The Food Biz Episode 2 Recap: Meati's Plant-Based Steak and Why We Need Sustainability

Are you caught up on the latest news and trends within the Food and Beverage industry? If you haven’t heard yet, “The Food Biz” is a brand new podcast where you can take a bite out of the latest headlines, trends, and insights within the Food and Beverage Industry.

We’ve released two podcasts now, so I want to go ahead and give you the rundown on our second episode! In this second episode, our podcast hosts Ryan Nelson and Kristyn Tarpey invite their first guest, Samantha Hermansen, onto the podcast to discuss a new funding campaign from Meati, who has just raised over 50 million dollars. This funding will go towards creating whole-cut meat alternatives. Kristyn explained that typically, plant-based meat replicates ground meat in the form of chicken nuggets, burger patties, meatballs, etc. - but Meati is now trying to create options like whole-cut steaks.

Samantha has been a vegetarian for over a decade, and explained that it’s been great to see the industry evolve so much since offering plain old tofu. She noted that she is thrilled to see Meati offer more plant-based options like steak.

Kristyn then points out that a significant benefit of the plant-based meat industry is how sustainable it is. Meati said that they would be able to produce the meat equivalent of 4,500 cows within 24 hours using less than 1% of the water and land that is used to produce traditional animal-based meat. Ryan jumped in to point out that many regions of the country are experiencing drought, which could heavily impact all of the animals that people rely on for food. He then pointed out that it takes 516 gallons of water to raise a chicken compared to 2 gallons of water to grow a head of lettuce, backing up the sustainability factors behind plant-based foods. The entire plant-based meat industry raised 3.1 billion dollars in 2020, and they’re not stopping now!

Kristyn, Ryan, and Samantha covered a lot of ground regarding funding in the industry, efforts to improve sustainability, and much more so make sure to listen to the whole episode now. You can also give our first episode a listen, where Kristyn and Ryan discussed a recent short-seller report on Oatly.

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Food Biz on Spotify or in the Apple Podcasts App so you can stay up to date on everything happening in the food and beverage industry. Please also feel free to reach out to us at news@barchart.com with any discussion topics, questions, comments, or overall feedback!