the non-dairy-curious something new – whether that’s for taste purposes, better nutrition, or higher sustainability credentials.
Plant-based milk in numbers
Courtesy: Statista
Asia leads the worldwide market for milk alternatives, recording $13.4B in revenue in 2023. China alone accounts for $9.5B of this, making it the largest plant-based milk market.
The global market for these products was valued by one research firm at $19.4B in 2023, with a CAGR of 7.6% until 2030, reaching $32.4B.
In the US, milk alternatives account for 36% of the plant-based market, racking up $2.9B in sales, and 80% of all non-dairy milk sold is either almond or oat milk.
Nearly half (44%) of US households bought plant-based milk in 2023, and eight in 10 came back for more. That being said, one in five Americans who purchase vegan alternatives also put cow’s milk in their shopping carts.
Courtesy: GFI
Also in the US, 15% of all milk sales in the country are plant-based, a figure that rises to 41% in the natural channel.
Meanwhile, foodservice operators are spending much more on plant-based milk than dairy – while they bought 8% more cow’s milk in 2023 (spending 7% more), their purchases of vegan alternatives grew by 18% in volume, representing a 21% higher spend.
Across the Atlantic, milk alternatives make up 41% of all vegan sales in Europe’s biggest markets, reaching €2.2B in 2023.
Courtesy: GFI Europe
Vegan alternatives take the highest market share of the milk market in Germany (10%), followed by Spain (8.6%) and the Netherlands (8%).
In Germany, Spain, and the UK, more than 35% of households buy plant-based milk.
A third of Americans still haven’t found a non-dairy product that meets all of their needs.
While non-traditional milk alternatives only make up 5.5% of the alt-milk market in the US – their sales value grew by 6% in 2023 to reach $160M.
Courtesy: PBFA
The problem: Why brands are looking beyond the established plant-based milks
We need to quit dairy: Simply put, dairy is bad for the planet. Per litre, cow’s milk uses 11 times more land than oat milk and nearly 70% more water than almond milk (often criticised for being too water-intensive), while producing around thrice as many emissions as rice and soy milk.
Current plant-based milks face multiple issues: As mentioned, almond milk suffers from a bad rep for needing too much water to grow, while oat milk has been through its own identity crisis with questions around seed oils and glucose levels. For many, coconut milk has too much fat, and rice milk too much sugar (it’s also the most carbon-intensive plant-based milk). Others, meanwhile, find soy milk’s flavour too beany or off-putting.
Courtesy: Our World in Data
Novelty helps: New innovations and food trends tend to go viral on social media, and brands that capitalise on these can win big. Offering alternatives to common plant-based milk options with attractive packaging and key functional benefits goes a long way.
People are often unsatisfied with the texture and performance: While baristas may love oat milk, others don’t quite match up in terms of foamability. Moreover, barista milks don’t always taste great on their own. The opposite is true too – good-tasting milks often have a texture problem. There are very few one-size-fits-all products in the current market.
Consumers want elevated nutrition: With health becoming more and more important to consumers, some brands could lose out. The demand for seed-oil-free milks is increasing, while being free from allergens like soy, nuts and gluten (from oats) is a major plus. And outside soy, protein is a key issue for the other common milk alternatives.
Courtesy: Minor Figures
There are some sustainability question marks: Dairy milk is, of course, as bad as it gets from a climate point of view. Meanwhile, almond and rice milk both use up a significant amount of water, and rice alone produces 2% of global carbon emissions, and 8% of the anthropogenic methane output. Soy, meanwhile, is often associated with Amazon deforestation (although most of the crop goes to animal feed).
Users care about food waste: What do companies like Oatly, Alpro and Califia Farms do with the leftover pulp left from their production? The answers are varied, based on where a facility is located. What’s clear is there’s a major opportunity for brands to valorise the sidestream and upcycle ingredients destined to go to waste.
What are these emerging plant-based milks trying to solve?
As they look to gain ground and consumer trust, the new-ingredient plant-based milks are playing to a host of key trends.
Targeted nutrition
Courtesy: Lattini
Some consumers aren’t satisfied with the lack of protein in traditional almond or oat milks. And while soy milk is a great source, many are put off by its flavour. Enter brands like Sproud and Ripple Foods, which are positioning pea milk as the ideal alternative. They have seen considerable success over the last couple of years, attracting investors and celebrities alike.
Brands like Bam and Niúke Foods, meanwhile, aren’t just focusing on the amount of protein, but also its composition. The former’s buckwheat milk contains all nine essential amino acids, as does the latter’s superfood quinoa milk, making both of them sources of complete protein.
Whole Moon blends soybeans with oats, almonds, as well as pistachios to provide complete protein. It also focuses on fibre, a macronutrient that has become prominent in people’s nutrition goals – 95% of Americans don’t consume enough fibre, despite its benefits for the gut. Another fibre-centric blend comes from Potina in the UK, which mixes whose banana pulp oat milks are geared towards children.
Others are providing allergen-free alternatives, which would speak to more than 225 million people globally. Lattini is catering to this population with its sunflower milk, which is free from the top nine allergens (which include soy, nuts, and gluten). Sweden’s Veg of Lund, meanwhile, makes potato milks under its Dug brand that are free from the top 14 allergens.
Elevated sustainability
Courtesy: Táche
Companies are looking to offer superior environmental attributes to existing plant-based milks, which can be riddled with issues like excessive water use (like almond and rice milks) and deforestation (coconut and soy milks), as well as climate-change-induced supply shortages.
Bam and Lattini, for example, is touting buckwheat’s credentials as a regenerative crop, while Sproud has been found to be the most sustainable plant milk out there by CarbonCloud. Dug’s potato milk, meanwhile, is 56 times more water-efficient than almonds, and uses only half as much land as oats. Hemp milk is also among the greenest, a segment led by brands like Good Hemp, Soon, and Pacific Foods.
Sustainability is top of mind for the red-hot pistachio milks on the market. The US – where this segment is populated by Táche, Three Trees, and Elmhurst 1925 – has become the largest exporter of the premium nut in the last decade, thanks to California (where it’s the sixth most valuable commodity, directly behind almonds).
The growth is partly ascribed to the fact that pistachios grow on drought-resistant trees that require lower-quality water than almonds. And since they take around seven years to start producing decent harvests, California may not have even reached its full growing capacity from the trees planted in the last decade.
Courtesy: Forca Foods/Instagram
Meanwhile, Força Foods is explicitly taking on the mainstream categories with Milkish, its watermelon seed milk, which uses 99% less water than almond milk, 72% less than oats, and 53% less than soy. And it’s not just water waste that the product seeks to address – it’s putting a commonly wasted ingredient in watermelon seeds.
Austria’s Kern Tec is also making use of a food industry byproduct to transform the alt-milk landscape. Its apricot kernel milk is sold via its Wunderkern brand, and as part of offerings from dairy processor Bauer and Swiss retailer Coop.
Food waste accounts for 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is recognised by Project Drawdown as the single most impactful thing people can do to fight the climate crisis and lower personal GHG emissions.
