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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Michael Wolf

Samsung Debuts the 6th Generation of its Family Hub Smart Fridge

Looking for a new smart fridge? Samsung’s got you covered and this time they’re bring Alexa with them.

Today the company announced the sixth generation of their flagship smart fridge, the Family Hub. The first of the big changes with the latest version of Family Hub is the addition of Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa. Samsung, which has long pushed its own voice assistant in Bixby, looks like it’s finally recognizing that the dust has settled in the voice assistant battle and Alexa is the dominant platform. That said, it looks like the company hasn’t given up on Bixby just yet, as it is giving users the choice of using Alexa or Bixby.

The other addition of what they are calling the SmartThings Cooking service. Many of the meal-planning features in the cooking service had been made available in the previous versions of the Family Hub, but in January at virtual CES the company had announced an expanded set of capabilities such as guided cooking and the ability to send cooking instructions to synced cooking appliances like the company’s Slide-In range. With the new upgrade, users of the Family Hub will be able to access all of these features from the Family Hub screen. The SmartThings Cooking service is powered by the Whisk platform.

If you’re a chicken lover, we’ve also got some good news in the Family Hub’s newest food shopping partner: Perdue Farms. In the announcement Samsung said they have added the chicken and premium meats-by-mail provider to their integration partner list.

You got to give Samsung credit: Despite early reviews mocking what some called a Frankenfridge, the company has stuck to its vision of building a smart fridge platform and updating it every year. Six generations in, one would assume that the Family Hub line of fridges is selling well, but the reality is we don’t know since the company doesn’t make sales numbers available. We can make some assumptions, though, based on looking at the number of reviews for SKUs like the 27″ French door edition, which is garnering enough reviews at Home Depot (1664 reviews) and Best Buy (433 reviews) that make it look as if it’s selling as well as other Samsung top models.

Owners of previous generation Family Hubs may be wondering if they will be able to get in on the Alexa and upgraded Smart Things cooking capabilities. According to a Samsung spokesperson, any Samsung Family Hub with generation 2 software or higher can be upgraded to generation 6 software.

The announcement didn’t say when the models will be in stores, but if the past rollouts of the Smart Hub are any indication, I’d expect them in stores this fall.

GE Debuts Range Oven With Connected Pizza Oven Built In

Last Fourth of July, my neighbor invited me over to show off his new outdoor portable pizza oven. I was both impressed and a little bit envious as he dished up scorching hot, leopard-spotted pies in just minutes.

It wasn’t long before I wondered how I could get my own pizza oven, only without going outside to cook. I could go the Breville counterop route, but I wanted something built-in so I could pretend I was like like our friends over at Modernist Cuisine.

Turns out unless I wanted to spend ten thousand bucks or more, there weren’t any options. Until now. That’s because GE has debuted a new range that has an integrated pizza oven built into the combo appliance for $3,499 called the Trattoria Pizza Oven.

The oven, which features a full pizza oven inside a dual oven range appliance, was the brain child of long-time Louisville-based GE engineer Eric Johnson. Johnson had seen how GE had created a purpose-built high-temperature pizza oven for its high-end Monogram brand and wondered if a pizza oven could be built into a conventional oven. He created a prototype and showed it to leaders who liked what they saw. As a result, the product was the first to be commercialized through the GE’s Profile Innovation Studio, which the company launched in February of this year.

While the Monogram pizza oven is a high-tech wonder in itself in with its ability to cook pizza in just a couple minutes without any extra ventilation, Johnson had to work within the confines of what could be done within a more traditional range. While the new pizza oven uses traditional range heating elements (which reaches 550 degrees, compared to the 1300 degrees in the Monogram oven), it has some extra features built in to cook a nice pie including an aluminum alloy cooking surface that heats quickly and maintains temperature, a built-in precision surface temperature sensor to monitor and adjust temperature, and a broil amplifier to distribute heating throughout the cooking chamber.

GE positions the Profile Innovation studio as a place where new product concepts are launched with an eye towards early adopters. Unlike FirstBuild, which is also located in Louisville, the Profile Innovation Studio seems less about crowdsourced product prototype concepts and more focused on building new appliance concepts for GE that could be commercialized fairly rapidly in fairly small production runs.

You can watch the hero reel intro for in GE’s video below.

GE Profile Trattoria Pizza Oven

FirstBuild is Making a Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber for the Home

One of my wife and I’s inside jokes is the reason we fell in love was our mutual dislike of mushrooms. When we first met, we both thought most forms of fungi that crossed our plates were gross. A few gray hairs (on my head, not hers) and years of marriage later, we can both be adult enough nowadays to eat the occasional mushroom when offered, even if we both would still prefer to hold the mold.

That said, I have come to marvel at the power of fungi in recent years and am all for people (except me) eating more mushrooms, so I was excited when I saw that FirstBuild is working on taking its mushroom fruiting chamber from prototype to product.

You can catch a glimpse of the new Mella Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber in action below in the video from FirstBuild.

Introducing Mella: The Smart Mushroom Fruiting Chamber

With sensors for humidity and temperature monitoring, the ability to monitor the mushrooms via a web dashboard and email alerts, closed-loop humidity control with a small refillable water basin, and air filter with duel inlet fans, the appliance has all the bells and whistles to help the aspiring fungiculurist create a high-tech fruiting chamber on their kitchen countertop. Plus it looks cool. The fruiting chamber is surrounded by glass, which lets you check out the your growing fungi.

So why is FirstBuild creating a mushroom growing appliance? The main reason is probably because weird and interesting new appliance concepts are largely the reason the organization exists. FirstBuild, which became somewhat well known with product concepts like its precision cooking Paragon cooktop and Opal ice maker, essentially acts as a product innovation engine for GE Appliances. The group crowdsources new ideas, builds prototypes, and occasionally -- like with the Opal -- will take the prototypes to full production.

FirstBuild has a microfactory that can do small batch manufacturing, so oftentimes the group will make small one-off manufacturing runs of products like the Forge clear ice system. Other times, the product never gets out of prototype, like it looks like happened with the Arden in-home smoker (bummer) or the Saucemaster 3000.

