Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Alternative Protein

Vow Gets Greenlight in Australia As It Hits 1,200 Pounds Per Week of Cultivated Quail Meat

Vow, the Australian-based startup making foie gras and parfait from the cultivated cells of Japanese quail, announced a couple of big milestones this week, including what it claims to be the biggest ever production run of cultivated meat after harvesting 1,200 pounds of Japanese quail in a single week. This milestone was achieved using the company’s custom-designed 20,000-liter vessel designed entirely in-house.

This news comes the same week the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) officially approved Vow’s application to add cultivated quail to the Food Standards Code. The final step is a 60-day review period by ministers from each jurisdiction within Australia and New Zealand. If no objections are raised, Vow could begin selling its cultivated quail products across ANZ as early as June.

According to CEO George Peppou, the secret to Vow’s rapid progress isn’t just about bigger tanks—it’s about rebuilding the entire factory model from scratch.

“Pharma infrastructure just doesn’t work for food,” Peppou told me in a recent episode of The Spoon Podcast. “We designed our second factory using a completely vertically integrated approach—engineers, welders, software, everything in-house—and built it for a fraction of what others have spent.”

Vow believes its new plant can make cultivated meat at a cost that is 20-50 times cheaper than its competitors, and now Peppou says that the company is now being approached by others as a potential manufacturing partner who see their approach as one that could scale.

“We’ve seen this sort of interesting uptick recently of other companies approaching us to ask about contract manufacturing. We’ve got the capacity. We’re selling continuously and we do have some excess capacity that we can provide to other companies. So we’ve got a few projects underway at the moment, which has been a very interesting insight into how other philosophies have played out.”

You can listen to my full conversation below.

A New Approach to Cultivated Meat with Vow's George Peppou

Dispatches from Future Food Tech 2025: After the Alt-Protein Boom, a New Realism Takes Hold

Last week, I headed down to San Francisco to check out the Future Food Tech conference, one of the leading gatherings in food innovation, where investors, startups, and big food brands come together to share ideas, commiserate, and network.

I attended this year’s event to gauge the current state of future food and assess if the industry had rebounded from last year’s somewhat somber mood, marked by cash-strapped startups—primarily in the alt-protein space—focusing on extending their financial runways amid a venture investment “winter.”

The good news: the overall mood is improving despite a rapidly shifting regulatory and governmental landscape, particularly in the U.S. Also, the industry has pivoted, in a fairly significant way, away from a pretty substantial over-indexing on alt-proteins as the key investment focus.

Below are my key takeaways, featuring some quotes from some of the experts who were at the show.

Dialed Down Alt-Proteins and More Discriminating Investors

First off, let’s get something straight: Alt protein is still important and on everyone’s mind at FFT and across the future food industry, but it’s just not the singular dominating focus anymore. Investors and entrepreneurs appear increasingly aware of the substantial regulatory, economic, scaling, and consumer adoption hurdles that many alt-protein products face.

At the same, many of the big investment funds and venture investors who got pulled into food tech during the bubble in 2019 to 2022 have pulled away from the space. While it means less investment dollars to fund, say, a pilot plant for a cultivated meat company that may be years away from coming to market, it also means fewer investment dollars are chasing me-too business plans.

“Everybody outside this sector was excited about Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat and thought all this stuff was going to change the game,” said Brian Frank, founder of FTW Ventures. “When all of us that were rationalists were going, ‘No, guys, it’s food. It is this.’ And so we’re coming back to this, and a lot of the tourist investors are leaving.”

Differentiated Players in Cultivated Meat Keep Pushing Boulder Up the Hill

Despite these challenges, some companies continue to talk up their advances in cultivated meat. One such company was Forsea, a company specializing in making cultivated unagi.

After signing the standard legal disclaimer waiving future litigation rights (typical at cultivated meat tastings—one investor told me he’s signed about twenty-five of them), I sampled Forsea’s cultivated unagi. It was good! The taste was pretty spot on, and the mouthfeel was about 90% there.

Another company that was pretty visible at FFT last week was Mission Barns, which had just received its ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA for its cultivated pork fat and was inviting people to try it out at tastings. While I wasn’t added to their tasting invite list, attendees who I spoke to who sampled their meatballs spoke highly of them.

