The World is waking up to the idea of mock meat as a healthy and more sustainable alternative to real meat. 2020, saw a sharp rise in the demand for protein-rich and antioxidant-rich diets. In this month’s Food Safety Conversation, we had Mr. Shardul Dabir who is an Innovation Specialist with The Good Food Institute India, Mr. Sairaj Dhond who is the Founder & CEO at Wakao Foods, and Mr. Narendra Pasuparthy who is the Founder & CEO at Nandu’s. The conversation was moderated by the CEO of Food Safety Works, Mr. Ramesh Agarwal

While talking about the current trend in the market, Shardul pointed out a very interesting fact that 90% of the people who consume any meat/protein alternative are Non-Vegetarians. He clearly stated that the world is moving towards a sustainable lifestyle which is a very good opportunity for plant-based meat products to make their name in the market. He believes that in the coming years India will be a leading supplier of plant-based meat as we have the resources available in abundance. He also highlighted the importance of taste as well and how much effort the researchers/food technologists are putting in to meet the taste and texture requirements.

Another theme was on using a backyard fruit like Jackfruit as a plant-based alternative for meat. Jackfruit being easily available in a household backyard and having a texture very similar to meat can be one of the best meat alternatives. Sairaj who is the Founder and CEO of Wakao Foods talked about how he sees the western countries as the target market for Indian plant-based meat production companies. India is the largest producer of Jackfruit in the world with 1,436,000 MT per year and can supply the rest of the world. He also emphasised that plant-based alternatives are natural and healthier than lab-grown/ fermented meat. His company has been working on optimizing the process in such a way that the natural nutritional values of the products are not lost during the entire production process.

There were so many more insights from Narendra. Sharing the findings from a poll that he had conducted on social media he found that 70% of vegetarians did not prefer to eat a product that is named “meat” even though it is completely vegan, or plant-based. He also stated that seventy-one percent of the country’s population is non-vegetarian —in contrast to the popular perception that it is predominantly vegetarian — yet Indians have a protein deficit in their diets. Plant-based proteins and lab-developed vegan proteins can be a big solution for the protein-deficient population. He also mentioned that the “plant protein”, as he opted to call it, should not be classified as a meat product rather should be given its importance as a separate standalone product.

 It took us two hours to complete it against an allocated time of an hour and 15min. The recorded session is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTX5gSGHzZc. If you would like to read more about Mock Meat you can read our article here.

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