Post by account_disabled on Mar 13, 2024 7:28:03 GMT
To make their animal-free products, Impossible, Beyond, and a host of smaller rivals have developed a range of substitute ingredients derived from plants, such as pea and soy proteins that mimic the texture and feel of animal proteins. But few are as important as cocoa butter — a key ingredient for Beyond Meat as well as products like UNLIMEAT — or coconut oil, which is used by Impossible Foods and several other brands, including Next Gen Foods’ Tindle plant-based chicken, Conagra’s Gardein beefless burger, Hormel’s Happy Little Plants plant-based meatballs, and NotCo’s NotBurger. Refined coconut oil and cacao butter have unique characteristics that help plant-based products replicate meat. Like animal fats, they remain solid at room temperature, and this high melting point enables plant-based meats to be grilled or cooked similarly to their animal-meat counterparts in gourmet restaurants, fast food chains, or home kitchens. These fats make up between 5 and 20 percent of a plant-based burger; already, major ingredients providers like Cargill and AAK have set up new sales platforms aimed at providing these two oils to the growing plant-based market segment.
And that’s just a start. Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to animal products, estimated in 2021 that plant-based meats will use 19 percent of global coconut production by 2030. GFI acknowledges that the recent slowdown in plant-based meat sales in the US might impact these projections and plans to provide updated figures later this year. But “continued development of the plant-based market outside of the US and Europe will support global growth of this industry,” the organization told Vox. On a warming planet, coconut and cacao supplies are increasingly volatile To achieve rapid sales growth,family’s fields since he was 12. He says he can no longer BYB Directory make a living from coconuts alone, and often works as a construction day laborer. His brother was so desperate, he chose to cut down his coconut trees and sell them for wood in order to get needed cash. “A coconut tree’s harvest lasts a lifetime, but once you’ve sold all the coco lumber, that’s it,” said Ordinado. “You can’t sell coconuts anymore.” It takes years before new coconut trees can start producing nuts, which means it’s not easy to rapidly expand or shrink production in response to market demand.
These problems are compounded by increasingly volatile weather. Last September, Super Typhoon Noru suddenly intensified off the coast of Luzon and slammed into Quezon province’s coconut heartlands. It was the third major typhoon to hit the region since 2020. Many experts connect the growing intensity and frequency of typhoons to climate change. “When typhoons hit coconut farms, it takes up to a year before they can recover,” said Jun Pascua, director of the National Peasants Movement, a Filipino association that represents coconut farmers. The latest storm was so strong that some of Pascua’s farmer-members in districts that were hit directly lost all their coconut trees. The situation in Quezon is common across the region, according to Haigan Murray, co-founder of the Coconut Knowledge Center, an Indonesia-based nonprofit. Production has fallen steadily by about 0.1 percent a year since 2010. This is primarily due to aging trees, a lack of investment in replanting, and limited tools to help farmers diversify their incomes.chocolate; Indonesian cacao is often used for cacao butter.
And that’s just a start. Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to animal products, estimated in 2021 that plant-based meats will use 19 percent of global coconut production by 2030. GFI acknowledges that the recent slowdown in plant-based meat sales in the US might impact these projections and plans to provide updated figures later this year. But “continued development of the plant-based market outside of the US and Europe will support global growth of this industry,” the organization told Vox. On a warming planet, coconut and cacao supplies are increasingly volatile To achieve rapid sales growth,family’s fields since he was 12. He says he can no longer BYB Directory make a living from coconuts alone, and often works as a construction day laborer. His brother was so desperate, he chose to cut down his coconut trees and sell them for wood in order to get needed cash. “A coconut tree’s harvest lasts a lifetime, but once you’ve sold all the coco lumber, that’s it,” said Ordinado. “You can’t sell coconuts anymore.” It takes years before new coconut trees can start producing nuts, which means it’s not easy to rapidly expand or shrink production in response to market demand.
These problems are compounded by increasingly volatile weather. Last September, Super Typhoon Noru suddenly intensified off the coast of Luzon and slammed into Quezon province’s coconut heartlands. It was the third major typhoon to hit the region since 2020. Many experts connect the growing intensity and frequency of typhoons to climate change. “When typhoons hit coconut farms, it takes up to a year before they can recover,” said Jun Pascua, director of the National Peasants Movement, a Filipino association that represents coconut farmers. The latest storm was so strong that some of Pascua’s farmer-members in districts that were hit directly lost all their coconut trees. The situation in Quezon is common across the region, according to Haigan Murray, co-founder of the Coconut Knowledge Center, an Indonesia-based nonprofit. Production has fallen steadily by about 0.1 percent a year since 2010. This is primarily due to aging trees, a lack of investment in replanting, and limited tools to help farmers diversify their incomes.chocolate; Indonesian cacao is often used for cacao butter.