Meeting the MAHA Moment: A Focus on Better Health Outcomes Becomes Primary Driver

It shouldn’t be overly surprising that the event’s focus has shifted from sustainability alone toward creating better, healthier food inputs. This adjustment reflects broader regulatory and business climates in the U.S., where food companies are adapting to an FDA and USDA potentially influenced by the likes of RFK Jr.

This new direction acknowledges the increasingly challenging regulatory environment for cultivated meat—now banned in states like Florida—while recognizing heightened consumer and governmental interest in clean labels and nutrition-focused, less futuristic food categories.

One company that aligns well with this trend is Borealis. Founder Reza Soltanzadeh emphasized the concept of “stealth health”—enhancing familiar foods with added nutritional value, like with their protein-rich pastas.

“Changing consumer behavior, like ordering a plant-based Big Mac at McDonald’s, is incredibly challenging,” Soltanzadeh explained. “But stealth health means your child shouldn’t even notice a difference from their regular ramen.”

AI is Tablestakes Now, But Beware the AI-Washing

Artificial intelligence was everywhere, both in on-stage panels and in hallway side conversations. Longtime pioneers in the space held court in packed rooms while new startups tried to talk up their AI bona fides.

As someone who created the first dedicated event a couple of years ago to explore how AI will change food, I’m not surprised at just how fast it has permeated the entire consciousness of the food industry executive class. After all, most of us, just being a person living in society, find it nearly impossible to get away from the AI-is-changing-everything conversation.

Still, the sheer amount of AI-food conversation was perhaps even more than I expected, and I imagine the heads of many in attendance were probably spinning as they tried to determine what exactly is a true innovation in food AI and what is simply a form of AI-washing.

I interviewed Matias Muchnick, CEO of NotCo, who warned startups against overstating their AI expertise: “Ultimately, claiming AI capabilities you don’t genuinely possess is a short-lived lie. Like greenwashing, AI-washing will eventually catch up with you.”

That said, it’s still exciting to see the potential. AI applications demonstrated at Future Food-Tech ranged from toxin detection to personalized nutritional recommendations.

As Megan Thomas, podcaster and future food consultant wrote: “Distinguishing meaningful innovations from hype remains a challenge, but the real-world applications of AI in food—from health to supply chains—are undeniably compelling.”

Fiber is Having Its Moment as GLP-1s Grips The Food Industry

Outside of AI everywhere, the most interesting trend to me was the pervasiveness of the impact that GLP-1s is having on both startup investment and overall focus in the space.

Peter Bodenheimer, venture partner at PeakBridge, wrote that “fiber is everywhere and continues to have its moment, with startups focused on new functional elements, improved formats, and data-driven discovery.”

What’s interesting is the divergence in conversation that is happening societally and within the food space. Ozempic and other GLP-1s have become household names and a part of the larger cultural conversation as folks on social media try to guess which celebrity on the red carpet is taking GLP-1s, the food industry is moving beyond last year’s initial panic to proactively optimize products for GLP-1 compatibility.

A wave of startups, including One.Bio, SuperGut, and Carbiotix, have emerged, offering platforms enabling CPG brands to enhance their fiber content and position products as GLP-1-friendly alternatives to pharmaceutical interventions.

I spoke with Carbiotix chairman Kristofer Cook, who described the company’s efforts in helping major brands integrate gut-healthy fiber through on-premise food side-stream upcycling. This two-birds-one-stone approach sounded like a pretty nifty trick, particularly for those brands who didn’t want to become reliant on startup’s nutraceutical to fortify their food.

Companies using their platform are “extracting more value from a side stream, which is typically set the way for animal feed,” said Cook. “They’re making their products healthier. And they’re able to market themselves as being more sustainable as well.”

Looking Forward

The bottom line is it seemed like, despite the shifting terrain underfoot from a regulatory standpoint and the continued fundraising headwinds, that food startups are finding their way. Those remaining in ths space are becoming increasingly pragmatic about the realities of innovation adoption, investment sustainability, and regulatory navigation. The exuberance over cultivated protei has been tempered by a clear-eyed recognition of consumer behavior, economic constraints, and the long-term role of health-centric innovation.

