With today’s consumer focusing on sustainability, traceability and healthy lifestyles, the alternative protein movement is gaining momentum across all food and beverage product categories. Emmanuel Laroche, Vice President Marketing and Consumer Insights, Symrise Flavors NA, says, “Consumer desire for more product variety and better tasting products will mean that manufacturers will need to innovate and differentiate themselves in order to thrive. At Symrise, our global approach combines the understanding of protein sources with our core taste expertise and deep market understanding to develop products in the key categories of meat alternatives, dairy alternatives and nutritional beverages. We call this new global initiative Taste for Alternative Protein (TAP).”

It is Symrise’s aim, as a Taste solution partner, to provide best-in-class taste solutions for plant-based foods and beverages. Symrise R & D teams have a holistic approach to innovation, a deep understanding of ingredients at a molecular level, global insight into consumer needs and product development expertise. They employ a wide array of tools to generate insights into this market for food and beverage manufacturers. By utilizing their proprietary Trendscope Reports, Taste Treks and chef network, they are able to identify product, ingredient and flavor trends, enabling Symrise to determine what is happening with alternative protein-related cooking techniques and recipes around the world. They also employ social media listening to understand what consumer perceptions and expectations are toward these products.

The Symrise Group, which includes Symrise Flavors NA and Diana Food, has a portfolio of taste and ingredient solutions that are tailored to the complex matrices of plant bases of customers. Their “code of nature” platform delivers authentic and impactful natural tastes by sourcing the best raw material from partners they know and trust, and preparing them in ways that provide authentic taste solutions for plant-based products. These fit for purpose meat, spice and vegetable flavors are strong enough to withstand any plant-based product processing and can be used to create targeted, signature taste profiles.

Savory meat analogs like plant-based patties and burgers require a specific approach to mimic the taste, flavor, texture, juiciness and the color of real meat, both raw and cooked. Symrise and Diana Food, working synergistically on the TAP Platform, have created a complete toolbox of ingredients and flavors that offers taste, richness, masking, color and appearance improvements to savory foods so they can formulate naturally tasty concepts.

Laroche concludes, “Alternative proteins in the food and beverage categories are poised for growth, driven by changes in consumer lifestyle behavior and sustainability considerations.  Vegetarian, vegan and flexitarian diets, as well as wider adoption by mainstream consumers, has created a market opportunity for manufacturers of these products, who can now look to Symrise to help them innovate and differentiate their brands.”

For more information visit www.symrise.com.