The juiciest topic in the global food industry this year is artificial meat featuring its own “blood.” When the US company Beyond Meat went public on the NASDAQ on May 2, its shares surged 163 percent, with shares being purchased by Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio, former McDonald’s president Don Thompson and Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing. The rise in environmental and health consciousness has seen a rapid increase in business opportunities for environmentally friendly foods associated with vegetarian and vegan diets.
Studies are increasingly showing that excessive meat consumption is harmful to health. In 2003, an American health advocate revived “Meatless Monday,” promoting the idea of refraining from eating meat every Monday. The practice was taken up in many countries, including the US, Canada, Brazil and Italy. For those of us who simply must have meat, and for whom a vegetarian meal constitutes a form of torture, artificial meat or veggie meat substitutes are the best option. According to a United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) report, veggie meat sales are predicted to soar from US$4.6 billion in 2018 to US$85 billion in 2030.
Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are currently the two largest producers of artificial meat in the world. Both companies are targeting not vegetarians but meat eaters, hoping to break away from the idea that vegetarian foods are meat substitutes.
Photo: Bloomberg
照片:彭博社
According to Beyond Meat’s chief growth officer, Chuck Muck, when the company approached stores and supermarkets, it asked them to display the product together with the meat products, to be sold together with real meat, and not to place it in the vegetarian foods section, as they wanted to attract meat-eaters, too. Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown says, “We score zero points if a vegan or vegetarian buys our burger. The more of a meat lover they are, the more they are our target customer.”
In April last year, Burger King teamed up with Impossible Foods to promote a veggie hamburger, calling it the Impossible Whopper, which was convincing enough that not even the Burger King staff could tell the difference between the two. This increased Burger King’s customer flow by 18.5 percent. The popularity of the Impossible Whopper led McDonald’s to team up with Beyond Meat to trial an artificial meat burger in Canada, followed by KFC working with Beyond Meat to produce Beyond Fried Chicken. With major fast food companies one after the other embracing artificial meat, the potential market for vegan foods knows no bounds.
(Translated by Paul Cooper, Taipei Times)
Photo: AP
照片:美聯社
今年全球餐飲業最火熱的話題就是會流出「血水」的人造肉!美國Beyond Meat於去年五月二日那斯達克掛牌上市,當日股價大漲百分之一百六十三,包括比爾蓋茲、李奧納多狄卡皮歐、麥當勞前執行長唐湯普生、香港首富李嘉誠都掏錢投資。因環保與健康意識興起,素食與蔬食帶來的綠色「食」尚商機正快速襲捲全球。
越來越多的研究發現,過量攝取肉食對健康造成危害,美國學者在二○○三年發起「週一無肉日」,推廣每週一不吃肉的活動,包括美國、加拿大、巴西、義大利等國陸續加入。但對無肉不歡的人來說,吃素是件痛苦的事,於是人造肉或是素肉成為最佳選項。根據瑞銀報告顯示,素肉銷售從二○一八年的四十六億美元,預估至二○三○年將達八百五十億美元。
Beyond Meat與Impossible Foods為目前全球兩大人造肉廠商,兩家大廠瞄準的都不是素食者,而是吃肉的人,希望跳脫以素食為肉品替代物的框架。
Beyond Meat首席增長官查克莫克說,Beyond Meat和超商、超市等通路業者接洽時,要求一定要把產品擺放在肉類區,和真肉一起販賣,而非放在蔬食區,因為要讓吃肉的人也可以接受Beyond Meat;Impossible Foods創辦人派崔克布朗也說:「若是純素或一般素食者購買我們的漢堡肉,我們得到的是零分,越愛吃肉的人,才是我們真正的目標顧客。」
去年四月,漢堡王和Impossible Foods推出素肉漢堡,取名為「不可能華堡」,逼真到讓連漢堡王內部員工也無法分辨真偽,為漢堡王提高百分之十八點五的客流量。因「不可能華堡」爆紅,勁敵麥當勞也和Beyond Meat在加拿大試推人造肉漢堡,就連肯德基也和Beyond Meat推出人造肉炸雞(Beyond Fried Chicken)。在速食巨頭紛紛投向人造肉的懷抱下,顯示出蔬食市場的無限潛力。
(自由時報)
Taiwanese cuisine boasts a rich culture of thick soups, with various options available at street vendors or high-end restaurants. In English, this style of dish is typically called “thick soup.” Western cuisine typically uses flour, cream, or mashed vegetables to create a creamy consistency, while in Taiwan, thick soups are made by simply incorporating food starch into the soup and creating a smooth and silky texture. Tutuo fish in thick soup is such a soup with fried tutuo fish chunks, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and wood ears. 台灣羹品飲食文化豐富,無論是巷口小店或是高檔餐廳,都有提供羹料理。羹在英文稱作「濃湯」,西式濃湯是以麵粉、鮮奶油、蔬菜泥等達到濃稠的口感,台灣的羹湯用太白粉即能做出濃稠絲滑的湯頭。土魠魚羹就是在勾芡的羹湯中加入炸土魠魚塊、香菇、竹筍、木耳等食材的料理。 boast (v.) 擁有(令人驕傲的事物) consistency (n.) 濃稠度 chunk (n.) 厚塊,大塊 wood ear (n. ph.) 木耳 The star of this
Huge stretches of coral reef around the world are turning a ghostly white this year amid record warm ocean temperatures. On April 15, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed the world’s fourth mass global bleaching event is underway — with serious consequences for marine life and for the people and economies that rely on reefs. WHAT ARE CORALS? Corals are invertebrates that live in colonies. Their calcium carbonate secretions form hard and protective scaffolding that serves as a home to many colorful species of single-celled algae. The two organisms have evolved over millennia to work together, with corals providing shelter to algae,
A: So who were Hollywood’s highest-paid stars of 2023? B: No. 5 to No. 2 were: Matt Damon with US$43 million, Ryan Gosling with US$43 million, Tom Cruise with US$45 million, and Margot Robbie with US$59 million. A: Didn’t Tom Cruise top the list? B: Nope, Adam Sandler was No.1, having made US$73 million, which is about NT$2.34 billion. A: Wow, maybe I should change my career to acting. A: 好萊塢去年的片酬排行榜前幾名是誰? B: 第5到2名是︰麥特戴蒙、4300萬美元,雷恩葛斯林、4300萬美元,湯姆克魯斯、4500萬美元,瑪格羅比、5900萬美元。 A: 冠軍竟然不是阿湯哥? B: 是亞當山德勒、片酬7300萬美元,大約23.4億台幣! A: 天啊或許我也該轉行當演員啦。 (By Eddy Chang, Taipei Times/台北時報張聖恩)
A symbol of purity and cleanliness, the color white is the standard color for coats worn by doctors. While this has been the case for well over 100 years, it hasn’t always been so. In fact, before the late 19th century, doctors wore formal black attire, which was similar to that worn by clergymen. Black was chosen for practical reasons—it hid stains from medical procedures and presented a sense of seriousness. The major reason for the color change of the doctor’s coat was to distinguish qualified, professional doctors from those with little or no medical training. Since medical science