And with food waste in sharp focus in the US – 38% of all food produced in the country goes to waste, amounting to $473B – formats that use discarded ingredients and industry byproducts stand to win.
New taste experiences
Courtesy: PKN
For some of the novel plant milks, it’s all about bringing a different flavour profile to the table. Niúke is banking on consumers’ curiosities with its indulgent peanut milk range, with a cocoa-infused offering that is said to taste like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
The banana milk from Mooala Organic, meanwhile, is reminiscent of banana bread, according to the brand, helped by the addition of sunflower seeds and cinnamon.
And then there is the new crop of pecan milk brands, hoping to take the essence of one of America’s most beloved nuts to the liquid format. THIS PKN, Pecanamilk and Treehouse Naturals (in canned packaging no less) are spearheading this charge.
The emerging plant-based dairy category is vast and innovative – can it milk the market share of the established alternatives?
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers two new dairy-free coffee creamers, Hellmann’s social media prank, and Oato’s launch of fresh oat milks at Sainsbury’s.
New products and launches
Alt-dairy giant Violife has made a foray into coffee creamers, which use lentils as their base and don’t separate or curdle, according to the brand. They’re available in Tempting Vanilla, Seductive Caramel, and Boldly Original flavours at Walmart stores nationwide for $4.88.
Courtesy: Heura
More news from the coffee creamer space: Organic Valley has introduced its oat-based lineup, with flavours like vanilla, caramel, oatmeal cookie, and cinnamon spice.
A week after partnering with Moonburger, vegan cultured Cheddar maker Stockled Dreamery will now be the “headline cheese” at all 13 locations of plant-based fast-food chain PLNT Burger.
Unilever-owned Hellmann’s has launched a new social-media-led campaign for its Plant-Based Mayo, which sees chef Matthew Ravenscroft trick his friends into making dishes with the product to prove there’s no difference in taste compared to the original version.
At the Scientific Kick-off Event for Bezos Earth Fund‘s Centre for Sustainable Protein at Imperial College London last week, Californian precision-fermented fat startup Yali Bioshowcased its designer cocoa butter alternative.
Fellow Californian company Beyond Meat has brought its vegan steak and chicken ranges to foodservice operators in France via Metro, Costco, Creta Gel, SDV, and other distributors.
Germany’s GoodMills Innovation has launchedGoWell Tasty Protein, a new plant protein blend for baked goods, made from faba beans, yellow peas, sunflower seeds and wheat. It has a protein content of 60% and a well-rounded amino acid profile.
British fresh oat milk maker Oato has gained a listing at Sainsbury’s. Its one-litre and one-pint bottles – which are non-UHT – will be available in the chilled aisle at over 370 stores nationwide.
Speaking of plant-based milk, fellow UK startup MYOM has launched its powdered oat milk at Whole Foods Market stores, one of “many grocery listings” planned for 2025.
Company and finance updates
US precision fermentation startup The Every Company has named Evan Geisert as its new CFO. He was formerly the finance chief at Smart Wires and Kairos Aerospace.
Spanish plant-based meat startup Heura was present at the Faculty of Medicine in Barcelona during the country’s Medical Residency Entrance Exam to spread awareness about the health benefits of a vegan diet to the doctors of the future.
Courtesy: Heura
French hemp fermentation startup Auralip has raised €500,000 ($521,000) from Business Angels Grandes Ecoles, Femmes BA, Yes Invest, and others, which could be matched by a loan from state investor Bpifrance.
Czechia’s Ministry of Agriculture has decided against introducing stricter labelling regulations for plant-based meat and dairy after considering the feedback to the proposal, a big win for the vegan sector.
Courtesy: Arla
Danish dairy giant Arla has withdrawn its Jörd plant-based milk brand from UK supermarkets, with the range already unavailable at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda.
Research and policy developments
In the UK, the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, the Microbial Food Hub, the Cellular Agriculture Manufacturing Hub, and the National Alternative Protein Centre (NAPIC) have signed an MoU to work together and address alternative protein challenges like cost reduction, scalability, and consumer acceptance.
NAPIC has also opened applications for five fully funded PhD studentships for alternative proteins, covering subjects like allergenicity and processing, the gut-brain axis, colloidal performance, nutritional equivalence, and microbubble stabilisation.
Courtesy: NAPIC
Across the Atlantic, anti-cultivated meat legislation remains popular. In South Carolina, SB 103 aims to restrict “misleading or deceptive” labelling of these foods.
US-cultivated meat startup Orbillion Bio has won the Salesforce DreamPitch event at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Chicago Med star Torrey DeVitto is swapping her scrubs for a cozy vegan sweater in a new PETA campaign! The actor, new mom, and rescued goat guardian is urging everyone never to wear cashmere and to leave goats in peace—not pieces.
In PETA’s video filmed at Barn Sanctuary, DeVitto—who was pregnant at the time of the shoot and just welcomed her daughter into the world—shares how compassion and kindness are the most important values she hopes to instill in her child.
I want her to grow up around animals and have that respect for them and just be mindful of what she chooses to eat and wear.”
As a guardian to two rescued goats, Pip and Squeak, on her Michigan farm, DeVitto reveals that goats suffer when their hair is torn out to make sweaters and scarves and encourages fans to choose cruelty-free options instead.
DeVitto says that pregnancy reinforced her empathy for all mothers—who “should get the same respect that a human mama gets.” Mother goats form strong bonds with their young, and both mother and baby recognize each other’s distinct calls—or “bleats”—shortly after birth. Like all mothers, goats want to nurture and protect their precious babies.
“This kid,” says DeVitto, gesturing to her baby bump, “will never hurt those kids.”
The Big Ugly Truth About Cashmere
PETA Asia investigations into cashmere operations in China and Mongolia—where nearly all of the world’s cashmere comes from—revealed goats screaming in pain as workers pin them down, twist their legs, and tear out their hair with sharp, rake-like metal combs, even tearing off pieces of their skin and leaving some with bleeding wounds. When goats are deemed no longer profitable, workers violently slaughter them.
Angora goats, the most commonly abused and killed animals in the cashmere industry, have interests, feelings, and unique personalities—just like Pip and Squeak.
Let Goats Keep Their Coats, Cows Keep Their Skin, and Birds Keep Their Feathers
No one wants to be abused and killed for fashion. Consumers can speak up against the fashion industry’s use of cashmere, leather, feathers, and fur by always choosing vegan materials. PETA’s shopping guide to vegan knitwear can help everyone cozy up this cold season and beyond with luxurious, animal-friendly fabrics.
In a blow for the vegan chocolate industry, Nestlé has taken its KitKat V off shelves in all markets except the UK.
Nearly four years after it was first introduced, the vegan KitKat is going off the market amid poor sales, a setback for both the plant-based industry and Nestlé’s climate goals.
The dairy-free chocolate had reportedly not been available in stores or online for some time, and Nestlé has now confirmed that the KitKat V has been discontinued in all countries barring the UK.
