The Belgian brand GreenWay just released new products in the Belgian supermarkets. 3 of them are from the collection “Plant-based for meat lovers” : it’s burgers, sausage and minced meat. GreenWay has the objective to seduce more and more people to follow a vegan diet by offering 100% plant-based products with the texture, taste and look-a-like of regular meat products.
What is GreenWay?
GreenWay started in 1996 after the founder (Paul Florizoone) went on a trip to India and became sick due to rotten meat. So he decided to cut out meat from his diet and discovered many new flavors. Back in Belgium, he wanted to share his passion for the vegetarian cuisine with the Belgian people and opened a restaurant in Ghent, the first GreenWay restaurant. As from the first day, it was a big success.
GreenWay was the first in Belgium to offer the “Beyond Meat Burgers” and they started the search to make their own variant. And so they started to create “fake meat”: texture, look et taste almost like meat. And this is how GreenWay arrived with the “Chipolata”, the “minced meat” and “Impossible Burger” in Belgium. You can find it at Delhaize.
What about the ingredients and nutrition?
As I mentioned before, I guess the aim of GreenWay is to attract meat lovers with a 100% plant-based product. So the goal should be to offer healthier alternatives to that products. For that, I looked closer to the ingredients and nutrition.
For this post, I will focus on one product: The Minced Meat. This ‘meat’ contains 15g of fat, almost 2g less than a classic minced meat (beef and pork). The product also contains 3g of protein, a difference of 3g with a meat product (not bad for plants).
Of course it’s not by switching to a vegan diet with product like this on a daily basis that you will be able to achieve a more healthier lifestyle or cancel your cholesterol. The plant based meats remain an industrial processed product and from a nutrition perspective, it still contains many things that we should reduce and/or avoid. But they are really helpful when you want to go on a plant-based diet and/or also when you’ve got guests at home who are not always vegan or like the idea of plant based food… You can impress them with some of the quality vegan products.
My opinion
To try it out, I prepared it basically. I used onion, garlic, a touch of olive oil, salt and pepper. This is before adding the tomato sauce, kidney beans and the Chili spices to make an Express Chili Sin Carne.
About the texture, for me it is really close to how I remember a classic minced meat. And the add on is, that it’s even possible to use it to make balls and burgers so you can use it in a lot of (non-vegan) recipes.
As for the taste, it is light and subtil. Even though it might still be missing something for the real meat lovers, for a vegan like me who wants to cook recipes that I had before from time to time, it’s perfect.
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