Have you eaten pie, turkey, meat pie or paw stew in the last few days? Even though family holiday meals have become lighter over the years, they are still very far from being vegetarian, which highlights the bitter failure of the imitation meat industry.
Posted at 7:40 p.m.
Rarely have we seen a new category of food create such enthusiasm before practically falling into oblivion.
You just have to look for a container of vegetable mince in your supermarket to realize this. They are not easily found. The last ones I could find were not placed with the tofu or with the ground beef. They were waiting to find a buyer in a freezer between the chicken nuggets and fries. And seemed to have been there for moons…
This is quite a contrast to the frenzy surrounding the arrival of vegetarian burgers in fast food chains a few years ago.
Remember when A&W launched a burger made with the Beyond Meat patty: everything sold out shouting “root beer”. This promising young Californian shoot was to revolutionize the contents of our plate. However, it has never made a single dollar of profit. Last year, its sales reached US$343 million, but its net loss was almost the same: US$338 million. No wonder the value of its stock has fallen by 95% over the past 5 years.
Its main competitor, Impossible Foods, is hardly more profitable. Since its founding in 2011, the company has always been in the red.
Seeing the vegetarian threat looming, the meat industry reacted. The Ontario hot dog and cold meats giant, Maple Leaf, went so far as to pay 140 million to buy the American imitation meat brand Lightlife. Last year, sales of this vegetarian subsidiary plummeted by 16% and the net loss amounted to 220 million.
Although we have invented pepperoni and bacon without pork, chicken croquettes and cutlets without poultry, the success of the industry remains mixed despite all the media hype surrounding it. Sales volume of plant-based proteins fell 19% in the United States last year, according to the Good Food Institute (GFI). In Quebec, Nielsen observed a drop of 8% this year.
“It’s still quite expensive, quite fatty and quite salty. Consumers may therefore have the impression that in terms of health and financial terms, there is not much gain,” analyzes Laurence Godin, professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Agricultural Sciences. food supply at Laval University. The list of ingredients, long and difficult to understand, is not attractive and one may wonder whether the target audience has been adequately identified.
Vegetarians don’t go to the ground beef aisle and those who buy meat may have tried Beyond Meat’s product, but if they don’t see any benefit, they will continue with ground beef. . This is the wall they hit.
Laurence Godin, professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at Laval University
A study carried out for GFI concludes that taste and texture are at the top of the reasons for not repurchasing them.
As for the ethical arguments (animal welfare, environment) put forward to boost sales, they are not enough to change consumption habits, concludes doctoral student Claudia Laviolette, whose research focuses on plant proteins. We fear greenwashing, we question the reliability of the data. Recipes and tips for cooking imitation meat work more, but the expert still believes that the fake meat industry risks disappearing.
What is fascinating, in the circumstances, is to see to what extent plant-based milks have experienced a reverse trajectory.
Sales volume has jumped 36% in Canada over the past 5 years, making it the fastest growing category among all “packaged food products,” according to Agriculture Canada.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Consumption of plant-based milk substitutes is increasing, both in Canada and the United States.
In the United States, the market for plant-based milk (2.9 billion US dollars, according to GFI) far exceeds that of plant-based meat (1.2 billion US dollars), although the unit price is much higher.
If plant-based meat suffers from its higher prices than meat, this is not a barrier in the dairy aisle, even if that produced by cows is much cheaper.
A liter of 2% Québon milk sells for $2.26, while you have to pay around $3.50 for a smaller 946 ml container of oat or soy milk. The same amount of almond milk sells for $4.99, while the liter of Elmhurst Cashew Drink costs a spectacular $10.
Faced with this enthusiasm, which is not dampened by prices, dairy processors have imitated their colleagues in the meat industry by investing in plant-based milk production plants. They even invented vegan eggnog that appeals to carnivores. You have to do it!
