It seems that every week in the vegan food news world is more exciting than last and this week is no exception. We have been waiting patiently for vegan Babybel cheese and they are finally here. Brits, your morning lattes are going to get a lot cheaper at Starbucks UK after the coffee giant stopped its surcharge on plant-based milk early next year. And Google’s end-of-year statistics show that people searched for vegan food at record rates in 2021. If this week is any indication, 2022 will be a year of major vegan developments in everything from dairy-free cheese to meatless cheese, chicken. Read on for more.
Babybel heralds a new era in vegan cheese
Those of us who ate cheese before going vegan remember how to unwrap a tiny wheel of cheese, peel back the red wax, and stick it in our mouths. Thanks to the introduction of vegan Babybel cheese, first at major UK retailer Sainsbury’s and everywhere shortly thereafter, those memories can be restored from January 1st without all of the drawbacks of dairy products.
Vegan Babybel cheese is wrapped in the same wax, but with a green hue that heralds a new, greener era in vegan cheese – with which Babybel’s parent company, the Bel Group, is fully on board. The French company has been making dairy products since cheese-making began in 1865. To reinvent itself in the modern age, the Bel Group is working to create vegan versions of all of their iconic brands.
Last year it launched the dairy-free cheese spread alternative Boursin, which the dairy brand developed in collaboration with the vegan company Follow Your Heart. We hope that 2022 will be the year Bel Group will give us vegan Laughing Cow wedges.
Starbucks UK is lowering the surcharge for vegan milk
With around 33,000 stores around the world, Starbucks has a duty to reduce its environmental footprint for the sake of the climate. Knowing that dairy products are the biggest contributor to its carbon footprint, Starbucks has looked for some changes. This week, Starbucks announced that it will no longer charge any additional costs for its five plant-based milk options, all of which are far more environmentally friendly than dairy products. The catch? The announcement only applies to its 1,020 stores in the UK, about 3 percent of total stores.
In the United States, activists and celebs (hello, Alicia Silverstone) have been pushing the coffee giant for years to stop charging customers for climate-friendly choices. In a clever stunt earlier this month, nonprofit Switch4Good attempted to help Starbucks realize that an additional fee for vegan milk supports dietary racism by placing the financial burden on people of color, 65 percent of whom are lactose intolerant Suffer. But Starbucks US won’t budge.
In a statement sent to VegNews by a US spokesman for Starbucks, the chain said it won’t cut its dairy-free milk supplement like its UK counterpart for the time being.
New technology in vegan meat
We all know that animal meat is an outdated technology and new innovations in vegetable meat bring all new possibilities that traditional animal husbandry cannot achieve. In Israel, SavorEat has been working to create a whole new way of making and ordering vegan meat, and this week it unveiled its technology to the world.
Imagine yourself sitting in a restaurant and ordering a traditional burger. The only personalization options besides the toppings used to be how you wanted it to be made. Enter plant-based meatballs and the burger order has been switched to either animal or plant-based meat.
Now, SavorEat’s technology is transforming the plant-based experience even further by giving customers the option to choose the fat and protein content of their plant-based patty (which SavorEat makes from a proprietary blend of chickpea, potato and pea protein). The entire process takes place via a mobile app that sends the specifications of a diner to a “robot cook” who mixes and grills a fully personalized vegan burger in six minutes.
SavorEat’s technology – completely devoid of human touch, a sad but increasingly important part of modern life – is now reaching restaurants across Israel with the goal of bringing robotic chefs to the U.S. market in 2022 through a partnership with Food Service bring giant sodexo.
Vegan chicken grows big
Without a doubt, 2021 will be when vegan chicken hit the market on a large scale. While Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods were previously known for their “bleeding” red meat replacements, both jumped into white meat this year with the introduction of plant-based chicken products. And this week vegan chicken continued to cluck.
The new brand CHKN Not Chicken – introduced by a group of flexitarians to help omnivores cut out meat – was exclusively available through the vegan e-tailer GTFO IT’s Vegan. The brand’s vegan pea protein-based chicken comes in Naked CHKN, Zen CHKN, and Fiesta CHKN flavors and can be used in any recipe that calls for chicken.
If you’re traveling to Pasadena, CA on New Years Day to watch the 2022 Rose Parade, keep an eye out for some samples of LikeMeat handing out spicy Like Chick’n Wings to get the New Year off to a real start.
Google searches for “vegan food near me” are increasing
In 2021, people were hungry for vegan food and Google’s annual report proves it. The search for “vegan food near me” reached what Google rates as a “breakthrough search,” meaning its popularity has increased by more than 5,000 percent!
Aside from trying to find vegan food near them, people also looked for topics related to sustainability. “Is climate change caused by humans” and “How does less meat help climate change? At the beginning of the holidays in November there was an increase in searches for “vino vegano” (vegan wine is Spanish) by 3,800 percent. That’s why we’re toasting a great vegan year with a few Vino Veganos at this NYE.
For the latest vegan news, read:
Meat industry pollution linked to 90,000 premature deaths in China
Offset celebrates its 30th birthday with vegan corned beef
This robot prints vegan 3D burgers that match your protein preferences
Anna Starostinetskaya is Senior News Editor at VegNews and has an overview of everything vegan in her hometown of San Francisco, CA and everywhere else.
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