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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Michael Wolf

New Study Claims Cultivated Meat’s Current Path Is Significantly Worse for Environment Than Beef

A new life-cycle analysis by researchers at UC Davis has concluded that the current path of the cultivated meat industry’s commercialization process is potentially orders of magnitude worse for the environment than beef produced through animal agriculture, producing anywhere from 4 to 25 times more CO2 than traditionally produced beef.

The analysis, which at this point has not been peer-reviewed, stands in stark contrast to previous life cycle analysis (LCA) studies that have concluded the environmental impact of cell-cultivated meat – which the study calls “animal cell-based meat” or ACBM – is significantly less than that of traditionally produced beef. However, according to the new research, the problem with previous LCAs is that they do not accurately represent the environmental impact of the current technologies being used in the assumption sets for forecasts within the techno-economic models.

In particular, the study (which was first written about in IFL Science) says the significant environmental impact associated with the purification required of growth medium has not been fully accounted for in previous studies. According to the UC Davis researchers, these previous studies had “high levels of uncertainty in their results and a lack of accounting” for what they believe is the necessary endotoxin removal required for growth media. Accounting for the required purification is essential say the study’s authors, and they believe that the fossil fuel needed for purified growth medium components using the current anticipated commercialization process is anywhere between 3 and 17 times that of the reported “high” scenario for that of traditional boneless beef production.

While the researchers state their study is more accurate than previous LCAs that didn’t accurately model the cost of the production of the purified growth medium, they go on to say that is because the cost built into these techno-economic models is based on current systems being developed for the near-term commercialization of ACBM. They say that the industry would be better off as a whole if some of the key issues were solved before the industry focused on commercial scaling, such as developing a more “environmentally friendly method for endotoxin removal” or “the development of a technological innovation that allows for the use of an inexpensive animal cell growth media produced from agricultural by-products.”.

“Perhaps a focus on advancing these precompetitive scientific advances might lead to a better outcome for all,” they write.

It needs to be stressed again that this paper has not been peer-reviewed, so until it has been evaluated by other subject matter experts in cell ag life cycle analysis in the research community, we should caution against pulling the alarm around the potential impact of the current path towards commercialization. At the same time, the report’s authors, such as Dr. Justin Siegel, have impressive resumes and a history of publication that indicates they likely wouldn’t put their name behind such a controversial conclusion if they didn’t believe it would hold up under scrutiny.

My guess is the conclusion in this study will cause a significant ripple of interest and could have a potentially significant impact on this industry if the findings are considered valid by the broader scientific community. Most of the currently venture-funded cultivated meat startups say they are working on technologies that will lower the costs of cultivated meat, but it’s unclear if any of them have identified ways to remediate the challenges identified by this study’s authors in the current path towards commercialization of ACBM.

We’ll follow the reactions to this study from those in the scientific community – and by extension, the investment community – over the next few months.

Pairwise Rolls Out First CRISPR-Edited Produce to U.S. Restaurants

Pairwise, a startup specializing in developing gene-edited produce, today announced the launch of its first product, a CRISPR-developed mustard green. The new product, the Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, will launch into the restaurant/food service channel in partnership with the food service specialist Performance Food Group.

The launch of gene-edited produce by Pairwise comes almost three years after the company got the sign-off from the USDA for its gene-edited mustard green. Mustard greens aren’t usually found on menus due to their pungent smell and bitter taste, but with changes engineered by CRISPR, Pairwise hopes to create a nutritious alternative to kale and Brussels sprouts that also tastes good.

While the Conscious Foods blend with Pairwise’s mustard greens will be the first publicly announced CRISPR-edited produce available in the US market, the product follows the launch of gene-edited tomatoes in Japan in late 2021. That product was produced by Sanatech Seed, which used CRISPR to increase the amount of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the tomatoes, a supplement that researchers claim can reduce blood pressure and improve moods.

The release of the Sanatech Seed tomatoes came roughly the same time gene-edited fish became commercially available in Japan. In late 2021, Kyoto-based Regional Fish Co., Ltd. started selling genome-edited “Madai” red sea bream and “22-seiki fugu” tiger puffer fish which were edited to grow bigger.

