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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Waste

Food Waste Gadgets Can’t Get VC Love, But Kickstarter Backers Are All In

It’s a mystery (kinda). While traditional venture and strategic capital haven’t shown much enthusiasm for backing food waste-fighting technology, the category is thriving on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

Two current campaigns, in particular, are crushing it, blowing past their initial funding targets with weeks still to go.

First up is the Shelfy Lite, the second fridge gadget from Italian startup Vitesy. The campaign has already raised over $300,000, more than ten times its original goal of around $28,000.

How Shelfy Lite's technology works

The Shelfy Lite works similarly to the original Shelfy (which I wrote about here), using a ceramic filter to purify fridge air and capture bacteria. The company claims that the pollutants are not just mechanically retained, but also destroyed, through a process called photocatalysis. This new version is smaller and more affordable, with a retail price of €100 (currently available at a 30%+ discount during the campaign). While the original Shelfy earned mixed reviews on its Kickstarter page, that hasn’t stopped even more backers from jumping onboard for the latest iteration.

Now on Kickstarter: Ion 2.0: Saves Money, Reduces Food Waste, Helps The Planet

The other gadget that’s tracking towards a successful campaign is the Ion 2, another fridge gadget promising to extend the life of your food. Like the Shelfy, it claims to purify the air, but it does so by filtering water through a silver-coated filter to ionize the air. The creators say this ionized air kills bacteria while remaining safe for humans at low concentrations.

I can’t speak to whether the Ion 2 will work as promised, but it’s clearly resonating with backers: more than 400 people have supported the campaign, which has raised over $68,000—nearly 20 times its original goal of just $3,500..

Meanwhile, the broader home food waste reduction category, from next-gen fridges to reimagined Tupperware, continues to struggle to attract venture investment. Part of the challenge is that most VCs aren’t interested in consumer hardware. But the problem seems deeper than that: few investors appear willing to bet big on fighting food waste.

Take the Tomorrow Fridge. The company shut down in April after failing to raise enough capital. CEO Andrew Kinzer shared the challenges in a candid LinkedIn post:

“When we set out to build a next-generation fridge—one that could extend the life of your fresh produce, reduce waste, and help make healthier eating easier—we knew we were taking on an ambitious challenge,” wrote Kinzer. “Unfortunately, the current climate for consumer hardware—especially for capital-intensive, science-forward products like ours—has made it incredibly difficult to bring something like this to life.”

Tomorrow is just the latest in a line of startups that have struggled to survive, including Silo, Ovie, and even Tupperware, which faced difficulty attracting strategic investment as its financial health declined.

Some might point to Mill as a rare example of traditional investors backing a food waste company. While technically true, I see Mill more as a waste management solution, at least until they launch something that prevents food waste (which I suspect they eventually will). The need for waste management is, in a sense, a validation of the significance of the problem for everyday consumers and the broader food industry.

So does the success of Shelfy and Ion 2 signal a shift? Maybe, but I’m still skeptical. Their success appears to be largely tied to the fact that both creators are veterans of the crowdfunding space, with proven records of launching hardware products in adjacent categories.

Still, you never know. With consumers feeling the pinch of higher grocery bills, the demand for ways to stop throwing money into the compost bin is growing. Perhaps, just perhaps, that rising interest will finally push more investors and founders to take consumer food waste seriously.

Food Recycler Startup Mill Hits $20M in Revenue as It Launches Mill for Workplace

Today, food recycler startup Mill disclosed (via Axios, scoop by my ex-Gigaom colleague Katie Fehrenbacher) that it has reached $20 million in trailing 12-month revenue. It also announced it is launching a new product line extension in Mill for Workplace.

The company, which makes a home food recycler, made headlines when it launched over two years ago, thanks to both its pedigreed founders (the CEO co-founded smart home startup Nest) and its upcycling service that turns processed food scraps into chicken feed.

Since then, Mill has continued to check off key milestones—an achievement worth noting, especially in today’s tough startup climate and in a niche category like home food waste management. Today, they hit another couple of big ones with the launch of a new product line and positive revenue growth.