“We know that KitKat vegan was popular amongst those looking for dairy or vegan alternatives. Unfortunately, the sales were reducing to the point where production was adding significant complexity to our manufacturing operations, which could not be sustained,” a Nestlé spokesperson told Green Queen.
“We have therefore made the difficult decision to discontinue KitKat Vegan. The vegan chocolate segment is still a niche market. Classic chocolate products continue to dominate the confectionery category and contribute to the vast majority of sales,” they added.
“Our emphasis with the KitKat brand for the foreseeable future will be on classic chocolate variants, as they continue to be the preferred choice among consumers.”
The company couldn’t confirm whether the continued availability in the UK was a case of backstock, or if it would continue to produce the vegan KitKat for this market.
For the plant-based chocolate segment, though, the withdrawal of a flagship product from the world’s largest food company is a major blow.
Vegan KitKat withdrawal a setback for Nestlé’s climate goals
Courtesy: Nestlé
KitKat V burst onto the scene in summer 2021, and was born out of consumer demand. “One of the most common requests we see on social media is for a vegan KitKat,” Alexander von Maillot, then head of confectionery at Nestlé, said at the time.
The rice-based bar contains ingredients like cocoa butter, wheat flour, corn fibre, and vegetable fats, and was an instant hit when it was first piloted in the UK and several other countries. This success led to a wider rollout in 2022, with 800,000 bars set to be produced every day.
It was a sign of confidence in the vegan industry, with Nestlé bringing out a non-dairy version of one of the CGG world’s most popular, hardest-to-replicate food products. Every second, the equivalent of 560 bars of KitKat are eaten around the world.
Many brands have tried coming up with copycat versions of the KitKat, including German retailer Aldi and startups like vegan producer Trupo Treats – but these products have either failed during development, or been discontinued soon after launch.
The innovation was also slated to help Nestlé’s Net Zero plans for 2050. KitKat V has an 18% smaller carbon footprint than the original, so if it could take even a small chunk of the market share, the climate dividends would have been significant for the company.
But it seems that, almost four years down the line, sales haven’t picked up as much as Nestlé would have liked, and the vegan KitKat faces an uncertain future.
High prices and climate change keep chocolatiers innovating
Courtesy: Nestlé
KitKat turns 90 this year, but it leads an industry faced with historical supply chain and cost challenges, thanks to the climate crisis. The global demand for chocolate has wiped out large swathes of land in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the two largest producers of cocoa. And in a business-as-usual scenario, only a third of cocoa trees will die out by 2050.
That has translated into high prices, with cocoa futures shooting up three- to fourfold last year to reach all-time highs. In New York, this peaked at $12,931 per tonne in mid-December, following weather-induced low supplies for the fourth successive season in West Africa.
Nestlé’s KitKat V was always more expensive than its classic counterpart, but more sustainable too. The bar’s individual climate reduction journey is now in limbo – especially since its maker abandoned the pledge to make the product carbon-neutral by this year after facing allegations of greenwashing.
Confectionery, meanwhile, is the company’s second-smallest business segment, making up only 9% of its total revenue. But while it is divesting from plant-based chocolate, its European competitors are going all-in. Lindt already has several dairy-free chocolates, including its oat milk bars, Lindor truffles, and offerings under its Hello! brand. Ritter Sport and Cadbury have had vegan options for a while now too.
And Ferrero released vegan Nutella last year to similar fanfare, after years of demand and countless replicas that didn’t quite hit the spot. It has also just begun rolling out a plant-based version of its Hanuta wafers.
Meanwhile, Nestlé and other chocolate producers are in a legal dispute with German confectioner Katjes, whose patent for oat milk chocolate is being challenged – a sign that vegan products remain desirable in the industry. And with cocoa-free chocolate becoming a hot commodity too, the future for climate-friendly treats seems exciting, Nestlé’s KitKat decision notwithstanding.
The Humane Society of the United States, American Society for the Prevent of Cruelty to Animals (ASCPA), and Compassion in World Farming are failing to prevent cruelty to animals—by sitting on the board of directors for the humane-washing scheme Global Animal Partnership (GAP), they have become apologists for factory farms.
The Humane Society of the U.S., ASPCA, and Others Are Betraying Animals Through GAP Support
GAP uses misleading “animal welfare certified” labels to convince consumers that they’re buying the flesh and secretions of animals who were treated better than those on other factory farms, butmarketing buzzwords mean nothing for animals raised and killed for food. PETA investigators documented systemic cruelty and suffering at 12 Global Animal Partnership-certified facilities.
A PETA investigation into Sweet Stem Farm—which was certified by GAP at the time—revealed that pigs were crammed into severely crowded sheds and had painful, bloody rectal prolapses.
Another PETA investigation into Plainville Farms—which also was, at the time, GAP certified—documented that workers there kicked, beat, and threw turkeys and left ailing birds to suffer without treatment. PETA’s investigation resulted in former Plainville Farms workers being charged with six felonies and a total of 141 counts of cruelty to animals—the largest number in any factory-farmed animal case in U.S. history. Ten former workers have been convicted so far.
Specific investigations aside, animals on GAP-certified farms can still be routinely mutilated without any painkillers, forcibly manually impregnated, and kept in factoary farm sheds that are virtually indistinquishable from oprtations that aren’t “animal welfare certified”. GAP does not prohibit companies from sending pigs into C02 gas chambers at slaughterhouses, where they convulse and slowly suffocate for up to several minutes.
When GAP was founded, a fundamental principle was that its board would be split between animal organizations and the animal-farming industry, but now it’s made up of seven factory farm industry leaders and only three animal “welfare” groups.
This makes it completely imbalanced: GAP has become little more than a humane-washing and marketing arm for the meat industry. For them to claim that they still have a voice at that table is highly suspect.
GAP is controlled by the meat, dairy, and egg industries—and that’s why PETA and other animal protection groups, like Farm Forward, dropped their support of GAP—and why we are urging the Humane Society of the U.S., ASPCA, and Compassion in World Farming to do the same.
“The demands for accommodations became bolder and bolder until calls were made to eliminate even the fundamental principle of having a balanced board comprising half animal groups and half industry. I left the board when this shift away from the core principles upon which GAP was founded became inevitable.” Aaron Gross, Farm Forward
By Supporting GAP, These Organizations Are Promoting Animal Suffering and Death
In late 2024, GAP announced that it is phasing in the requirement that all producers follow the abysmally low standards of the “Better Chicken Commitment,” a humane-washing sham that allows chickens to continue to suffer mightily in vile, filthy, factory-farm conditions so the meat industry can profit.
Over 8 billion chickens are killed for their flesh in the U.S. each year. Almost all of these chickens, called “broilers” by the speciesist chicken industry, spend their entire lives confined in dirty sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, even when their flesh is labeled “Animal Welfare Certified” in grocery stores like Whole Foods. The intense crowding and confinement by the meat, egg, and dairy industries often lead to outbreaks of disease, such as bird flu. When the birds are only 6 or 7 weeks old, workers cram them into overcrowded crates and truck them to slaughter.