Looking forward, if this year’s FFT is any indication, it seems food tech innovation is now being defined more by clear-eyed realism, a focus on finding practical food-driven health interventions, and an embrace around accelerating innovation through the use of technologies like AI.

Pet Food Snapshot: Innovation, Cultivation, and a Ruff Patch

Whenever I head to the pet food store, I’m simultaneously overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice available on the shelves and disappointed by the limited selection of alternatives that don’t rely on traditional animal agriculture.

The good news for those looking for more sustainable alternatives is that the alt-protein pet food sector has been slowly inching forward (and occasionally stepping back, as you’ll see below), but there has recently been a surge of news in this space.

First up, this week German pet food manufacturer Marsapet, in partnership with Calysta, launched “MicroBell,” a dry kibble featuring FeedKind Pet protein produced via gas fermentation. Gas fermentation uses microbes to produce protein, eliminating the need for arable land or animal ingredients.

Last month, Meatly became the first company globally to offer pet food made from cultivated meat. Partnering with plant-based dog food brand THE PACK, Meatly introduced “Chick Bites,” a limited-release dog treat that blends plant-based ingredients with Meatly Chicken. Following this launch, Meatly is focused on scaling production and making cultivated pet food more widely available. The company plans to raise additional funds to expand production and distribute Meatly Chicken to more retailers over the next three to five years. Future collaborations with THE PACK and Pets at Home are also in the pipeline.

Finally, despite positive news from both the cultivated meat and gas fermentation fronts, the industry faces challenges. Wild Earth, a vegan pet food startup that gained prominence after securing a deal on “Shark Tank” in 2018, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. The company reported $2.4 million in assets against $12.6 million in liabilities. Co-founder and CEO Ryan Bethencourt—who has been one of the most influential voices in alternative proteins over the past decade—cited difficulties in securing venture capital and managing debt as contributing factors.

Bethencourt remains optimistic despite the bankruptcy. “I don’t think this is the end of the Wild Earth story.”

Givaudan, Bühler Group, and Migros Open Doors to The Cultured Hub, a Scale-Up Facility for Cellular Agriculture

Three years after announcing a joint venture, Givaudan, Bühler Group, and Migros have finally opened the doors to The Cultured Hub, a cutting-edge biotech facility dedicated to cellular agriculture production in Kemptthal, Switzerland. Initially introduced in 2021 as the Cultured Food Innovation Hub with the stated mission of accelerating the development and market penetration of cellular agriculture products, the facility now boasts advanced product development labs as well as cell culture and bio-fermentation capabilities.

According to the announcement, the new facility will enable startups to scale up their processes from small-scale laboratory experiments (e.g., shake flasks) to 1,000-liter pilot operations without requiring expensive asset investments or equity dilution. The organization says the facility will allow emerging companies to access subject-matter experts and resources to “create regulatory batches with analysis and food safety procedures, test new products, work on optimizing processes, and conduct small market launches.”

In some ways, the new facility is reminiscent of MISTA, the San Francisco-based innovation hub resulting from a partnership between Givaudan and Bühler. However, unlike MISTA, which features facilities such as a biotech lab and an extrusion hub, The Cultured Hub’s infrastructure is specifically focused on cellular agriculture production for products such as cultivated beef, fish, dairy, and more.

“The Cultured Hub is designed to bridge the scale-up gap for companies, enabling them to retain equity, protect intellectual property, and fast-track their journey to market without high capital investment,” said Ian Roberts, Chief Technology Officer of Bühler Group. “We are thrilled to bring together industry players and create a collaborative environment that will drive significant advancements in the industry.”

The rise of shared-access facilities for piloting new cell-ag food products makes sense in today’s capital-constrained environment. Venture capital investment in cultivated food startups has slowed over the past couple of years, particularly as capital requirements have risen with many of these companies entering the scale-up phase. At the same time, it remains uncertain whether many of these products will ever reach the commodity price points required to make them viable replacements for traditional animal agriculture.

Notable companies participating in The Cultured Hub’s community include Ever After Foods, GOURMEY, Mosa Meat, Nestlé, Nutreco, and Orbillion Bio.