The move into the business market makes sense, particularly since, as founder Matt Rogers shared in a LinkedIn post, Mill’s food recyclers are already in use at offices like Duolingo and Bristol Myers Squibb. The company’s Mill for Workplace landing page emphasizes how it will help businesses meet their sustainability goals and highlights Mill’s fleet management software.

As for revenue, while $20 million in sales is impressive, the analyst in me wants to know how much of that is hardware vs. recurring subscription revenue, and what their year-over-year growth rate looks like. My concern for any hardware company right now isn’t just the tough funding environment (though I expect Mill will look to raise another round), but also how their bill of materials and overall costs will be impacted by Trump’s new tariffs.

That said, Mill’s management has proven savvy from the start, offering a digestible monthly rental plan ($35/month as of today). I’d also expect they can command a higher monthly rate for business customers. Given their track record, I expect them to continue to navigate this space relatively well.

If you want to hear more about Mill’s business and their new business line, Mill President Harry Tannenbaum will be at Smart Kitchen Summit in July.

Podcast: The Story of Mill With Matt Rogers

If you follow the world of kitchen and consumer food tech startups, you know there hasn’t been much in the way of venture-funded startups targeting food waste in the home.

That changed last year when Mill lifted the veil on the company and its first product, the Mill Bin, a smart food recycler. The company’s unique approach included a subscription-based home food waste recycler and an accompanying service that would turn the food grounds into chicken feed. 

We decided to catch up with the company’s CEO, Matt Rogers, to hear about the journey to making Mill. During our conversation, we also talk about:

  • The early lessons in building a tech-powered food recycling appliance and service
  • Why Matt decided to target food waste after building a smart home company in Nest
  • The challenges in getting consumers to think about wasting less food
  • How better data can help us change consumer behavior 
  • The future of food waste reduction technology in the consumer kitchen

You can listen to the full episode below or find it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can also watch the video of our conversation on YouTube or below.

A Conversation With Matt Rogers from Mill

If you want to learn more about Mill, you can head to their website or join us at the Smart Kitchen Summit where we will be hearing from company cofounder Harry Tannenbaum. Use discount code podcast for 15% off tickets.

After Hitting Ten Thousand Users, Mill Unveils Second-Generation Hi-Tech Food Waste Bin

Last week, Mill unveiled its second-generation appliance, one year after introducing its high-tech food waste bin (don’t call it a composter!). The news comes as the company reaches ten thousand customers and claims it has helped divert one million pounds of food waste from landfills.

Both the first and second generation Mill turn food waste into inputs for chicken feed called grounds. The significant difference between the two machines is that the second-generation Mill will do it faster and more quietly.

According to the company, one primary area of feedback from users of the first-gen Mill was that the appliance processed food too slowly. When the company returned to the drawing board to build the second-generation device, it redesigned the food chopping blades from horizontally mounted to two vertically mounted blades, according to an interview Mill CEO Matt Rogers gave Fast Company.

Video Credit: Mill

Another upgrade speeding the break down of food faster is a change to how the food waste is heated. While the first-gen Mill was heated only from the bottom, the new Mill’s heating element is connected to the entire bin interior, resulting in faster overall food breakdown.

Finally, unlike the first Mill, this new one comes with a purchase option from the get-go. Spoon readers will remember that the company started opening the doors to purchase the first-gen appliance a few months ago after hearing feedback from many of its customers that they’d prefer to own the appliance, especially those that used the Mill to process food waste for use in their garden rather than sending it back to Mill to use for chicken feed.

According to Mill, the new appliance will sell for $999. For those who still want to rent the appliance, the monthly service (without grounds pickup) will be $29.99, $49.99 with grounds pickup. For those who purchase the Mill and want grounds pickup for the Mill chicken-feed service, that’ll cost an additional $10 monthly.

Stepping back, my guess is the biggest challenge Mill will face is its high price point. Consumers looking for high-tech help processing their food waste into compost can find options like the Vitamix Food-Cycler or the Lomi for less than half the price. I worry that just like June and those bringing new approaches to cooking, products hovering around the thousand-buck mark are too expensive for most customers to roll the dice on what is essentially a new product category. While rental lowers the cost, Mill learned that most customers prefer to own their kitchen appliances, which is why they opened up the purchase option.

