You might recall a decade ago that the word “Clean Label” was popping up in industry as a way to transform nutritional labels on the back of food packages to “easy to understand, consumer-friendly words” and throughout the years, many food companies have not only applied the trend but have innovated every year to be more and more consumer friendly. Sweeteners, colors, emulsifiers, you name it, it’s been “cleaned”.

Yet the average consumer still doesn’t know what clean label means. If you ask them directly, “do you think our bar is clean label?” they’ll have no idea what you mean.

Instead, companies cater to their demographic’s perception of clean. It could be no added sugars, a shorter ingredient list, or no hard-to-pronounce ingredients. Its all clean label, but it means different things to different people.

Recently, a new word has popped up in which the food industry is jumping on board, but the consumer might have no idea what it is.

SPI Group hosted a really insightful talk about the market research behind the word Flexitarian and a thing that caught my attention is the broad definition and confused reactions of consumers when they asked what it was. This is the exact same response as the Clean Label movement received when it came to explaining it to customers.

What can we learn from the success of the clean label movement that we can take to this new market? Here are my insights.

What is a Flexitarian?

Sounds like a type of dinosaur to me…

A flexitarian is someone who does not eat meat or animal products in every meal. Unfortunately, this is a super broad statement, but it gives you a good idea of how broad the target is. You can go as far as that these people want to reduce their meat consumption because eating plant-based foods is healthier and more sustainable. Motives differ but in general. People now believe that adding more plants into their diet is good for you.

There are no rules, or hard laws when it comes to Flexitarian. There’s no rule about how many times a week you can eat meat, or how processed the product is, it’s a very general term, with a lot of opportunities.

In most situations, the plant-based meat industry is a great example of companies that try to fit in the flexitarian market.

There is a strange stigma before this term was introduced, that if you ate plant-based meat, you were vegan.

Even before the Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger storm, plant-based meats were still popular, but surprisingly never targeted to people who want to reduce their meat consumption. Gardien and Yves, and Field Roast were all companies that had really good products but didn’t focus on the meat eater. Boca was historically notorious for being picked on as an inferior burger. But they’ve recently changed their brand to focus on meat eaters.

As the global consumer perception is now changing when it comes to how we view meat, a lot of opportunities arise.

The Factors of Growth

The “Flexitarian market” exploded just a couple of years ago, it what feels like a perfect storm of the world ending, a technology growing, and trying to feed the world.

Environmental World Issues

There are many viral videos about how meat is harmful to the environment. Reports from the UK and solutions from various news outlets put a compelling reason to reduce meat consumption for ethical, nutritional, and sustainable reasons.

In the past, most articles were polarizing shouting out that meat is murder, which has developed a stigma that only works for a certain few.

Now much of the media is catering to the fact that you just need to eat less meat. There are many statistics that have said that if we reduce meat consumption by X%, we can really do some good in the world.

We had the worst fire in California, Phoenix and Washington just had snow. Australia got to 120F last month. The Polar vortex, the hurricanes, and earthquakes. Things are happening at a much faster rate. As more people are affected by things like this, it is possible that they will care more for the planet.

Technology

Impossible and Beyond are both companies that revolutionized the plant-based meat world by flipping the perspective that plants can taste meaty. The technology came together, yet surprisingly, both burgers show different branches of that technology. One showcased a secret ingredient that was carried by traditional soy and wheat while another one turned pea protein into something edible. Before, people just slapped on a bunch of beans in a press and got a burger, but now, the game has changed.

And bear in mind, both companies had 7 years before these fruitions. Could you put your head down for 7 years before you created an innovation like that? Most people can’t.

When this happens, the floodgates happen as all of the big industry and its suppliers are now finding ways to reverse engineer everything. This is actually very common practice in the industry, which is why a lot of me-too products get crushed by original innovation. Other players who have innovated and still have not successfully been copied include Coca Cola, Mars Candy, Quest Nutrition, Cliff Bar, and Chobani are all examples of products that are still kicking it because they were the first ones who do what they do best.

However, because people are playing catch-up, there are a lot of pieces that are falling by the way side and you can be the one that can pick up these interesting pieces of technology and just start creating.

Feeding 10 Billion

For the last decade or so, IFT has posted a prompt on how to feed 10 billion by 2050. Surpassingly, at the time, no one mentioned growing meat in labs or even reducing meat consumption. At the time, crickets were popular solutions or 3D printing. Though these solutions are still being worked on, we now have more options.

As we all know, things change when a big prompt is given to us, but it’s really enlightening to see that there might be some tangible solutions to this big problem.

We know for a fact that even if the 1^st world countries stop producing meat, the other countries will grow, and the richer they become and following history, the richer the civilization, the more meat they will consume.

One of the people I’ve talked to about this made a good point. The man in a third-world country, if he gets rich, will most likely buy a steak than a salad.

So now things get a lot difficult because not only do we have to convince our nation to eat less meat, but also convince the emerging nations that there are better pleasures than meat. This is a challenge, but an exciting one.

Can Clean Label and Flexitarianism co-exist?

A small point of data shows that people who want to reduce their meat consumption and preferred meat like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat cared less about Clean Label than their counterparts. Of course, this brings up an important question: Does plant-based meat need to be clean label?

Some people will care about clean-label plant-based meat and some will despise it. Vegans generally don’t like plant-based meat because they don’t like processed foods, and also can make whole foods like beans and lentils, taste really good.

Yet the big issue is that cost is a huge factor when it comes to pricing plant-based meat. Meat is very cheap, but there is data that people will pay a premium for good plant-based meat. As long as you provide that it has more value than meat, people will pay more.

With new players coming into the market such as Nestle, Tyson, and Lightlife, there is now going to be a really big bet on how people will react to the mainstream technology of plant-based burgers. Is soy ok? Is it good enough if it’s IP-preserved? Do people care about heme or do people care about yeast extract?

The next couple of years will be a huge test on how people’s preferences will differentiate the market. With all of the data showing what’s trending, what about the people who don’t mind? Is it fine to have a GMO soy patty that has artificial flavorings just like it’s ok to have a standard pink-slime, antibiotic-filled patty? Or do you prefer a non-allergenic, organic plant-based burger over the grass-fed, free range beef burger? Will people be fine blending meat and plants together? Or do people want them separate? There is still a lot to be explored.

The good news is, just like clean label, is that if you’re entering the market, you can differentiate yourself. With the evolution of clean label, food brands have really formulated foods that have meaning, like cage-free egg sandwiches, or have omitted unnecessary ingredients like saccharin. The clean label movement, though hidden in the customer perspective, has really innovated the food industry for the better by opening up the value of food, and flexitarian will open up the curtain on how food can play a role in sustainability. Sure, for every success, there is a group of people who don’t like the change, but businesses ultimately follow the money, just like every other food trend in history.

The Flexitarian trend will not go away and it will be amplified as more health and sustainability solutions get published. There are many opportunities that are open right now and you have the opportunity in the next few years, to truely innovate in this field.