Plant-based meat products gain further momentum: Why they are becoming increasingly popular

Blue Tribe: Celebrity couple Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma have become investors as well as brand ambassadors for a plant-based meat brand called Blue Tribe. This has again brought to limelight the conversation around plant-based meat products. Blue Tribe is one of the several plant-based meat companies in India, which is a growing market for this segment. With growing consciousness around climate change and animal cruelty, more and more people in the country are choosing to switch from actual meat products to alternatives that taste just like meat without any of the cons.

According to a statement by Blue Tribe, plant-based meat products can help in saving the planet by combating global warming as well as climate change.

In recent years, a lot of the animal cruelty that goes on behind closed doors of the meat industry has also come to light, causing many to switch to a meat-free diet in an attempt to reduce the demand for meat in the country.

This move of switching to either vegetarianism or even veganism, be it for environmental reasons or for love of animals, has been supported by numerous celebrities as well.

Plant-based meat products: What it is made of

Many companies have been working on finding alternatives to meat that taste like meat but are instead made of plants. In fact, there are several restaurants all over the world that focus solely on plant-based products, with one such establishment even operating in the Dubai Expo 2020 site as an offering for vegans.

Though a controversial issue among meat lovers and vegans, plant-based meat products are gathering pace. While meat lovers often argue that searching for meat alternatives after giving up on the food makes little sense, a good point of contention is that most vegans give up on meat not because of the way it tastes, but because of other negative factors that it represents.

Hence, many companies are seeing great opportunities in developing such alternatives. Jackfruit and soybean are among the most common alternatives to meat. However, other products like peas, lentils, grains and mushrooms are also among the common ingredients for such products.

According to some studies, meat production leads to 60% of the greenhouse gases among food production. In a study published in Nature Food, researchers found that raising and culling of animals for food had a much more significant impact on the environment than the growing as well as processing of vegetables and fruits. The study calculated that most of the cropland around the world is being used to grow feed for animals, instead of for humans, which means that many forests are being cut down to make space for animal feed. Moreover, large amounts of methane are also released by livestock, leading to an increase in greenhouse gases.

To put things into perspective, the study also stated that while the production of 1 kg of wheat leads to the emission of 2.5 kgs of greenhouse gases, a single kg of beef produces 70 kg of emissions.

Due to such studies taken up in the past, many people have switched to vegetarian or vegan diets in order to reduce their own carbon footprint.