In the US, large ag conglomerates like Simplot have been working with CRISPR since 2018, developing the technology to reduce bruising and black spots in potatoes or extend the life of the strawberry. However, as of this point, Simplot and other firms working with the technology haven’t announced the public availability of their products.

Pairwise, which showcased its CRISPR-edited produce for one of the first times earlier this year at The Spoon’s CES food tech happy hour, plans to roll out its Conscious Foods product into grocery stores later in 2023

Japan Vertical Farm Pioneer Spread Hits 100 Million Lettuce Serving Milestone

While the vertical farming industry in the US continues to struggle, longtime Japanese precision agriculture pioneer Spread continues to pump out heads of lettuce in its fifteen years in operation, hitting the 100 million pack milestone this year. The company, which raised $30 million in funding last year, sells its produce in approximately 5,000 retail stores, as well as food service and ready-made meal operators across Japan, according to a release sent to The Spoon.

The company’s founder, Shinji Inada, started the company in 2007 after a career in fresh produce distribution, citing a concern about a decrease in agriculture production due to climate change. While vertical farming has been around in Japan since the 1980s, Inada noticed that neither the quality nor price of “plant factory” produce was on par with traditionally farmed agriculture, so he developed a vertical farm system to produce his lettuce brand called Vegetus.

Since then, his company has continued developing its vertical farming technology and launched its Techno Farm concept in 2018, which uses automated cultivation, precise environmental control technology, and an IoT-based cultivation management system called ‘Techno Farm Cloud.’ The company’s TechoFarm system is used in three locations today: Techno Farm Fukuroi, Techno Farm Narita, and Techno Farm Keihanna.

Since its fundraise last year, the company has been exploring expansion into strawberries and the production of plant-based meat. The company has also been expanding its selection of lettuce varieties, launching a ” Chigiri ” product in 2021, which has its leaves removed during production, and launching a new European lettuce variety, “Stick,” this spring.

Two Years After Buying Spyce, Sweetgreen Launches Infinite Kitchen Robotic Restaurant

Last week, Sweetgreen opened the company’s first robotic restaurant in Naperville, Ill, a suburb of Chicago.

The new automated restaurant, which the company calls Infinite Kitchen, comes almost two years after the company acquired Spyce Kitchen, a startup building automated robotic makelines.

The Infinite Kitchen name is not new; Spyce first used the name when it launched its second-generation robotic kitchen platform in November 2020 and, like the new Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen, the system was visually reminiscent of the Creator burger makeline. The system’s conveyor belt runs under ingredient dispensers that drop customized mixes of fresh ingredients into bowls. You can see the Sweetgreen version of the Infinite Kitchen in action below.

In the video and the press release, Sweetgreen takes pains to make clear that while it sees automation as a way to add efficiency to operations and enhance the customer experience, they are not doing away with humans as part of the Sweetgreen experience.

“Every meal begins with human hands,” says the video’s narrator, “from our local farmers to our team members, all there to guide you through the process.”

With the Infinite Kitchen, Sweetgreen has also rethought the customer process flow, integrating digital touchpoints (including self-service kiosks similar to those from Spyce).

From the release:

When visiting the Naperville Sweetgreen restaurant, customers are greeted by the new “host” position which provides a more personalized connection between team members and guests. To order, customers can utilize self-service kiosks, place an order through the mobile app, or order directly from the restaurant’s host. The new restaurant format also brings in a new Tasting Counter, brand-storytelling digital screens and a revamped merchandising strategy for an authentic Sweetgreen experience at every touchpoint. Customers visiting the store will be able to shop exclusive merch with designs inspired by the new store joining the Naperville community.

According to the company, Sweetgreen will open its second Infinite Kitchen location later this year at an existing restaurant, where the company hopes to learn how to integrate and retrofit the new technology into an existing kitchen.

Long term, expect the company to expand the use of automation to most of its locations. Company CEO Jonathan Neman has said that about half of Sweetgreen’s labor is food assembly. “And this Infinite Kitchen takes the majority of that,” Neman said in November.

