Patents on the soles of your shoes...: World Vegetarian Day 2019

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

World Vegetarian Day 2019

If you are having a hard time following the USDA Guidelines for daily fruit and veggie intake, using pyramids or plates, and eating so many veggies, then World Vegetarian Day might not be such a fun day. Except that the tide has turned radically in 2019.

Indeed, the vegetarian world has become better empowered with new food technologies, such as those marketed by Impossible Foods Inc., and Beyond Meat®, now each available at supermarkets in the US. New food technologies that have raised the bar on faux meat, responding successfully to the challenge of creating products that have the texture, smell, color, and taste of real meat—enough to even mislead consumers into believing they are eating real meat, in a blind testing situation.

More than faux meat, Beyond Meat® is even marketing itself as a movement, to save the planet both from global warming, and the ethical issues at stake in consuming animal-based products. Indeed, for a company such as Beyond Meat®, selling products mimicking chicken, beef, and pork that went public on the NASDAK Stock exchange in May 2019, with the ticker symbol BYND and an IPO share price of $25, trading 4 months later at $148 USD, that is quite a following! As for Impossible Foods Inc., the Stanford U.-connected company could not keep up with production when the company’s famous Impossible™ Burger went on sale at Burger King®, earlier this year.

Thus, the hope, in both companies, using different processes and sources of plant-based proteins, is that more people will consume less meat, and that even those who have become vegetarian will buy into the faux meat menu options that they offer. An already winning gambit, since PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)* named Beyond Meat®, Company of the year, as early as in 2013.

To get involved, or for more information, please visit World Vegetarian Day here!