World vegan day:five startups offering alternatives to animal proteins

From salmon to mozzarella, there are valid plant-based alternatives to our traditional foods.We tell you five of them for World Vegan Day.

According to the last one Eurispes Italy Report, 2.4 percent of our compatriots decided to say completely goodbye to animal proteins (in 2016 it was 1 percent).Of course, it is still a very small percentage, especially in light of data such as those published on Nature according to which the transition towards a plant-based diet by 2050 could save us between 332 and 547 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, bringing us very close to the objectives ofParis Agreement.But, as many other studies on the subject testify, even only limit the consumption of foods of animal origin could significantly reduce environmental impact.Second Ourworldindata.org, a single vegan day in the world would generate a savings of 22 million tons of CO2. It's clear that food choices can make a difference:after all, it would be enough to follow a vegan diet for one month a year (as happens for Veganuary) or a few days a week.In view of World vegan day, which is celebrated every year on November 1st on the anniversary of the foundation of the Vegan society, we collected 5 foodtech startups which offer tasty, satisfying and balanced plant-based alternatives to the most common animal proteins.The purpose?Allow people to change the way they eat gradually and without too many sacrifices, building a food system that is less harmful to the environment and less cruel to animals.

5 startups for World Vegan Day

• Heura Foods
• Dream Farm
• Revo Foods
• Good Meat
• Remilk 

Heura Foods

For Bernat Añaños And Marc Coloma, which they founded in 2017 Heura Foods in a coworking in Barcelona, ​​developing vegan products does not mean giving up on Mediterranean gastronomic heritage.That's why the basic ingredients are the legumes, ground until a concentrated flour is obtained.The latter, once mixed with water, allows you to obtain different consistencies and therefore differentiate the range of products on the market, depending on the different parameters of heat, pressure and humidity.Finally, to give the characteristic Mediterranean flavour, a marinade is carried out with extra virgin olive oil and spices such as thyme, basil And cumin.

The result is nuggets, cutlets, strips, burgers and also typical specialties such as chorizo, all 100 percent vegan, tasty and tasty.Present on the Italian market since 2021 in various large-scale retail trade and in the food service channel, Heura Foods is aiming for further expansion in our country.A curiosity:heura in Catalan means ivy, a plant that expands rapidly, filling the world with life, nature and color;if it is true that nomen omen, this is exactly what the founders want for their brand.

Dreamfarm

Almond, vegetable fibre, salt and agar agar are the ingredients that make up the vegan mozzarella Of Dreamfarm.Creating a sustainable and tasty alternative to one of the most loved Italian products in the world is certainly a great challenge, but Mattia Sandei And Maddalena Zanoni. The founders of this benefit company Parma people started from a fact:the vegetable cheeses on the market, even those rare cases that manage to replicate the color and consistency of the originals, are still unbalanced on a nutritional level.Hence the choice to focus on almonds of Sicilian origin, low in saturated fats and rich in antioxidants, vitamin E, proteins and unsaturated fats.

Dreamfarm ferments them naturally with an original method (European patent pending) which further enhances their taste, consistency and nutritional profile.The addition of vegan lactic ferments, capable of producing organic acids similar to lacto-dairy ones, recalls the notes of dairy products and greatly mitigates the taste of almond.This is why the flavor of vegan cheeses is nothing like that of almond milk.With the addition of natural fibers we then obtain the consistency closest to the original dairy product.Finally emulsifying everything, the almond fat binds to proteins and water, giving the product its characteristic white colour.In addition to mozzarella, Dreamfram also produces a spreadable cheese (the ingredients are practically the same, only the consistency changes), which can be purchased throughout Italy in specialized shops and online.

Revo Foods

While the market of plant-based meat has seen a boom in recent years, the offer of plant-based seafood products remained relatively limited.Yet, l’overfishing it is a global problem.Not to mention the fact that, given the increase in levels of pollutants and microplastics, Unfortunately, today eating fish is no longer so healthy.

