By Erik Marcus
Vegan chicken is easy to find and delicious. Natural foods companies are churning out an increasing variety of sensational vegan chicken products.
Why Choose Plant-Based Chicken?
For a number of reasons, it makes sense enormous sense to seek out alternatives to chicken. The United States chicken industry kills more than eight billion birds every year. The vast majority of these chickens endure terrible conditions. From birth through slaughter, most birds never spend a moment outdoors.
Thanks to decades of selective breeding, today’s birds grow several times faster than birds from just fifty years ago. This rapid growth dramatically increases health problems and deformities, and many birds have trouble walking. Producers slaughter most chickens at only six weeks of age—well before they’ve finished growing. If allowed to live longer, “flip over syndrome” and other health problems would drive mortality rates to unprofitable levels.
Since they are such small animals, each bird yields a tiny amount of meat. You’d have to kill more than 200 chickens in order to produce the same amount of meat that you’d get from one cow.
What Are the Most Popular Vegan Chicken Brands?
Luckily, it’s never been easier to remove chicken from your diet. Several vegan chicken products are convincing enough to fool even trained chefs. Check out these excellent brands:
- Abbot’s Butcher: Slow Roasted Chick’n
- Alpha Foods: Chick’n Patties and Nuggets
- Beyond Meat: Tenders, Nuggets, & Popcorn style
- Daring: Six Varieties
- Gardein: Chick’n Wings, Filets, Tenders, Nuggets, Sliders, Strips, & Scallopini
- Impossible: Chicken Nuggets Made from Plants and Wild Nuggies
- LightLife: Plant-Based Chicken (five varieties)
- Like Meat: Like Chick’n (six varieties)
- NotCo: NotChicken Patties
- Rebellyous Foods: Nuggets, Tenders, and Patties
- Smarter Meat Foods: Premium Vegan Ground Chicken
- Sweet Earth: Shreds, Strips, Korean, & Chipotle
- Tofurky: Plant-Based Chick’n (four varieties)
If you’re excited by the above list, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. More and better vegan chicken products are on the way.