GFI: Fermentation Fuels Q3 2024 Alt-Protein Investments, While Cultivated Meat Lags

This week, the Good Food Institute released its quarterly alt-protein investment update, so I thought it’d be a good time to check in and see which way things are trending.

At this point it’s well-known that the alt-protein investment climate has had a couple tough years, and the latest numbers show things remain tough.

According to data shared by GFI, alternative protein companies raised $233 million in Q3 2024—a 37% decrease from Q2, but a 25% increase year-over-year. The drop from Q2 is notable, exceeding the 20% decline across the broader venture capital market. However, the 25% year-over-year growth in Q3 is a potential bright spot and could indicate that the second half of 2023 marked the low point for the overall market.

Source: GFI

GFI also broke things down by sub-sector, and it’s clear that fermentation technologies are where investors are placing their bets:

  • Plant-based proteins raised $56 million in Q3, bringing the year-to-date total to $194 million.
  • Fermentation technologies, which saw the largest share of investment, raised $174 million in Q3, with $572 million invested year-to-date.
  • Cultivated meat and seafood companies raised $3 million in Q3, reaching $133 million year-to-date.

It’s important to note that the overall alt-protein investment numbers can be heavily influenced by a few large deals. For example, Q2 2024 saw $118 million invested in the cultivated meat sector, largely driven by a $55 million Series B investment in Prolific Machines, a cultivated meat infrastructure company, and a $42 million investment in Dutch cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat. These larger deals led to an average deal size of $10 million for cultivated meat in Q2, compared to a paltry $396,000 in Q3 2024.

Similarly, Q3’s fermentation investment numbers were significantly impacted by two major deals: a $61 million investment in fermentation startup Formo for its Koji cheese products and a $45 million Series B for precision fermentation startup Helaina, focused on its human lactoferrin product.

GFI notes that lower interest rates moving forward could provide a boost to the alt-protein space, but cautions that the cost of capital remains relatively high. They continue to advocate for alt-protein startups to explore non-traditional funding sources, such as government-backed loans and programs.

Looking ahead, I predict that fermentation-based startups will remain the most attractive area for investors in the coming year. Investment in cultivated meat startups will likely focus on infrastructure players with game-changing technology, like Prolific Machines. Meanwhile, many cultivated meat startups that raised significant rounds in the past few years to scale manufacturing have put those plans on hold as they work to extend their funding runways during this ongoing VC winter.

According to GFI, the alt-protein space has seen a cumulative $16.3 billion invested since 2015, a decent number overall but still relatively small compared to other sustainability focused-sectors. To give you an idea of just how small the space is compared to other sectors, the solar industry raised $6.9 billion in venture capital in 2023 alone, and that number jumps to $34.3 billion when factoring in corporate funding.

One thing that the space needs to attract bigger dollars is a more attractive exit outlook. Overall, the exits in alt-protein has been disappointing, as have the results of those companies that have gone public. Until we see a big investor success story in this space, the dollars may remain relatively small compared to other markets.

From Data-Scraping to Discernment Layer: How NotCo’s Giuseppe AI Has Evolved Over the Past Decade

Almost a decade ago, while others experimenting with AI focused on algorithms for trading, diagnostics, or digital advertising, a company called NotCo was experimenting with AI by the name of Giuseppe to create plant-based foods that could match the taste and texture of their animal-based counterparts.

According to Aadit Patel, SVP of AI Product and Engineering at NotCo, the company’s founders (Patel would join a couple of years after the company was founded in 2015) realized early on that, in order to build an AI model that could help create plant-based products mimicking the taste, texture, and functionality of their animal-based counterparts, they would need a whole lot of data.

The problem was, as a startup, they didn’t have any.

When I asked Patel in a recent interview how the company overcame the infamous “cold start” problem—the challenge many embryonic AI models face before they have built large datasets on which to train—he told me they found the solution in a very public place: the U.S. government’s website.

“In the early days, when we had no money, we literally scraped the USDA website,” said Patel. “If you go to the USDA website, there’s a bunch of free data materials for you to use. And I guess no one had actually joined it together to create a comprehensive dataset… So the first versions of Giuseppe were built on that.”

