Meat alternatives and meatless products

The meat alternatives market is offering opportunities for canny food processors to expand their product ranges and appeal to a broader group of consumers.

The number of committed vegetarians and vegans in the marketplace is relatively stable. Recently, however, the number of consumers looking for partial meat alternatives, so called meat reducers or flexitarians, has been on the rise. It is therefore scarcely surprising that the latter have become the target for meat substitute product launches.

The recent changes in food habits are due to various factors:

• While not a key driver, animal welfare continues to be a strong influence
• Food safety/scares
• Sustainability and environmental concerns (carbon footprint)
• Economic crisis: the price of meatless products may be more attractive (affordable options)
• Meat alternatives may have a healthier image with regard to a balanced diet, not least in connection with saturated fat and cholesterol
• Ethnic/fusion food: eg, Indian food may inspire meatless habits in host cultures.

Meat analogue market

Meat substitutes represent a small but very dynamic niche segment in the processed foods sector. They are made with protein from vegetable origin. The market therefore has grown significantly with some specific boosts due to the food scares linked to animal products, such as BSE, foot-and-mouth disease, Asian flu, etc.

Since 1997, there has been a more than 14-fold increase in the number of new protein-containing meat substitute product launches each year.

Consumers are displaying increasing awareness of the key issues attributed to these foods:

• A healthier image, associated with the foods’ low levels of saturated fats and their allergen status
• More ‘natural’, associated with their vegetal origins and good traceability
• More sustainable and ethical

In spite of such advantages, these products are still sold as part of a specific diet and are not considered as everyday food by most consumers. Today, the food industry majors have a limited involvement in such products.

Two key limits explain this:

• The consumer price and a limited choice of raw materials
• The taste of such meat-free foods that, up until now, has not satisfied the majority of consumers

Meanwhile, from a marketing point of view, the meat substitutes market will continue to benefit from an enlarging consumer base increasingly shifting from a ‘vegetarian’ to a ‘meat-free’ positioning. Moreover, there are ever more opportunities to entice consumers with a wider choice of attractive products. For example, exotic flavours or premium products are both promising avenues, as is a larger variety of protein sources.

Focus on taste and texture improvement

Whatever the food product category, consumer pleasure and satisfaction are the key to success. Taste and texture play a major role crucial to enlarging the consumer base for meat-free products.

The latest product ranges incorporate important features that support meatless product formulation that help rather than hinder consumer satisfaction. Legume proteins are now valuable alternatives to soy, the most common meat analogue.

Legume proteins in synergy with wheat proteins can optimise both texture and the nutritional profile of meat analogues.

The taste of legume protein has long been a limiting factor in the quest for successful animal protein substitutes, a constraint recently overcome by French company Roquette. Its new technology has been able to extract the dry protein from the pea.

Food processors can now incorporate meat analogues into their products, extending their product range of nutritionally well-balanced, healthy and sustainable foods that will appeal to a larger number of consumers.