Bel Brands gets into animal-free cheese with Perfect Day partnership
Bel Group may be 150 years old, but the French cheese giant is showing once again that it’s not stuck in the past.
Bel is the first cheesemaker to use Perfect Day’s animal-free dairy proteins in a product, launching Nurishh Incredible Dairy cream cheese spread on Jan. 1, 2023.
The company also is launching a plant-based version of its iconic The Laughing Cow cheese wedges at Whole Foods stores nationwide, which is the final piece of Bel’s commitment to launch a plant-based version of every one of its well-known cheese brands.
Florian Decaux, plant-based acceleration director for Bel Brands USA, said that the company’s innovative spirit is part and parcel of its “For All, For Good” corporate identity. Bel works to create the kinds of products that serve its consumers needs — in terms of taste, ingredients and sustainability. And to get there, he said, Bel partners with innovators such as Perfect Day.
“We believe that together we can really leverage innovative technology to develop a first-of-its-kind product that can deliver — and even exceed [traditional cheeses] — because it’s what we always do at Bel: [Shift] the consumer expectation of what alternative dairy and dairy-alternative cheese can be,” Decaux said.
Nurishh Incredible Dairy Spread is the first product with dairy under the Nurishh brand, which is devoted to plant-based options. But because the product uses Perfect Day’s whey proteins, which are created through precision fermentation and not by animals, it is more sustainable than traditional dairy cheese. The product is also lactose-free.
Decaux said Bel chose to make a cream cheese with Perfect Day’s proteins because whey performs best in spreadable applications. Nurishh Incredible Dairy has a texture and taste like traditional cream cheese, and Decaux said that consumers had been looking for animal-free options.
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