This cobbled-together dataset formed the foundation for Giuseppe’s recommendations, leading to the creation of products like NotMilk, which uses unexpected combinations like pineapple and cabbage to replicate the taste of dairy milk.

As NotCo grew, so did Giuseppe’s capabilities. New analytical labs in San Francisco and Santiago, Chile, gave the company a wealth of new data on which to train its AI. Over time, the model’s ability to create innovative food products also improved.

One of the biggest hurdles in food development is the fragmented nature of the supply chain. Data is scattered across various entities—ingredient suppliers, flavor houses, manufacturers, and research institutions—each holding critical information that contributes to the success of a product. Over time, the company realized that to create an AI capable of building innovative products, it couldn’t rely solely on NotCo’s datasets. Instead, Giuseppe would need to integrate and analyze data from across this complex web of partners.

“What we’ve done with Giuseppe is figure out a way to incentivize this very fragmented ecosystem,” Patel said.

According to Patel, pulling together these disparate datasets from across the product development and supply chain would result in a more holistic understanding of what is needed for a successful product that is better aligned with market realities.

“We realized that if we just made an AI system that’s specific to CPG, we’d be losing out,” said Patel.

Generative AI and Flavor and Fragrance Development

One recent expansion of Giuseppe’s capabilities has been the exploration of new flavors and fragrances using generative AI. While GenAI models like ChatGPT have become infamous for creating sometimes strange and off-putting combinations when designing recipes and new food product formulations, Patel explained that the company has been able to overcome issues with general LLMs by creating what he calls a discernment layer. This layer filters and evaluates the multitude of generated possibilities, narrowing them down to the most promising candidates.

“Discernment is key because it’s not just about generating ideas; it’s about identifying the ones that are likely to succeed in the real world,” Patel said. “With generative AI, you can prompt it however you want and get an infinite amount of answers. The question is, how do we discern which of these 10,000 ideas are the ones most likely to work in a lab setting, a pilot setting, or beyond?”

The discernment layer works by incorporating additional data points and contextual knowledge into the model. For instance, it might consider a formulation’s scalability, cost-effectiveness, or alignment with consumer preferences. This layer also allows human experts to provide feedback and fine-tune the AI’s outputs, creating a process that combines AI’s creativity with the expertise of flavor and fragrance professionals.

Early tests have shown positive results. When tasked with creating a new flavor, both the AI and the human perfumers receive the same brief. When the results are compared in A/B tests, Patel says the outputs of Giuseppe’s generative AI were indistinguishable from those created by human experts.

“What we’ve built is a system where AI and human expertise complement each other,” said Patel. “This gives us the flexibility to create products that are not just theoretically possible but also market-ready.”

CPG Brands Still Have a Long Way to Go With AI-Enhanced Food Creation

Nearly a decade after building an AI model with scraped data from the USDA website, NotCo has evolved its AI to create new products through a collaborative approach that results in a modern generative AI model incorporating inputs from its partners up and down the food value chain. This collaborative approach is being used for internal product development and third-party CPG partners, many of whom Patel said approached the company after they announced their joint venture with Kraft Heinz.

“Ever since our announcement with Kraft Heinz and signing a joint venture, there’s been a lot of inbound interest from a lot of other large CPGs asking ‘What can you do for us?’ and ‘What is Giuseppe?’ They want to see it.”

When I told Patel I thought that big CPG brands have come a long way over the past twelve months in their embrace and planning for using AI, he slightly disagreed. He said that while there’s a lot of interest, most big brands haven’t actually transformed their business to fully create products with the help of AI.

“I would say there’s strong intent to adopt it, but I think there hasn’t been put forth like a concrete action plan to actually develop the first AI-enabled R&D workforce,” said Patel. “There is room, I think, for new AI tech for formulators, and room for best practices and lessons learned of adopting AI.”

You can watch my full interview with Aadit below.

The NotCo team will be at the Food AI Summit talking about their new efforts using generative AI to develop flavor and fragrance, so make sure to get your tickets here.

