‘The New Makers of Plant-Based Meat? Big Meat Companies’

David Yaffe-Bellany for the NYTimes:

Analysts project that the market for plant-based protein and lab-created meat alternatives could be worth as much as $85 billion by 2030.

What’s interesting about that figure is that UBS thinks $85 billion could be a conservative figure.

“When companies like Tyson and Smithfield launch plant-based meat products, that transforms the plant-based meat sector from niche to mainstream,” said Bruce Friedrich, who runs the Good Food Institute, an organization that advocates plant-based substitutes. “They have massive distribution channels, they have enthusiastic consumer bases, and they know what meat needs to do to satisfy consumers.”

This is the thing that spooks me when companies like this enter the market. I want everyone to have access to the best, and if theirs are only 80% as good as the best then it’s a massive disservice to people’s piqued interest in all new plant-based foods.

“We’re a meat company, first and foremost,” said Mr. Pauley, the Smithfield official. “We’re not going to apologize for that.”

A spokeswoman for Tyson, the largest meat producer in the United States and the creator of a new line of plant-based chicken nuggets, put it more bluntly. “Right now,” said the spokeswoman, Susan Wassel, “it’s really about the business opportunity.”

And this is a hard pill to swallow. Of course, I want everyone involved in vegan foods to have similar interests—but that’s unrealistic. Most business people are only into making money and don’t care how it’s made. So… I hope lots of evil people make bajillion dollars decreasing animal usage, saving the earth, and helping other people. In the end, it’s a net positive. Though, I’d prefer the good people make the bajillion dollars. I can’t control that.

“If the products are not that great, if they’re just basically repurposed veggie burgers, the harm it does to us is not competition,” [Pat Brown, Impossible Foods CEO] said. “It’s reinforcing consumers’ belief that a plant-based product can’t deliver what a meat lover wants.”

I really like Pat Brown’s turn of phrase. He really understands how to say something with a bang.

Beyond Meat is valued at nearly $9 billion, making it about a third the size of Tyson.

This was news to me, and I love it—especially because Tyson used to own a small stake in Beyond. It’s good to see Beyond eating Tyson’s dinner after what Tyson did last year. For those who don’t know, Tyson learned everything they could from Beyond and then sold off their shares to go off and try to make a competing product. Good riddance.

‘What the World Needs Now Is Anarcha-Feminist Vegan Chocolates’

Julia Tulsch spent the day and interviewed Lagusta Yearwood on her expanding vegan chocolate business:

“It’s hard for business owners because [people want vegan junk food], so why would you not make that stuff? But I don’t want my market to be vegans because that’s not activism for me. I don’t even want people to know we’re vegan. Because I want people to come in here — it happens, and I’m always very gratified by it — and just be like ‘Oh, that’s good food.’

“The way I think about it is that I’m a political person trying to run businesses from a political standpoint. Veganism is just a piece of that. You can get into a lot of trouble when it’s like ‘Oh, but it’s vegan!’ But that can leave out so many other ethical concerns. I don’t want to say [veganism] doesn’t matter. But it’s not The Thing. I feel like it’s one small component of an ethical life, you know?”

Yearwood’s background is fascinating, especially how her anarchist side affects her business—from putting recipes out so people don’t have to buy them and also letting employees have a say in what jobs they prefer doing around the shop.

‘California Governor Signs Fur Sales, Circus Performance Bans’

“California is a leader when it comes to animal welfare, and today that leadership includes banning the sale of fur,” Newsom said in a statement. “But we are doing more than that. We are making a statement to the world that beautiful wild animals like bears and tigers have no place on trapeze wires or jumping through flames.”

California enacting these laws is important because its economy carries massive weight. If California were its own country, it would be the 5th largest economy on earth. When California sets regulations on any industry, those laws slowly become the national American standard.

Look at cars as an example. When emissions regulations are enacted, because California purchases such large amounts of cars, the auto-makers make that the standard for the rest of the country too.

‘The Shadowy Beef Lobbyist Fighting Against Plant-Based ‘Meat’’

Here’s a small excerpt from Eater’s podcast called Eater’s Digest hosted by Martha Daniel. She speaks with Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, and Rachel Konrad, Impossible’s Chief Communications Officer — and I think they’ve found their nemesis:

Pat Brown: There’s obviously a lot of effort to limit our ability to market our products. That just has to do with regulations around what we can call them and how we can talk about them. There were efforts in a number of producing States to put those restrictions on. I would say by and large they were not very successful. I don’t think that the smart money is betting that it will withstand a constitutional challenge. They’ve hired this guy Richard Berman, the Center for Consumer Freedom, who’s like mister mouthpiece for every big evil industry you can think of.Which I feel like boy, that’s a point of pride for me. You definitely want to be the people he’s going after. Not the people who he’s defending.