The move into a grow system for mushrooms isn’t the only sign that FirstBuild has become home-grow curious since earlier this year the company prototyped a smart garden system. It’s also possibly a sign the innovation group is following its parent company’s lead in exploring home grow systems as part of a broader home appliance offering.

If you want to get in on the mushrooom farming fun, stay tuned. FirstBuild says the campaign (which we presume will be on Indieogo) is coming soon.

Schools Around The World Are Racing to Create Future Food Curriculum. Here’s Why it Matters.

Anyone familiar with the story of Silicon Valley knows just how fundamental the university system was in creating the center of the technology universe.

Colleges and universities have long served as launch pads for the world’s biggest tech companies, from the education of integrated circuit founding fathers William Shockely and Robert Noyce (at Caltech and MIT, respectively) to the creation of Yahoo! and Google by graduate students at Stanford, to Mark Zuckerberg hacking away at Hot or Not in his dorm at Harvard.

And now that food companies big and small are embracing new technologies to create alternative forms of meat, universities around the world are racing to create curriculum and innovation centers to create the food workforce of the future.

In the U.S., future food activity is popping up at schools from coast to coast, with notable efforts that include UC Berkeley’s Alt Meat Lab, a cellular agriculture course at Tufts, CRISPR courses at Harvard and ReThink Meat courses at Stanford.

But it’s not just American schools. Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University has created an alternative protein course called “Future Foods—Introduction to Advanced Meat Alternatives.” In Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem launched a pilot course titled “Cultivated Meat and Plant-Based Meat.” An introduction to cell-based meat is now available for postgraduates at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil.

So what’s driving all this interest in future food in the halls of academia across the globe? According to long-time future food pioneer and lecturer Ron Shigeta, one of the main forces is advocacy organizations.

Groups like the Good Food Institute “are leveraging money from ethical vegans and others interested in animal welfare,” Shigeta told me. “They are offering incentives to schools and programs, as well as driving the economic incentives by helping grants come through. This is happening in Davis, CA, Singapore and elsewhere.”

Amy Huang, who heads up the Good Food Institute’s efforts to encourage the academic community to embrace alternative protein education, says the reason we’re now seeing alt-protein education flourish around the world is simple: a fast-growing industry needs good people.

“People are the very backbone of our quest to reimagine the protein supply,” said Huang via email. “So, it’s essential that we equip students and industry professionals with a deeper, stronger foundation of specialized knowledge they’ll need to join the alternative protein sector.”

According to Huang, higher education institutions want to prepare students for what promises to be a potentially massive shift by helping them understand the enabling technologies and systems underpinning these changes.

“These courses are being driven by forward-thinking faculty and university administrators who are challenging the educational status quo and asking themselves: What emerging technologies have true disruptive potential? How can we equip our students with the skills they need to be leaders in these fields?”

And it almost goes without saying that by preparing their students with programs about disruptive new alt-meat technologies, these institutions are setting a foundation for their own future success.

“By prioritizing innovation over convention, they’re positioning their institutions as the centers of gravity for students seeking a groundbreaking education,” said Huang. “And they’re also establishing their regions as potential hubs for the explosion of entrepreneurial activity and economic growth that the alternative protein industry will bring.”

And it’s not just the schools who are driving change. Students, many of whom have value systems that align with a move away from industrial animal agriculture, are asking for classes and sometimes even creating their own.

This is something both Shigeta and Huang agree on.

Shigeta noted that, “Millennial and GenZ students (sometimes vegan) are much more focused on climate change, looking for socially positive ways to make changes they believe in. With the students advocating for movement from within, the doors are opening for sure.”

Huang believes the students themselves are perhaps “are perhaps the most powerful changemakers within academic ecosystems.” She adds that, “We see this playing out through The Alt Protein Project, like at Wageningen, Stanford, and UNC Chapel Hill, with students advocating for and successfully launching courses at universities around the world.”

The Alt Protein Project is the Good Food Institute’s own program to develop and encourage alt-protein education within the world of academia. The program has five objectives: building courses and majors, expanding open-access research, stimulating entrepreneurship, building awareness, and creating an inclusive and interdisciplinary community.

One example of this student-led change helped by GFI is at the Netherland’s Wageningen University. A group of five students wondered why there wasn’t a class in protein transition. To create one, the group, under the name of The Wageningen Alternative Protein Project, worked with the Good Food Institute on a student-led effort to build up both a community interested in this area as well as a group of teachers willing to lead such courses. The effort paid off, as teachers within the food science department have indicated they plan to teach the course the students proposed next year.

All this progress is exciting, but in many ways it’s still early days. Wageningen, after all, is widely recognized as the world’s top university in agriculture education and the school is just now getting around to creating a class on protein transition. UC Davis, one of the US’s leading ag research universities, created its Cultivated Meat Consortium in 2019 is just now launching the second phase of its formal cultured meat programming and research.

But according to Huang, what is early today in terms of future food education could become commonplace in a few years as colleges look to build a workforce and create a foundation for the world of alt protein.

“In five years, we hope to see alternative protein courses at every major university around the world,” said Huang. “The educators and institutions that begin cultivating these kinds of educational pathways today will hold the attention of alternative protein startups and companies as they expand their teams, build infrastructure, and establish industrial centers.”

Let’s hope she’s right. Just as the rise in computer science curriculum has helped fuel growth and an explosion in huge societal shifts (both good and bad) over the past century, we’re gonna need some serious creativity to help us manage and expand our food systems over the next 100 years. The pandemic exposed our food supply chains’ fragility and opacity while also illustrating how our continued over-reliance on industrial animal agriculture is not sustainable.

In other words, we’re gonna need lots of smart people to help us feed 10 billion people, and much of that will start with an education system that creates a qualified future food workforce.

Editor Note: This post originally said the alt-protein transition efforts at Wageningen University were started by one student. This has been changed to reflect the efforts of all the students involved.

Food Tech Show: Talking Food as Medicine With Dr. Robert Graham

You get sick, you take a pill right?

Not according to Dr. Robert Graham. As a Harvard trained physician and a trained chef, Dr. Graham wants to get at the root cause of our illnesses through diet.

