糖心视频

鈥淪orry! There鈥檚 an egg shortage and we are not immune,鈥� said a sign in my local . It was placed inside the refrigerator that once held organic eggs, large eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs. It was empty.

An outbreak of avian influenza (or 鈥渂ird flu,鈥� as you might have heard it be called) , leading to a rapid depopulation of hens who could lay eggs and the rising cost of your favorite breakfast.

But you know what can鈥檛 get avian influenza? Plant-based eggs.

Cracking the code on plant-based eggs

Vegan eggs have come a long way. In 2011, startup received its first $2 million in funding for what became its flagship egg replacement product made of mung bean protein. Just Egg, as the product is called, cooks up similarly to fluffy, diner-style scrambled eggs and the company flocked to a billion-dollar valuation.

Since then, several other startups have hatched plans to bring a variety of plant-based eggs to the market. There are hard-boiled egg lookalikes, courtesy of Switzerland-based and Texas-based . Singapore-based unveiled a vegan 鈥渞aw egg鈥� 鈥� a viscous 鈥測olk鈥� suspended in a watery pool of 鈥渨hite鈥� that cooks up like a fried egg.

But there鈥檚 a pecking order in the plant-based food market, and eggs are at the bottom. There are barely a dozen startups creating egg substitutes, according to Crunchbase data. At its peak in 2021, funding to the sector was a mere $208.7 million. For comparison, investors spent more than $2 billion on the meat substitute industry that same year.

And deal counts have naturally increased.

Will plant-based eggs poach the market? Probably not. Plant-based eggs, like most plant-based food, are suffering from the same supply chain and cost problems that currently plague the chicken egg industry.

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