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FOOD AND DRINK

‘Worse than broccoli, better than pork’: France’s beloved lardons go veggie

Vegan bacon sizzles on a pan in the office of a French startup whose quest to produce the "holy grail" of the growing plant-based meat industry gained the financial backing of Hollywood star Natalie Portman.

'Worse than broccoli, better than pork': France's beloved lardons go veggie

Paris-based company La Vie recently raised 25 million euros ($28.3 million) from investment funds and climate-conscious celebrities like Portman, an avowed vegan.

If not the first to bring plant-based bacon to the market, La Vie’s founders are banking their success on mastering imitation pork fat, setting it apart from other brands.

“We’re the only ones in the world today to have succeeded in developing a vegetable fat that cooks, fries, infuses and browns” like animal fat, enthused the company’s chief executive and cofounder, Nicolas Schweitzer.

After several minutes on the frying pan, the rashers of La Vie’s imitation smoked bacon were golden brown, crunchy and similar in taste to the real McCoy.

Next up are lardons. The chunks of meat and fat also brown up nicely, but are a bit salty.

“We have a reduced salt version as well,” said Vincent Poulichet, 32, the company’s scientific expert and other cofounder.

The lardons received a C rating on France’s “Nutri-Score” food health rating scale — a middle score on the A to E ranking.

“Worse than broccoli, but better than pork lardons,” the company notes wryly on its website.

La Vie’s CEO, Nicolas Schweitzer (R) and Chief Technology Officer Vincent Poulichet (L) cooking some veggie rashers. Photo: Eric Piermont/AFP

Startups and established food manufacturers alike have been rolling out a variety of products that aim to replace beef, chicken and pork with plant-based ingredients.

But making faux bacon taste like the real thing is another challenge. Ethan Brown, the head of industry leader Beyond Meat, told the Wall Street Journal last year that making bacon, steak and raw chicken were all the “holy grail”.

A growing number of consumers are seeking to reduce or eliminate meat from their diets over concerns including animal rights and the industry’s impact on the environment.

According to a 2021 report by market research firm Euromonitor International, more than one in four consumers globally say they are trying to limit their meat intake, in addition to the 10 percent of people who are vegetarian or vegan.

London-based market research firm Fairfield expects the market for plant-based meat to grow by nearly 19 percent annually between 2021 and 2026, to hit $13 billion.

 5,000 trials

La Vie’s founders, who created their company in 2019, believe conquering consumers on taste is the real key to success.

“After three years of research and 5,000 trials we succeeded in the somewhat crazy challenge of reproducing the taste of pork,” said Schweitzer, 34.

The fat in La Vie’s imitation bacon and lardons is made mostly from sunflower oil and specially-treated water.

The meat part contains soy protein, salt, natural colourants derived from radish skins and tomatoes, and natural flavours.

It was after testing La Vie’s products at home in the United States that Portman joined the company’s financial backers.

“It was by giving people a taste of our products that we managed to put together this extraordinary round of financing,” said Schweitzer. “Right away, investors said, ‘Oh, yeah!'”

Venture capitalists like Oyster Bay, Seventure and Partech joined the funding round, as did the owners of several successful European startups such as Oatly, Vinted, Back Market and BlaBlaCar.

British and US markets

In addition to taste, La Vie believes its bacon is healthier for people, the planet, and of course pigs.

The company says its products contain less than a tenth the saturated fat of real bacon, and their production has fewer carbon emissions and uses less water.

La Vie’s imitation lardons are already on sale at Carrefour shops, and it aims to get them on the shelves of all major supermarkets in France in 2022.

It also sees vegan and vegetarian restaurants as key to getting more potential clients to taste its products.

La Vie aims to get its products on British shelves by April and then rapidly enter the key US market as well.

La Vie, which has partnered with an established cold cuts and prepared foods manufacturer, plans to quickly double its staff to 60 employees.

Member comments

  1. not one tiny little mention of cost….and there’s the rub. while many of us would like to support these companies, we find it difficult to do so because of the cost….if the real motivation is in helping the planet, perhaps pricing products out of reach for normal people isn’t the answer…i will guarantee you that if these products were cheaper than meat products, people would buy them and the companies would still make their exorbitant profits…

  2. How many E numbers and additives are mashed up in a pulp to imitate the taste of lardons, what damage is that doing to your health?

    If you want to go vegan, or veggie, that’s fine but don’t eat unhealthy chemical mixtures pretending to be good for the planet, these veggie companies just want to make profits, they are not philanthropic.

    Choice is ok, but it needs to be “informed “ choices.

  3. It is a fantastic step forward but I do agree with shoe regarding pricing. Until these alternatives are cost affective for everyone they will remain niche products.