Ever since I met Dr. Graham in Japan at the Smart Kitchen Summit in 2019, I’ve watched him work with food companies and retailers to build scalable approaches to food as medicine and have realized he’s perhaps the industry’s leading advocate and voice for food as medicine.

Dr. Graham joined me on Clubhouse to talk about food as medicine where we discuss:

  • The current state fo food as medicine
  • How new approaches like DNA-driven medicine and microbiome testing fit within food as medicine
  • The role food brands and retailers play in food as medicine
  • And much more!

As always, you can find more Food Tech Show podcasts at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Food Tech Show: Talking Upcycling with ReGrained’s Daniel Kurzrock

As a young homebrewer, Daniel Kurzrock wanted to turn his passion for beer brewing into a business. He had started baking bread for his friends using the spent grains from the beer-making process, so he had a rough idea that maybe someday he could open something like a microbrewery-slash-bakery that would both brew beer and make upcycled food.

Kurzrock would eventually start an upcycled food business, only in a much different – and much bigger – way than he originally anticipated.

With one pound of grains for every six-pack of beer brewed, Kurzrock and his cofounder Jordan Schwarz realized that there were billions of pounds left behind or potential inputs for human consumable food. With this realization, soon ReGrained was born.

Almost a decade later, the company is partnering with some of the world’s biggest breweries and making products such as ice cream using a patented upcycling process.

Listen to Daniel and I talk about ReGrained’s journey and the growth of the upcycling industry in this podcast. As always, you can find more Food Tech Show’s at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

‘Store-Hailing’ Startup Robomart Launches Fleet of Mobile Mini-marts in West Hollywood

“Store-hailing” startup Robomart announced today that they are launching their first fleet of mobile mini-marts in West Hollywood, California.

The new store fleet is initially made up of two types: Pharmacy Robomart and Snacks Robomart. The mobile pharmacy version will sell items such as shampoo, batteries, condoms, and Ibuprofen, while the Snacks Robomart will feature chips, candy, sodas, and other snacks. Robomart is also developing a Grocery version that will include fresh fruits and vegetables and other refrigerated items. According to the release, the company says it also has plans “to expand its fleet to include the Pantry, Deli, and Café Robomarts in coming months.”

Robomart customers don’t shop on the app as with other delivery services. Instead, after hailing a Robomart with the app, customers select from the roughly 40-50 different products after the store arrives. Once the customer chooses the items they want, their total is calculated using RFID tags, their credit card is automatically charged, and a receipt is available via the app. The company is working with vehicle fleet provider Zeeba and Avery Dennison for its RFID tag technology.

How much does it cost to shop at a Robomart? Robomart charges a hailing fee of $2 per customer visit and says pricing for products is the same as “in-store” — which probably means typical 7-11 or other convenience store pricing. No tipping is required. All this seems reasonable but makes me wonder how the company will make enough money over time on $2 hailing fees and convenience store markups.

When Robomart launched at CES in 2018, the original pitch featured mobile mini-marts that were fully autonomous. Since then, the company has adjusted to today’s regulatory and technical reality and launched its first fleet to include human drivers. The driver, however, does not interact with the consumer.

And according to Robomart CEO and cofounder Ali Ahmed, the company still envisions a future that includes fully autonomous vehicles and has already built a prototype. “We built a driverless Robomart to showcase our vision of the future,” Ahmed told me. “We plan to add more driverless vehicles to our fleet in the coming years as regulation catches up.”

As part of the announcement, Robomart also said they are working with REEF to provide inventory management and restocking services. Spoon readers may know about REEF for the ghost kitchens they operate in their regional parking lot-centered logistic hubs. In addition, REEF’s Light Speed division will be the first merchant selling products through Robomart.

While Ahmed didn’t say where his company plans to go next, they hope to replicate the model they’ve built with REEF as their replenishment partner in new cities.

“We’re really excited about the partnership with Reef, ” Ahmed told me. “They have set up the station in our first operating zone and are managing supply, inventory, and restocking. We see ourselves replicating this model and playbook with Reef for every major city.”

Once Upon a Farm Acquires Baby Food Delivery Startup Raised Real

Once Upon a Farm has acquired Raised Real, a frozen baby food subscription by mail startup. With this purchase, Once Upon a Farm will add a frozen direct-to-consumer product line to its lineup. Deal terms were not disclosed.

From the release:

The purchase of Raised Real will expand Once Upon a Farm’s growing organic, refrigerated pouch portfolio to now include frozen meal options, making it even easier for parents to choose and prepare nutritious meals and snacks for babies and toddlers.

Once Upon a Farm, founded in 2017, has so far reached $30 million in revenue and is one of the leading brands in the organic and better-for-you baby food space. Earlier this year, company CEO John Foraker said the company was exploring direct-to-consumer because it’s where “much of the growth is coming from.”

Those explorations apparently led them to Raised Real.

In the same interview, Foraker said the company wasn’t looking at the frozen food aisle. Apparently that didn’t exclude frozen food delivered by mail, which is exactly what they are getting in Raised Real. Raised Real’s main products are flash-frozen plant-forward baby meals, which they sell in 12 or 24 allotments for an average price of about $5-6.

Longtime readers of The Spoon may recall Raised Real’s CEO and cofounder Santiago Merea was the founder of Orange Chef, a company that was sold in parts to Yummly (later itself bought by Whirlpool) and the Perfect Company. Merea’s shift to baby food was in large part driven by his interest in the category after he himself became a parent.

“I couldn’t wait for them to start eating,” Merea told me in in 2017. “But when I went to the grocery store all of the food was processed. I realized that all of these companies are speaking to the previous generations of parents. The current generation of parents doesn’t want processed food. They want fresh and organic.”

Merea’s background in kitchen hardware probably had a lot to do with the Raised Real’s initial product offering, which paired the company’s frozen food with a customized food blender that subscribers would get with a subscription commitment. The hardware eventually went away, probably to simplify the business model and because most parents already know how to use their own blenders.

Merea, who will be staying with Once Upon a Farm, sees the deal as helping bring Raised Real to a wider audience.

“John Foraker and his team at Once Upon a Farm are perfect to accelerate our aspirations at retail and help us bring to life our ambitious vision,” said Merea in this week’s release. “Our products, combined, create a leading plant-rich portfolio platform for kids of all ages across fresh and frozen, online and offline. This is a big day in our journey in which we can all celebrate.”

