The Need for the Color Red inthe Plant-based Trend

The trend of vegan or vegetarian products maintains a constant growth in Latin America, despite the fact that in general the importance of this market cannot be noticed much. Little by little, more and more vegan or vegetarian options are seen in supermarkets and restaurants, this is due to the sum of all the buyer profiles that can acquire this type of product – vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians. However, do you know what the differences are between these three profiles?

VEGETARIAN

Vegetarians are those people who follow a strict plant-based diet, eliminating the consumption of meat, however, they do consume or use other products that are derived or come from animals such as dairy where they consume products such as cheese, milk or yogurt, as well as other elements such as eggs and honey, and they are not limited to wearing sheep’s wool garments.

VEGAN

On the other hand, vegans are those people who limit their diet and what they use even more, since they do not want to contribute to the market of animals and their derivatives. Unlike vegetarians, vegans cannot consume or use any of the above or anything derived from or derived from animals, making these vegan alternatives attractive to this market.

FLEXITARIANS

We must know the largest market in percentage of this trend, and they are the flexitarians. These can be known as those people who reduce their meat consumption directly or indirectly, either by limiting the consumption of red meat, trying to reduce the portions of animal protein compared to the amount of vegetables. But, they continue to consume meat and derivatives.

The reason many vegan alternatives have a meat-like appearance is the need to help consumers adapt to this trend by offering formulations that resemble current non-vegan options. This is where the role of colors comes in, helping to achieve reddish or pink tones that can remain the same when exposed to light, but with the thermal process they go away and thus similar to that effect that meat has before and after its cooking.

Beetroot is a good option to have these results, however, the formulators also seek to have the effect that the brown meat is not seen in its entirety, but rather that it can maintain a lighter and reddish tone inside, which cannot be achieved with conventional beets, since they degrade in their entirety with the cooking process, thus resulting in a problem for these alternatives.

But this is no longer a problem, since at Sensient we have the Uberbeet Platform, which has various specialized solutions for each color need in these alternatives.

With Uberbeet, we are able to maintain pink and red tones in vegan meat, even though they are exposed to the cooking process. Managing to reduce the amount of product use between 5 and 10 times less than a conventional beet, and with the unique advantage of being able to to resist thermal processes.

Find out more about how Sensient’s natural solutions can be adapted to your new plant-based product development by requesting a sample or otherwise requesting advice from our technical and development team.