Leading European Foodgroup Say Goodbye to Meat to Concentrate on Plant-based Market

Following the sale of meat company Enkco, Vivera Foodgroup is entering a meatless future with the remaining plant-based companies in its portfolio which includes Vivera (one of the largest producers of plant-based products in Europe), Culifrost and Dutch Tofu Company.

According to the group, it has “strong ambitions and aims at large-scale investments in expanding production capacity and product range,” which could mean new plant-based products hitting supermarket shelves in the near future.

Vivera is well-known for its meat replacement products such as its ‘ground-breaking’ steak, and is keen to expand the production capacity of its Netherlands-based factory to meet the “rapidly developing market demand” for plant-based foods.

CEO of Vivera Foodgroup, Willem van Weede, said: “We are one of the first companies in the world’s meat industry to say a final goodbye to meat. From now on we only focus on plant-based foods which are really conquering the world.

“More and more consumers are discovering that plant-based products can be just as tasty as real meat and have many benefits for personal health, environmental impact and animal welfare. As a result of the sale of our meat activities we think we can boost even more Vivera’s rapid international growth”

Source: Vegan Food and Living

Moroccan Beans

Ingredients

1 tablespoon finely grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 (14-ounce) can red kidney beans, drained
1 (14-ounce) can butter beans or lima beans, drained
1 (14-ounce) can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
1 (14-ounce) can tomatoes, with juice
1 cup vegetable stock
1/3 cup pine nuts
1/3 cup currants
fresh basil leaves, torn, to garnish

Method

1. Saute the ginger, cinnamon, cumin seeds, and turmeric in the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat for 1 minute.
2. Add the onions and saute until softened, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the red kidney beans, butter beans, garbanzo beans, tomatoes, and vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Toast the pine nuts in a small pan over medium heat until golden, 5 minutes.
5. Add the currants and pine nuts to the beans. Sprinkle with the basil and serve hot.

Makes 6 servings.

Source: Modern Mediterranean Cooking

In Pictures: Vegan Brunches

Beyond Meat Upgrades Its Burger with Better Marbling and Complete Protein

Jon Porter wrote . . . . . . . . .

Beyond Meat has started selling a new “meatier” version of its Beyond Burger that the company says is a source of complete protein and both looks and tastes more like real meat.

The new burger uses a combination of coconut oil and cocoa to imitate the look and taste of “marbling,” the white, fatty specks you get in meat that contribute to its rich flavor. The burger also new uses apple extract so that it browns more as it’s cooking.

Although the burger contains the same 20 grams of protein as before, its pea, mung bean, and rice protein combination means that it’s now a source of “complete protein,” containing each of the nine amino acids that are necessary in a human diet. Complete protein can be tricky to get without resorting to meat or other animal-derived foods like milk and cheese, but Beyond Meat’s products are all vegan. They also use a time-honored tradition for vegetarian complete protein: beans and rice.

The new burger has been developed as part of what Beyond Meat refers to as its “rapid and relentless” development process. In a Vergecast interview due to be released later today, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown says that this development process is designed “to try to make the product that you just bought obsolete as quick as we can.”

“As much as I love to hear that you know you’ve gone out to buy [our existing burger], part of me cringes because I know that I have a product here that’s so much better than that,” Brown says.

Beyond Meat, and its main meat-free burger competitor Impossible Foods, have both enjoyed enormous success this year. Beyond Meat’s sales tripled last quarter, and the company expects to break even this year. Meanwhile, Impossible Foods is now selling its Impossible Burger in Burger Kings nationwide, and both company’s burgers are available in a wide range of other burger chains. There have been growing pains however, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that both companies are now struggling to meet demand for their burgers.

Beyond Meat’s new burger is available in stores including Whole Foods, Kroger, Safeway, Publix, Wegmans, Target, and Sprouts. Look out for a small red label on its packaging that reads “Now Even Meatier,” to make sure you’re getting the new burger.

Source: The Verge

New Radiotracer Can Identify Nearly 30 Types of Cancer

A novel class of radiopharmaceuticals has proven effective in non-invasively identifying nearly 30 types of malignant tumors, according to research published in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Using 68Ga-FAPI positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), researchers were able to image a wide variety of tumors with very high uptake and image contrast, paving the way for new applications in tumor characterization, staging and therapy.

The 68Ga-FAPI radiotracer targets cancer-associated fibroblasts, which can contribute up to 90 percent of a tumor’s mass. Many cancer-associated fibroblasts differ from normal fibroblasts by their specific expression of the fibroblast activation protein, or FAP. FAP-specific inhibitors were first developed as conventional anticancer drugs; now they have been advanced into tumor-targeting radiopharmaceuticals.

In the retrospective study, researchers used PET/CT to image 80 patients with 28 different kinds of cancer, aiming to quantify 68Ga-FAPI uptake in primary, metastatic or recurring cancers. All patients were referred for experimental diagnostics by their treating oncologists because they were facing an unmet diagnostic challenge that could not be solved sufficiently with standard methods. The injected activity for the 68Ga-FAPI examinations was 122-312 MBq, and the PET scans were initiated one hour after injection. Tumor tracer uptake was measured by SUVmean and SUVmax.

All patients tolerated the examination well. As the overall SUV mean, median and range of 68Ga-FAPI in primary tumors and metastatic lesions did not differ significantly, researchers analyzed all results in one group.

The highest average SUVmax (SUVmax >12) was found in sarcoma, esophageal, breast, cholangiocarcinoma and lung cancer. The lowest 68Ga-FAPI uptake (average SUVmax <6) was observed in pheochromocytoma, renal cell, differentiated thyroid, adenoid cystic and gastric cancers. The average SUVmax of hepatocellular, colorectal, head-neck, ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancer was intermediate (SUVmax 6-12). In addition, the tumor-to-background ratios were more than three-fold in the intermediate group and more than six-fold in the high-intensity uptake group, resulting in high image contrast and excellent tumor delineation.

“The remarkably high uptake of 68Ga-FAPI makes it useful for many cancer types, especially in cases where traditional 18F-FDG PET/CT faces limitations,” said Uwe Haberkorn, MD, professor of nuclear medicine at the University Hospital of Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. “For example, low-grade sarcomas generally have a low uptake of 18F-FDG, causing an overlap between benign and malignant lesions. In breast cancer, 18F-FDG PET/CT is commonly used in recurrence, but not generally recommended for initial staging. And for esophageal cancer, 18F-FDG PET/CT often has only a low to moderate sensitivity for lymph node staging.”

In contrast to 18F-FDG PET/CT, 68Ga-FAPI PET/CT can be performed without specific patient preparation such as fasting or recline during uptake time. This is a potential operational advantage for 68Ga-FAPI PET/CT, as it stands to improve patient comfort and accelerate work-flow.

According to Haberkorn, 68Ga-FAPI offers the possibility of a theranostic approach in the future. “Cancer associated fibroblasts have been described as immunosuppressive and as conferring resistance to chemotherapy, which makes them attractive targets for combination therapies,” he said. “Because the 68Ga-FAPI tracers contain the universal DOTA-chelator, it is possible to label them with therapeutic radionuclides whose half-life fits to the tumor retention time of the carrier molecule. Since the tracer has been observed to accumulate in several important tumor entities, there may be a huge field of therapeutic application to be evaluated in the future.”

Source: Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging

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