Red to Green Podcast: How Cultured Meat is Ripe Terrain for Conspiracy Theories

Qanon. The Deep State. 5G microchip injections.

We live in a golden age of conspiracy theories. These circular reasoning belief systems once relegated to the fringes have entered the mainstream, fueled by social media, validated by politicians and celebrities and calcified by repetition and confirmation bias.

Food is no stranger to conspiracy theories. Whether it’s worries about GMOs being used to hurt our health, that KFC breeds mutant chickens or that there was once a great fondue cheese cartel (or wait, that one’s true), these food conspiracy theories are just as pernicious and persistent as those that plague politics.

And here’s the problem: we’re only getting started. As we move forward into the world where more and more of our calories are from impressive and hard to fathom technology, it’s safe to say we say we’ll likely see many more food-based conspiracy theories.

All of which is why found this conversation Red to Green’s Marina Schmidt had with Dr. Daniel Jolley, a professor from the UK who researches conspiracy theories and their impact, so fascinating. Schmidt and Jolley go deep on how future food, particularly cultured meat, is an area that is ripe for conspiracy theories. And, as discussed by Schmidt and Jack Bobo in the previous episode, this means that the companies behind this new food need to think seriously about preparing for a polarized world where they need to work hard to counter false beliefs about their product.

You can listen to the full conversation here, download it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or read the transcript of the conversation below.

Marina Schmidt

Yes, finally, conspiracy theories. What an interesting topic, while we do focus on the term conspiracies, the basic principles we talk about also apply to the questions. How do we convince skeptics? How do we engage in communication? How should we deal with issues like fake news that will arise? Once cultured meat gets the attention of mainstream media more and more. There hasn’t been much researched on, on conspiracy theories until recently. And professor Daniel jolly from whom you will hear today is one of the people leading this field.

He’s a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at  North Umbria university in the UK, his research focuses on the consequences of conspiracy theories and has been featured on BBC in the New York times, the guardian financial times, Huffington post, et cetera, et cetera. In 2020 to date, his media engagement has had an estimated reach of 1 billion people.

I haven’t seen the topic of cultured meat, conspiracies discussed anywhere else in such detail. So I’m excited for you to listen in. Let’s jump right in.   

Daniel, it’s really lovely to have you on red to green.

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Absolute pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

Marina Schmidt

You know, oftentimes people, when I talk to them about conspiracy theories in the field, some say, well, why would you care about what’s some weird people talk about in their niches, but then at the same time, it seems that conspiracy theories have become way more widespread. What would you respond to that?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

I think that it’s a good stereotype and a good mix of separation. And indeed that was the perception may 10, 15 years ago, where it was suggested that only a small number of people believed in conspiracies and they were on the fringes of society. They had no impact in essence, but actually polls have demonstrated that they are widespread.

In the UK, 60% of people believe at least one conspiracy. Similar findings have been found in America. So this is a significant body of people who are subscribing to the viewpoints, where they believe in that there’s peripheral groups that they’re doing something sinister.

And typically they’re believe something sinister to do with a large event or large issue. So it could be to do with climate change, could to do with vaccines and COVID to do with COVID 19. So that one group is conspiring against the other.

So in essence, what you find is that when people are drawn to these viewpoints, they can actually change how they act in the world. Because of course, if you believe that climate change is a hoax and it’s not happening. Why would you reduce your carbon footprint? If you believe that vaccines are dangerous because doctors or nurses cover up the dangers to make a profit, why would you vaccinate?

And particularly it’s very prominent right now with, of course the COVID-19 vaccine. Again, if you think it’s all a hoax or you think that so many, the sentence too is going on, you are less likely to want to vaccinate yourself.  But of course, the basis is not in truth. These things are not true. COVID-19 is happening.

Climate change is happening. Vaccines are safe. They will help us be COVID 19. These are things that are based in facts. If people for different reasons, going down the line of, ‘well they’re dangerous X, Y, and Z’… that could impact the smooth running of society. It could impact how me and you engage.

And of course, cultured meat is a new field. It is something that even me personally, I’m still learning about, but it has all of the key ingredients of conspiracy beliefs to flourish. And we can obviously get into that during this podcast, but it certainly, to me, looking from the outset, potential flourishing ground for these narratives to really develop.

Marina Schmidt

Yeah, definitely. And that’s exactly why I wanted to talk to you because that aligns with my beliefs about the field. I think it’s quite exciting that right now we are witnessing the emergence of a completely new product category. When I talked to some people from the field about it, I sometimes get the response ‘any press is good press.’

Do you think that’s true?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Hmm. So we know with conspiracy theories that once people are exposed to them, they can be very resistant to correction. And also they can be very influential, straight away. They can impact us without us realizing. I mean by that is research has shown that when you’re exposed to this, these narratives, it makes you think differently about that event, whilst it wouldn’t impact your behaviors immediately, of course, because you need to digest information, it takes a bit of a time for you to actually impact your behavior.

For example, you vaccinate, or whether you use that product, t it would initially make you more skeptical towards that product. It will change your opinion towards it. Arguably, a one-time exposure on a Twitter feed is probably going to have a minimal impact. It will probably  fade away.

But of course, prolonged exposure where you find yourselves, maybe in a Twitter algorithm or on the YouTube trending page where there’s different recommended videos, you may find yourself in essence, in a bit of a rabbit hole. Where you you’re then be recommended similar videos. That, of course, will then reaffirm that, that prior belief and suddenly your belief may indeed then become much more resistant to change.

And as we see with social media, interesting research recently highlighted that Amazon books also play along along with algorithms. Whereby if you were searching about cultured meat or the myths around that, I suspect there will be recommended books or articles that may be a bit more conspiratorial.

The caveat is it’s just not one post. It’s stuff over a period of time. It’s not just that you read one thing and suddenly you’re a changed person. That, of course, isn’t true. It’s that prolonged exposure that I think is more problematic.