NotCo's Aadit Patel Talks About the Evolution The Company's Food AI Giuseppe

Why GFA’s Unceremonious Drop of Climax is a Big Win For the Company & the Plant-Based Cheese Category

For the past week, the alt-protein world has been abuzz about the news that the Good Food Awards had quietly dropped Climax Food from the list of finalists and, according to Climax, snatched the winner’s trophy from them due to a convoluted and confusing set of rationalizations by the organization.

Washington Post broke the story last weekend in an article titled A vegan cheese beat dairy in a big competition. Then the plot curdled (is there a title for best article headlines? If so, WaPo may have just ran away with it).

The article detailed how Climax was listed among the finalists when the GFA announced them in January and how Climax was quietly informed that same month that they had actually won it all. An uproar among industry insiders ensued, fueled by a blog post from well-known cheese industry influencer Janet Fletcher, questioning whether vegan cheese is actually cheese. The post featured quotes from traditional cheesemakers who, unsurprisingly, felt that cheese not made from animal milk should not be included.

“My take is that it’s not really cheese,” said cheesemaker Mateo Kehler of Jasper Farms in the post.

The story took a turn when Climax Foods CEO Oliver Zahn was informed by the WaPo journalist working on the story that Climax had been taken off the list of finalists and, as he would soon learn, had been disqualified from the competition altogether. From there, Climax and GFA provided differing accounts of what happened, with GFA offering up a confused and convoluted explanation that seemed to hinge on the fact that Climax had included Kokum butter in its original entry, an ingredient that they claim is not designated as GRAS (generally regarded as safe). Zahn claimed that the entry requirements didn’t specify that ingredients needed to be GRAS-certified, a claim backed up by the Internet archive version of the rules as stated in January.

As WaPo was working on the story, Zahn spoke to a few other journalists (myself included) about the news in anticipation of the WaPo story’s release. When I first talked to Zahn, he was worried about the impact of the news and was frustrated that his team had bought tickets and made hotel reservations in anticipation of receiving an award. However, his biggest frustration was that he felt the award would raise the visibility of his product and be an important milestone for the vegan world.

via GIPHY

Above: The Good Food Awards

As it turns out, the controversy surrounding the GFA awards and the organization’s unceremonious retraction of the winner’s trophy might just be the best thing that’s ever happened to Climax and the plant-based cheese category. That’s because it’s clear that even though Climax didn’t receive the award in the end, the publicity from GFA’s rake-step is better and more far-reaching than if the organization had actually gone through with the right thing.

Sure, Climax winning the award would no doubt have been a nice feather in their cap, but would it have gotten them featured as a bit on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert?

Meanwhile… Amazon Cat Returned | Gull Screeching Champion | Vegan Blue Cheese Beats Dairy

When I caught up with Zahn after the WaPo story had come out and dozens of follow-on stories had appeared about the news, he seemed more at peace. Of course, a jump in sales will probably do for you.

“Sales are good,” Zahn told me.

Stepping back, that a panel of judges saw a plant-based cheese as not only on par but actually better than a product made with dairy is forcing the industry and consumers to have a conversation, one in which I imagine many will side with Climax. Sure, today many in the industry are claiming distinctions without a difference when it comes to the actual final product, saying things like real cheese “has a story” and plant-based cheeses aren’t “agricultural products” (huh?). But in the long run, when consumers happily begin choosing great-tasting vegan cheese, the industry (and the GFA) will have to follow their lead.

You can watch my interview with Oliver below.

Climax's Oliver Zahn Talks About Good Food Awards Controversy

‘Amazon for Proteins’: Shiru Launches AI-Powered Marketplace for Proteins

Shiru, a company that utilizes AI to discover plant-based novel proteins, has announced a new marketplace in ProteinDiscovery.ai that lets anyone search, discover, pilot, and buy molecules for food, agriculture, personal care, and advanced material applications.

Shiru claims that its protein marketplace is an industry first. It allows researchers and product builders access to a database of 33 million-plus molecules and search via sequence, functional use, and expression.

“With ProteinDiscovery.ai we’ve made the world of natural proteins for industrial applications accessible. We’ve even added the ability for users to easily purchase samples, creating the ‘Amazon for proteins,’” said Shiru Founder and CEO Dr. Jasmin Hume. “We’ve been using AI to identify high-value, novel, scalable proteins for years, fueling our own product development. With significant recent interest from CPGs and ingredients companies alike, we decided to open our toolbox to everyone.”