We’ll keep an eye on the Mill and how they perform with their second-gen appliance.

Podcast: Overcoming Obstacles To Build Kitchen Tech Hardware With Ovie’s Ty Thompson

Ty Thompson and the rest of the Ovie team recently passed a major milestone: They shipped their first hardware product.

The product, a consumer food waste management system, was over half a decade in the making. Along the way to market, the founding team faced numerous challenges around funding, finalizing the product concept and design, building prototypes for manufacturing, and finding the right manufacturer to work with.

Ty talks about all of these challenges and the lessons learned, including:

  • Battling mission creep around the product’s vision
  • How to find the right minimum viable product to get it into production
  • What you need to do (and what you shouldn’t do) when looking to find the right manufacturing partner
  • How to balance your life and your day job while hustling to build a startup

And much more!

You can listen to the full episode by clicking play below or you can find it in the usual podcast spaces such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Mill, Maker of a High-Tech Home Food Waste Bin, Adjusts Plans and Enables Purchase Option

It’s been just over a year since the Mill, the company behind a high-tech home food waste bin, was announced to the public. The company, which made an initial splash with a unique waste-to-chicken feed service and a management team with impressive smart home pedigrees, has spent much of the past year shipping to initial customers and working on partnerships with local municipalities in Washington and Arizona to integrate their product into places with limited curbside composting pickup.

And, starting last month, the company began allowing customers to purchase the Mill bin, adding a new option for a product that had previously only been available as part of a monthly subscription fee option. Before, customers had to pay a $33-a-month subscription service to Mill that included the home bin and the Mill grounds pickup service. Now, they have the option to purchase the Mill bin for $999 a year ($899 with promotion), which gets them the bin, a year of Mill essentials like charcoal filter refills and parts and maintenance, the option to opt into Mill pickups, and a 12-month warranty. 

Where the company works with local pickup partners, plan options may be slightly different, according to Mill. Today, that primarily applies to the Phoenix market, where the company has partnered with a local compost pickup company called R.City. This Phoenix business makes a business out of picking up residential food waste and using the compost to regenerate the soil on its farm in South Phoenix.

I’ve been trialing the Mill myself, and I have to say the device works really well. I’ve tried the grounds pickup service, and it was as easy as advertised. However, since I prefer to put the grounds into the ground, buying the machine probably makes the most sense for me in the long term. That said, I imagine most folks might balk at coughing up almost a grand for a high-tech machine to manage food waste.

After Over Half a Decade in Development, Ovie Ships Food Freshness Trackers

Since I first saw the Ovie team standing in a small booth in the bottom floor of the Sands Convention Center during CES 2018, I’ve been following them to see if this group of founders could bring their vision for a smart food tracker to life. The team, which at that time consisted of Ty Thompson, Dave Joseph, and Stacie Thompson, had scratched together a prototype to showcase their idea at the big show: a low-cost visual tracking system to help people waste less food.

I liked the idea, so I was happy – and a bit surprised – to see that after over half a decade, the company’s founders had persevered and finally shipped product. Sure, the original idea – a “smart storage system” that not only included tags but some Tupperware-like containers as well as an app that allowed you to track your food inventory in one place – was a little bigger than what they ultimately brought to market (more on that in a minute), but the reality is it’s hard to ship hardware. Most project teams make compromises by the time the final product ends up in the consumer’s hands.

When I first wrote about them, I called the Ovie Smarterware trackers a ‘Tile for food’; in reality, the idea is a bit closer to an intelligent sticky note system to help you track your food’s freshness. The way the final, shippable product works is you stick Ovie smart trackers (called LightTags) on the food items you want to track, and you tell them how long you want to monitor a food item by clicking the light on the LightTag once for each day. So, for example, I would click a LightTag seven times for a pound of ground beef with an expiration date of a week from now.

As you can see above, if the light is teal, you have more than 24 hours left on your timer. Yellow warns that you have 24 hours or less on that food. The red light means time has run out. According to Ovie, each color has a blink pattern for the color-challenged. The blinks are slowest in the Teal stage and speed up as the expiration date inches near.