Supporting GAP Is Supporting Factory Farms
The Humane Society of the U.S., ASPCA and Compassion In World Farming can work with the meat dairy and egg industries to create “imperfect change” to the factory farm industry, but they shouldn’t be promoting misleading labels that serve to give the public the false notion that “humane meat” is anything more than a myth.
Join PETA in urging the Humane Society of the United States, the ASPCA, and CIWF to stop supporting factory farms and humane washing and start telling consumers the truth: eating animals is never humane. Go vegan—it’s easy.
Over 130 organisations have written an open letter to the EU agrifood commissioner, imploring him to develop a plant-based action plan by next year.
“The time for change is now.” That was the consensus of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture last year, which recommended that policymakers create a bloc-wide action plan for plant-based foods by 2026.
It’s a sentiment now being reiterated by more than 130 climate advocacy organisations, animal rights activists, doctors, and consumer groups, who have written to ag commissioner Christophe Hansen to ensure the strategy is included in the region’s vision for agriculture and food, which is expected to be released next month.
“A shift to healthier, more sustainable, affordable and balanced diets is essential for a successful transition to a more sustainable food system – and plant-based foods are part of the solution,” the letter reads.
“Such an action plan should be accompanied by appropriate funding that boosts the production and consumption of plant-based foods, with a focus on organic and agroecological products.”
Why the EU needs a plant-based action plan
Courtesy: Dimarik/Getty Image, Alessandro0770/Getty Images, Canva AI | Composite by Green Queen
The letter’s signatories include the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC), the European Public Health Alliance, Greenpeace, Compassion in World Farming, and Four Paws, among others.
These organisations argue that current policies don’t ensure that healthy, sustainable and balanced diets are the affordable choice, and new measures are sorely needed to ramp up plant-based production and consumption.
An EU-wide action plan, they suggest, would help boost the bloc’s strategic autonomy. Currently, it relies on imports for two-thirds of its high-protein feed, exposing farmers and consumers to supply chain issues and price fluctuations. Increasing plant protein production for direct human consumption can assist in closing the protein gap and bolster self-sufficiency by “doing better with less”.
At the same time, it would create new business opportunities for farmers, who can diversify their production and income sources by introducing new crops. This will increase profit margins and cut costs as there would be less reliance on inputs by integrating nitrogen-fixing legumes.
The economic costs of animal protein production and consumption in the EU amounted to €3T in 2022, but a scenario with healthier and more plant-forward diets could save 43% of these externalities (or about €1.3T annually).
All EU member states have dietary guidelines recommending a higher consumption of whole plant foods, and some are implementing strategies to promote a shift to plant-rich diets. “To ensure policy consistency and support from both farmers and consumers, a coherent EU-wide policy is needed to drive alignment with dietary guidelines across all parts of the value chain,” the letter reads.
Then there are the public and planetary health benefits. Four in five Europeans aren’t eating enough produces, legumes, or whole grain, leading to chronic diseases and avoidable deaths. And climate change, soil degradation, and declining soil fertility are all threatening Europe’s long-term food security, but a plant-based action plan can create a more resilient agriculture system.
Growing calls for food systems transformation in the EU
Courtesy: V-Label
The EU’s Common Agriculture Policy, which provides farmers with financial support, is heavily skewed towards livestock farming. The sector receives around 82% of its subsidies from this instrument, four times higher than plant-based agriculture. This is despite meat and dairy accounting for 84% of EU agriculture emissions and 71% of its farmland, and providing only 35% of calories and 65% of proteins in the region.
The idea to create an action plan for plant-based food was floated by climate advocates and lobby groups representing farmers in September, with the goal to “strengthen the plant-based agrifood chains from farmers all the way to consumers”. The report acknowledged that EU citizens were eating too much meat, noting: “The sustainable choice needs to become the choice by default.”
EU commissioner Ursula Von der Leyen had said this advice would feed into the Commission’s agrifood vision, to be unveiled within the first 100 days of her second term.
But in his confirmation hearing, Hansen poured cold water on the Strategic Dialogue’s advice, calling it “rather a vague formulation” and suggesting more detailed discourse was needed. That said, he indicated that it was important for the EU to update its protein strategy from 2018 to include plant protein needs more prominently.
The open letter states that both the EU Commission and its member states should embrace and support this transition on the supply and demand side to position the region as a “global leader in competitive, resilient, and sustainable agrifood systems’.
One of those member states could serve as inspiration. Denmark was the first country to unveil a national plant-based action plan last year, and the organisations suggest that such a plan would put plant-based food on more of an equal footing with livestock farming.
This is not the first open letter Hansen or his colleagues have received over sustainable food systems. Health organisations have urged lawmakers to prioritise preventative policies and promote healthy and sustainable diets in the region’s food and farming vision. And food giants including Unilever, Danone and Oatly have asked Hansen to deliver an agriculture vision rooted in sustainability to ensure long-term competitiveness.
“The Commission’s upcoming Vision for the Future of Agriculture and Food needs to be bold on the demand side and pave the ground for an EU Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods. It is the missing puzzle piece to make progress towards diets that will benefit people and the planet,” said BEUC director general Agustín Reyna.
Our weekly column rounds up the latest sustainable food innovation news. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers Lidl’s new plant-based range, a vegan workplace canteen, and the UK House of Lords’s nod to cultivated meat.
New products and launches
Discount retailer Lidl has unveiled 28 new affordable plant-based products in the UK, which include Meat Free Cordon Bleu, Barista Oat Milk, and Smoked Tofu. The range starts from £1.09.
Courtesy: Lidl
Also in the UK, plant-based milk brand Mighty has added caramel and chocolate flavours to its oat milk powder range.
British foodservice wholesaler Brakes has extended its plant-based range with nearly 40 new products and created a Vegan Hub for Veganuary.
London-based Tofu Vegan, a popular Chinese restaurant chain, has opened its fifth location on Gloucester Road.
Across the Atlantic, tofu maker Hodo has announced a retail expansion into Meijer, Harris Teeter, and Giant Martin’s.
New York-based Edenesque has launched a barista edition of its pistachio milk, which is available at Whole Foods Market, on its webstore, and at Joe Coffee for $7.99 per carton.
AI-led ingredient discovery company Shiru has put out a partnership call to beverage manufacturers for the development and scale-up of a natural sugar replacer.
Popular fast-food chain Slutty Vegan has opened a new Bar Vegan location in Baltimore’s Rye Street Market, which is part of the Baltimore Peninsula District development.
Ingredients giant Griffith Foods has launched an Alternative Proteins Portfolio to complement its range of plant-based seasonings, sauces, dressings, binders, coatings, and all-in-one mixes.
Dutch vegan food distributor GreenPro International has rebranded to Plantitude to solidify its role as the “connecting factor in the protein transition”.
Crafty Counter has introducedEggless Salad under its vegan Wundereggs brand, which is available at all Safeway and Albertsons stores across Idaho and Washington state.
Meanwhile, Emirates Airlines has introduced a range of vegan meals for children, including pizza, vegetable fajitas, cauliflower bites and strawberry crumble. It adds to the carrier’s 300-plus plant-based options.