Marina Schmidt

Yes. And also how it fits into all of the previous information that has been propagated. I mean, partially that’s actually an interesting point that was raised in our episode four with Jack Bobo. You’re saying that, by attacking the animal agriculture industry for being sinister, for having toxic ingredients in their meats or for not following regulation, eit undermines the trust in the food system. Ironically, which may over the long term hurt the cultured meat industry or the alternative protein space overall. So how would you see the cultured meat conspiracies fitting in with macro trends before that? For example, the overall distrust in the quality of food, et cetera?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

it’s a good question.  in essence, it’s all going back to that distrust of biomedical therapies, which of course is slightly different here, but of course it’s science-based and it’s science driven. I mean, know that people who believe in conspiracies favor the alternatives, they favor herbals, they favor organic foods herbal supplements.They pull back from vaccines.

In general, if you believe people that are involved in plots and schemes in general, in the world, you are likely to believe in multiple types of conspiracies. So typically someone who believes that the climate change isn’t happening are also susceptible to believe that vaccines are dangerous, that the Americans didn’t go to the moon, that potentially cultured meat.

Is actually some kind of conspiracy to kind of  change the world population. Or it’s dangerous, or that it’s made to make profits.

So  with the modified food. A poll a few years ago found that actually  12% of people believed  in the conspiracy that (GMOs) are being used to shrink the world population. Only 19% have actually heard of that conspiracy previously.

If you think of other kind of medical conspiracies, but for example, that governments are hiding the cure for cancer as a way to keep making profits. 63% of the sample had heard of that conspiracy, where 37% of those people believed in it. So just from that example  of the modified food, this area is not as widely heard of. People aren’t aware of these things occurring. And of course this isn’t even asking about culture of meat. So I suspect if we can kind of predict the future a couple of years where cultured meat is more in our mainstream.

So I’m thinking when it’s mentioned on the news more regularly, when it’s something that we can see and actually pick up in supermarkets, I think there’ll be much more of uptake with people being skeptical of that food because they believe in an essence of conspiracy beliefs.

Marina Schmidt

Yeah. In a previous interview, I think it was episode two of the season with Isha Datar, we mentioned this uptake curve. So you have the early adopters and then you have at getting into the mainstream and you have the laggards, et cetera. And it’s this bell shaped curve, somewhat of increasing adoption. And I’m wondering how you would see this, considering that once things reach the mainstream, there tends to be an uptake in negative press and criticism and fake news potentially. So how do you see this bell curve actually being shaped?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Well, when I think about  this area, I can see similarities with technology advancements. So thinking of 5G. 5G is a very topical thing to be talking about, and there are a whole range of misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories.

With COVID-19. there was an uptake in people believing that COVID was caused by 5G.  And then that then led to people trying to set a light to these 5G towers because they thought if they could stop the 5G towers, then that would stop COVID.

So for me, I’m seeing kind of similarities here with potentially the emergence of that technology. And I think potentially people listening now could learn from the communication strategies of people in the phone industry, from the governments trying to tackle misinformation with 5G that is still ongoing.

I think from my perspective, it was a very kind of similar journey with this that they (wireless carriers) thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. We’ll just put X and information to say what 5G is, what 4G is, what 3G is, and that will be fine. People will just be happy with that.

But of course it’s been demonstrated that that is just not true. That when people have these suspicions of the government of people in power, that they’re hesitant to engage in these new technologies.

Thinking back to, 1900’s where Spanish flu came, people thought it was due to the telephone. That it was a telephone that was causing this flu. So these kind of links with trying to understand the issues because events are always kind of comes from some kind of advancement, something that the government is potentially trying to roll out.

So I think with this. Potentially, it could be a very similar tactic being used in that people may think it will be taken on automatically when that actually might not be true. So for me, it’s thinking about what can we learn from the 5g roll out now?  I’ve seen so many great campaigns, for example, in Australia, where I think it was Vodafone were having in essence  misinformation campaigns to try and highlight 5G doesn’t cause COVID in essence. So potentially trying to prebunk people’s misperceptions about this meat and, in essence, trying to highlight the positives. If there are any criticisms, to try and tackle that to try and be up front with that, to try and highlight.  how this meat has, of course, has been developed, because of course that would be a question.

People wouldn’t go about people wonder is it safe? So I think by being able to work through and see good practice from other things that I’ve unfortunately had a very similar journey, I think will be really positive.

Marina Schmidt

Hm. Interesting. I feel that in our industry information is seen as the great balm to nervous minds. So when in doubt, just throw information on it or educate people. Once people understand the technology, once they understand the facts, then they obviously will like it. And once they try it.

In another interview of the season, we touched upon how GMOs actually got a bad one reputation by the companies over-communicating. The big safety measures they’re using. Publishing these long form papers, describing the technology and risk assessments and digital data. And that was again on the spectrum of over-communicating making people wonder, well, if you need to publish all that stuff, it seems to be quite dangerous.

So it’s, so counter-intuitive, it’s fascinating how irrational this is.  So where do we strike the balance between we need to be upfront with what we’re talking about, but also then if we talk too much ourselves about the potential dangers and risks, and also arguments against cultured meat, then we are drawing attention to these things?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Hmm. I think what you raised there is this, the science communication and how it really needs to be targeted to the particular audience where the average person is unlikely to sit through and read a 20 page risk assessment, because not only is that quite dry material for any, most of every everyone, it’s not going to be motivated to read that instead, it needs to be a much more accessible.

Fun, arguably humorous way to get them engaged in the content. So the example I mentioned earlier  with 5g and Vodafone. These adverts are shorter, they’re engaging. They were fun to watch, but they were also informative they’re in essence, using humor as a way to educate.

So people were therefore engaged to learn about this topic. Of course, if people wanted to learn more about the Pacifics that can exist as well. In essence, potentially  the campaign is to have multiple passage to it where you’ve got the more public facing, engaging content that in essence can.

Demystify some of the, fake news based around  that particular area. And also then more the scientific where they can go through the risk assessments or indeed whatever it is.

The majority of people would not engage in conspiratorial thinking about this particular issue. It would just be a small arguably minority who are more susceptible to engage in this type of thinking. So it’s trying to work out how detrimental could that be?  the NHS in the UK.

