A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques.
A chicken nugget is a food product consisting of a small piece of deboned chicken meat that is breaded or battered, then deep-fried or baked. Developed in the 1950s by finding a way to make a coating adhere, chicken nuggets have become a very popular fast food restaurant item, and are widely sold frozen for home use.
A veggie burger is a hamburger made with a patty that does not contain meat, or the patty of such a hamburger. The patty may be made from ingredients like beans, nuts, grains, seeds, or fungi such as mushrooms or mycoprotein.
Boca Burger is a veggie burger produced by Kraft Heinz in Chicago, Illinois. Like all of Boca Foods' products, Boca Burgers serve as a meat alternative.
Gardenburger is the brand name of a veggie burger sold in the United States. It was developed in the early 1980s by Paul Wenner, the owner of the Gardenhouse, a vegetarian restaurant in Gresham, Oregon. It is currently owned by Kellanova.
Rustlers are a range of hamburgers and hot sandwiches made by Kepak, a company based in Dublin, Ireland. Each product in the range comes packed with a sachet of sauce appropriate for the food. Several products are now also packaged with a slice of processed cheese and/or a rasher of bacon.
Lightlife Foods is a company that produces food for plant-based diets. In 2018, its worth was estimated at $80 million. It is best known for its plant-based veggie dog, Smart Dog, which launched in 1993. In 2019, the company launched a plant-based burger to compete with Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. Lightlife Foods is a carbon-neutral company.
Tofurky is the brand name of an American vegan turkey replacement made from a blend of wheat protein and organic tofu. Tofurky brand was officially introduced in 1995.
A vegetarian hot dog is a hot dog produced completely from non-meat products. Unlike traditional home-made meat sausages, the casing is not made of intestine, but of cellulose or other plant-based ingredients. The filling is usually based on some sort of soy protein, wheat gluten, or pea protein. Some may contain egg whites, which would make them unsuitable for a lacto-vegetarian or vegan diet.
Gardein is a line of meat-free foods produced by Conagra Brands. In 2003, the company was founded by Yves Potvin, who remained as the CEO of Gardein until 2016. In November 2014, Pinnacle Foods purchased Gardein for $154 million. Pinnacle was acquired by Conagra in 2018.
Vegetarian bacon, also referred to as veggie bacon, vegan bacon, vegan rashers, vacon, or facon, is a plant-based version of bacon.
Linda McCartney Foods is a British food brand specializing in vegetarian and vegan food. Available in the UK, as well as Norway, Ireland, Austria, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the range includes chilled and frozen meat analogues in the form of burgers, sausages, sausage rolls, meatballs, stir-fry dishes and pastas.
Beyond Meat, Inc. is a Los Angeles–based producer of plant-based meat substitutes founded in 2009 by Ethan Brown. The company's initial products were launched in the United States in 2012. The company went public in 2019, becoming the first plant-based meat analogue company to go public.
Impossible Foods Inc. is a company that develops plant-based substitutes for meat products. The company's signature product, the Impossible Burger, was launched in July 2016 as a vegan alternative to beef hamburger. The primary ingredient of the Impossible Burger, and most of the company's product line, is Soy Protein Concentrate.
La Loma Foods, formerly named Loma Linda Food Company and Loma Linda Foods, and with products presently branded under the name Loma Linda and Loma, is a former food manufacturing company that produced vegetarian and vegan foods. It is presently an active brand of vegetarian and vegan food products produced and purveyed by the Atlantic Natural Foods Company of Nashville, North Carolina. Loma Linda Foods began operations in 1905 under the name The Sanitarium Food Company and was owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church until 1990.
McVegan is a veggie burger sold by the fast-food restaurant chain McDonald's. In 2017, McDonald partnered with the Swedish food company Orkla to create a plant-based patty inside a small steel kitchen in Malmö, where they began the creation of the product. In Germany, the chain's vegan burger is sold as the Big Vegan TS.
Fry Group Foods is a manufacturer of vegan meat substitutes founded by South Africans Wally and Debbie Fry in 1991. In March 2020 it joined LIVEKINDLY Collective, the global plant-based food company.
