b'Wheres the Meat?With plant-based protein products becoming a biggercommodity every day, Seed World wanted to get the skinny on how plant-based foods look so much like their meat counterparts. Alex Martin amartin@issuesink.comPLANT-BASED PROTEINS.Just mention- problem and created two different, unique ing the idea can stir up a roomimmediately,products. people take sides. Pro meat, neutral or pro plant- Impossible Foods saw a huge problem based. Its hard not to have an opinion on them,in the fact that animal agriculture occupies even though many people havent had the chancealmost half the land on Earth and consumes a quar-to taste these proteins.ter of our freshwater. Their solution? Lets not use However, according to the website Plant Basedanimals again, and instead, create a copycat beef Foods, theres been a 14.7% growth of plant-basedproduct made of these plant proteins. And thus, proteins since 2014, and by 2020, the global plant- the Impossible Burger was formed.based protein market is projected to reach $5JUST saw that the food systems tools were billion. While there might be strong opinions aboutlimited, and there were a lot of underused foods that plant-based proteins, theres also an increasingcould provide tremendous benefit to them instead curiosity amongst the global market. of the core ingredients that big food companies use: In the past few years, theres been a growingsoy, corn, processed sugar and animal protein. After global awareness in the U.S. and over the world.a lot of exploring, JUST created JUST Egg, a plant- Udi Lazimy serves as People are starting to understand that we live in abased, protein-packed product that cooks up andsenior sustainability and finite world and resources matter, says Udi Lazimy,tastes like real eggs.sourcing manager at senior sustainability and sourcing manager at JUST,Animal protein isnt necessary to create reallyJUST. a company based in San Francisco, Calif., that hasgood food, Lazimy says. Were looking to use been researching and working with plant-basedplant protein to replace things like eggs and dairy, foods and cultured meat.because they arent necessary if plants can func-We wanted to look at how to make the foodtion the same way. We think itll make everything system better, and we think that plant-based solu- much more sustainable. 36 %tions offer a path to solve a lot of the problemsTo produce these products, both companies within our current food system, he says. had to think outside of the box when it came toof consumers buy Nick Halla, senior vice president, International,ingredients. plant-based meats.Impossible Foods agrees. After growing up onThe Impossible Burger mixes a few different a dairy farm and working at General Mills, Hallaproteins together: soy protein to get the chew believes our current food system isnt working. right, potato protein for the form and texture, andThe plant-based food From the economic challenges in agriculture andheme, which is found in all meat products, to give itsector grewthe resource pressure, theres plenty of problemsthe flavor. To make the Impossible Burgers sizzle like20 %popping up in our land resources, Halla says. Themeat, theyve included sunflower oil to create the fat.life we grew up with doesnt exist anymoreinstead,You have to look at protein production in differ- in retail sales, as we need to change the system and how its run. ent leaves and seeds to see what would help mimiccompared to 2% Both companies saw different answers to thisthe meat look and taste, Halla says. Weve learnedgrowth for all foods.6/ SEEDWORLD.COMSEPTEMBER 2019'