Martha Daniel: Richard Berman, again, is the inspiration behind the movie Thank You for Smoking. As I said, he’s defended cigarettes. He’s lobbied against raising the minimum wage and lowering blood alcohol content limits for drivers. His PR group’s website proudly declares him quote the industry’s weapon of mass destruction. Berman has his sight set on Impossible and the person from Impossible who is really locking horns with him is Rachel Konrad, their chief communications officer.

Rachel Konrad: He is probably the sleaziest PR guy in America. He’s of course a raging climate denier. He’s actually now taken the mantle to try to defend big beef and to really quote, “Tell the story of big beef.” His nonprofit has taken out advertisements in Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He’s done a series of stupid op-eds that tried to question the nutritional benefits of plant based meat. He loves to trash plant based meat as too processed, which is complete bullshit. I think that the biggest possible validation that we are truly about to change the world is the fact that they’ve hired Richard Berman. Like you don’t hire Richard Berman unless you are evil incumbent industry so reviled that your back is against the wall.

I love that it’s a point of pride for Brown that Richard Berman is in the fight against Impossible. I’d feel the same way. I know it’s easy to villainize people but Berman is about as evil and repugnant as a person can get.

Oat Milk

When I read reviews of restaurants like Komi in Washington DC, like this one in the Washington Post from Tom Sietsema, I’m reminded of the relative newness of veganism. Especially to many chefs. And how things can shift overnight, overweek, overmonth.

It reminds me of what has happened with oat milk. The great Oat Milk. Our new liquid friend in the vegan community. A frothy and friendly beast that is splashed into coffees, espressos, and teas. Neutral and nice—and in only the last year, it’s become a staple in most coffee shops I stop by. It has a lovely body that is a great friend to many drinks. It’s common now, but only a year or two ago I had never seen it.

And things like this are happening in my life all the time. Daw Yee Myanmar Corner, one of my favorite restaurants in LA, makes a lentil tofu. Foodies is now making a tofu out of pumpkin seeds. And there is Chickpea tofu too.

This part of the review makes me hungry for that exploration:

The first marvel is a tiny taco whose dark filling, hidden beneath shredded lettuce, is a ringer for ground beef. Playing the meaty role, however: ground black walnuts imbued with a housemade version of Old El Paso taco seasoning. Close behind the treat is a souvlaki featuring mushrooms that have been sliced paper-thin, marinated, layered and pressed for a few days before they’re threaded on a skewer and seasoned with oregano. Along for the joyride is a dreamy mustard dip.

[…]

The grandest illusions are the gyro and the not-fish fillet.

The former is a magic trick coaxed from tofu skin, griddled at different temperatures and times to achieve a gyro’s signature crisp edges, then bundled in pillowy pita.

Walnuts. Mushrooms pressed for many days. Griddled tofu skin. These new uses are special developments. One small step for veganism, and (possibly) one giant leap for vegan eating.

These fresh explorations and their best uses hasn’t been seen, but time will be our friend. Komi sounds like it’s exploring vegetables in new impressionistic ways. It reminds me of Superiority Burger of New York City. (SB is in LA soon!) These restaurants are changing our future meals, whether we know it or not. Each experimental dish they make could be the next plant-based heartthrob and staple of our homes.

‘So Your Kid Wants to Go Vegan… What Next?’

Jessica Scott-Reid at Tenderly:

“When children and youth realize what’s happening to animals and the planet it can be overwhelming,” she says. “A lot of children and youth are reporting that they are experiencing climate anxiety.”

[…]

As Dr. Fergusson concludes, not only can a plant based diet be physically safe and healthy for young people, but allowing children to eat and live in a way that may better align with their personal ethics, can also be psychologically beneficial.

“It may help them to reduce some of the anxiety they feel around the current state of the planet, and as they become aware of the state of animals within animal agriculture. Knowing that they are not personally contributing to that system and that they are taking a stand ethically, may be comforting and empowering to them.”

Thinking about food is another opportunity to be anxious. As this young generation becomes more informed through the internet, it’s hard to not feel sympathy and a related tension for action or inaction on almost every social issue. There are problems all around us, but now it’s a question of where people want to focus their energy, their exposure, and inevitably their life.