Cana, The Startup Building a Make-Any-Drink Beverage Printer, Shuts Down

Cana, the company which was building an appliance that they claimed could create and customize virtually any beverage, shut down last week, The Spoon has learned.

According to numerous Linkedin posts from previous employees, the company could not secure funding and laid off all of its employees last week. Cana, which had raised $30 million in January last year, promised to have the product ready to ship sometime this year. But despite having a working prototype and brand partners in place, Cana could not raise the “funding necessary to build a production line for manufacturing and shipping devices.”

The news comes just two months after the company brought on none other than Sir Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame to be a brand ambassador, a hail mary move that didn’t work out.

Like many startups nowadays, Cana found the drastically reshaped funding environment just too difficult to survive. Consumer hardware startups have had a particularly tough time in recent years, and Cana’s climb was made even more difficult given the task of developing and building a consumables production infrastructure.

The Cana vision of a make-anything drink machine always seemed a bit too good to be true, so it’s a bummer we’ll never see if they could have made it work if they had gotten more funding.

Podcast: 3D Food Printing & Cooking with Lasers!

Close your eyes and imagine the kitchen of the future. Not 100 years into the future, more like 10 or 20.

Does that kitchen you’re envisioning include a 3D food printer whipping up a dinner or a snack? And if so, are those printed creations being cooked with lasers?

While the crazy idea might not happen tomorrow, if life follows the example of science fiction (as it often does), there’s a chance a 3D food printer with laser-powered cooking will be sitting on our kitchen counter in a decade or two.

If we’re going to get there, this week’s guest on The Spoon Podcast, Jonathan Blutinger, might have something to do with it. Jonathan is a 3D food and software-defined cooking researcher who is trying to envision what this future world of cooking looks like.

In the podcast, we talk about:

  • How Jonathan got started exploring future cooking technologies
  • What is laser cooking and how does it pair with 3D food printing
  • How the current state of the 3D food printing ecosystem compares to other industries like digital music
  • The difference between printing sweet vs savory products
  • Will consumers ever accept the idea of 3D printed food
  • And lots more!

You can listen to this week’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or by clicking play below.

Recipe for Disaster? ChatGPT is Tasked to Create Unique, Tasty Dishes and Fails Miserably

So you think your newfound ability to prompt ChatGPT for AI-generated recipes could result in a culinary masterpiece?

Hold that thought, advises the World of Vegan, a popular wellness website focused on vegan living. The site recently undertook an intriguing experiment powered by generative AI, where they prompted ChatGPT to conjure over a hundred diverse recipes. The group prompted the AI bot to whip up new and innovative recipes for a variety of occasions ranging from date night dishes to brunch and dessert ideas. From there, the site’s chef team tested each recipe to see how they tasted.

The result? Not good.

All this prompting led to what the group described as “hilariously pitiful results.” With many of the recipes, the chef team at World of Vegan spotted ingredient formulations that “would clash right away and where the mishaps would occur.” The team also felt the recipes were largely “deceptive,” seeming ordinary at first glance but often described as “rich” and “decadent” when they were quite the contrary.

“I had a feeling ChatGPT would struggle with recipe development, since developing recipes is such a delicate mixture of fine art and science,” World of Vegan founder and chef Michelle Cehn told The Spoon. “But I was shocked by just how difficult it was to find a single spring recipe written by ChatGPT that worked with a passing grade. This is a crucial warning for both food bloggers seeking shortcuts and home cooks looking for quick recipes. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble (and wasted time, energy, and money) by bypassing ChatGPT and opting for a trusted blogger’s highly-rated recipe instead.”

Image credit: Erin Wysocarski

One of the biggest fails cooked up by the World of Vegan team was a vegan scalloped potato dish (pictured above), which the recipe’s chef said had an ingredient list and cooking instructions that were out of order. The resulting dish had an off-putting color, a pungent sauce, and tasted bad.

According to World of Vegan, out of the 100 or so recipes the team cooked up, only one – a cauliflower taco dish – resulted in an appetizing result.

Cehn believes the resulting 1% success rate might be due to ChatGPT’s reliance on what is essentially flawed data, namely millions of subpar recipes drawn from the Internet. With this as its foundation, things are destined to go poorly once the bot is tasked to create a unique recipe.

