Plant-based meat (for you and your dog), nut cheese and vegan wine to wash them down – the latest food trends
- The inaugural Plant Based World Conference and Expo in New York was a showcase of the latest research and ideas on plant-based meat substitutes
- It covered topics such as how to market plant-based food to mainstream diners, and a health summit heard how eating animal protein increases the risk of cancer
It came as no surprise that some of the concessions at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre in New York had shut early. Today, visitors to the centre had come for the inaugural Plant Based World Conference and Expo, and they weren’t interested in hamburgers and hot dogs made from real meat. This was strictly a vegan affair.
The conference was a showcase of the latest research and ideas on plant-based meat substitutes, a growing trend. It covered topics from how to market plant-based food to a mainstream audience to how to convince athletes to adopt a meatless diet. Most noticeably, speakers talked about how to get meat-loving carnivores to switch to plant-based food (it’s as much about the food’s texture as the taste of it, panellists said).
The expo was held in conjunction with a summit on “Food Solutions for Human Health”, which looked at how a plant-based diet could prevent – and even reverse, as some panellists claimed – chronic diseases such as diabetes.
On display was vegan wine to accompany that cheese, which is similar to regular wine except it dispenses with the animal-based fining agents that some winemakers use in the production process.