It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, and that means our thoughts turn to longtime Thanksgiving traditions like turkey and stuffing, pumpkin pie, and general overindulgence.
But a couple of stories in last week’s issue have us wondering if, from a food perspective, the Thanksgiving of the future will bear any resemblance to the current holiday.
The first story was our lead story, which concerned Perfect Day, a pioneer in animal-free dairy, teaming up with global agricultural company Archer Daniels Midland Company to develop and commercialize animal-free dairy proteins.
The second story concerned a new Certified Plant Based program being launched by the Plant Based Foods Association. Among the first brands to participate in the program: Tofurky, which makes plant-based, meat-type products.
For obvious reasons, it was Tofurky that got us thinking about the future of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, although it’s worth noting that Tofurky doesn’t appear to actually produce “turkeys” (it received certification in the PBFA’s new program for its Italian sausage).
About the closest Tofurky comes, at least according to its website, is a Plant-Based Roast & Wild Rice Stuffing. The roast is described as a “savory blend of wheat and tofu.”
So is this the future of Thanksgiving, and other traditional holiday meals as well? Certainly it is for at least some consumers, but there are at least a couple of reasons why we don’t think traditional holiday foods are going to be replaced anytime soon.
It is worth noting that the traditional Thanksgiving meal has already been replaced for some consumers. There are, depending on the source, somewhere between maybe 2 million and 10 million vegans in the US, so those consumers have already abandoned the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
It’s also worth noting that the aforementioned Tofurky has been in business since 1980, so companies manufacturing and marketing plant-based foods that replace traditional animal products have been around for decades. That point is already well-known (maybe too well-known) in the dairy industry.
As far as the future is concerned, it’s worth noting that Perfect Day, at this point, doesn’t appear to be ready to hit the market with dairy products such as milk, cheese and yogurt. Instead, Perfect Day and ADM will work together to optimize and scale up the production of dairy proteins. Their first project is an animal-free whey protein that can be used in a variety of food products.
Indeed, it’s worth noting that ADM’s expertise, in the food business, is with ingredients ranging from proteins and soy isoflavones to lecithin and starches. So we don’t expect to see Perfect Day brand cheese competing for space in the dairy case or the deli anytime soon. Nor do we see the company’s cheeses capturing awards in any cheese contests in the near future (although that certainly raises an interesting issue that may have to be addressed sometime in the not-too-distant future).
We also can’t help but wonder about the regulatory status of these dairy proteins. Perfect Day says its proteins, whey and casein, are exactly the same as the proteins that come from cows, but that doesn’t necessarily mean these proteins are okay with the US Food and Drug Administration.
Another interesting aspect of at least some of these products, and one that we’ve mentioned before in this space, concerns ingredients. One of the top consumer priorities we hear about repeatedly these days is that consumers are interested in foods with short, simple ingredient lists and ingredients that are easy to pronounce and understand.
With that in mind, here’s the list of ingredients in Tofurky’s roast (mentioned earlier): Vital wheat gluten, water, organic tofu (water, organic soybeans, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride), expeller pressed canola oil, natural flavors, sea salt, contains less than 2 percent of onion, carrot, celery, garlic, leek, rosemary extract, lemon juice concentrate, oat fiber, cornstarch, calcium lactate, potassium chloride, maltodextrin.
By comparison, here are the ingredients in a Butterball Frozen Whole Turkey: Whole young turkey. Contains up to 8 percent of a solution of water, salt, spices, and natural flavor.
Consumers today are also more interested in where their food comes from, or where the ingredients in their foods come from.
That would seem far easier to ascertain for a Butterball turkey than for Tofurky’s roast.
Certainly it’s not too difficult to envision a rather bleak future for the animal products industry. Everything from cheese to turkeys could be produced in a lab rather than on a farm or in a traditional factory. In other words, forget about America’s Breadbasket or whatever the agricultural heartland is referred to as these days; in the future, our food will come from Silicon Valley.
But while rural American is certainly hurting these days, thanks to continued low commodity prices, among other things, we don’t see the traditional agricultural economy becoming extinct anytime soon. Yes, there are threats to traditional dairy and other food products, but that’s been the case forever. Back in the late 1800s, for example, one problem was “filled cheese,” in which vegetable fat was substituted for milkfat.
Today it’s plant-based foods, tomorrow it will be lab-produced foods. But the dairy industry will continue to thrive as long as it produces the wholesome, high-quality foods consumers desire.
Cheese Reporter welcomes letters to the editor. Comments should be sent to Dick Groves, at [email protected].
