I was once extremely skeptical of the of the terms, “vegetarian chicken strips” or “vegan tuna” but I can say that I might have been converted after visiting the vegan butcher in Toronto. Yes, I put the word vegan + butcher in the same sentence. That sounds almost as wrong as coconut bacon, doesn’t it? Well, my recent trip to Yam Chops was an eye opener to how closely a non-meat product can look, taste and feel like the real thing.
It is estimated that global sales of meat substitutes will reach $4B in 2016, a 42% rise since 2010. That’s a lot of money, right? Well if you combine this with the 3.5% of the US population or around 7.5M that classify themselves as vegan plus an additional 23M who are vegetarian, you now have a category worth taking about.