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Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, will debut vegan offerings such as the Incredible Burger in the spring of 2019, according to reports. The company will also debut vegan walnut milk and expects its vegan offerings to be worth $1 billion in a decade.
With more and more people going vegan for environmental, health, or ethical reasons, large companies like Nestlé are taking notice. Nestlé will release the Incredible Burger under the company’s Garden Gourmet label and plans to expand its vegan business over the next decade.
In an interview, Nestlé chief technology officer Stefan Palzer said:
While digging deeper into consumer trends, we found they changed a bit in the last couple of years depending on how consumers define a healthy diet. … Vegetarianism has never been this popular before and it’s here to stay, I’m convinced about that.
The company announced in July of 2018 that it would make a new dairy-free formula that caters to infants with allergies (and the growing number of vegan families!). Nestlé credits millennials with helping plant-based foods become more mainstream.
Over the past decade, veganism has seen consistent growth as millennials, the largest generation and the one with the most self-identified vegetarians, purchase their own food. But if you think millennials are vegan AF, you should know that Generation Z is even more into plant-based foods! As this generation grows older, we can expect to see a boom in vegan alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs, with major companies like Nestlé cashing in.
Even the meat industry is taking notice. Maple Leaf Foods, a major Canadian meat supplier, launched an independent subsidiary called Greenleaf Foods that is 100 percent plant-based. The company also owns plant-based businesses Field Roast and Lightlife.
Bloomberg reported that Applegate Farms, a subsidiary of meat giant Hormel Foods, was looking to invest in the $3.7 billion plant-based market. Similarly, America’s largest meat producer, Tyson Foods, has invested in clean meat company Memphis Meats and plant-based meat company Beyond Meat. In fact, Tyson recently launched a $150 million venture capital fund, Tyson New Ventures, for investing in vegan meats.
Furthermore, Cargill made history in 2017 with its landmark investment in Memphis Meats, which is known for creating real beef burgers without cows and the world’s first chicken and duck meat without animal slaughter.
But the industry isn’t the only one investing in vegan alternatives. Germany’s government recently invested $780,000 to make plant-based meat alternatives more “meaty” in texture, and last year Barbara Hendricks, Germany’s federal minister for the environment, banned all meat from official government functions in an effort to combat climate change.
Additionally, Canadian officials set aside $153 million to enable the country to provide more plant-based alternatives to meet the growing demand for vegan protein.
It’s true what they say—2019 will be the “Year of the Vegan.”
More plant-based alternatives aren’t just good for vegans or people making the switch; they’re great for billions of animals suffering every day at factory farms. From birth to death, these animals are trapped in a nightmare: crated and caged, cut and burned, and brutally killed. With no federal laws regulating the treatment of animals at factory farms, cruelty has become the norm.
Join the millions of people combating climate change by switching to a vegan lifestyle. Order your FREE Vegetarian Starter Guide and find thousands of vegan recipe ideas on our Pinterest page!