The company persevered through a series of challenges to finally reach this point. They launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2018, looked for investors and manufacturing partners, and fought through a pandemic and a significant hardware winter. While the Ovie tag system isn’t exactly as proposed in the company’s Kickstarter, the fact that founders saw it through and shipped it is a pretty impressive feat.

If interested, you can buy an Ovie system on the company’s website.

Mill Celebrates Standards Group Approval of Upcycled Kitchen Scraps As New Animal Feed Ingredient

Last week, Mill, a company that makes a kitchen scrap upcycling appliance, announced that a standards group had voted to approve a new ingredient feed definition, effectively giving a thumbs up to the output produced by the Mill appliance.

According to the announcement, the ingredient definition committee of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) had unanimously approved a new animal feed ingredient definition for Dried Recovered Household Food. The approval follows a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year.

This is good news for Mill, which pitches its hardware and service as a way to put calories destined for landfill back into the food system through what it calls food grounds. The way Mill’s service works is the food grounds – the heated, dried-up material resulting from processing within the Mill kitchen bin – are sent back to Mill, which then turns it into chicken feed. Now, with the leading animal feed standards group giving this feed ingredient category an official thumb’s up, Mill might have just helped pioneer a new upcycling pathway for standard household food waste to make its way into animal feed.

For Mill, the news follows the recent opening of its new facility in Mukilteo, Washington, its first dedicated facility for processing food grounds into chicken feed. While the choice of a Seattle suburb might be a bit surprising for a northern California startup like Mill, it makes sense when you consider the company’s first municipal partner for its Mill service is the city of Tacoma, which is working with Mill to pilot a service which offers Mill bins and the processing service to Tacoma city residents for a monthly fee.

According to the company, while this is a significant milestone in general for this emerging category of food scraps upcycling, there are a few i’s to dot and t’s to cross.

Although the new definition still needs to clear two procedural votes later this year before its expected inclusion in the AAFCO Official Publication (OP) in January 2024, the committee vote and FDA recommendation were the most rigorous regulatory reviews required and demonstrate significant confidence in and momentum around the definition. 

With this news, I’ll be interested in watching if other consumer food waste recycling product companies attempt animal feed as a new potential service opportunity. Mill is the first company to offer an associated service with a home food scraps bin and likely has filed patents around the entire bin and service concept, but there probably will be some space for others to produce products here.

Smart Composters Are Heading to Retail, But Will Consumers Bite?

Earlier this month, Costco shoppers in select cities across California and Washington State may have stumbled upon a product demo for an item called Lomi. This white countertop appliance, roughly the size of a sewing machine, sat atop a table adorned with a tablecloth, with boxes stacked high just behind.

The images on the tablecloth hinted at the machine’s purpose – perhaps it was a pressure cooker? An air fryer, maybe? The only way to truly discern the machine’s function was to request a demo from one of the beaming representatives or squint and read the sign that proclaimed “Lomi, Smart Waste Composter, $449.99”.

Don’t get me wrong – The very presence of a compost machine at Costco built to help food scraps avoid the landfill is a good thing, a possible sign that better management of food waste is inching toward more mainstream acceptance. But I still had to wonder: will consumers bite on a machine whose main function is to process food waste into something that can be used as fertilizer?

How Big Is Home Composting?

The answer to that question may lie in how many people want to compost their food scraps but don’t currently have an easy way to do it or access to a curbside compost service.

Approximately a quarter of US citizens aged 30 to 59 years own a compost bin in their homes. That number dips to 14% for those over the age of 60, and rises slightly to 32% for those under 30. One reason for these relatively low numbers is that only 27% of households in the US have access to curbside compost pickup. Curbside pickup is crucial because, unless someone is an avid home gardener, they likely have little need for home-generated compost. By offering curbside compost pickup, local municipalities make the diversion of food scraps as simple as recycling your cans and bottles or disposing of your garbage.

