Away From Animals: Plant-Based, Cell-Cultured and More

Delivery

This report comes in PPT.

Key findings

Analogues for animal-based food are continuing to improve

Moving beyond just plant-based meat and plant-based milk substitutes, availability has now spread across categories to encompass foods such as plant-based snacks, ready meals and dairy alternatives (including cheese and yoghurt). Development and investments beyond core categories have increased, and products have vastly improved.

Plant-based products are expanding across new frontiers

Production techniques are moving beyond simply shaping/flavouring the best mix of texturised vegetable protein (for meat alternatives) or finding the best ingredient (almond, oat, etc) to create a milk facsimile; approaches such as blending and fermentation are addressing objections regarding taste, texture and usage.

Cell-cultured food is coming

The world’s largest market for processed meat - the US - is poised to allow cell-cultivated food for human consumption. This holds the potential to be the most accurate of all alternatives to meat, dairy and beyond.

Plant-based is facing greater challenges than ever before

Food price inflation has seen consumers cut back, as plant-based products are more expensive than animal-based alternatives. Alternatives’ health credentials are increasingly under fire, and perhaps most importantly an overheated launch environment meant many consumers have tried products which ultimately failed taste/texture expectations.

Increasing expense will drive alternative purchases

The debate over the environmental impact of animal-based foods will become more common as climate change has an ever-more negative impact on people's lives. Governments will increasingly promote plant-based alternatives as a necessity, and consumers will respond as animal-based foods become more expensive to purchase.