Aussie plant-based player v2food has unveiled a new identity for Soulara, the ready meal brand it acquired in January.
Courtesy: Soulara
And in India, vegan startup Blue Tribe Foods – backed by cricketer Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma – has rolled out sweet potato fries, which are available at online retailers like Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, and Blinkit.
Company and finance updates
Belgian agrifood company Arvesta has opened Nuverta, a plant-based protein facility in Mettet, which will initially produce pea protein concentrate.
British green energy innovator Ecotricity, owned by Dale Vince, has opened what it says is the country’s first fully vegan workplace canteen.
The University of Nottingham has partnered with UK plant-based food company Jampa’s and Canadian manufacturer Tartistes to develop next-gen vegan products, receiving funding from the UK-Canada Innovate UK scheme.
Courtesy: Heura
Spanish vegan meat startup Heura has opened a new innovation lab in Barcelona’s 22@ tech district, and plans to register six more patents over the next nine months, adding to the innovations it announced late last year.
Slovenian plant-based food producer Narayan Group is set to be acquired by Edible Garden AG Incorporated, having signed a letter of intent to enter a share purchase agreement.
In the US, animal-free component producer Nexture Bio has acquiredMatrix Food Technologies, which makes plant-based, edible nanofibre scaffolds and microbeads for cultivated meat.
Courtesy: Tender Food
Boston-based Tender Food‘s co-founder Christophe Chantre has announced that he stepped down from his role as CEO last fall.
Tender Food also received $5.1M as part of the US Department of Energy‘s Technologies for Industrial Emissions Reduction Development (TIEReD) Program, while fellow Boston company Ginkgo Bioworks earned $2.4M.
Superlatus, the parent company of The Urgent Company, has been sued by Eat Well Investment Group, which has accused the former of fraudulently selling its plant-based food tech platform to avoid contractual obligations and cheating it out of $10M.
Research and policy developments
In the UK, the House of Lords has recognised cultivated meat as a key engineering biology opportunity and is calling for improved regulation of these products in a report published by its Science and Technology Committee.
Vegan seafood startup BettaF!sh and upcycled apricot kernel company Kern Tec have each won a €5,000 award as part of EIT Food’s Marketed Innovation Prize.
Courtesy: Kern Tec
The University of Galway in Ireland has introduced a 12-week course on Animal Law for undergraduate law students, which starts this month.
In their attempt to bring vegan cheese closer to what consumers expect, researchers from the University of Guelph and Canadian Light Source have found that blending coconut oil with pea protein provides better melting and stretching, and mixing it with sunflowerr oil lowers the saturated fat content without compromising functionality.
Finally, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved a motion to ramp up the procurement of plant-based foods to lower emissions and improve public health, with county food services now encouraged to adopt a 2:1 ratio of plant- to animal-based mains.
German startup Project Eaden has secured €15M ($15.6M) in a Series A funding round to launch its fibre-spun whole-cut in retail, starting with REWE supermarkets nationwide.
Using textile technology to modernise and futureproof the $35B ham market, Berlin-based Project Eaden has raised €15M ($15.6M) in an oversubscribed Series A fundraiser.
The startup, which makes whole-cut plant-based meat with fibre-spinning tech, secured lead investors Planet A Ventures and REWE Group, with support from DeepTech & Climate Fonds, Happiness Capital, AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance, and existing backers Creandum and FoodLabs. This takes Project Eaden’s total funding to date to €27M ($28M), just three years since being established.
Christoph Gras, General Partner of Planet A, said: “Research suggests that plant-based products could replace 11–22% of global meat consumption by 2035—but only if improvements are made in taste and texture. Project Eaden is leading this shift with its new fiber technology, which delivers a meat alternative that will appeal even to the most skeptical consumers. This first-of-a-kind approach is a crucial step toward decarbonizing the food sector.”
The fresh capital will support scale-up efforts and a European retail launch. Its ham products will debut at 3,800 REWE supermarkets across Germany in early 2025, providing an alternative to the country’s favourite meat (pork). The company will follow this with entry into several other EU markets by the middle of the year.
According to the company, the retailer was won over by Eaden’s ultra-realistic texture and taste. “Project Eaden is setting a new standard in alternative meat by delivering the meat-like experience that today’s consumers crave. As a launch partner, we’re excited to bring their innovative products to our stores,” said Hans-Jürgen Moog, chief procurement officer of REWE Group.
Modern meat inspired by the textile industry
Courtesy: Project Eaden
Founded by Dr David Schmelzeisen, Jan Wilmking and Hubertus Bessau in 2022, Project Eaden went viral on the internet when it unveiled its whole-muscle steak and placed it next to conventional beef, with online commentators wondering if the image was doctored.
The Berlin-based company has since expanded its portfolio to create whole-cut sausages, pork loin and, of course, ham. These meat alternatives are derived from an age-old fibre-spinning technology employed by the textile industry. This allows Project Eaden to meet technical requirements like elasticity, water-binding ability and strength to closely mimic animal muscle fibres.
To get here, plant proteins are bundled into strands, and then unfolded in a solution to create a homogenous liquid. This is spun to form ultra-thin fibres, which get integrated into a compound to replicate the collagen-based connective tissues found in animals.
Wilmking, the firm’s managing director, has previously explained that the tech uses two types of fibres. “First, we use strong and thin fibres for connective tissue, which don’t stick together much, but help make the meat structure and bite experience feel real,” he told Green Queen in July.
“Then, a large part of our product is made from a cheaper, juicier fibre that sticks together just enough to hold meat juice in small spaces, making it taste tender and yummy, like real meat,” he added.
Project Eaden’s ultra-realistic Serrano ham. Courtesy: Project Eaden
The resulting products have been endorsed by butchers, Michelin-starred chefs, and retail buyers. “Our proprietary tech is versatile across meat types, cheap and highly scalable,” said Schmelzeisen, who has a PhD in textile engineering and is also a managing director at the company.
The funding round comes at a challenging time for alternative protein startups, which have suffered from a lack of investor interest. Financing for plant-based companies fell by 24% in 2023, reaching $908M. The fall was even sharper in the first nine months of 2024, when the sector raised a mere $194M.
That said, investors have shown they’re willing to back challenger brands with well-executed products in niche, underserved categories. Paris-based La Vie, for example, closed a €25M ($27.4M) round in October, while Spain’s Heura brought in €40M ($43M) – and both only launched their pork-free ham products in the last 18 monts.
Alongside Project Eaden, these brands also benefit from what is a relatively competition-free space, with only Prime Roots, Squeaky Bean and Quorn the other prominent players making vegan ham.
Germans turn away from meat amid health concerns
Source: Pig Progress
Much has been said about the slow sales of meat alternatives globally, but Germany has remained a high-performing outlier. It is the largest market for plant-based meat outside the US, and accounted for 46% of meat alternative sales in Europe’s biggest regions in 2023. These products witnessed a 6% hike in sales to reach €990M and entered over 37% of households.