Put a campaign about vaccines AIDS, but in the comments on their Facebook or on their Twitter feed are then conspiratorial. So you’ve then got, you’ve even got the concern of, well, do we, as the organization or the charity or whatever it is, respond to those comments or do we ignore those comments?

Problem with responding is you’re then given. Light to these issues and you’re debating,  that particular point. If you ignore other people are then reading the comments and they’re seeing that those are being ignored. So does that mean that it’s true or false? So I think potentially how the campaigns that Harvest had the strategy comes deals with those types of situations is something that we need to kind of understand and.

I know from some people that I spoke to, they, when they have those comments, they try and respond privately to those people and to try and offer Cantu arguments and try and discuss with them that by that particular issue to do the vaccine or whatever it is.

But of course that’s problematic in its own, right as well.  And then in essence has been aware of that coming and thinking of ways to try and catch argumented.

So, yeah. Do you go ahead and you pre booked some of these myths and then potentially people who are then commenting, you know, with conspiratory narratives, you then can link to videos linked to infographics that explain  what has happened or indeed under the root. 

Marina Schmidt

In one of the other interviews of you, I remember you were talking about the issue that conspiracy theories. An overall negative controversial press has a POL it’s attention driving, and to be able to contract that we need to possibly create storylines and narratives that are even more engaging, even more interesting.

And. I mean we do focus on conspiracy theories, but when we talk about that, I always also think about just overall our media landscape and how journalism has become so attention driven, like quick attention driven, as we know, bad news sells more than good news. for example, from talking to people in the field, I’ve heard that even if they would talk to journalists and send them.

Nice pictures and tell them how to talk about it. So not call it Frankenstein meat, not call it lab ground, but call it cultured or cultivated meat. The end result would be the magazine, especially the mainstream outlets, publishing the stuff that gets people more anxious and angry. So do you have any best practices of how to deal with that?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

That’s a good point because of course we know in general that anxiety and anger can breed conspiratorial thinking, because in essence, when you have those feelings, you’re trying to make sense of that particular issue with that particular topic or that event. And by believing that conspiracy, Oh, it’s the government always doctors or whatever it is, can at least.

Try and make me feel less anxious, could try and make you feel less threatened. So potentially an article that presents this area in that particular way, may indeed drive the conspiratorial narratives. So I think as you say back to the point, is it, the communication strategy potentially is really important as a way to ensure that the language that is being used, is it going to breed conspiratory beliefs?

Because of course, people may already be coming into this area. A bit intrigued, but also it’s skeptical of  how will this work? How is it being designed? Is it safe? Which of course are legitimate questions to ask. They are questions. I’m sure we will all ask. It comes conspiratorial.

Of course, when you have those questions, but then you think, wow, it’s, it’s some kind of government conspiracy. They’re trying to make money wherever they say, well, it’s all part of the conspiracy. And then they, in essence, you discredit any evidence and you stick to your prior beliefs. So potentially  people ask questions with different motives in a way.

And of course  fake news is different to conspiratorial beliefs because, so it could just be fake. And not conspiratorial. It could suggest, you know, that this, this meat has to be made by doing weird to it.

I think an example, but do sit with there isn’t someone covering something up, which of course will be really a payment to someone and potentially someone who’s feeling anxious. They also pick up this as well. So I think it’s been trying to be clear with what this is. And has to be developed and in essence, dry and pre bunk, some of the, of the deceptions.

So it could be potentially just, they get out loud, like have a good focus group with people to talk about their concerns or their questions and potentially to see, well, okay. How widespread are these questions? Could we try and preempt some of these questions? We’ve some potentially engaging PR or indeed conversations.

Marina Schmidt

Hmm. A lot of that is inherently logical. I’ve heard you stayed in a different interview. Conspiracy theories are inherently logical. Also when people believe in fake news,    there’s also this pattern of, I don’t believe any mainstream media. So I believe this single block on the internet that has all the answers.

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Yeah.

Marina Schmidt

The tricky thing is that the reason for these beliefs is so entirely irrational. So how do you address that? Can you fix that even with logic? 

Dr. Daniel Jolley

So people who are already skeptical of biomedical therapies in general, Maybe would be skeptical of these type of new technology in essence, because there were believe that the scientists have doing something shady behind the scenes.

And in essence, it is all down to that high status power person or group rather who kind of supports this viewpoint. So, so we trusted research found that a biomedical therapy that will supported by a low power source or seemed to be quite favorable. But as soon as that same therapy was supported by a high power source, favorability dropped the floor.

So in essence, it was the power source, who was the one influence in that belief. In essence, whether . high power source was, seemed to be conspiratorial or dots. So potentially if a Revit of stakeholders are talking about cultured meat, not just the government, but for more low power sources. So I think your charity secret people who haven’t necessarily got a vested interest in this area.

They indeed, maybe more trustworthy, but I think for that bit of research that could demonstrate that actually,  is it really biomedical? That is the issue or is it the power source who’s supported that particular approach is that the issue potentially, and by having a much more larger stakeholders involved in the communication, we be able to get a more diverse range of people involved in that area.

But I’ve always found that research really interested in how that same product could be viewed very differently, depending on who supports it.

Marina Schmidt

That’s quite interesting. You spark the idea in me that maybe especially in the cultured meat space, there’s an opportunity to tell founders stories because it does come not from the corporations, which makes it different from the GMO case. But it does come from a lot of individuals that come together aligned around.

Values like animal ethics, environmental concerns.  a belief in innovation and improving the world. Right?  there’s an opportunity to build trust, not by arguing through hard facts, but by arguing. for stories.  over the millennia. we have been passing on information through powerful stories . regarding the connection between conspiracy and and science. In episode four Jack Bobo argued that companies should not use science in there. Product argumentation because science is inherently polarizing and it will drive away a certain part of the population instinctively.

And then I also talked to Rafa, who is the CEO often alternative dairy company called formo who argued that in their communication, they focus on science on the one hand. It is because they are addressing early doctors. but. In a broader scheme. He believes people don’t trust science, that’s something he wants to change.

So he wants to communicate. science is awesome. Look at what science can enable. What do you think about these two viewpoints?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

I think it’s really interesting. I suppose it makes me think about COVID-19 of course. And the head of vaccine has been talked about in science communication, whereby there’s been at least in the UK, a lot of push trying to understand. The how the vaccine have been developed and at the start lots of questions about, well, how has it been developed so quickly and understand which of course were not conspiratorial.

