Like the ad pictured above says, you can now eat “crab-free crab.”  We live in amazing times.

Faux fish, or plant-based seafood, is becoming more popular with consumers and even more popular as an investment destination for many venture capital funds.

If you think this is too far out, have a look at the following bullet points and the chart below, based on data from the Good Food Institute, an international nonprofit promoting alternative proteins, as reported by Bloomberg:

• U.S. sales of plant-based seafood grew 23%, to $12 million, in 2020.
• VC investment in U.S. plant-based seafood hit $70 million in the first half of 2021 (that’s as much investment as in all of 2019 and 2020 combined

Mimic Seafood.  This Madrid-based startup’s Tunato product Is made from a specialty tomato variety grown in southern Spain that resembles sliced sushi-grade tuna. It’s a higher end example of food innovations in the booming plant-based protein market replicating seafood.

Gathered Foods.  At the other end of the taste spectrum is Gathered Foods, the maker of Good Catch, which is rolling out faux fish fillets and crab-free crab cakes in select Long John Silvers restaurants in California and Georgia.  Ok, not to be too harsh on Good Catch’s palate, they are also working upscale with Whole Foods to roll out their tasty fake treats in their stores.

Good Catch's products are made with a blend of peas, chickpeas, lentils, soy, fava beans and navy beans.  That’s a lot of beans.

It’s an open question whether consumers will actually bite.  But it’s definitely an improvement over something like, say Subway’s recent defense of the authenticity of its tuna sandwich which many people think is fake, and not in a good way.  CEO John Chidsey had to defend it as being 100% real tuna in a recent interview.

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