Fast food chain reportedly experimented with mushrooms and chickpeas before settling on breaded cauliflower
Chick-fil-A is jumping on the plant-based bandwagon.
The Atlanta-based chain said on Thursday that it’s testing its first plant-based entree – a breaded cauliflower sandwich – at restaurants in Denver; Charleston, South Carolina; and the Greensboro, North Carolina, area. The test begins 13 February.
Continue reading...Researchers find no such link for women, suggesting connection between diet and bowel cancer is clearer for men
Eating a plant-based diet rich in vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes can reduce the risk of bowel cancer in men by more than a fifth, according to research.
A large study that involved 79,952 US-based men found that those who ate the largest amounts of healthy plant-based foods had a 22% lower risk of bowel cancer compared with those who ate the least.
Continue reading...Airline says it changed menu during Covid but critics say ‘one size fits all’ alienates passengers and is a sign of decline
Qantas has stopped offering vegetarian meals on some domestic flights, leaving one irate traveller to suggest it is a further sign that the airline is in decline.
Environmentalist Jon Dee was flying from Adelaide to Sydney on Sunday night when he was told there was only chicken pie on the menu.
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Continue reading...Simply avoiding meat and dairy isn’t going to cut it if you still turn to ultra-processed foods
Did you change what you ate or drank for January? The start of the year is an annual cue for a Pandora’s box of diet demons to be released; from meal replacements and super-keto diets to slimming teas. Alongside these trends live the regular and more ethical health-conscious messages of dry January and Veganuary, both of which have grown in popularity and have a much cleaner public image. Despite that, they are still not perfect. So this year I’d like to propose another idea that hopefully has longer staying power: call it the “real food revolution”.
The premise of Veganuary is simple: use the pivotal month of January to make a big change to your diet, your health and the planet’s health by cutting out animal products. Veganuary is a not-for-profit charitable company that provides recipes and motivational emails to help you give up meat and dairy products for just one month, with, ideally, positive effects on your waistline and your carbon footprint. Overall, they do a great job, and there is plenty of evidence to support the efficacy of reducing animal-based foods for our health and our planet’s survival. We now know that agriculture is responsible for about 25% of global heating and the single most important action we as individuals can do to help address the climate crisis is not to give up cars, but to eat less meat.
Continue reading...Migraines disappeared after man started diet that included lots of dark-green leafy vegetables, study shows
Health experts are calling for more research into diet and migraines after doctors revealed a patient who had suffered severe and debilitating headaches for more than a decade completely eliminated them after adopting a plant-based diet.
He had tried prescribed medication, yoga and meditation, and cut out potential trigger foods in an effort to reduce the severity and frequency of his severe headaches – but nothing worked. The migraines made it almost impossible to perform his job, he said.
Continue reading...Marco Pierre White is championing Redefine Meat’s products, but do they live up to the hype?
Across four capitals – London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Tel Aviv – a new meat was born, containing precisely no animal. The London champion of the company, Redefine Meat, is the celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. At Mr White’s in Leicester Square, chefs, investors and barbecue and burger connoisseurs – as well as former winners of MasterChef – gathered to taste it.
The tone of the event was set by the offering of a pipette of “blood” – “Doesn’t it taste like blood, though?” asked an excited waiter. Well, yes. But memo from the world of carnivore: blood is more something we put up with than something we actively want to drink.
Continue reading...The 34 outlets catering to students at four universities will offer only a single meat option four days a week
Students at universities in Berlin will from this winter swap currywurst and schnitzel for seeds and pulses, as campus canteens in the German capital make heavy cuts to their meat and fish options.
The 34 canteens and cafes catering to Berlin’s sizeable student population at four different universities will offer from October a menu that is 68% vegan, 28% vegetarian, and 2% fish-based, with a single meat option offered four days a week.
Continue reading...If cellular agriculture is going to improve on the industrial system it is displacing, it needs to grow without passing the cost on to workers, consumers and the environment
Americans will eat about 2bn chicken nuggets this year, give or take a few hundred million. This deep-fried staple is a way of profiting off the bits that are left after the breast, legs and wings are lopped off the 9 billion or so factory-farmed chickens slaughtered in the US every year. Like much else that is ubiquitous in contemporary life, the production of nuggets is controlled by a small group of massive companies that are responsible for a litany of social and ecological harms. And, like many of the commodities produced by this system, they are of dubious quality, cheap, appealing and easy to consume. Nuggets are not even primarily meat, but mostly fat and assorted viscera – including epithelium, bone, nerve and connective tissue – made palatable through ultra-processing. As the political economists Raj Patel and Jason Moore have argued, they are a homogenised, bite-size avatar of how capitalism extracts as much value as possible from human and nonhuman life and labour.
But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of modern capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology – in this case, animals – and do well by doing good.
Continue reading...Daniel Humm, owner of foodie haven with three Michelin stars, says modern food system ‘simply not sustainable’
One of New York’s top fine dining restaurants is abandoning meat and going for a plant-based menu after its chef and owner posted a message on its website saying the modern food system was “simply not sustainable”.
