It is an off-white paste with the consistency of Play-Doh and a malty whiff – and it is taking the high street by storm.
The unappetising formal name for this sought-after food is mycoprotein but it is better known to the growing ranks of vegetarians and vegans as the basis for products including mince, nuggets, burgers and now Gregg’s sellout vegan sausage rolls.
The fungi-based protein is mass-produced by the meat-free specialist Quorn Foods in the world’s largest “meat alternative” factory, outside Darlington, where it has been grown from a starter culture over a period of 35 days in towering metal fermenters. The raw paste, which later emerges on shop shelves as Quorn, is then packed into huge wheeled buggies, ready for the next stage of its transformation into one of the UK’s most popular meat-free snacks.
This week Greggs raised its profit forecasts for the third time this year, boosted by demand for the vegan version of its signature sausage roll. The UK’s largest bakery chain said a strong start to 2019 had continued in recent weeks after it ramped up production of its best-selling Quorn-filled roll.
Quorn Foods’ vast output is a far cry from its modest beginnings in 1985 when its first product – a potato-topped pie – went on sale in Sainsbury’s. Now a familiar household name, Quorn is benefiting from the soaring popularity of flexitarian’ diets – where a largely vegetable-based diet is supplemented occasionally with meat – and the growing trend for consuming meat alternatives and plant-based eating.
A recent YouGov poll showed that for the first time, the majority of the UK population (52%) are reducing their meat consumption, while only 4% are strict vegetarians and 2% vegans.
The climate crisis is playing a role in dietary change. This month the UK Committee on Climate Change recommended a 20% decrease in meat consumption and an increase in the consumption of plant-based proteins, while a study from the EAT-Lancet commission – formed by the Lancet medical journal and the sustainable food organisation EAT – also recommended a shift from meat to plant proteins.
Meat production is a major contributor to the climate crisis. Deforestation to make way for livestock, along with methane emissions from cows and fertiliser use, emits as much greenhouse gas as all the world’s cars, trucks and airplanes. Heavily industrialised meat production also risks mass extinctions of animals, as well as spawning significant pollution of streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.
In strict laboratory conditions at the Billingham factory, the paste starts life as “fusarium venenatum A3/5” – a dried seed culture derived from a fungus found in soil. Removed from liquid nitrogen in tiny samples, it is “brought back to life” in an incubator by gentle shaking with nutrient liquid, ready for fermentation.
“It’s very much like adding yeast to bread or beer” says Tim Finnigan, the director of research and development at Quorn Foods, which is owned by Phillipines-based Monde Nissin. “But it is on a huge scale. And because we ferment our protein it uses 90% less land, water and greenhouse gas emissions than conventional animal proteins.”
The chilled raw paste is transported to other factories – including Quorn Foods’ Stokesley facility in North Yorkshire – where the company will flavour, season, flatten and shape it to make the 100-plus products in its fast-expanding range. At Stokesley alone, for example, half a million veggie burgers roll off the production line every day – many for contract caterers supplying schools and hospitals.
For many years Quorn was made only to a vegetarian recipe, with albumen – egg white - added to it to help create texture. However, its new vegan version, which accounts for 10% of production, uses potato starch or agar instead. Once the albumen or potato has been mixed with the mycoprotein it is cooked and then frozen.
The vegan Quorn will trundle by lorry to the baker’s own factory in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where for the bespoke recipe it will be combined with herbs and spices and wrapped in Greggs’ own vegan pastry. Quorn Foods supplies Greggs with about 13.5 tonnes of the paste per week.
At peak capacity each of the three fermenters – 40-metre towers – creates up to 60 tonnes of mycoprotein a day. Further factory expansion and a fourth fermenter at Billingham – part of a £150m investment – will double production capacity of the company’s core products, adding approximately 20,000 tonnes of mycoprotein a year.
Licensed partnerships such as the one with Greggs are key to driving growth in meat-free food, according to Kevin Brennan, the chief executive of Quorn Foods, who thinks the UK’s largest bakery chain deserves more credit for the time it took to develop one of the most successful new vegan products in recent history.
“They phoned up and it was the right offer for us” he says. “This has been at least a couple of years in the making but we couldn’t go public until the launch. It took an enormous amount of work on Greggs’ part to get the vegan pastry alone right.”
Another recent partnership involves supplying vegetarian Quorn to the Dr Oetker pizza brand, while talks which could lead to collaborations with other major high street names are ongoing.
Brennan said younger consumers – typically the under-30s – are driving growth, with a completely different attitude to meat eating compared to previous generations. “They have grown up in a different environment and are so aware of health and sustainability issues. It’s not that younger consumers are all turning vegan or vegetarian but they are eating substantially less meat.”
Quorn Foods products may now be part of a booming industry of meat alternatives – but that has not stemmed criticism that they are heavily processed and a far cry from natural, plant-based diets.
“We use the age-old process of fermentation to grow our mycoprotein and then create the textures people enjoy simply by cooking and freezing.” Finnegan says. “To say that this is somehow ‘highly processed’ is not to be treated fairly in the debate. Mycoprotein is a complete protein, high in fibre, low in saturated fat and contains no cholesterol.”