I caught up with Hume to learn how the new protein discovery engine works. You can watch the video of our conversation below.

The Spoon Talks With Shiru About New Protein Discovery Marketplace

PoLoPo Unveils ‘SuperAA’ to Turn Potatoes Into Protein Factories Via Molecular Farming

Today, Israel-based startup PoLoPo announced it has deployed its molecular farming technology, a system that uses a genetically engineered potato to produce egg proteins, at greenhouse production scale. The company’s protein production system, which it has dubbed the SuperAA platform, grows proteins within a potato’s tuber, which is then harvested and extracted into protein powder.

Molecular farming, which produces animal protein using seed crops, has gained traction in recent years. The technique, which the Good Food Institute named the “fourth pillar” for alt protein, uses genetic engineering to introduce animal DNA directly into the seeds, transforming the resulting crops into protein factories. Once the genetically engineered seeds are planted, traditional farming management techniques can be employed to grow the crops until they are ready for harvest.

The technique has gained momentum in recent years, partly because of the cost savings it promises to introduce. After all, there is no more efficient way to produce calories for human consumption than by sprouting them from the ground. By transforming plants into small bioreactors, molecular farming companies can take advantage of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of leveraging traditional row crops as protein production engines.

PoLoPo’s founders say that the growing demand for egg-derived ingredients like ovalbumin highlights their system’s potential. Ovalbumin helps a food’s texture and increases shelf life in baked goods and plant-based meat alternatives. However, it has been in short supply in recent years, with avian flu outbreaks roiling egg production and costs surging.

The company will sell the processed protein powders to food manufacturers, who will be able to slot them into existing food production lines. The global ovalbumin-powder market is expected to hit $36 billion by 2032, according to the company. PoLoPo raised $1.75 million in seed funding last year.

Algae Cooking Club Debuts High-Smoke Point Cooking Oil Made from Fermented Microalgae


Today, a startup called the Algae Cooking Club introduced its first product, a chef-grade algae-based cooking oil. According to the company, the new oil has a smoke point of 535 °F, much higher than olive or corn oil, with a high density of Omega-9 fats (93%).

The high Omega-9 concentration is due to the utilization of microalgae, known for its efficiency in producing heart-healthy fats. Unlike macroalgae, those multi-cellular and visible-to-the-eye organisms like seaweed, microalgae are single-cell organisms usually found in lakes, streams, and oceans. However, the Cooking Club doesn’t spend its time or resources trying to scoop up enough of these little guys to churn out its oil; instead, it uses (what else?) giant metal vats to create them via fermentation.

The company feeds the microalgae sugar in bioreactors, where the organisms convert into oil, a process that allows them to bypass the need to harvest algae from natural habitats. Within just a few days, the algae achieves an oil content of approximately 80% by weight. From there, the algae undergoes an ‘expeller pressing’ technique, which the company compares to the process used in the olive oil industry. This means applying pressure to the algae to separate the oil from the biomass. Afterwards, they bottle up the resulting cooking oil.

The unveiling of Algae Cooking Club’s cooking oil comes at a time when the broader food industry recognizes the need to find ways to produce food more sustainably and without as much CO2 impact. Findings from researchers at The University of California, San Diego, reveal that algae, through rapid photosynthetic growth, can produce significantly more biomass than traditional crops like corn using the same amount of land. This efficiency, coupled with algae’s minimal impact on biodiversity and its ability to grow in conditions that would otherwise be unsuitable for agriculture, continue to thrust algae – and increasingly solutions based on microalgae – into the conversation about the future of more sustainable food production.

The Algae Cooking Club’s product isn’t the first algae-based cooking oil. In 2015, TerraVia (then known as Solazyme) launched an algae-based product line under the Thrive brand, and the Thrive algae-based cooking oil gained some dedicated customers due to its high smoke point. Unfortunately, that product was discontinued, so now Algae Cooking Club hopes to tap into those customers left behind by Thrive and, I imagine, grow the market significantly for the category.

The oil can be purchased at the company’s website for $25 per bottle (less if you subscribe).

