Making Faux Meat Taste Real Boosts Profits for Flavor Makers

In a sun-filled room of Givaudan SA’s Innovation Center, a four-story brick building in the gentle hills east of Zurich, dozens of white containers are stacked in neat rows. While they have labels such as “bacon,” “fried fat,” and “pork lard,” what’s inside is made of extracts of foods such as herbs, garlic, and onion, or enzymes and amino acids from cooking—and not a molecule of animal protein.

The flavorings are aimed at the growing business of meat alternatives from newcomers such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods and at industry stalwarts like Nestlé, Perdue, Smithfield, ...