At the same time, 46% of Germans are cutting back on meat, particularly pork, just as plant-based meat production rises and the new national dietary guidelines recommend a shift away from animal proteins and towards plant-based foods. This is being driven by younger cohorts like Gen Zers, who have been found to be more receptive to meat alternatives than older demographics.
Health is another key factor challenging pork consumption. Processed deli meats such as ham are often packed with nitrates, and the World Health Organization classifies such foods as Type 1 carcinogens. Eaden’s ham products are nitrate-free, as well as free of antibiotics and hormones.
Still, several barriers remain, chief among them palatability. More than 60% of Gen Z consumers in Germany are unsatisfied with the taste and texture of plant-based meat, a number that rises to 80% for Gen Xers and 88% for those aged 69 and above.
Wilmking believes Project Eaden’s whole cuts are solving that: “We are here to make the switch away from animal meat consumption a no-brainer. Our products deliver on taste, texture and nutrition.”
Tackling climate narratives
Courtesy: Project Eaden
The other issue is climate. Nearly two in five Germans think the country eats too much meat, and 30% want to increase their plant-based meat intake, though more than half don’t believe meat is a major problem for the climate – despite animal proteins being responsible for 57% of food system emissions (twice as high as plant-based foods).
Project Eaden hopes to change this narrative – each kg of its products reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 20kg of CO2e, cuts water use by as much as 56 cubic metres, and lowers land use by up to 20 sq m.
The company will now expand its team across sales, marketing, operations and engineering, and is also working on broadening its range to more cuts, including Serrano and cooked ham, bratwurst, bacon, chicken breast, pastrami, and beef and pork flank steaks.
Another startup making fibre-spun meat analogues is Massachusetts-based Tender Foods, which likens its production process to spinning cotton candy. The company has raised $23M since it launched in 2020, and its fried chicken and pork are on the menu at meat-free chain Clover Food Lab.
Willicroft, a plant-based startup that evolved from a decades-old dairy company, has shut down after failing to meet its fundraising goals.
Dutch company Willicroft, famous for its bean-based vegan butter and cheese range, has wound down due to funding difficulties, co-founder Brad Vanstone has announced.
The startup, whose roots go back to the 1950s, had raised €2M from investors in 2022, and had opened a €350,000 crowdfunding round a year later.
“2024 was a tough year for Willicroft. After failing to meet our fundraising goals, we made the difficult decision to sell the company,” Vanstone wrote on LinkedIn.
“I said goodbye to this chapter of Willicroft by burying a small plaque in the Scottish Highlands – my grandparents’ and my favourite place on this planet,” he continued. “Willicroft, in its current form, was meant to last far longer. Nonetheless, it has been an experience I will never forget – one I feel privileged to have lived and one that has filled me with tremendous energy to build upon.”
Courtesy: Willicroft
2024 a ‘sobering reality check’ on the protein transition
Willicroft was founded in 2018 as an evolution of the dairy company founded by Vanstone’s father in 1957. With an ethos rooted in sustainability – the company’s CEO was Mother Nature – the brand’s products were available at retailers in three countries, and restaurants in several more.
The B Corp-certified startup’s latest product lineup featured Greek White, Italian Aged, Young Dutch, and Original Fondue cheeses, as well as a hard butter called Better – all made from ingredients like cashews, soybeans and white beans via fermentation.
“We came close to creating a self-sufficient business that balanced profitability with a positive impact but ultimately fell short. I take a great amount of heart in knowing that our recipes have found happy and trusted homes,” wrote Vanstone.
“Last year, in particular, was a sobering reality check on the pace at which our food industry is transitioning,” he added.
“A certificate my grandparents (a dairy farmer) received from the UK milk board illustrates this vividly: one of the Holstein Friesian cows on the farm produced 100 tonnes of milk across its lifetime. This is a staggering output for a single animal. By contrast, Willicroft, in its reimagined form, produced a little under 100 tonnes in total over our six-year existence.”
The company also had a wine and cheese store in Amsterdam called Kelder, which closed its doors in May 2023. Following Vanstone’s announcement about the business’s closure, its website has now gone offline too.
Vegan cheese was the fastest-growing plant-based product in Spain, France and Italy, and saw sales hike by 48% between 2022 and 2023 in Europe’s six largest markets. At the same time, this is a very small category within the plant-based sector, taking up just a 3.6% market share.
Broadly, non-dairy cheese is a tough space. This is the one category perceived as most far away in taste and texture from its dairy-based counterparts, a challenge that has bred lots of competition among brands vying to fill this gap.
Large and established brands like Violife, Sheese and Bel Group’s Nurishh dominate the market, but consumers remain unconvinced by the current options on the market. Three in 10 Europeans aren’t familiar with fermented vegan cheese products like Willicroft’s, according to a 2024 survey of over 7,800 people. And 22% of those who’ve tasted them don’t consume them, highlighting a major gap in satisfaction.
Courtesy: Willicroft
While Willicroft was making strong inroads with its butter alternative, made from shea and coconut oil and fermented soybeans, its progress was likely impeded by the overarching financial challenges.
And these challenges are only compounded by pressure from the dairy lobby, which holds a sizeable influence over EU policy. Livestock production has received the bulk of the money available under the Common Agriculture Policy, despite animal proteins generating 84% of the EU’s farm emissions and 72% of its land, while providing only 35% of calories and 65% of proteins.
The contrast between the output of a single cow versus Willicroft’s entire existence “highlights the challenges we faced in scaling, the immense size and efficiency of the dairy industry, and the strain it places on animals within that system”, noted Vanstone.
“It remains far too difficult for companies driving positive change in the food industry to thrive. My next steps are uncertain, but I am determined to confront this challenge head-on in the coming years.”
Willicroft’s closure comes at a challenging time for Europe’s alternative protein industry. UK ready meal maker Allplants shut down in late 2024, while Swedish mycoprotein specialist Mycorena was rescued from the brink by Naplasol months before. Speaking of mycoprotein, industry leader Quorn posted pre-tax losses of £63M in 2023, a fourfold increase from the £15M it lost the year before.
The French government’s proposed labelling ban on plant-based meat products has been cancelled by its top court, echoing a similar decision by its EU counterpart.
Veggie burgers are here to stay – yet again.
A long-running saga in Europe’s food tech industry, the war on plant-based meat labels has taken another turn in favour of vegan producers, as France’s Conseil d’État has rejected two decrees proposing a ban on terms like ‘plant-based bacon’ on, well, plant-based bacon.
In a ruling yesterday, the country’s top court called the decrees “illegal and contrary to European regulation”, noting that EU member states cannot independently regulate food labelling.
The decision comes just over a week after the court held its final hearing on the matter, where its advocate-general – who assists the court and presents opinions on cases with full impartiality and independence – recommended cancelling both decrees.
The advice argued that the decrees are not fit for purpose and that the government should pay legal costs to the plaintiffs, namely the European Vegetarian Association (EVU), the Association Végétarienne de France (AVF), and industry giant Beyond Meat.
By throwing out the attempt to prohibit meat-like phrases on vegan products, the Conseil d’État has delivered a landslide victory for the plant-based industry, and agreed with a similar ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last year.
