Fertility rates in poorer countries are falling faster than historically anticipated. This shortens the "demographic sweet spot"—the period with a large working-age population and few dependents that fuels economic growth. This trend makes the task of development harder, as nations may begin to age before they become wealthy.
Beyond traditional factors like girls' education, demographers hypothesize that smartphones are a powerful new driver of falling fertility. By exposing women in rural, poorer areas to the lifestyles and smaller family sizes of richer, urban peers, smartphones can rapidly diffuse new cultural aspirations and norms, accelerating demographic shifts.
While simple artificial flavors like orange soda are cheap to produce from a few molecules, the flavor of aged cheese is far more complex. The sheer number and variety of molecules required to artificially replicate these distinct flavors makes the process prohibitively expensive, preventing vegan cheese from achieving cost parity with its dairy counterpart.
The scientific challenge for vegan cheese is milk's casein protein, which creates a unique network that binds fat and water, yielding cheese's signature melt and stretch. Plant proteins are structured entirely differently and cannot replicate this function. As a result, alternatives rely on less effective bases like oil and starch, which fail to mimic the texture and flavor complexity.
India’s total fertility rate has fallen to 1.9, below the replacement level of 2.1. Some industrialized states like Tamil Nadu have a rate of 1.3, identical to Finland's. This rapid demographic shift creates a "whiplash" for a nation long focused on curbing a population explosion, forcing a pivot towards managing an aging population while still relatively poor.
The market timing for ambitious food tech was poor. The venture capital boom that lifted companies like Beyond Meat and Oatly cooled just as innovators like Climax Foods were tackling the difficult, expensive science of creating a zero-compromise vegan cheese. The market shift squeezed funding before a breakthrough could be achieved, leaving the product category waiting for its "Oatly moment."