For years, people following vegetarian and vegan diets were exceptionally poorly catered for on restaurant menus and in supermarket convenience food. But no longer: the boom in plant-based products has been one of the major food stories of the past few years.
But as the food writer and author Bee Wilson tells Hannah Moore, the boom has stalled and in some cases gone into reverse.
One of the industry’s most prominent brands, Beyond Meat, has hit hard times, cutting a fifth of its workforce. The UK-based Meatless Farms went into administration. Heck has reduced its range of non-meat products. As the cost of living crisis has taken hold, consumer demand for some plant-based products, which can be more expensive, appears to have slowed. And as Wilson explains, there are increasing worries among shoppers about ultra-processed foods such as meat-like products.
Photograph: Moe Doiron/Reuters
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