A swing of victories for plant-based meat labels
Courtesy: La Vie
France’s first attempt to ban meaty terms on plant-based products came in 2022, when it issued a decree to prohibit all such descriptors except ‘burger’. The Conseil d’État suspended the decree after complaints from meat-free companies and associations, calling the wording too vague.
The second decree – proposed in September 2023 – was nearly identical, co-signed by then Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne. It aimed to outlaw 21 terms like ‘steak’, ‘ham’ and even ‘grilled’, threatening a non-compliance fine of up to €1,500 for individuals and €7,500 for companies.
This second decree listed a further 120 more phrases – like ‘bacon’, ‘sausage’, and ‘nuggets’ – that companies could use only if the amount of plant protein didn’t exceed a maximum limit ranging from 0.5% to 6%. This, of course, meant that no fully plant-based products could use these terms.
The Conseil d’État suspended this too, following the complaint from the EVU, AVF and Beyond Meat. It referred parts of the case to the ECJ, which also rejected the ban and returned the case to the French court for a final decision.
The EU’s highest court ruled that the only way a member state can implement such a ban is to legally define meat products and descriptive terms first, and even then, such a ban would only apply to products manufactured within that country (creating an unfair environment for local companies). It also said countries can’t adopt national measures that determine minimum inclusion levels of plant proteins for labelling purposes.
It’s not the first time the EU has ruled in favour of plant-based companies on this issue – the parliament voted to reject such a ban in 2021 as well, though choosing to enforce it on non-dairy products.
Lawmakers should stop politicising ‘non-issue’
Courtesy: Beyond Meat/Green Queen
France is far from the only country targeting vegan product labels. These legislative proposals are common across the world – as recently as last month, the Czech government was floating a similar move.
The major argument behind these proposed bans is that consumers are confused when they see a product labelled ‘veggie burger’ or ‘vegan chicken’. But this has been dispelled by numerous studies, with most consumers knowing the difference between plant- and animal-derived proteins.
Rafael Pinto, senior policy manager at the EVU, argued that these attempts “do nothing but confuse consumers”, hindering the region’s shift to a more sustainable food system. “The data is clear, consumers are not confused by the use of traditional denominations for plant-based products,” he said.
“Policymakers should be focused on promoting better conditions for farmers, citizens and innovation, instead of politicising a non-issue,” he added.
In a positive sign, these efforts are increasingly being thwarted. Italy is reconsidering its ban after pushback from the country’s leading union of food manufacturers. A South African court ruled against upholding a ban last year too. And Turkey’s latest labelling laws allow companies to use such terms on packaging.
Plant-based companies like Tofurky, Miyoko’s Creamery, Planted, Oatly and NotCo have all won legal battles over product labels – and Beyond Meat has now joined them.
This story was updated on January 29 to reflect the French court’s final decision.
Dr Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org and author of How Not to Die, spoke to the Good Food Institute about misinformation and the link between ultra-processed foods and plant-based meat.
Perhaps the most pertinent public debate around plant-based meat today concerns ultra-processing, a topic that has prompted a shift to more whole foods, pushing industry leaders to reformulate products and talk more about nutrition on-pack.
Ultra-processed food (UPF), a subset of the Nova classification, was never meant to be about health – it simply was a reference to how much processing a product has undergone. But the confluence of processing and ill health has strengthened over recent years, thanks to a host of studies.
It has dissuaded people from buying meat alternatives, with a 10,000-person survey from 2024 suggesting that more than half of Europeans avoid these products because they’re ultra-processed.
Nutrition experts have been fighting back, highlighting the distinction between food processing and human health, and reiterating the benefits of meat analogues – especially over their animal-derived counterparts.
NutritionFacts.org founder and How Not to Die author Dr Michael Greger, a leading health expert, is one of these voices. He plans to write a book dedicated to the subject, and hit back at the misinformation surrounding meat alternatives in the Good Food Institute’s latest Science of Alt-Protein seminar.
Here are 10 takeaways from the event.
1) UPF effects can be independent of dietary quality
Studies involving nearly 10 million people have linked greater exposure to UPFs to a higher risk of chronic health conditions and premature death. But this association was found after controlling for dietary quality, so it wasn’t just that people were eating “junkier diets”.
“At least some of the adverse consequences of ultra-processed foods may be independent of dietary quality. This could involve things like harmful additives, heat-induced contaminants or packaging chemicals,” said Greger.
2) Plant-based meats are the UPF exception
While there are several factors that could explain the connection between UPFs and ill health. Normally, when you compare ultra-processed products (like Kool-Aid or fruit candy) with the foods they were designed to replace (in this case, water or fruits), the former category tends to perform worse on the health scale.
“However, plant-based meats appear to be the exception – better in most ways compared to the foods they were designed to replace,” said Greger. He cited a 2024 systemic review of nine studies comparing plant-based with conventional meat, and found that the former scored better based on every nutrient scoring system tested. And a 10th study rated plant-based meat three times healthier than animal-derived meat.
Courtesy: Dr Michael Greger/GFI
3) Are additives like methylcellulose a concern?
There is growing evidence suggesting toxicity from several artificial food additives, like synthetic dyes and emulsifiers. One of the most commonly used additives in plant-based meat is methylcellulose, known for its binding, gelling and thermoreversible properties. It’s also often used in laxatives.
But while there has been some potential harm found with methylcellulose use in mice, this is at 10 times higher concentrations than what’s found in plant-based meat.
“Reassuringly, vegetarians who eat plant-based meat may actually have lower rates of irritable bowel syndrome than those who don’t consume plant-based meat, suggesting that at least from that standpoint, plant-based meat emulsifiers are not a problem,” said Greger.
4) The sodium comparisons are misleading
Despite plant-based meat having more fibre, lower saturated fat, zero cholesterol and oftentimes comparable protein levels, one area they face scrutiny over is the sodium content. “The most harmful additive currently in use is ironically the most traditional of all, and that’s salt. The number one dietary risk factor for death on planet Earth [is] excessive sodium consumption,” Greger noted.
One study found vegan burgers to have 10 times as much sodium as beef. “But that’s because they were comparing raw beef with pre-seasoned plant-based meats. Now, they could have compared [cooked] burgers to burgers, but intentionally excluded them from the study, skewing the results,” he explained.
When comparing like-for-like, the nutrition expert said the saltiest plant-based meatballs have been found to be lower in sodium than the least salty conventional meatballs.
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
5) Plant-based meat can provide GLP-1 boost
Nearly three-quarters of Americans over 20 are overweight or obese, which leads to a host of other life-threatening conditions. This has also given rise to GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. Greger cited research showing that a plant-based burger boosts the GLP-1 receptor about 40% higher than a beef burger.
Additionally, even when people swap only a single serving of meat a day with vegan alternatives, they lose significantly more weight. This could be due to fewer branch-chain amino acids, which improves metabolic health, or because the resting metabolic rate in vegetarians has been found to be 20% higher than meat-eaters.
