A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques. The ingredients of meat alternative include 50–80% water, 10–25% textured vegetable proteins, 4–20% non-textured proteins, 0–15% fat and oil, 3-10% flavors/spices, 1-5% binding agents and 0-0.5% coloring agents.
A chicken nugget is a food product consisting of a small piece of deboned chicken meat that is breaded or battered, then deep-fried or baked. Developed in the 1950s by finding a way to make a coating adhere, chicken nuggets have become a very popular fast food restaurant item, and are widely sold frozen for home use.
The McChicken is a chicken burger sold by the international fast food restaurant McDonald's. It consists of a toasted wheat bun, a breaded patty, shredded lettuce and mayonnaise.
Chicken McNuggets are a type of chicken nuggets sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. They consist of small pieces of reconstituted boneless chicken meat that have been battered and deep fried. Chicken McNuggets were conceived by Keystone Foods in the late 1970s and introduced in select markets in 1981. The nuggets were made available worldwide by 1983 after correcting a supply issue. The formula was changed in 2016 to remove artificial preservatives and improve the nutritional value.
Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It is the largest meat company in America. It annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Together with its subsidiaries, it operates major food brands, including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright Brand, Aidells, and State Fair. Tyson Foods ranked No. 79 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
Boca Burger is a veggie burger produced by Kraft Heinz in Chicago, Illinois. Like all of Boca Foods' products, Boca Burgers serve as a meat alternative.
Morningstar Farms is a division of Kellanova that produces vegan and vegetarian food. Many of their offerings are plant-based variations of traditionally meat products. Their products include meatless chicken nuggets, popcorn chicken, corn dogs, breakfast sausage, burgers, hot dogs, bacon, and pizza snack rolls with vegan cheese. Originally, Morningstar offered some, but not all vegan products. In 2019, Morningstar Farms announced all products would be vegan by 2021, but had not yet done so as of May 2024.
Lightlife Foods is a company that produces food for plant-based diets. In 2018, its worth was estimated at $80 million. It is best known for its plant-based veggie dog, Smart Dog, which launched in 1993. In 2019, the company launched a plant-based burger to compete with Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Lightlife Foods is a carbon-neutral company.
Josh Balk is an American activist, CEO of The Accountability Board, which he co-founded. Previously, he was vice president of farm animal protection for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) farm animal division. In addition, he is a cofounder of Eat Just, a food technology company. Prior to working with HSUS and founding Eat Just, he was known for his work at Animal Outlook. Balk is best known for leading successful legislative campaigns for farm animals, along with his work with food companies in enacting animal welfare policies that include eliminating gestation crates for breeding pigs and battery cages for chickens. He is also known for his work with the food industry to shift its focus onto plant-based foods.
Eat Just, Inc. is a private company headquartered in San Francisco, California, US. It develops and markets plant-based alternatives to conventionally produced egg products, as well as cultivated meat products. Eat Just was founded in 2011 by Josh Tetrick and Josh Balk. It raised about $120 million in early venture capital and became a unicorn in 2016 by surpassing a $1 billion valuation. It has been involved in several highly publicized disputes with traditional egg industry interests. In December 2020, its cultivated chicken meat became the first cultured meat to receive regulatory approval in Singapore. Shortly thereafter, Eat Just's cultured meat was sold to diners at the Singapore restaurant 1880, making it the "world's first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat".
Beyond Meat, Inc. is a producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown. The company's initial products were launched in the United States in 2012. The company went public in 2019, becoming the first plant-based meat analogue company to go public.
Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. The company's signature product, the Impossible Burger, was launched in July 2016 as a vegan alternative to a beef hamburger.
Upside Foods is a food technology company headquartered in Berkeley, California, aiming to grow sustainable cultured meat. The company was founded in 2015 by Uma Valeti (CEO), Nicholas Genovese (CSO), and Will Clem. Valeti was a cardiologist and a professor at the University of Minnesota.
Cellular agriculture focuses on the production of agricultural products from cell cultures using a combination of biotechnology, tissue engineering, molecular biology, and synthetic biology to create and design new methods of producing proteins, fats, and tissues that would otherwise come from traditional agriculture. Most of the industry is focused on animal products such as meat, milk, and eggs, produced in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering farmed livestock which is associated with substantial global problems of detrimental environmental impacts, animal welfare, food security and human health. Cellular agriculture is a field of the biobased economy. The most well known cellular agriculture concept is cultured meat.
Benjamin Pasternak is an Australian technology entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of SIMULATE, an American food technology company, that has raised US$57M in investment to date. SIMULATE's signature product, NUGGS, launched in July 2019. It is a plant-based alternative to chicken nuggets. Previously, Pasternak founded Monkey, a social networking app that enabled teenagers to video chat with like-minded people.
Beyond Fried Chicken, Kentucky Fried Miracle or KFC Chicken Nuggets are a food product sold by the international fast food chain KFC. In August 2019, El Segundo, California-based Beyond Meat partnered with KFC for a plant-based chicken flavour nugget. It is the first fast-food chain to introduce a plant-based meat replacement after partnering with Beyond Meat.
Nature's Fynd is a company that develops microbe-based proteins for meat substitutes and dairy substitutes. The protein is produced by a fungus first identified in geothermal springs in Yellowstone National Park.
The McPlant is a vegetarian burger sold by the fast-food chain McDonald's in several European countries. In 2021, McDonald's partnered with Beyond Meat, a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes, to create the McPlant platform. It features a plant-based meat alternative burger patty made from plant ingredients such as potatoes, peas and rice.
Steakholder Foods is a company which develops 3D bioprinting technologies for usage in cellular agriculture. Based in Israel, it has a Belgian subsidiary called Peace of Meat, with which it produces cultured meat, with a focus on cultivating foie gras. It was originally founded in 2019 as MeaTech 3D Ltd., or MeaTech for short.