    Now the day they can come up with a naturally cultured plant-based cheese that can melt I will be happy (in the world of plant-based cheeses this is an either/or situation – melty cheeses are not naturally cultured as they require tapioca starch to achieve the stretch and that requires heat to activate, nullifying the inclusion of cultures/moulds to produce the cheese).

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HEALTH

Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

Perrier has halted production of 1-litre bottles of its famous carbonated water because of a contamination problem - the latest in a series of problems with some of France's most famous mineral water brands.

Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

The French love bottled water. They spent an estimated €2.5 billion and drank an average of 145 bottles each of the stuff in 2023.

The country is both the world’s biggest exporter of bottled water and the home of its most famous brands from Volvic to Evian, Vittel to Perrier.

But all is far from well in the highly lucrative bottled water market.

In January, it was reported that a third of French mineral water brands received treatments which are banned for the supposedly ‘natural’ products and, in April, France’s health watchdog demanded a clampdown at Nestlé water sites after traces of “faecal” contamination were found.

Meanwhile drought conditions last year raised concerns about overproduction of bottled water in France, with companies exempted from water restrictions that everyone else faced.

Perrier problems

Now, it has emerged that Nestlé has halted production of one-litre bottles of Perrier water at its facility in Vergèze, in the Gard département in south-west France, according to Le Monde and Radio France.

After learning in April that one of the plant’s wells had been shut down following a ‘contamination episode’ after flooding caused by Storm Monica, the investigation has found that two more wells have recently undergone disinfection operations – which the Nestlé group said was a ‘regular maintenance operation’.

Following the April contamination warning, State authorities ordered the destruction of a batch of at least two million bottles of Perrier. The final number of destroyed bottles was around 2.9 million, according to Nestlé group’s own estimates.

Officials, including members of the Occitanie regional health authority, visited the Vergèze facility on May 30th to inspect the plant, boreholes and water quality monitoring laboratory. The findings of this inspection have not yet been made public.

But of seven wells used to produce Perrier brand fizzy mineral water, most are currently out of service, the investigation found – prompting production of the famous one-litre green bottles of Perrier water to be halted until at least the end of summer.

A préfectural decree means the company can draw water from two boreholes to produce a drink called Maison Perrier, which will not have ‘natural mineral water’ status.

Water conditions

The risk to water quality is not confined to the Vergèze operation. Safety concerns have been known by health authorities for years in the Vosges region where the Hépar, Contrex and Vittel brands are drawn, the investigation found, citing a confidential report in which officials expressed concern about the withdrawal of illicit treatments, which could “expose consumers to a health risk, as the treatments were put in place to compensate for a quality defect in the resource”.

In June 2023, in a letter sent to food safety watchdog the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire alimentaire nationale (Anses), the director of Occitanie’s regional health authority referred to “regular bacteriological contamination of raw water in at least five of the seven drilling”. 

In October of the same year, Anses alerted the government of an “insufficient level of confidence” to ensure “the health quality of finished products”.

Nestlé’s response

Nestlé said that it had initiated a plan to transform its factories, in agreement with authorities. “We have invested significantly, and will continue to do so, to protect this unique heritage and ensure its future,” the group told journalists from Le Monde and Radio France.

But unions are concerned about the future of the plant and its 1,000 employees and have triggered a clause in the Code du travail meaning they will be alerted of “facts likely to affect the economic situation of the company”, amid concerns authorities could order the shutdown of the plant for safety reasons.

So, is bottled water in France safe to drink?

There are two main types of bottled water in France – spring water and mineral water. 

Spring water is subject to the same safety regulations as tap water. But it cannot undergo disinfection treatment. Be aware, a single brand of spring water can in fact come from several sources located in different regions, and the composition can change bottle-by-bottle, depending on the origin.

Mineral waters are not subject to the same safety rules as tap water – in fact, some mineral waters would not be allowed in the public drinking water system because they would not meet strict criteria. For example, fluoride levels are limited at 1.5 mg/l for tap water; mineral waters, however, can contain up to 5 mg/l.

Like spring water, mineral water should not be subject to disinfection treatments.

But, on the whole, and despite recent concerns, bottled water in France is safe to drink.

And which one is the cheapest?

Tap water. According to consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir it costs €0.003 per litre, on average, or less than €2 per year for a consumption of 1.5 litres of tap water every day.

And it is subjected to all kinds of routine checks – 54 different parameters are monitored pretty much all the time.

6 things to know about tap water in France

If you’re not a fan of the taste, you could always run it through a water filter. It will be more expensive, but still cheaper than bottled water – and still subject to the same number of safety checks, plus it has been filtered.

It’s also better for the planet because tap water doesn’t involve plastic bottles – the city of Paris is currently running a campaign to encourage people to drink tap water in order to reduce waste in the form of plastic bottles. The city has hundreds of drinking water fountains and businesses that display the L’Eau de Paris’ label will refill your water bottle for free.

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