‘Plant-based meat could create a radically different food chain’

Smaller firms that specialise in ingredients for plant-based food have started to spring up, and more established ones, such as Ingredion, are moving into this space too. Its researchers are investigating whether other crops, such as yellow peas and fava beans, can make good meatless meat. They are also hoping to breed new varieties of soya and wheat. Earlier this year Motif Ingredients, a startup created by Gingko Bioworks, a biotech firm in Boston, raised $90m to develop specialised ingredients for plant-based products. Jon McIntyre, Motif’s boss, aims to make flavourings and other additives (to improve texture or bite, say) by inserting specific DNA sequences into the genomes of yeast. Fermenting that yeast will then produce their desired products. Both companies hope that their products will help even the smallest firms to create their own plant-based meats from scratch.

I read things like this and do a little dance in my chair. The future is exciting. New flavors and new experiences are going to be happening for the decades and decades to come.

‘Going Vegan Won’t Save the Planet’

Mark Buchanan with an op-ed for Bloomberg:

At a recent food festival in Wales, I witnessed an enlightening discussion between two experts on the future of farming. Chungui Lu, a Chinese native who is now a professor in the U.K., spoke on the promise of vertical farming — high-tech indoor vegetable farming capable of producing more food per acre than traditional farming. In contrast, Patrick Holden, a traditional yet visionary Welsh farmer, argued for the human and ecological benefits of small-scale farming for the local sale of meat, cheese and vegetables produced using fully organic methods.

Their ideas seem to reflect a clash between technology and tradition. But I came away thinking that neither offered a solution by itself. Our problems are so deep and diverse, and multiplied by local variations in culture, weather and human density, that no one solution will suffice. We’re going to need many.

I’d imagine that someday soon we’ll see a new term for this distinction. There are too many facets of veganism that clash over the idea of what veganism encompasses. Right now, it seems to me that ‘veganism’ is a label for people doing it for the animals while ‘plant-based’ is often people doing it for personal health reasons. Thankfully both are aligned in the way they eat — and that means a reduction in animal use. This openness to understanding how we affect the world around us is the key takeaway.

From the ecological perspective, Holden said, the meat-versus-vegetable distinction isn’t the right one. Both can be produced in environmentally helpful ways as well as harmful ones, with the latter becoming the norm over the past half-century of industrial farming. Vegan and vegetarian diets may be good for CO2 emissions, but their blind pursuit can exacerbate other issues. He gives one example: It doesn’t help the environment to eschew a local organically grown egg in favor of tofu produced with intense pesticide application on a soy plantation carved out of the Amazon rainforest.

For me, eating vegan food means eating a meal that attempts to reduce the net suffering of animals. But understanding how to categorize and consider what happened to the earth to make that meal is a new facet. There are rarely labels that mention sustainability or some hint about the overall distance the parts of my meal had to travel to reach my plate. Every mile effects CO2. Each part an addition. And all of these things play a part in the future and I hope we can find a way to approach food menus and labeling in some way to indicate that.

‘Lab-grown meat start-up raises $14 million to build production plant’

CNBC’s Amelia Lucas writing about Future Foods and their latest on in vitro meat, this part caught my eye:

Future Meat has managed to reduce production costs to $150 per pound of chicken and $200 per pound for beef.

I’m impressed they’ve been able to cut the cost that low. I feel like just a year or two ago it cost tens of thousands of dollars to make a pound. My brain remembers some of the burgers they had on the morning shows costing around $100,000 each.

By 2022, Future Meat plans to launch a second line of entirely lab-grown meat that will cost less than $10 per pound.

If they can pull this off, Willy Wonka would be envious. Imagine starting from scratch, and taking the cost of a product from over $100k to $10 in under 10 years. It’s incredible.

‘Introducing Atlast™ Food Co.’

Our core insight is that conventional food processing technologies can’t mimic the structure of meat. And neither can most plants. But certain mushrooms, when grown in a precise manner using the patented Atlast™ Food Platform, show promise of delivering that critical meat-like texture. (This fact shouldn’t be surprising given that certain hard to cultivate wild mushrooms have long been recognized as convincing meat substitutes.)

So about a year ago we started on our journey to grow a plant-based steak. Or, more accurately, a myco-based steak.

People have been doing some fascinating things with mushrooms recently, so I’m excited to see what Atlast can do. Their photos are intriguing.

If you’re looking for other interesting mushroom products, I’d start with Pig Out Chips. They’re smoked, delicious, and the closest thing I’ve had to bacon in decades. You can find them on their website, and I just recently saw them at Sprouts Markets. Check their website for other stores that carry their products.

And check out the ‘Seafood’ tower at the all-vegan Crossroads restaurant in Los Angeles. I speak about this experience with Jesse Mullenix and Alex Irit in episode 2 of the Vegan-Carne Alliance podcast.