What are Biona Organic Seitan Pieces?

Having looked at the reviews for this product online, it is clear that Biona hasn’t quite mastered the art of seitan. When compared a similar product from one of the most popular European seitan brands, Wheaty, the formulation does differ somewhat. The Biona product has around 15% soya beans in their recipe whilst the Wheaty recipe has no soya beans, more seitan and a small amount of guar gum. In the Biona product there is substantially less seitan in it which means there are less disulphide bonds which help in the formation of the crosslinked, gliadin trapping matrix which is needed to produce a more acceptable mouth feel. Products like this are often seen as specialist and as such are either kept to the more upmarket retailing spaces or in the more health food centred arena. Taking the same example, the Biona Organics Seitan Pieces, 350g which retails at £3.29 on Ocado (94p/100g) we can see that the price point is somewhat disjointed when looking at the price of wheat. As of today, 20th February 2018, the price of wheat was just slightly over £148 per tonne. This indicates that Biona have substantially marked up the price of the product and are confident that they know their customer base extremely well. It helps to highlight that their customer base has a higher disposable income and are very brand loyal, so much so that companies like these can charge a hefty premium for their otherwise fairly cheap products. As seitan is a fairly new meat substitute that can often not turn out as desired one could argue that innovation must continue in order to ensure a more homogenous and quality product is delivered each and every time and at a more accessible price point.