It is not new news that the plant-based meat protein category is growing. The category has seen strong growth and billions of dollars of investment resulting in strong advancement of category and product performance. The goal for the category shifted from being simply a vegetarian or vegan option to mimicking the experience of the animal incumbent, bringing in a new flexitarian consumer who is trying to reduce meat consumption to the category. Progression of taste, texture, appearance and even store placement of plant-based meat proteins to replicate the animal offering has brought more consumers to the category and helped reduced perceived gaps between the incumbent meat and plant-based offerings. Although the progress made is truly a feat, meat eaters still note sacrifices when choosing plant-based. Further progress is needed to close this gap and remove the perceived sacrifices made by meat eaters when choosing plant-based meat options. What are the sacrifices and research opportunities? Through experience with industry development, manufacturing for plant-based meat, as well as customer conversations and proprietary customer research, it has been shown that the specific gaps differ by product type (i.e., plant-based patties mimicking beef vary from plant-based patties mimicking chicken but have the overarching goals in common). The largest opportunities to continue advancing the category include but are not limited to texture, flavor, appearance and the label impact of those solutions. The opportunities are large for this category and the purpose of this message is to begin discussing the technical opportunities in the plant-based meat category that we can unlock together to elevate the entire category.

Technical opportunities associated with producing plant-based meat

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.