Revo Foods is a Viennese company that produces 100 percent vegan "fish", recently hit the headlines for its ultra-realistic 3D printed salmon fillet.But how does he manage to recreate the texture, structure, taste and nutritional profile of foods such as salmon and tuna?Using pea proteins and mushroom mycoproteins, added with algae derivatives, rich in vitamins and omega-3 and always used in vegetable cuisine to give dishes that typical "sea flavour".

Founded in 2020 by Robin Simsa, with a background in biotechnology and a passion for ocean sustainability and selected by Forbes for the 30 under 30 list, Revo Foods is the largest supplier of alternatives to salmon in Europe.Compared to conventional salmon, it generates 77 to 86 percent of CO2 less, it consumes 95 percent of fresh water fewer and calculated that it saved 18,908 fish (data from August 2023).The startup's product range also includes smoked salmon, with or without seaweed, and tuna and salmon spreads.For now they can be purchased abroad in large-scale retail chains, on the official website and through specialized sites.

Good Meat

It is certainly a narrative that is not free from controversy food created in the laboratory;we at LifeGate have also dealt with it multiple occasions. Personal opinions aside, one fact remains:“manufacturing” meat with the same nutritional value as traditional meat would avoid occupying pastures, consuming feed and antibiotics and inflicting suffering on animals.

For World Vegan Day let's focus on Good Meat, a brand of the American company Eat Just that produces cultured meat in a sterile and controlled environment, effectively excluding slaughter from the process and almost completely eliminating the risk of illnesses.“Assuming that we will always eat meat, if we want to continue to live together on planet Earth we must do it differently,” declares the company, talking about “a technology capable of bringing a desperately needed change to the way the world eats ”.

In practice, Good Meat extracts (with painless methods) stem cells from chickens, eggs and cows.After examining them and choosing the best ones, he inserts them into special bioreactors, similar to the tanks used for beer fermentation, in which they grow and multiply in a culture medium made up of nutrients.The meat thus obtained then reaches the desired shape and consistency thanks to cooking techniques, modeling and 3D technology.The entire process takes four to six weeks and, once started, allows you to continue producing meat indefinitely without adding new cells.With this process, Good Meat claims to reduce CO2 emissions by 92 percent and occupied land by 95 percent.Last summer Good Meat received theapproval final by the United States Department of Agriculture for market its cultured chicken meat which, currently, can be enjoyed in a Washington D.C. restaurant and in one of Singapore.

Remilk

As we unfortunately know, the traditional dairy industry it produces greenhouse gas emissions, generates waste and consumes resources in enormous quantities, as well as pushing animals beyond their physical limits, causing great suffering.It is therefore blatantly destructive and no longer sustainable;yet, dairy products have been a fundamental (and for many essential) ingredient since prehistoric times.Starting from these premises, the Israeli foodtech startup Remilk has developed a patented approach for the scalable production of proteins identical to those of milk, obtained from a fermentation process that requires fraction of resources compared to traditional milk.For the first time in history, cows are eliminated from dairy production on an industrial scale, without compromising taste, functionality and nutritional values.

But how does all this happen?Simply put, the gene responsible for the production of cow's milk proteins is placed in a yeast, which works as an “instruction booklet,” teaching him to produce proteins highly efficiently.The yeast is then inserted into fermenters where it multiplies rapidly and produces proteins identical to those of cow's milk, to which minerals, vitamins, fats and non-animal sugars are then added.The milk thus obtained is used to produce cheese, ice cream, yogurt and any other dairy product.

As demonstrated by double-blind tests conducted by the company, Remilk products are indistinguishable from traditional dairy products:they have the same taste and consistency, despite being free of lactose, cholesterol, hormones and antibiotics.According to what was declared by the co-founders Aviv Wolff And Ori Cohavi to Times of Israel, Remilk's food production model is up to 100 times more efficient in terms of land use than the current dairy system, 20 times more efficient in terms of time and 10 times more efficient in terms of water consumption. Currently the company focuses mainly on dialogue with dairy product producers, but it is not excluded that in the future it may address consumers directly.