There was a quiet news item in the food industry press that caught my attention recently. Quorn is to be blended with meat for the first time in a range of new foods. I know, right? Hold the front page!
Hear me out and I’ll get to why this is worth mentioning in a little more detail. First, the story itself: Quorn is expanding from making and selling its own branded products, to supplying its mycoprotein as an ingredient to others. It will be mixed with meat to make sausages and burgers that are a hybrid, reducing the overall meat content without compromising the final product.
If you’re not sure about this, remember that sausages have always contained a ‘filler’ alongside the meat anyway. No sausage is 100% meat or the texture isn’t right, and so many contain wheat flour or breadcrumbs or something the industry calls ‘sausage rusk’. According to designasausage.com (yes really) “rusk is a cornerstone ingredient in traditional sausage making”. So putting Quorn in the mix is not some kind of betrayal and the meat defenders can stand down.
These products won’t be on general sale just yet. The main customer is the NHS, which will be serving them in hospital meals as a way of reducing meat consumption. Here’s why I think it’s interesting.
So far, discussion about meat has often focused on the question of meat or no meat. There are vegetarians and vegans on one side, and everyone else on the other. This all-or-nothing approach makes sense for those who see the abuses of the meat industry as a moral issue, but it doesn’t leave room for incremental change.
Quorn have spotted this. “We were effectively competing with the meat industry,” says Quorn CEO Marco Betacca, “only making products that were alternatives to theirs, and encouraging people to switch.” The new approach signals a shift in emphasis for the company, from “help a few people eat no meat” to a company that “helps everyone eat less meat”. I expect this move into the flexitarian market will also be a profitable one.
This approach, incidentally, is how I expect insect protein will eventually enter the market. Very few people want to chow down on a cricket stir-fry (and having done so myself I wouldn’t bother again). But powdered protein in a mix with other things would pass largely unnoticed. The same goes for cultured meats, as and when they become commercially available. They’re likely to be used in processed foods such as pate, sausages or nuggets, and probably as a blend.
We know that eating less meat has huge benefits to the environment and to health, as well as animal welfare. The common arguments for a vegetarian diet have only got us so far. Perhaps the arrival of the hybrid sausage marks the beginning of something new.
The Earthbound Report 