Daniel Humm is the driving force behind Eleven Madison Park, which has won three Michelin stars and is one of the top names in Manhattan’s elite foodie scene.
Continue reading...Concerns over carbon emissions and food crises are fuelling a move away from meat consumption as a symbol of wealth
The window of a KFC in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou hosts the image of a familiar mound of golden nuggets. But this overflowing bucket sporting Colonel Sanders’ smiling face is slightly different. The bucket is green and the nuggets within it are completely meat free.
Over the last couple of years, after many years of rising meat consumption by China’s expanding middle classes for whom eating pork every day was a luxurious sign of new financial comforts, the green shoots of a vegan meat revolution have begun to sprout. Although China still consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork, and boasts a meat market valued at $86bn (£62bn), plant-based meat substitutes are slowing carving out a place for themselves among a new generation of consumers increasingly alarmed by food crises such as coronavirus and African swine fever.
Continue reading...Temporary decision by Green mayor of Lyon to take meat off menu met by protests
A decision by the Green mayor of Lyon, seen by many as the country’s culinary capital, to temporarily take meat off the menu in school canteens during the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a major political row in France.
Government ministers have accused the mayor, Grégory Doucet, of “ideological” and “elitist” behaviour after the measure, which is also being studied by several other cities including Paris, came into force in Lyon’s schools on Monday.
Continue reading...While China pushes for more industrialised farms, Buddhist monks urge now-sedentary nomads to embrace vegetarianism
Former free-roaming nomads now mostly resettled in rows of sun-baked block houses in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, their spiritual and cultural practices – and even their stomachs.
These yak-tending herders have always eaten meat. In addition to the milk, butter and cheese they derived from yaks, meat was a necessity in their harsh lives.
But a movement spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the region over the past two decades has increasingly urged now sedentary nomads to practise vegetarianism, to pay a “life ransom” for the release of animals destined for the slaughterhouse, and to abandon the slaughter of their own animals because they have settled down.
Continue reading...Naima Brown’s encounter with a lab-grown chicken nugget reminded her of a Happy Meal – but she’s less certain about what it means for the future of food
“Clean”, “cultured”, “no-kill” – these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to San Francisco-based food start up Just Inc’s lab-grown chicken nuggets.
The product has just been approved for sale to consumers in Singapore – a world first. But the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick would prefer it if everyone dropped the additional descriptors and just called his company’s product “meat”.
Continue reading...Multinational plans to cash in on consumer trend towards reducing meat and dairy intake
Unilever is setting a target of €1bn (£900m) in annual sales of its plant-based foods through some of its best-known brands, as it seeks to cash in on the growing number of consumers reducing their meat and dairy intake.
The estimated five-fold sales growth over the next five to seven years will be driven by new products from The Vegetarian Butcher meat-free label, and bolstered by expansion of dairy-free ice cream and mayonnaise ranges from Ben & Jerry’s, Hellmann’s, Magnum and Wall’s.
Continue reading...Farmers and meat lobbyists accuse plant-based food producers of ‘cultural hijacking’
The terms “veggie burger” and “veggie sausage” could be banned under proposals being voted on by the European parliament next week. Also banned would be terms such as “yoghurt-style” and “cheese-like” for plant-based alternatives to dairy products.
Sales of these products are growing fast but farming and meat lobbyists say the terms mislead people and amount to a “cultural hijacking” of the meat industry. Opponents, backed by major food companies including Unilever and Nestle, say the claims of consumer confusion are ridiculous. They say a ban would also contradict the EU’s drive to help consumers choose more sustainable food and cut climate-heating emissions.
Continue reading...More than 40% of Germans are cutting down on meat, and vegan burgers are a shopping mall staple
Inside a shopping mall in south Berlin, two colleagues are chomping on hamburgers and fries, cheese sauce running down their fingers as they try to beat the lunchtime clock.
Feelings of guilt are in short supply this Friday afternoon: the burger joint where the two women have grabbed a bite is called Vincent Vegan, and the patty inside the brioche bun is made of wheat, barley and soya.
Continue reading...Small-market test rolls out months after rival Burger King began testing the plant-based Impossible Foods burger
McDonald’s is finally taking a nibble of the plant-based burger.
McDonald’s said Thursday that will sell the PLT, or the plant, lettuce and tomato burger for 12 weeks in 28 restaurants in south-western Ontario by the end of the month.
Continue reading...Animal rights activist says she will create up to 500 jobs in County Durham
A former crisp factory in the north-east of England will be turned into Britain’s biggest vegan food producer, creating up to 500 jobs in the area, according to its owner, the former model Heather Mills.
VBites in County Durham will take over the former Walkers factory and turn protein from seaweed, peas and other plants into substitutes for beef, chicken, pork, salmon and tuna, according to Mills, who told the BBC the factory would be the biggest of its kind in the UK.
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