“A human brain can’t access all that information, so people are likely independently (and unintentionally) creating duplicate recipes online. Since ChatGPT must create a truly unique recipe, it has to get a little weird to create one that’s not plagiarized.”

While one might expect a site focused on creating recipes to be skeptical about AI filling its shoes, I don’t doubt the poor results are that far off from what others may find if they conducted a similar experiment. Good recipes often result from lots of experimentation and applied knowledge, something that you don’t get when a bot freewheels up a new dish idea out of thin air.

And while a more specialized AI trained on the compatibility of various culinary ingredients – something akin to a chatbot based on Chef Watson – might yield better results, we don’t have that, at least not yet.

Bottom line: human-powered recipe creators are still necessary…for the time being.

Washington State University Receives First-Ever FDA Approval for Gene-Edited Pigs for Human Consumption

Earlier this month, Washington State University (WSU) received the first-ever approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for gene-edited pigs for human consumption.

That consumption will be delivered in the form of German-style sausage, which will be used in on-campus catering services that raise funds for the WSU meat judging team. The pigs were processed at the WSU Meat Lab – WSU is a land-grant university, and much of the research on campus is focused on agriculture and nature sciences – and during the processing of the meat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected the meat.

The approval marks the first time the U.S. FDA has approved a gene-edited pig for entry into the food supply chain. The approval is the culmination of two years of research led by Jon Oatley, a professor in WSU’s School of Molecular Biosciences in WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

“The original intent in making these animals was to try to improve the way that we feed people,” he said. “And we can’t do that unless we can work with the FDA system to get these animals actually into the food chain.”

Oatley used CRISPR gene-editing technology to improve genetic traits in the livestock. As readers of the Spoon know, CRISPR accelerates the process through which changes to an organism’s DNA can occur as compared to other methods such as through selective breeding. And unlike transgenics (or what is often called GMO or genetic modification), CRISPR doesn’t introduce genetic materials from other organisms.

Oatley and his team gene-edited the pigs to enable them to sire offspring with traits from another male pig. This technique, called surrogate sires, allows the male animals to produce sperm carrying the genetic traits of donor animals. The surrogate sires are first edited to be sterile by knocking out their specific gene related to male fertility. From there, the animals are implanted with another male pig’s stem cells to create sperm with the desired traits of the donor male.

The long-term goal for Oatley and other CRISPR researchers is to use this high-tech form of selective breeding to disseminate valuable genetic traits in livestock. Those traits could be improved meat quality, higher protein density, disease resistance, or enhanced ability to withstand changing environmental conditions.

Oatley and his team used the investigational food use authorization process for five gene-edited pigs to demonstrate that food made from the gene-edited animals is safe to eat and is now working toward FDA approval for a line of gene-edited pigs. The pigs’ offspring, which aren’t gene-edited, have not yet received FDA approval at this point for human consumption.

XPRIZE Announces Finalists For $15M Competition to Develop More Sustainable Protein

XPRIZE, an organization that hosts competitions to seek out solutions to global challenges, announced the six finalists of its $15 million XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion (FTNB) competition. The contest, kicked off in 2020, seeks to stimulate the development of more sustainable and accessible chicken breast and fish filet alternatives that can satisfy the rising demand for meat products amid a growing global population.

According to the release, the six finalists have developed “multiple consistent cuts of a meat alternative that replicate the look, taste, smell, feel, cooking behavior and nutritional properties of a structured filet of fish or chicken breast.” The finalists were selected by a judging panel of “diverse experts in international sustainability, agricultural and biological engineering, the food industry, and experts working at the highest levels of academia and research.” 