6) Meat analogues enhance diabetes management
Nearly 15% of American adults have diabetes (mostly type 2), while almost two in five American children and teenagers are prediabetic. Greger highlighted the potential of vegan meat products in reducing insulin resistance and managing blood glucose levels in diabetics.
A four-year interventional trial shows that diabetics who replaced animal protein with TVP – a processed meat alternative – find significant improvements in blood sugar. Swapping a single serving of red meat with TVP vastly enhanced insulin resistance, though resting blood glucose levels were only significantly better through a shift to whole soybeans.
In another study, pregnant women with gestational diabetes who swapped half their animal protein for TVP not only saw improvements in insulin resistance and blood sugar control, but also found newborn hospitalisations lowered by 85%.
Courtesy: LaylaBird/Getty Images
7) Plant-based meat is good for the gut
The GLP-1 boom has also put gut health in sharp focus, and meat alternatives can bring major benefits here. They can promote positive changes in the microbiome, helping feed beneficial gut microbes, for example, which produce anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids.
Replacing a few servings of meat a day with Quorn’s mycoprotein alternatives has been found to increase the abundance of good gut bacteria and reduce the amount of DNA damage caused by faecal matter.
“According to the latest data, about 85% of ground beef and turkey are contaminated with faecal bacteria at a retail level. And about half a chicken, and a third of pork,” said Greger. “But you don’t have to cook the crap out of plant-based meat because there shouldn’t be any crap to begin with.”
8) Vegan products can reduce healthcare costs
“These days, most of us are dying from diseases of excess, not deficiency,” Greger remarked. Too much salt, too much sugar, too much saturated fat, too many calories. “Higher intake of meat in general – red meat, white meat, processed, unprocessed – [is] also associated with increased risk of death from all causes put together,” he added.
“If people swapped out about 75% of their meat, up to 50,000 lives can be saved every year in high-income countries potentially saving billions of dollars of healthcare costs,” he continued.
9) On-pack labelling requirements can help plant-based food
It was only last week that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed the rollout of a front-of-pack label that scored the saturated fat, sodium and sugar content of a processed food product from low to high. Greger praised on-pack labelling strategies, drawing a parallel with how the fight against trans fats was won when the food industry was forced to list them on their ingredient labels.
He argued that these policies – unwelcome as they might be for many food producers – have forced their hand. They now “actually have to care about sodium”, for example. “It would be nice if companies were like: ‘Maybe we should care about sodium because we don’t like killing people,” Greger said, acknowledging that it’s not something shareholders will ask about.
But front-of-pack labelling means companies can’t “hide behind some health halo”, such as “plant-based” or “natural”.
10) Whole-food plant-based meat is the way to go
Asked what his dream meat alternative would be, Greger said this already existed in the form of plant proteins “made by Mother Nature”, like kidney beans. But he painted a bigger picture.
“Can we make something healthier than a kidney bean?” he said. The way you make something healthier than a lentil is to do something to it that makes people eat more lentils. “Add some potassium chloride to lentils – all of a sudden tastes better you’re eating more lentils,” Greger suggested.
This could be complemented with some healthy fat, like a nut butter, and added fibre – or at least a mechanism that strips less fibre away. “Just more whole healthy foods in people’s bodies would be ideal,” he said.
With hopes of a European launch growing, Californian plant-based meat leader Impossible Foods has had a patent for its heme protein reinstated in the EU.
Two years after the European Patent Office (EPO) revoked a key patent it granted to Impossible Foods, the decision has been overturned by the agency’s Board of Appeals.
A culmination of a protracted process that faced significant opposition, the patent concerned the plant-based company’s use of heme protein and flavour precursors in its flagship burger, which allow it to ‘bleed’, smell and taste like conventional beef.
The heme ingredient – derived from soy and genetically engineered yeast – has been at the centre of a legal dispute in its home country, where the Californian firm triumphed over a long-running legal battle with Motif Foodworks, taking over its heme business. The latter ceased operations soon after the case came to an end.
Why Impossible Foods’s EU patent was reinstated
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The EU patent was first granted in 2017, covering a meat alternative compromising heme proteins and “at least two flavour precursor molecules”. Impossible Foods inserts the DNA from soy plants into a genetically engineered yeast strain called Komagataella phaffii to produce soy leghemoglobin via a process similar to how Belgian beer is brewed.
But it was challenged by a straw man (or anonymous) opponent a year later, which argued that the patent was invalid due to a lack of novelty or an inventive step (when an invention is not obvious to a person skilled in the field), and insufficient disclosure.
The EPO’s Opposition Division agreed that the patent was invalid for the latter reason. And while it believed that Impossible Foods’s heme protein was a novel invention, it lacked an inventive step.
In its decision on December 20, the Board of Appeals said it was “readily apparent” the case was complex. “The proprietor had to address numerous and increasingly expanded attacks raised by the opponent and third parties during the opposition proceedings. More than 100 documents were filed, most of them after the filing of the notice of opposition,” it stated.
The appeals body found that the requirement that the heme-containing protein be ‘isolated; was directly and unambiguously disclosed in the patent application, as were the combinations of three flavour precursors.
Impossible Foods had also communicated how the heme protein and flavour molecules give its plant-based analogues the taste and smell of meat during the cooking process, the Board of Appeals noted. It additionally found that the company had made sufficient disclosures about its invention, which it said contained an inventive step.
Impossible Burger inching closer to European plates
Courtesy: Impossible Foods
The EPO Board of Appeals’s decision ended a year of significant regulatory progress for Impossible Foods in Europe. The company already sells its beef in the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, the UAE, Australia, and New Zealand – but has faced several hurdles in the EU and the UK for its precision fermentation process.
But in June, the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) food additives panel issued a positive safety assessment of LegH Prep, a liquid preparation containing the company’s soy leghemoglobin and other ingredients. This was provisional, as it was subject to an assessment from the regulator’s GMO panel.
That came months later in November, when the GMO body ruled that the ingredient was “safe for human consumption with regard to the effects of the genetic modification”. It ended a Clock Stop – a period when evaluation is officially stopped pending further information from the company – that had hampered the process since December 2021.
This then followed a 30-day consultation period, allowing the submission of purely scientific comments and questions to be addressed by the EFSA and the EU Commission. Following that, the Commission will draft approval decisions to be brought to the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, which will discuss and then vote on them.
“The agency’s comprehensive, scientific assessment of the safety of soy Leghemoglobin (heme) across two applications reinforces the overall quality and safety of our food, echoing similar approvals from regulators in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand,” an Impossible Foods spokesperson told Green Queen in November.
They noted that the GMO approval was “an important step toward bringing Impossible products to Europe”, adding: “We’re excited to continue our work with EU decision-makers to bring Impossible Foods products to European consumers.”
Impossible Foods’s patent victory comes at a testy time for plant-based meat in Europe, where it has faced renewed attacks over the use of meat-related terms on product labels. But in a positive sign for the industry, the EU’s top court rejected the French government’s attempt to instate a labelling ban, a decision that is set to be finalised by France’s top court.
