Gold&Green’s Pulled Oats are a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to meat as the combination of oats and beans makes for a fully vegan protein source.
Gold&Green produces their Pulled Oat products from oats and beans, only adding natural ingredients such as spices and oil to create the different flavour varieties. After a trial and error of trying to figure out the best way to use oats as a meat substitute, Maija and Reetta, the founders of the company, decided to mix in fava beans and yellow peas and became very happy with the result both in terms of flavour and nutrition. The combination of oats and beans contained more protein than chicken and offered all nine essential amino acids in addition to being high in fiber and iron and low in fat.
The company now offers a product range of seven different oat-based products, produced with locally-grown, Nordic oats. Because of the lack of beans and peas grown in the Nordic countries, some of it is currently imported from Central Europe but the company aspires to grow the beans and peas locally in the future as well. When it comes to materials, Gold&Green uses recycled water bottles and industrial waste for their product packaging.
Why you should care
According to the World Resource Institute, meat and animal-based food is a larger emitter of greenhouse gasses in addition to being more resource intensive when it comes to land and water usage than plant-based foods. Beef uses on average twenty times more water than cereals, and is one of the driving factors of deforestation.
How the Global Goals are addressed
Clean Water and Sanitation
Replacing meat with plant-based alternatives such as Pulled Oats can help to reduce water demand, helping to reduce water stress levels.
Climate Action
The carbon footprint of oats is considerably lower than any available meat, so transitioning from meat to plant-based alternatives can help to reduce emissions.
Life on Land
Livestock is one of the major causes of deforestation: directly for grazing space; and indirectly for growing feed crops. Plant-based protein sources can be far less land intensive than the animal alternatives.