Durban - The world’s most well-known fast food chain stores have seen a spike in the number of plant-based options on their menus, giving vegans and vegetarians more options when eating out, according to ProVeg international.
The organisation’s Anusha Lakha said that could be attributed to the growing number of flexitarians across the world; people who consciously reduced the amount of meat in their diets.
“One of the biggest reasons people move towards plant-based eating is health concerns,” she said.
Lakha said a lot of health concerns had been raised about meat and dairy products, such as possibly being carcinogenic, hormone content and “there are a host of reasons that people are noticing and see that it isn’t good for them”.
Recently Burger King came out tops in a ProVeg International survey which showed that the five leading fast food chains in the world had increased their number of plant-based menu options.
It used a scorecard to rank the five biggest global fast food chains in terms of the plant-based options on their online menus.
Under scrutiny were McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut or Dominos (depending on the country), and KFC, while the countries sampled were Belgium, Czechia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the US.
In the study, ProVeg analysed 43 menus. Only 22 menus (51%) offered at least one plant-based option and out of 1 473 main dishes, only 85 main meals were plant-based.
While Burger King ranked first as the restaurant with the most plant-based options internationally, last year, it also appeared among the top franchises in the South African rankings.
Apart from the largest amount of plant-based options available, Burger King also had the largest share of the menu that had plant-based options, next to Subway, Lakha said.
“We encourage restaurants not just to add more plant-based options but to switch out animal-based options for plant-based options and that is why it’s important to see that the menu share percentage is quite large, where Burger King seems to be doing quite well. It’s only 12%, but 12% is already quite good.”
A similar survey, done in South Africa last year, showed that the top six fast food outlets with the most plant-based options were Kauai, Spur, Panarottis, Burger King, Simply Asia and Steers. Lakha said that apart from Kauai and Simply Asia, which focused on whole food plant-based dishes, most of the outlets simply used meat analogues (the vegan or vegetarian version of the meat products) in place of the original product.
Lakha said that was mainly done to appeal to flexitarians: “When people are choosing to be flexitarian, often that transition to having a more plant-based diet involves having products that imitate meat products.”
The survey shows that a glaring gap in the fast food chain market was catering for those with a sweet tooth.
“The one area that most of the fast food chains don’t seem to be doing well in is vegan desserts. Mains are there and they’re exciting and people do go for that but … there’s definitely an opportunity for manufacturers and brands that specialise in that space to bring that forward,” said Lakha.
ProVeg International said the global market for plant-based meat alternatives was predicted to double within the next few years, growing from $7.9 billion in 2022 to $15.7bn in 2025.
The Independent on Saturday