It was just legitimate questions, which then scientists were then going games. And for example, using their own Twitter feeds to explain in essence how that vaccine was developed and then got the NHS staff talking about the success of the vaccine and how they’re seeing the impact in the hospitals. So I think potentially that science communication where it’s directed and trying to make it accessible, I think is really good.

Of course, when you’ve then got it much more complex. So we mentioned earlier about releasing folder where you’ve got. Tired is a page as any arguably of different risk assessments that we’re not missing, that you can digest potentially it’s both. If it gives someone that sort of information, they may push back on it because they just don’t understand it.

And then they may indeed think, well,  what do we need or this? if someone was to send a journal article to me from, you know, a cell background where it’s the.

This is the science of how this meat is formed. I wouldn’t understand it. I wouldn’t want to understand it, but instead, and much more interactive seminar interactive, video, something on YouTube, even just using the platform Tik Tok to communicate in a very, more accessible, fun way will be really dynamic to, of course, that kind of reminds me as well is when we’re thinking about communication, you thinking about  the adults, but we’ve also got young people.

These arguably the young people are the ones who are going to be using this type of technology. They’re going to be using this type of meat, which means that maybe each targeting communication towards your groups.  So by trying to demystify, and even from the early stage, he’s targeting teenagers could be a really interesting marketing strategy whereby.

We know from research that I’ve done recently, that age 14 seems to be a peak time for  young people to believe in conspiracy theories. Because at 14 it’s, when people are relying less on their family, that they can walk to their friends are really, that’s where they can get a social media account age 12, 13, it’s where people are relying less on their emotional regulation and much more relying just on the emotions. So in essence, they’re not thinking about how they’re feeling that was kind of acting, which means that the anxiety, the threat, the uncertainty, trying to look to see what others are doing, can make them more susceptible, to believe in conspiracies.

And I think it’s good to communicate science. It’s just making sure you communicate science in a very accessible way, such as podcasts like this.

Marina Schmidt

Yeah.  the topic is so vast and I think we’ve touched not just on conspiracy theories. We also talked about fake news. I think another topic that will be important is crisis communication. There will be a point in time at which something will go wrong. And some company will have a mishap and then the media will be all over it, covering it in depth.

And I think an important part of the discussion is that consumer adoption and consumer acceptance is not a linear progression. So people start eating things and they stop eating things that can change their mind once they try it, it doesn’t mean that they are one over. And they’re going to continue only eating cell cultured meat.

The thing, another thing that’s really nerves me as I, as I’m thinking about these topics is with no GMO and no gluten and no soy.  it’s such a phrasing question because suddenly soy becomes something that is inherently bad or gluten becomes something that’s inherently bad because why would you otherwise buy products where there’s a label of no soy, no gluten.

Right. and it’s all these small, psychological influences that will accumulate into. How much impact this field is going to have over the longterm.  if we want to have a big impact, we want to have the majority of people switch to alternatives in a way from conventional agriculture products.

So lots, lots of things to talk about.  what other case studies or examples would you recommend to listeners to look into, to learn about how to address conspiracy theories, fake news or crisis community?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

So there’s actually quite a bit of literature that has come out of COVID-19 because eight speed, a flourishing van for conspiracy narratives, because in essence, it has all the key ingredients for why conspiracy theories, flourish, anxiety, that 4s join uncertainty big event, which means that they’ve been on a lot of interests.

But I think what we are learning is that it’s a challenge. And that, of course, people who have these beliefs, they really hold onto them. They, they come. That’s social identity, which means that people are motivated to defend their beliefs and they would engage in dialogue to defend them.

So potentially it’s thinking about ways that we have a much more productive conversation with someone. And it’s not a case of going in and saying, you’re writing home, you’re writing over wrong. That’s the only way you’re wrong. And I’m right. It is going in and trying to have a conversation is trying to understand why did that person have those particular polices start with, why do they believe?

For example, if, if they do, if they really cultured meat is some kind of conspiracy to make profit, why do they think that, Oh, then and dry and kind of. Tease apart, some of their psychology, is it all based in anxiety that they’ve all read about what they eat potentially? Are they just trying to offer some kind of reassurances to themselves about the world, the world that they live in?

And of course, it’s also promoting people to think more critically about the information they digest, where for me on personal level, I try and think about the emotional reaction that I have to things. So, as I mentioned previously, if I, when I read something and I feel really angry or really happy by reading it, it’s worth thinking, do I have this reaction?

Because it’s true because I just like what it says.  it’s biomedical, it’s biomedical therapy. Ish. It’s obviously at the same thing, of course, but it’s very much in the same pot in my view. And of course, people who believe in conspiracy theories push back on that.

And so I suspect there will be a similar pushback on this competence.

Marina Schmidt

Yeah, interesting side note, the GMOs for example, are more accepted in a biomedical setting than they are in a food setting. So people tend to be even more queasy about anything that is in their food and that they consume on a regular basis. to get to some of the ending questions, if you would have 50 million in what businesses, what you invested in or in what initiatives.

Dr. Daniel Jolley

So I suppose, because I’m really interested, biased in fake news can split theories with information. I think it’s trying to develop different strategies to help people think more critically. So of course, it’s that balance of wanting to make sure people can ask questions. And to question everything, but to be able to have the skill sets, to think through what they are being exposed to.

Having children’s schools think through evidence and be able to give them the skill sets. There could be really useful, in essence, do studies to work out what is the best way to intervene.  Regarding food, sustainability or agriculture. What is an unusual opinion that you hold that many people would disagree with?  I felt like I’ve learned a lot by engaging in this podcast. I didn’t really know much of a cultured meat really  it’s kind of bypass me a little bit, and that’s why I talked about at the start that I think. These are the kind of the key ingredients for a conspiracy theory to blue in the future when it comes more mainstream, when people are more aware of this area, because let’s say even me, who’s tensely a bit more aware because of my research area wasn’t really tapped into it.

That’s probably why I’ve not really got anything controversial to say, because I don’t really know about it. Maybe that’s controversial. It’s on, right? The fact that I’m a guest here and I’m learning, you know, through the process.

