Investments companies have also been attracted by seeing meat-free sales rising. Four companies in this guide are now owned by private equity investment companies, who, like meat companies, may not be in it for ethical reasons: States its products use: "100% plant-based ingredients and sustainable soy" but does not name source countries Minimum life based on 'use-by' date of product. Average life based on last week's deliveries. Life guarantee shown based on delivery tomorrow with the Life guarantee starting the following day. Our Recommended brands did well or reasonably for soya and palm oil sourcing, and are vegan companies: Dragonfly, Biona, Bonsan, Oumph!, No Meat, Fry’s, Beyond Meat and THIS. But we already know that preparing our own food from scratch using fresh vegetables, beans and pulses and wholegrains and being moderate with salt and sugar is better for us. So, if you’re concerned about your health, it’s better to look for minimally processed meat-free products, like tofu, tempeh, or ones where you can still see the beans and the vegetables rather than the ones that look like meat.

Wide range of pieces, mince, steaks, escalopes, burgers, sausages, roast, fillets, meat balls, slices, bites, nuggets, fish fingers, picnic eggs, pies, ready meals. 28 of their 70 products are vegan. Is it homemade? Bean burgers are easy to make at home and may have fewer health and carbon issues than ultra-processed products.From an animal rights point of view it seems a no-brainer. Animal rights campaigner Peter Singer who wrote the seminal animal rights book, ‘Animal Liberation’ in 1975, is in favour of it on the basis of ‘minimising suffering’. PETA are also in favour though it caused some ructions within the group. Some meat analogue companies calculated that they had made carbon savings by comparing their products to meat products, for example Beyond Meat compared the environmental impact of its burger to a beef burger and Livekindly claimed that it had avoided generating the weight of 28,249 elephants in CO2, apparently by comparing itself to a meat company. However, most gave no information about steps they had taken, other than producing plant-based food, to reduce their carbon emissions. Management of workers’ rights in supply chain Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet. But overall, people in the UK are eating less meat. In 2022, YouGov found that 2-3% of respondents said they were vegan whereas in 2019, the Vegan Society estimated that just over 1% of the population were vegan.

YouGov found that 88% of people were vegan for animal rights reasons, 79% for environmental reasons and 40% for health reasons.For these reasons, we think it’s best to avoid South American soya, which many of the brands in this guide do.

Corporate control threatens to undermine gains from reducing reliance on animals by replicating some of the problems of the traditional meat industry, including mass-produced, monocultured ingredients and energy-consuming methods. Steve: "I half-welcome lab grown meat; I know the facts of climate impact of animal consumption, and plant based meat alternatives are highly processed and have problems of their own." Still a popular ingredient largely because, unlike most other beans, soya protein is a complete protein containing all the eight essential amino acids that we need. Soya sausages were invented in Germany during the first world war to deal with meat shortages.Gosh! – Efanor Investimentos is a Portuguese investment group which owns food retail, clothing, electronics and telecoms companies. It bought Gosh! in 2021. States its soya is sourced from France, North America and China and is not grown at the expense of rainforests Our article comparing meat, vegetarian and vegan diets has more information about carbon, land use and other issues and how these relate to our food choices. Like other foods, a vegan label doesn’t necessarily equate to the product being healthy. But it doesn’t mean that they are less healthy than a meat burger when all nutritional factors are considered, particularly fibre. Just 7% of soya is used directly for human food products such as the ones rated here, and the amount has increased minimally over time compared to soya processed for animal feed, which has risen sharply over the last 30 years with the global demand for meat – from 88 million tonnes in 1990 to 227 million tonnes in 2013.

Once just the stronghold of small, alternative vegan companies, the meat-free market is now dominated by mainstream companies, including those that make most of their money from meat, and private equity companies who might see meat-free companies as a profitable investment in the current climate. Product-sampling will be also be available at locations with high footfall, in addition to shopper marketing activations both in-store and online. Mycoprotein means ‘protein from fungi’. It is the basis of Quorn, which is a type of soil mould that is grown in fermentation vats. It was invented deliberately in a drive to find new proteins to feed the world’s growing population in the mid-eighties. Although the patent on it has now expired, Quorn Foods is still the only company that makes it. Pea protein With so much choice available, how do you know which brand make what vegan and fake meat alternatives? In the table below brands are listed alphabetically and the products are vegan unless otherwise stated. BrandDespite selling vegan brands, many of the companies in this guide also sell meat products and therefore lost marks under our Animal Rights and Factory Farming categories. Meat companies selling meat-free products There are still a lot of meat-free products made of soya, but most new products on the market are made from pea protein and wheat – both products that can be grown in the UK and Europe without South American rainforest destruction. Soya beans Kantar Take Home FMCG – fastest growing brands based on value sales 48 w/e 29-Nov-20 vs. w/e 28-Nov-21 While the carbon impact of meat alternatives is generally lower than meat, we expect all companies to be taking reasonable steps to reduce the climate impact of their activities. On the whole, the companies in this guide didn’t do well in this respect. This guide covers ready-made meat alternatives and includes products designed to taste, smell and look like meat (appetisingly called ‘meat analogues’ in the trade). It also covers products like tofu, falafel and vegetable fingers which can be used as meat replacements, but in general are not marketed as being analogous to meat.