Day by day, evidence of the growing economic power of vegetarian food-seeking consumers continues to mount, telling us that “veg” is here to stay. What’s the evidence of this growing economic force, you ask? A quick scan of recent headlines gives the lowdown on the growth of “vegenomics.”

Getting your foot in the door can be the hardest part of attracting new customers, particularly with once-upon-a-time niche items like vegetarian foods. However, with new business models sprouting up each day, more and more options are becoming available to get the word out.

According to research from Mambo Sprouts Marketing, functional foods — items that provide additional health-promoting or disease-preventing attributes beyond their basic nutritional properties — are making a big splash with consumers and offer another way for manufacturers to differentiate their products.

No matter where you stand on meat analogues, it’s been hard to miss the latest news that scientists at the University of Missouri have come up with a soy-based product that very closely imitates chicken flesh. This latest food breakthrough is featured in the upcoming issue of Time Magazine, which touts that this is the “first soy product that not only can be flavored to taste like chicken but also breaks apart in your mouth the way chicken does: not too soft, not too hard, but with that ineffable chew of real flesh.”

A newly published survey of nearly 6,000 vegetarians from the United Kingdom estimates that vegetarians make up about 6% of the adult U.K. population. Moreover, “lapsed vegetarians” (those who tried the diet and moved away) make up about one-tenth of the U.K. population.