Mane’s Meat Centre of Excellence, Revisits Its Meat-Free Solutions

01 May 2014 --- With more than 30 years experience of working with vegetable proteins, MEAT PRO has developed real expertise in this field enabling it to provide 360° solutions for meat-free applications using vegetable proteins. Already developed for several years now, these complete solutions have been revisited to bring new flavour perspectives for the vegetarian and vegan sectors.

A vast meat-free market Contrary to popular belief, the meat-free market is not a niche market. Firstly, industrials manufacturing meat-free products are diversified: ranging from specialised manufacturers (acting in the nutrition or dietetic sector) to “classic” food producers that make meat-free products to vary their offer on-shelf. And secondly, meat-free consumers are not necessarily vegetarian. Today, strict vegetarians only account for a small proportion of the population, whilst there has been strong growth in the number of flexitarian consumers. These consumers eat meat, but have reduced their meat consumption and consequently use alternative products for their everyday meals. Meat-free consumers are therefore more numerous than it would appear.

Taking into account these two characteristics of the vegetarian market, MEAT PRO saw the opportunity to bring its expertise to key players in this market by developing complete solutions. 360° solutions for end products By combining, the vegetarian market expertise of MEAT PRO and the flavour experience and know-how of MANE, the solutions created by MEAT PRO have been revisited in order to bring fine-tuned flavoursome profiles that are in line with the current meat-free market.

These customised solutions, developed by MEAT PRO’s R&D team, address the following characteristics of the finished product at the same time: Taste: taste plays a crucial role in vegetarian applications. Considering this, MANE has refined its flavour approach, which has been developed due to its knowledge and its experience of food flavours, thus allowing MEAT PRO to develop solutions for vegetarian products with deliciously surprising flavour profiles. With more than thirty years experience of working with vegetable proteins, MEAT PRO’s solutions can clearly mask off-notes coming from the utilisation of pea or soy vegetable proteins.

Visual aspect: MEAT PRO brings its expertise in vegetable protein masking in order to produce end-products that are visually close to meat products (e.g. vegetarian lasagne or chilli con carne), as well as ensuring that vegetarian products are visually attractive to consumers (e.g. veggie burgers or meatballs).

Texture: thanks to many years of experience, MEAT PRO’s R&D team can develop solutions which provide end-products that are consistent, well bound together and juicy. “Thanks to the diversity of vegetable proteins, we are capable of reproducing different kinds of textures, like that of minced meat or the fibrous texture of a chicken breast for example”, claims Minh Quach, the formulator of this new solution range. Nutrition: according to the formulations, there are plenty of possibilities to obtain nutritional claims for the end-product packaging (regulation EC No 1924/2006) like “high proteins”, “high fibres”, “low fat”, etc... These 360° solutions are available for any type of savoury vegetarian applications: ready meals, burgers, sausages, etc.

For several years now, we have observed an “explosion” in the meat-free market. Indeed, since 2007, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the number of vegetarian product launches has increased on average by 18% per year, according to Innova Market Insights data. In addition to all of this, meatless days keep growing in popularity everywhere in the world. Nowadays, vegetarian products are more numerous, more diversified and more available than ever before. Without doubt, it is an attractive market for manufacturers looking to diversify their product offer and for which MEAT PRO has all the necessary expertise to make the products tastier and thus even more appealing.