Fish: the last frontier in false meat
Fish: the last frontier in false meat
Burgers, chicken and hot dogs dominate the fast-growing market of $ 684 million for alternatives of meat based on plants. Fish? Not that much.
That is beginning to change as new companies invest in. New ingredients, machinery and technologies. They promise to make the imitation tuna, the salmon and the shrimp smell, taste and look more ... fishy.
Heather Collins, a Denver marketing consultant, was surprised by the Sophie's Kitchen vegan "smoked salmon" she bought a few months ago for a family reunion that included a vegetarian cousin.
"It had a smoky flavor, and it even had that slimy texture," he says. The salmon never came to the family dinner, says Collins. She ate it all herself.
Texture is the Holy Grail when it comes to finding alternatives based on plants that imitate meat, and fish has proved particularly difficult to guess right.
Good Catch will present a range of tuna-like products in 2019, including hamburgers without fish.
Photo:
Ha Lam / goodcatchfoods
Most efforts to counterfeit seafood in the past used soy or wheat gluten, say food investors and analysts. Textural subtleties, such as the peeling of meat or the snapping of shrimp, were often absent.
"Manufacturing technologies were not there," says Dan Altschuler Malek, senior risk partner at New Crop Capital, which has investments in 30 animal protein replacement companies, including some focused on fish.
In 2013, Ocean Hugger Foods co-founder and chef, James Corwell, decided to explore the possibility of using Roma tomatoes instead of raw tuna. Tomatoes, he says, contain glutamic acid, an amino acid that is responsible for the tasty flavors found in meat.
Making the tomatoes look and taste as close as possible to the tuna took dozens of touch-ups for five years, from the tomato variety used to the consistency of the marinade, says Ocean Hugger CEO David Benzaquen
The result, Ahimi, launched last year. Its fleshy texture comes from a patented manufacturing process, a "commercial secret," says Benzaquen, which improves tomato quality with five ingredients, including soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil.
Ocean Hugger's Ahimi, sold in two sizes, can be used either as a sushi roll or as a "fillet" for the nigiri.
Photo:
Ocean Hugger Foods
The product, which is sold to chefs for use in raw fish dishes such as sushi, is now found in 100 restaurants and coffee shops, including 51 Whole Foods stores in the US. UU It is presented in piles of "fillets" of half tomato, marinated and frozen. Cut similarly to raw tuna, says Mr. Benzaquen.
Katie Ratz, a 28-year-old high school teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia, who left the fish two years ago, recently tasted it at a restaurant that serves imitation meat in raw cubes on "poke" plates.
"The fleshy texture was dead," she says.
Ocean Hugger is now working on an eggplant-based eel called Unami to be launched next month. At the beginning of 2019, Sakimi, a carrot-based salmon will be presented.
Sophie's kitchen uses konjac, a fibrous Asian root vegetable with a gummy texture, to make her smoked salmon and the most popular canned tuna, called Toona. When combined with pea starch, the konjac can be turned into different types of seafood imitations, from seafood to fish fillets, says Chief Executive Eugene Wang. Pea protein is marked up or down for varying degrees of texture density.
Sophie's kitchen offers a "smoked vegan salmon" that uses pea starch and konjac, an Asian root vegetable.
Photo:
Sophie's Kitchen TM
Technology is helping the mission of companies. Good Catch, co-founded in 2016 with New Crop Capital, is building a manufacturing facility in Heath, Ohio, with specialized high-humidity extrusion machines similar to those used for canned cat food, says co-founder Eric Schnell. Its 3.3-ounce packages of tuna-like products will enter the market early next year.
Even with the new advances, companies face swimming against the current. Many consumers have no problems eating fish, which receives rave reviews from doctors and nutritionists for being relatively low in fat while they are loaded with nutrients, including vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids.
"Traditionally, fish has been one of the last things that people would give up," says Seth Tibbott, founder of Tofurky, who says he is closely watching the space of fake fish.
Many people who squirm at the thought of eating chicken or meat do not have the same problem with fish, says Mr. Tibbott. "Farm animals have legs and they look more like us," he says.
However, those in the fake fish business say that the potential market for alternatives to fish has been underestimated, as vegetarian foods become more common and consumers increasingly consider commercial fishing practices and levels. of mercury found in fish.
When going out in a group at a restaurant, a vegetarian can affect the options of a whole table, says Mr. Benzaquen, of Ocean Hugger. "That person is going to dictate what the whole group orders." If a restaurant does not offer interesting alternatives, he says, they could lose tables.
Although strict vegetarians represent only 3% of the population, 37% of people say they order vegetarian meals in restaurants at least part of the time, according to a 2016 online survey of 2,015 adults conducted by Harris Poll for the group non-profit Vegetarian Resource Group.
Even the main meat companies are covering their bets and making investments in plant-based meat.
now It owns something more than 5%. beyond the flesh, and
last year he acquired vegetable protein companies, such as Lightlife Foods and Field Roast Grain Meat Co.
And while sales of plant-based fish substitutes are minuscule, which account for about 1% of the entire category of meat substitutes, they increased 19% to $ 9.3 million in the last year, according to a recent Nielsen study made for the Good Food Institute. a nonprofit organization in Washington that advocates alternatives to conventional animal agriculture.
That number is expected to increase in 2019, says the institute's senior marketing manager, Caroline Bushnell, with the growing popularity of plant-based foods and new entrants in the category.
The manufacturers of fake fish hope that they can have the same impact on the sections of frozen foods and corridors of canned tuna that Herbal milks have had in dairy cases.. According to the Nielsen study, vegetable-based milks now account for 13% of total milk sales.
"It seemed that nobody was addressing it," says Dominique Barnes, executive director of New Wave Foods, which plans introduce shrimp with plants To restaurants and customers of the food service in 2019.
New Wave Foods plans to launch its 5-pound bags of plant-based shrimp to restaurants in 2019.
Photo:
Hannah Kaminsky / New Wave Foods
However, companies say that substituting animal-derived proteins for imitation versions may include nutritional concessions.
Three ounces of raw yellowfin tuna contain 21 grams of protein, according to the National Nutrient Database of the United States Department of Agriculture. A 3 oz. Serving of Ocean Hugger's Ahimi contains 1 gram of protein.
"The vast majority of Americans get more protein than they need," says Mr. Benzaquen.
Sophie's Kitchen has tried to add omega-3 oils to its product, using everything from flax to chia, to obtain a nutritional profile more similar to fish. But the taste was medicinal, says Mr. Wang, the CEO. The company continues to consider the possibility of adding omega-3 from algae.
"The product was designed to be a texture replacement," says Mr. Wang. "We hope that in the future it can also be a nutritional replacement."
Write to Anne Marie Chaker in anne-marie.chaker@wsj.com
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