Economic advantages of using vegetable protein products in Scandinavia

Abstract Sweden is a small country with different habits and traditions compared to the rest of Europe and even to the rest of Scandinavia. Numerous special conditions important for the economics of using vegetable protein are reviewed. Sweden is outside the EEC and has a protectionist agriculture policy. The food standards are rather special. Since 1973 government subsidies have been made for some important base foods like milk, cheese, meat and processed meat products. This has meant an increasing per capita consumption for these products as well as increasing problems of selling protein for substitution of meat or milk protein. A hesitancy to use vegetable proteins is due to, among other things, bad marketing and inferior products in the beginning of the 1970s. By tradition recombined meat products contain a lot of dry ingredients as, for instance, potato starch and rusks. The water content is high and the meat and fat contents are rather low. The process economy of using soy protein isolate lies very much in the possibility of better yield control. According to a Delfi Study, the future will bring an increasing usage of vegetable proteins in Sweden, While the total protein consumption, however, will not increase.