A stroll down the grocery aisle – or even a stop at a favorite restaurant – might yield a new protein option: plant-based chicken. Designed to mimic the taste and texture of the world’s favorite bird-based cuisine, plant-based chicken has already captured a small but growing slice of poultry market share.
It’s more than a gimmick; it’s a movement with great financial potential and multiple benefits that include lower greenhouse gas emissions and a way for meat brands to reach new audiences.
What Is Plant-based Chicken?
Plant-based chicken is a food product engineered to re-create the taste, texture, and appearance of chicken. Most manufacturers of plant-based chicken products make it from a vegetable protein like soy or wheat, then shape it into nuggets, patties, or roasts.
The ingredients in plant-based chicken vary by product, recipe, and manufacturer. In addition to wheat or soy protein, the most common plant-based chicken ingredients used are:
- Cellulosics
- Hydrocolloids like carrageenan
- Plant-based oils like coconut oil, sunflower oil, etc.
- Nutritional yeast
- Spices, including mustard and garlic powder
- Sodium, usually sodium carbonate and sodium citrate
How Is Plant-based Chicken Made?
Plant-based chicken, and its more stringent sub-variety, vegan chicken, is relatively easy to manufacture. After processing the wheat or soy protein base into a dough-like compound, manufacturers add spices and flavorings, sodium, water, and hydrocolloids (like carrageenan) to retain moisture. Depending on the product, the outside is coated with breading. Vegan and gluten-free plant-based chicken products skip the breading or use gluten-free breading alternatives.
Is Plant-based Chicken Healthy?
Yes, but it’s not a 1:1 chicken replacement in terms of nutrition. Plant-based meat products are healthier than their natural counterparts, overall. They offer lower fat content and sodium, more fiber, and a lower calorie count. However, plant-based alternatives may lack some nutrients found in traditional meat depending on the final formulation.
Poultry’s Environmental Impact
A rise in global chicken consumption has made those efforts to lower poultry’s environmental impact exceedingly difficult. Poultry greenhouse gas emissions from animal waste include nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), which are planet-heating greenhouse gasses many times more potent than carbon dioxide. Chicken hatching and production facilities are also energy-intensive, using a considerable amount of electricity for lighting, heating, and ventilation.
The poultry industry also relies heavily on grain production. Various forms of grain, including wheat and corn, comprise between 75% and 90% of a broiler’s daily diet. That means approximately 40% of US grain production is used to support poultry production, equating to nearly 97,000,000 acres.
Plant-based chicken avoids all of the emissions associated with the raising, processing, and transportation of broiler chickens. Long-term, increased demand should lower production costs of plant-based products and provide manufacturers with more reliable margins; fuel and feed costs are notably volatile, especially in food production.
Poultry Demand Is on the Rise
Global chicken consumption reached approximately 140 million tons in 2021, the equivalent of 74 billion chickens. It’s now the world’s most-consumed meat, surpassing pork and beef largely thanks to improved standards of living in developing and middle-income countries in Asia and Latin America.
At its current pace, the world will eat more than 900 billion chickens per year by 2033, a level of estimated poultry industry emissions that could prove a negative tipping point for the world’s climate goals.
To offset these projected poultry production emissions, plant-based chicken, other meat alternatives, and more sustainable poultry production will require rapid upscaling.
The Push to Plants Comes to Poultry
Plant-based meats have made headlines, first for a meteoric rise in investment and sales and then for a dramatic drop in revenue post-pandemic. Despite the recent slump, plant-based chicken remains a priority for manufacturers and the environmentally aware public.
Animal welfare advocates point to the restrictive living conditions inside commercial broiler houses or chick breeders, terms used to describe massive industrial poultry farm facilities. These facilities typically house 36,000 to 52,000 birds at a time in a building with an average footprint of 60 x 600 feet.
The Trial Run: Plant-based Chicken at KFC
Kentucky Fried Chicken’s launch of plant-based chicken at select locations in 2022 provides a convenient snapshot of an industry at a crossroads. As one of the most valuable quick-service restaurant chains in the world, KFC’s partnership with Beyond Meat was the first plant-based protein offering at a national chain in the US.
KFC’s effort accidentally embodied the almost conflicted intent of many national converts to meatless alternatives. Dubbed “Beyond Fried Chicken®,” the meatless option wasn’t technically vegetarian because it was fried in the same oil as KFC’s real chicken and used the same breading.
The promotion was short-lived; announced in January 2022, KFC did not extend its plant-based chicken offerings once supplies were exhausted.
Still, it’s a sign of consumer interest. It also shows an industry capacity to deliver plant-based chicken at scale thanks to a growing contingent of plant-based meat manufacturers with procurement, production, and distribution resources to bring meatless alternatives to the masses.
Innovative Food Design and Quality Ingredients – That’s Tilley
Tilley Distribution works with leading food and beverage manufacturers to source and deliver the specialty ingredients needed to create delightful, innovative new products for consumers worldwide.
Our expansive ingredients catalog, including specialty hydrocolloids like carrageenan and custom formulation expertise, makes us an ideal partner in innovative product development. See what Tilley can do for your organization; speak with a representative today.
