[odyssey7]

Animal protein seems to be good for wellbeing, and there's a lot of overlap between veganism, wellness awareness, and alternative food choices.

Given that and the already-existing ability to create collagen/gelatin in a lab that's suitable for vegans, I've always wondered why nobody has managed to get it to market as a food.

There's already a growing group of wellness-focused people who don't want typical non-gelatin jelling ingredients like carrageenan and various gums in their foods; these provide only the jelling property and none of the nutrition of actual gelatin, and they are associated with inflammation.

Edit: Maybe all of the funding is going toward grail projects like synthetic beef patties that have an element of technical novelty, rather than the comparatively boring process of creating collagen at scale and getting FDA approval?

[dkarl]

IIRC from back when I was a vegan, and assuming what I heard was correct at the time, there was a single, very popular foreign supplier of "vegan" gelatin that was eventually exposed as a fraud. The gelatin they were selling was of animal origin. There were no competing products. Any new product will have to overcome the residual mistrust from that incident.

Found a source for the story that matches my recollection: https://aaww.org/the-vegan-marshmallow/

[jfim]

> Given that and the already-existing ability to create collagen/gelatin in a lab that's suitable for vegans, I've always wondered why nobody has managed to get it to market as a food.

Outside of some pastry applications (eg. mirror cake glazing), it's pretty much only used for Jell-O and aspic, neither of which are particularly trendy at the moment.

There's gelatin and collagen in soups as part of making broth, but it's not really something that people see as an ingredient.

[odyssey7]

Ah, you may not be aware of this. Collagen supplements are trendy with the wellness crowd as a protein powder, and bone broth is too under closely related reasoning. People who buy these things are thinking, "I want my skin and tissues to be healthier, so I'm going to buy collagen or bone water that is full of it."

This study seems like it bolsters the reasoning. The market for both of these options is currently closed off to vegans.

[ben_w]

When I was last in the USA, I was very surprised to discover all the yoghurt in the store I went to contained gelatin.

[jdminhbg]

This is a consequence of the low-fat craze that peaked in the 90s but still exists. When you remove fat from yogurt, you need to add sugar and gelatin back in so it has flavor and texture.

That said, you should be able to find plenty of real yogurt in the US now.

[yawnr]

Huge demand for collagen powder as a beverage additive lately though. Could definitely be a real opportunity.

[bobby_bob]

For example, Nestlé purchased "Vital Proteins" last year and are making their collagen products to their Nestlé Health Science portfolio.

https://www.fooddive.com/news/nestle-to-acquire-majority-sta...