Two Taiwanese doctors from Cornell University, Jen-Yu Huang and Michelle Lee, saw the trend of plant-based meat and became the first-ever to use the encapsulation technique to produce ?alternative fat?, which enable plant meat to taste like real meat. They established Lypid and got selected into global accelerator IndieBio, and plan for mass production next year.

Plant-based market is booming, but plant-based meat ? tastes very bland

Research suggests that the global plant-based meat market size was approximately USD 3.3 billion in 2019, which is estimated to soar to USD 13.8 billion in 2027, by 19.4 CARG within seven years. Plant-based products are also winning favors from both consumers and investors. Investors had poured dollars into the alternative protein in the first half of 2021, seeing over more than 350% of funding as the entirety of 2020. Startups that focus on improving the mouthfeel for dairy alternatives such as milk, cheese and eggs have also drawn large investments.

 

However, to fully replace real meat, there has always been a major flaw for vegetarian meat -- It just doesn?t taste as good!

 

Texture and flavor are what distinguish meat from plants mostly. Due to that muscle tissues are highly flexible and plant cells are rigid, real meat tastes buttery and chewy while vegetarian meat can taste powdery or sloppy. In order to solve the problem, a person who is both an entrepreneur and a scientist studied the reason behind this. It turned out that ?fat? is the essence of mouthfeel and taste, and that is why Dr.Jen-Yu Huang asked his schoolmate Dr.Michelle Lee to found the vegan fat startup Lypid.

 

Upstream provider for now, food manufacturer for the future

Lypid now adopts a B2B business model, namely that they sell their plant-based fat caters to plant-based meat providers. They have been in contact with more than ten companies so far and plan for mass production next year. Nevertheless, they also aim to develop and sell their own products, like vegan bacon, in the future. Their main target market will be the US market while Taiwan is their potential market.

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?Taiwan has actually been making very tasty vegan meat. It?s just that no one is seeing it as a real industry,? Jen-Yu mentioned. This being one of the reasons, they have recently founded a lab in Taiwan and are now recruiting.

 

 

 

Source: https://meet-global.bnext.com.tw/articles/view/47473