The finalists, which were selected from a semi-finalist group of 28 companies (later expanded to 31), include a mix of cell-cultured, fermentation, and plant-based platforms. The mix between chicken and fish is 50/50, with three for each:

  • CellX: Cell-based chicken team from China
  • Eternal: Fermentation-derived chicken team from Argentina
  • The PlantEat: Plant-based chicken team from South Korea
  • ProFillet: Plant-based fish team from Canada
  • Revo Foods: Plant-based fish team from Austria
  • TFTAK: Plant-based fish team from Estonia

What’s just as interesting as which companies were named finalists are which ones didn’t make it to the final round. The list of semi-finalists included some of the biggest names in alternative protein across cell-cultured (UPSIDE, Good Meat, Blue Nalu to name a few), mycelium-based (Atlast/MyForest, Good Meat Company) and gas fermentation (Air Protein) based products, and none of these companies made the finalist round.

Also surprising is that none of the companies chosen were based in the United States, the country which has seen the biggest overall amount of venture capital go into alternative protein. Two of the finalists are from Asia, two from Europe, one from Latin America, and one from Canada.

One reason some of the bigger names didn’t end up on the finalist list is no doubt due in part due to the withdrawal by up to about 11 companies earlier this year due to a revision to the contest’s rule changes last year that said Aspire, one of the co-sponsors of the event, would have a right of first refusal on investment in the finalists. The rules were revised slightly in September, but the restrictions still proved too much for many finalists such as Eat Just, Wild Type and Better Meat Company.

The FTNB competition was modeled after XPRIZE conducted an analysis of global food system challenges in which it identified 12 breakthroughs that could establish a more food-secure and environmentally sustainable world by 2050. From these 12, the group chose the need for alternative proteins at-scale as a critical impact area that requires significant technological advances, decreased price points, and notable shifts in consumers’ preferences.

From here, the finalists will head to the next round of tastings. The semifinalist round was hosted in Abu Dhabi, which is the home to Aspire, which cosponsored this XPRIZE competition alongside the Tony Robbins Foundation. According to XPRIZE, the winning team, which will be selected in 2024, will develop multiple consistent cuts of chicken breast or fish filet alternatives (115 grams / 4 ounces) that can replicate the sensory properties, structure, versatility, and nutritional profile of conventional chicken or fish, while having a lower comparable environmental footprint than animal-agriculture derived products.  

Amazon Now Lets You Buy Physical Goods in Virtual Worlds. Could It Work For Food?

This week, Amazon announced a new platform called Amazon Anywhere that enables the discovery and purchase of physical products from within virtual environments such as virtual and augmented reality and video games.

The platform, which the company showed off through an integration with an augmented reality pet game called Peridot (from the same company that made Pokemon Go), allows customers to buy physical products without leaving the game environment. Game players and VR explorers can see product details, images, availability, Amazon Prime eligibility, price, and estimated delivery date as they would on Amazon’s website. They tap the “buy” button and check out using the linked Amazon account without leaving the game, and from there, products will ship out and can be tracked and managed via the Amazon app or website.

Today in-game and virtual world purchases are limited to digital goods like currencies or digital characters, but Amazon’s new platform opens up a potentially interesting new way for players to buy physical products. The Peridot demo enables players to buy merch like t-shirts, hoodies, phone accessories, and throw pillows with game art on them, but what if shelf-stable food or food-related items were sold from within the virtual environment? Would emerging CPG brands, which often use DTC strategies early on, see this as a potential new channel to market?

While the idea is an intriguing one, the main problem with Amazon’s platform is it’s Amazon’s platform. Amazon is a relatively expensive place to purchase food, and smaller emerging DTC brands tend to prefer selling on their website using white-label e-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce/WordPress, Magento, and Squarespace until they finally graduate to retail.

However, in-world physical product purchases might get traction with bigger multichannel CPGs. Amazon tried to court big CPG brands early on with its IoT-powered Dash buttons, but eventually abandoned the project in 2019 (though they are still selling a Dash smart shelf). The company also tried to get a return on its massive investment in Alexa through sales of everyday consumables, but the division’s recent struggles show consumers, for the most part, still like to click buttons on a web page or an app to complete a purchase.

Which brings us back to Amazon Everywhere. The use of virtual or augmented worlds will grow in time, meaning Amazon’s early effort to build a platform could pay big dividends in the long run. Brands could tie products to stories or characters through experiences that would be pretty much impossible through more traditional advertising. With in-world purchases, they would be able to convert in an entirely new way.

