Dairy alternative brand Rebel Kitchen has launched three milk alternatives in the UK, all made from plant-based ingredients and available in skimmed, semi-skimmed and whole milk varieties.
Rebel Kitchen said the new Mylk line replicates the ‘great flavour’ of milk while still eliminating lactose, with a growing number of consumers cutting dairy out of their diets either for medical reasons or down to lifestyle choice. Organic coconut cream replicates the richness of cow’s milk, brown rice mirrors the natural sweetness, and nutritional yeast adds the ‘grassy notes’ traditionally associated with dairy.
The new range joins Rebel Kitchen’s range of free-from ‘mylk drinks’, as well as its Unoco bottled coconut water.
Rebel Kitchen commercial director Adam Thompson said: “We believe this is the next step in innovation for the free-from milk category. Never before have consumers been able to shop this category like the traditional dairy aisle. We see Mylk as a contender for dairy sales in the same way that meat-free alternative brands now make most of their sales from a non-vegetarian customer base. This is a fast-growing category with plenty of potential: in 2002 milk alternatives sales were only 5% of those of cow milk’s – by 2021 they will be 20%.”
Rebel Kitchen claimed that, by allowing consumers to shop the Mylk range as they would with traditional dairy – including whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed versions for the various different fat contents – the innovation would bring more shoppers into the dairy alternatives category.
The level of fat is derived from the amount of coconut cream in each variety, with 8% in the skimmed version to 25% in the whole milk.
Co-founder and managing director Tamara Arbib said: “The definition of a rebel is to ‘question the norm’ and that is exactly what we’re doing with our launch of Mylk. We’ve all grown up shopping the milk aisle based on our preference for the red, green or blue tops. Then when entering the plant-based arena, you have to make a decision from almond through to soya but none of them are really delivering on taste – until now.”
But with a recommended retail price of £2.99, the brand will need to work hard to recruit and retain consumers who are interested in replacing dairy for lifestyle reasons. The equivalent amount of cow’s milk usually sets British consumers back less than a quarter of the price of Rebel Kitchen Mylk.
In April, the UK’s National Osteoporosis Society warned that eliminating dairy from the diet posed a serious threat to bone health in later life, and could leave consumers more vulnerable to breaks and fractures.
The charity found that nearly a fifth of consumers aged under 25 had sought to reduce the amount of dairy in their diets. It adds to earlier research from the Food Standards Agency, which discovered almost a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds claimed to be intolerant to cow’s milk and dairy products, despite less than a quarter of those having had their intolerance diagnosed by a doctor.
The new line will be available from supermarket Waitrose this month, packed in 1 litre cartons.
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