By Melissa Hart My head is spinning as I think about the nutritional needs of humans and the artificial food mess that is marketed as whole and healthy in the lovely new collaboration between Beyond Meat, Inc. and PepsiCo. According to the Nasdaq, plant-based food options are gaining increasing prominence as consumers become more conscious of their eating habits and its impact on the environment. Several food companies have been tapping into the evolving opportunities in the plant-based food arena, with Beyond Meat, Inc. (BYND) being one of the forerunners. As part of Beyond Meat’s commitment to continue expanding plant-based protein offerings, the company teamed up with PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP) to form a new joint venture entity – The PLANeT Partnership, LLC. Apparently, investors are excited about this new collab as shares of Beyond Meat increased 17.7 percent during the trading session on Jan. 26th. While I am all for people making money, I honestly can only hope for a bearish market when it comes to fake meat and its success. I know the vegan community loves the idea of plant-based everything from ice cream to handbags, but if they hate processed foods and all the healthy eating recommendations are anti-processed, how do fake proteins fit in? These keen marketers are teaming up with several grocery store chains including the one store that caters to the environmental and health-conscious shopper – Whole Foods. I have never been to a Whole Foods store, but my perception is that they are purely into whole foods. Foods that are long on natural and short on process. Fresh veggies, flavorful fruits, all-natural oatmeal, non-pasteurized honey, eggs that may still have specks of chicken manure on them and beef that is fresh off the hoof. Where does fake meat, that has been processed and molded into sausage links or beef patties, come into the ‘Whole Foods’ genre? Can you get organically grown fake meat? Does Beyond Meat, LLC produce all natural, grass fed, hormone free, non-GMO fake pork chops? Well let’s look at some of the ingredients of Beyond Meat protein food: Sunflower Lecithin, Calcium Alginate, Yeast Extract, Methylcellulos, Cocoa Butter, Coconut Oil, Expeller-Pressed Canola Oi, Pea, Mung Bean, Faba Bean and Brown Rice. Does that sound like a ‘whole food’ to you? Let’s compare that to the ingredient list for a common, ordinary beef roast: Beef. Again, consumers have an abundance of food choices and I will never stick my nose into your grocery cart. But when we see that PepsiCo also has a big share of the pie in our school foodservices, I get a little nervous wondering if we are now going to promote fake meat to our school aged children who are just forming their life-long eating habits. Remember, this is a generation of consumers who have never had whole milk, thanks to the uneducated, overzealous obesity police who thought whole milk was contributing to weight gain in our nation’s youth and removed it from the school lunch program. Can we please keep Beyond Meat and PepsiCo out of what our children are consuming in a daily meal, a meal that may be the only one they are guaranteed to receive? People need real, whole, American produced beef, pork, eggs and milk. The real protein of champions produced by champions. |