Survey: Parasite & Mercury-Free Fish Are Key Attributes of Cell-Cultured Seafood According to Sushi Eaters

According to a report published by cell-cultured seafood startup BluNalu, consumers value the absence of parasites and mercury in cell-cultured seafood, especially among those who frequently eat sushi. The data, sourced from a survey conducted by a market research specialist in 2022 and featured in a comprehensive report by BluNalu this week, displays how consumers prioritize specific qualities of cell-cultured seafood, like BluNalu’s toro tuna.

The survey chart below reveals the answer to the question: “How significant are the following benefits of cell-cultured seafood when deciding whether to order it in a restaurant?” The top four attributes, as ranked by sushi enthusiasts, all pertained to the “clean” attributes of food cultivated beyond our increasingly polluted and climate-affected oceans. The importance placed on seafood being free from parasites, pesticides, mercury, and microplastics suggests the kind of narratives companies like BluNalu should adopt when introducing their products to the market.

Other interesting insights from the BluNalu research compilation include a preference among chefs and food industry experts for the toro portion of the tuna – the fatty belly portion of the fish – when asked which type of fish and part of a fish that the company should emphasize when created a cell-cultured alternative to wild-caught fish. This desire for toro, according to BluNalu, is because chefs see an opportunity to present this premium cut to a wider audience. From the report:

Another intriguing insight from the BluNalu research is the preference among chefs and food industry experts for toro, the fatty belly region of tune. When inquired about which fish type and section the company should highlight when producing a cell-cultured alternative to wild-caught fish, most leaned towards the toro. BluNalu believes this is because chefs see an opportunity to offer this high-priced cut to a wider audience. From the report:

Discussions with chefs illuminated the opportunity presented by cell-cultured bluefin tuna toro to extend menu utilization in non-Japanese fine-dining restaurants for the first time at scale, given that 80% of the world’s supply of this fish has historically been consumed in Japan.

While it’s worth noting the while research in the report is obviously self-serving, the insights and data seem to ring true. Like many, I’ve become increasingly worried about the potential for toxins when eating seafood over the past few years, and I’d be interested in eating seafood that doesn’t have exposure to chemicals, parasites, and other contaminants of seafood pulled from the sea. And like many in the food tech world, I’m also interested in eating less seafood due to the threat to the seafood population from overfishing.

If you’d like to take a look at the full report, you can find it here on BluNalu’s website.

Sodexo to Deploy SavorEat’s Plant-Based Burger Printing Robot at the University of Denver

This week, food service giant Sodexo and plant-based 3D printing specialist SavorEat announced they will be rolling out SavorEat’s 3D printing robot at the University of Denver. The deployment of the SavorEat Robot Chef marks the first deployment of the Israel-based company’s 3D printing technology in the U.S.

SavorEat, which went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2021, has been building its plant-based 3D printing technology for half a decade. The printer, which both prints and cooks plant-based burgers, was first rolled out in Israel last fall through a partnership with catering company Yarzin-Sella. The printer enables customers to customize their burger, choosing the size of the burger, doneness, protein level, and cooking style.

SavorEat, which initially pushed its product’s plant-based 3D printing angle, started focusing on promoting its burger printer as a robotic chef over the last year-plus with the launch of its second-generation platform. The company has published several blog posts hailing the benefits of automation in restaurants and says it plans to help restaurants reduce costs through back-of-house automation.

The partnership with Sodexo was inked back in 2021, and at the time, the two companies indicated they would deploy the plant-based meat printer in 2022. From the announcement:

Sodexo will examine the robot chef system and the first product developed by SavorEat, a plant-based protein burger, within higher education institutions across the U.S. In parallel, both parties are working on reaching an agreement for the distribution of SavorEat products.

In 2020, SavorEat CEO Racheli Vizman told The Spoon that their plans extend beyond food service and that the company would someday build a home-based 3D meat printer.

“That’s our goal,” said Vizman. “Where we can also have, next to a microwave, we can have machines that you know can create a variety of products.”

While you may need to wait a while for the home version of SavorEat’s Robot Chef, in the meantime, you can try out a SavorEat printed burger at the University of Denver’s Rebecca Chopp Grand Central Market in Community Commons starting this week.