Ask anyone if they’re considering a vegetarian diet for sustainability reasons and they’d probably look at you like you have two heads. Truth be told, it’s not on most people’s radar. With initiatives like “meatless Monday”, people trying “vegan for a week”, and the popularity of recipes such as “nice cream”, it’s become something at the forefront of culinary trends. One way that’s manifesting itself is the rise of meat alternatives – and we’re going to explore them and see just how they measure up.
Meat has a specific flavour – it has an element of fibrous texture, it has fats, it is savoury and it is strong. If you cook it anything less than medium-well then it also “bleeds” when you bite into it. It’s hard for vegetables and non-meat options to measure up to that, at least in terms of giving the same experience.
Beyond burger is one such example of a replicated meat product, which comes from plant proteins. It uses 99% less water in production than creating a meat burger, due to the effort and water that goes into raising livestock. Sustainability in raising animals for consumption is a topic of huge importance in the food industry, and the beyond burgers aim to tackle that by producing a burger that looks and tastes like real meat, can be bought just like any other burger.
Beyond Burger are not the only brand making waves in the food world with meat alternatives – Danish company Naturli’ created a meat substitute available in the UK and Denmark which “bleeds” like a real burger, and also sell a minced “meat” for meatballs. Other supermarket chains in the UK such as Tesco and Iceland produced their own meat- free ranges for sale as well.
So is this just a passing fad, or will we be seeing more of these products as time goes on? The likelihood is we’ll see a lot more people taking these products on as part of their diet. Vegetarians, flexitarians (those who lower their meat intake to eat more vegetarian food but who don’t restrict it completely), and vegans are all on the rise. Wanting to improve animal welfare and sustainability doesn’t mean that people don’t want to eat nice food. For many the inability to eat burgers, meatballs, or having to think of new recipes for their weeknight meals which use meat (like Bolognese sauce) is one reason why they won’t try a meat-free diet, so these products make it a lot easier.
With agriculture causing 15% of all emissions, which contribute to global warming, and animal-rearing taking up half of that 15%, it would make a tremendous difference to the environment. Even if a customer’s concern isn’t the environment, but instead animal welfare, health, or just to try something new – it’s pretty clear that these products are going to be taking off even more in the coming years. The financial predictions seem to agree – the plant-based meat industry is set to exceed a value of $6.3 billion by 2023. Keep an eye out for more meat-alternatives to keep on-trend with this new, improved, sustainable product.