While it’s too soon to tell if consumers will bite, I have no doubt Amazon will attempt to find out. My guess is we’ll also see other players like Facebook and Microsoft follow Amazon’s lead and build out VR and video game in-world purchase platforms for physical products as well, but for now, it looks like Amazon has got the jump on them.

Motif Continues Finished Product Expansion With Launch of Portfolio at NRA Show

Motif Foodworks, a company that develops plant-based meat alternative ingredients, has continued its expansion into finished product formats with the debut of its food service portfolio later this month at the National Restaurant Association show.

The company says the portfolio, which includes alt pork (PorkWorks), beef (Plant-Based Ground and Motif BeefWorks, Plant-Based Burger Patties and Grounds) and chicken (ChickenWorks), will be available to food service providers later in 2023. The products are an evolution of their initial steps into the food product prototypes it started testing in 2022 under slightly different brand names and came just a month after the company dabbled in a direct-to-consumer trial.

The move comes despite the company’s recent insistence that they are still primarily a B2B player set on designing next-generation food ingredients for other brands. After the launch of its D2C trial last month, company CEO Mike Leonard told Food Navigator that the company is still a B2B company and they don’t intend to develop a consumer-facing brand of its own.

As appetites for late-round alternative protein investments cool, it looks like Motif continues to look for ways to accelerate its pathway toward revenue. The company, which laid off an unspecified number of employees last summer, has already raised $343 million and would likely have difficulty raising another significant round in the current environment. In addition to its continued expansion into finished products, the company expanded into bioprocessing services earlier this year and showed its openness to platform flexibility by expanding into molecular farming in a partnership with Ingredientwerks.

The expansion into a fully fleshed-out end product portfolio comes at an interesting time for Motif, as the company continues its fight with Impossible over patents which started last year when Impossible filed suit over patent infringement in March of 2022. Motif responded by challenging the validity of Impossible’s patents but endured a setback in October when the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed Impossible’s patent. The legal battle continues, with the trial set to begin in January 2025.

Wendy’s Announces FreshAI, a Generative AI for Drive-Thrus Powered by Google Cloud

Today Wendy’s announced it is working with Google Cloud to develop a generative AI solution for drive-thrus called Wendy’s Fresh AI.

The new solution, which is powered by Google Cloud’s generative AI and large language model technology, will go into a pilot test next month at a Wendy’s company-operated store in Columbus, Ohio. According to the announcement, the new tool will be able to have conversations with customers, the ability to understand made-to-order requests, and generate responses to frequently asked questions. 

In contrast to general-purpose consumer interfaces for LLMs such as ChatGPT and Google Bard, Wendy’s Fresh AI will be walled off and tailored around interacting with customers ordering food at a Wendy’s drive-thru. According to the company, Wendy’s Fresh AI will have access to data from Wendy’s menu and will be programmed with rules and logic conversation guardrails, ensuring that the conversation bot doesn’t spout off about politics or culture when prompted, but focuses solely on helping customers get their burger order right.

The deal is a nice pick-up for Google, which has been on its heels to a degree since last fall when the OpenAI released ChatGPT. Google’s strength in enterprise platforms through its Google Cloud infrastructure services could possibly give it a leg up on other generative AI platforms, even though OpenAI beat the company to the fast food drive-thru lane through its partnership with Presto.

Wendy’s says that it will use the learnings from the pilot to inform future expansion of the platform to other Wendy’s drive-thrus.

Where Is This All Going?

The restaurant quick-service industry has been embracing digital transformation in a big way over the past few years as a way to remedy the industry’s continued struggle with finding qualified workers, and the fast food drive-thru is probably one of the roles could be largely automated with a well-tuned generative AI model. I can envision a hybrid model that utilizes a gen-AI as the first point-of-contact customer interaction layer, but has it backstopped by a remote carbon-based life form (i.e. human) that can step in when there is the first hint of something out of the ordinary. Think of it as a Gen-AI/Bite Ninja hybrid model (while Bite Ninja hasn’t announced any AI solution partnerships for its cloud labor platform, I would be surprised if those conversations aren’t already underway).