The following is a guest post from Michael Leonard, CEO of Motif FoodWorks, who has nearly two decades of experience in senior industrial science and technology roles in the specialty food ingredient and fast-moving consumer goods industries.
“There’s no chance,” pronounced Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2007, “that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”
Ballmer blew that call, illustrating that even brilliant people can stumble when they try to see into the future. Indeed, consumers’ embrace of new products, new technologies, and new paradigms is notoriously hard to predict. For this reason, the current attacks on meat alternatives should be weighed with skepticism. Innovation always provokes a backlash. And while some journalists are predicting the imminent demise of plant-based meat, writing the sector’s obituary this early in its life will prove to be a poor soundbite in the exciting years ahead. Because in the long run, consumers like innovation – and they like having choices.
As the CEO of Motif FoodWorks, I believe plant-based foods are critical to a better future; they make too much economic, nutritional, and ecological sense not to pursue. The demand is there, and it will grow. Do I know exactly how fast, or what the market will look like in 10 years? Of course not. But human beings have, for centuries, brought scientific and technological advances to bear on the making and serving of food. It is folly to think this tradition will end. We are too close to unlocking the full potential of food design and the secrets of texture and taste to pull back.
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