Marina Schmidt

Daniel how can listeners connect with you?

Dr. Daniel Jolley

So they can find me on Twitter @DrDanielJolley, or they can just search in Google and you’ll find my website or videos or anything else that I’ve suggested.

Marina Schmidt

It was really, really interesting to talk to you. Very insightful and very happy. We got to discuss this topic.

Dr. Daniel Jolley

Pleasure. Thank you.

Motif Adds Umami to Its Plant-Based Meat Tool Box

If you’re like me and love the umami savoriness of meat and seafoods, I’ve got some good news for you: plant-based ingredient engineering unicorn Motif just announced they’ve added the ability to create umami to their toolbox of technologies for plant-based food.

According to this week’s release, Motif’s latest protein “provides the rich umami flavor and mouth-watering aroma associated with beef — all without the animal.” Motif says the new umami technology will be available by the end of this year.

The technique Motif uses to create its umami protein is precision fermentation, the same process used by a number of companies building enabling platforms and ingredients technologies for meat substitutes. Impossible Foods, for examples, uses precision fermentation to create the famous plant-based heme that give its meat that same iron-y flavor you get in real beef.

One interesting aspect of the story not mentioned in the release is how Motif leveraged its relationship with Ginkgo Bioworks, the company it spun out of in 2019, to help build the umami taste technology. In an email, a Motif spokesperson told The Spoon they “were able to use our partnership with Ginkgo to take advantage of their throughput screening and strain development capabilities, which allows us to innovate and scale production rapidly.” It’s clear that, even as one company plans its IPO and the other raises the kind of money that will almost certainly require it to go public, the two companies remain closely intertwined.

Umami wasn’t the only new technology Motif debuted this week. The company also announced it had achieved a new way to give plant-based meat a meat-like texture that “delivers real, meaty chewdown and juiciness.” Unlike the company’s fermentation-derived umami tech, this new meat texture technology “was able to replicate the texture of animal tissue using plant proteins and plant-based carbohydrates” through “advancements in materials science and production.”

Recipe Sharing App Whisk an Early Test Partner for TikTok’s New Jump Program

This week TikTok officially launched its Jump program, a new feature which allows third party apps to integrate with the hugely popular social video app. The new integration allows someone watching a TikTok video to click on a button to access features of apps directly from inside TikTok

Recipe sharing app Whisk is an early integration partner with TikTok, which makes sense since cooking is one of TikTok’s most popular genres. The partnership, which Techcrunch wrote about in February, started as part of an “alpha testing” trial with a small group of TikTok creators that Whisk helped identify. With today’s announcement, the feature is being rolled out to wider group of creators (though not all). TikTok said it will roll out the feature more widely after some testing.

The TikTok-Whisk integration, which you can see in action above, works like this: TikTok users who are watching a cooking video can tap a Save to Whisk button that will allow them to view the recipe in Whisk. Users can also add the recipe to a collection or a meal plan, or have the recipe converted to a shopping list they could have delivered via one of Whisk’s grocery delivery partners (e.g., Walmart, Instacart).

For Whisk’s part, the integration is a no-brainer and could be a huge source of potential traffic for the recipe app. Whisk, which is now part of Samsung, was already growing pretty quickly; connecting its app with TikTok’s hugely popular cooking content will only accelerate that growth.

Looking forward, chances are other food and recipe apps will follow Whisk’s lead as TikTok opens up its program more widely for integration. Social media is where many consumers look for their next meal idea, and the social video app has become a viral recipe kingmaker. With Jump, recipe app makers now can monetize that viral interest in baked feta pasta by converting social video watchers to customers through shoppable recipes.

Japan’s CulNet Consortium, an ‘Open Innovation Platform’ for Cell-Based Meat, Officially Launches

Last week a group of Japan-based companies announced the official launch of the CulNet Consortium, an open innovation platform for the development of cell-cultured meat in Japan and beyond. The announcement, made by Japan cell-based meat startup IntegriCulture, details the member companies and outlines the activities of the group.

The group’s platform is centered around an open innovation framework developed by IntegriCulture, one of Japan’s most visible and active startups in cellular agriculture. The Uni-CulNet framework and the Consortium plans were originally announced in May of 2020, when IntegriCulture described the framework as “a standardized cellular agriculture infrastructure” that “rapidly establishes the foundation for democratized cellular agriculture.”

The consortium’s member companies plan to cooperate across five different areas to help accelerate the sector’s overall advancement: cell source, culture medium, CulNet hardware, product bioreactor, and product processing.

From the release:

  • Standardized culture media: Recipes that are fundamentally different from the existing media (basal media). Basal media are the raw material for all cultured cell products, and a different type is required for each kind (food, material, medical, etc.).
  • CulNet SystemTM hardware: Hardware that lets people use the CulNet SystemTM across a broad spectrum of uses, whether it’s in mass production or just at home.
  • Product bioreactors: Bioreactors that are used to make things like the products’ edible parts. We estimate that a variety of animals used as agricultural products will be a source for the cells.
  • Cell product processing: The process control that is needed to meet the products’ processing and safety requirements (cell components and culture supernatant).
  • Cell sources: The process that is used to extract and culture cells from livestock and fishery resources and the systems that enable the whole sequence of processes to be completed right where the cell sources are produced—tailoring them to their intended use, source animal species, etc.

It’s not surprising IntegriCulture and its founder Yuki Hanyu are a driving force behind a standardization push around open innovation. Hanyu has been the most visible evangelist for cell-based meat in Japan over the last few years, and his company’s ethos for open innovation was signaled by the efforts he put into building a DIY cultured meat initiative with the Shojinmeat project.

The CulNet Consortium isn’t the only industry organization gaining momentum as the cell-based meat industry matures. The Alliance for Meat, Poultry & Seafood Innovation (AMPS Innovation), an industry group focused on market education and industry advocacy, just announced an eighth member, Orbillion Bio, who joins Eat Just, Upside and Blue Nalu, among others. AMPS has been working to influence US policy to support the cultured meat industry, including a recent joint industry letter to the FDA after its call for input into the labeling framework for cell-based meat.