Entertaining rebranding

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Food manufacturers are of course continually trying to ‘re-invent’ their products to appeal to an up-to-date consumer, depending on the latest fashion. Whether that’s capitalising on their credentials in terms of high fibre, low fat, reduced sugar, low salt or whatever (depending on latest health advice and consumer interest) or trying to make it sound as though their products are produced in cottage industries or family farms by coming up with appealing-sounding brand names such as various supermarkets’ own-brand labels of ‘Redmere farm’ or ‘Rowan hill’. One of my favourites is labelling vegetables as ‘farm-grown’ - well where else would they come from?? The latest craze/fad/fashion is a ‘plant-based diet’, which in its most complete form is of course veganism. This is being promoted as a good thing to do to reduce the impact of meat production on climate change, as well as allegedly being healthy. It’s got to the point where even vegetables are now labelled as ‘plant-based’. Which makes you wonder what people thought they were before! But anyway this particular re-brand made me smile. Quorn is produced from a type of fungus (they don’t tell you exactly what, which is rather disturbing, only that it is ‘mycoprotein’) but it makes a useful meat substitute if you are cooking for a vegetarian/vegan or just want to cut down on your consumption of actual meat. My partner is quite keen and we sometimes use the pieces instead of diced chicken and the mince added to beef mince. These used to be labelled as ‘Quorn chunks’ but when I bought some the other day I noticed that the same items have now been rebranded as ‘Vegan pieces’. I guess they want to appeal to all the trendy young consumers and to people who don’t realise that Quorn is a vegan product (not sure if you can really call it ‘plant-based’ because is fungal mycelium really a plant?) But the question is - are pieces of vegans, vegan? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.