However, with a home compost appliance, anyone can compost food in their kitchen and either sprinkle it on their garden or discard the processed scraps into a patch of soil on the side of their yard. Some products, like the Mill, offer a pickup service for processed food scraps (which they turn into chicken feed) via mail-in packages.

But Will Consumers Bite?

All of this brings us back to the question of how many people would be willing to buy a home composting appliance. Past studies indicate that a majority of consumers are open to using home composting services if they’re readily available, but most aren’t prepared to pay extra for a curbside pickup service. And even when folks say they will compost if access is available, in practice, they don’t always follow through.

However, I suspect that these products target a different type of consumer: the home composter with a purpose. This includes the home gardener looking to create their own compost and the food waste warrior looking for a way to reduce their carbon footprint. For those that fit one or both of these descriptions, they would likely welcome a Lomi or another smart home composter into their kitchen.

That is if they can afford one. The Lomi is $449 for the basic option, plus the extra cost to periodically buy the compost pods with microorganisms that speed up the process of breaking down the food. The Vitamix FoodCycler FC 50 costs $349, plus the cost of filters every couple of months. The Mill, whose makers prefer it not to be referred to as a composter because they turn the scraps into animal feed (though we still categorize them as composter), charges a monthly subscription of $33 for the machine and the pickup service for the processed food grounds.

None of these are cheap, especially for a fairly new product category like smart composters, which is probably why Lomi felt the need to start sending demo teams into markets in California and Washington to show people what these products are all about. When I walked up to the Lomi table and asked them about the product, the demo leader was enthusiastic and let me know how to use it.

In the end, I think this market will be an interesting one to watch, in part because it’s so new. It will take some time to teach consumers the benefits of these products, and once they do, we will learn just how many folks are willing to pay for a machine to process their food scraps.

Dispatches from Israel Food Tech Ecosystem: Anat Natan, CEO and Cofounder of Anina

I talked to Anat Natan, the co-founder and CEO of Anina. Anina is an Israeli startup that takes imperfect food and transforms it into ready-made meals in pods. Food waste has significant economic and environmental implications, and it is estimated that the greenhouse gas emissions from food contribute to 7% of the overall greenhouse gasses emitted globally. We talked about the technology that powers Anina, operating in markets outside of Israel, and what she believes sets Israeli founders apart. 

J: Talk to me about the technology behind Anina. 

A: We create these laminates, these vegetable sheets, and we try to incorporate as much food waste as possible. The laminate is strong but flexible. We try to take the ugly produce, and we try to incorporate all this food waste in our production process because we care about all the factors of the produce outside of how it looks. A third of the produce in the US goes to waste due to aesthetic reasons. I think there’s a catch-22. As consumers, we want to be more and more sustainable, consume more sustainable brands, and support sustainable production. But on the other hand, we become, as consumers, more concerned about what’s perfect. 

After we create these laminates, we mold them, we fill them, and we close them. Our technology is protected IP, and this IP contains the process from fresh produce to the pod, including the laminate. We’re registering it in the US, the EU, Israel, and Singapore. 

J: Did you choose those markets because those will be your first entry points? 

A: Our go-to market is divided into two approaches. With the US, our brand will have partners to get to the market efficiently and reach customers in the right and creative way. With the rest of the world, we are going to use a B2B approach, which is a joint venture. We bring to the table what we know how to do, which is the production process and R&D. And everybody does what they know how to do best. The partners know the market, the consumers, and the supply chain. We start by creating pilots, and we’re going to conduct pilots in Israel, Spain, Andorra, and Singapore to understand the right way to approach the market. And after that, we will create a long-term collaboration with them. 

J: What type of consumer testing have you done so far? 

A: So much. We have conducted external research in Israel, Spain, in Italy (with Barilla) and very in-depth design thinking research. In the US, we have done a market analysis that organizes qualitative, quantitative, demographics, and surveys. Every time we ask the question, do you understand what it is? Do you know how to use it? We give the product to people to try at home and then answer surveys. Anina was established in June 2020, and I’ve been conducting research since August 2020 because I believe that innovation needs to go hand in hand with understanding how to approach the consumer. Obviously, they cannot imagine what they don’t have in front of them. But you have to evaluate what they think to make sure that you don’t bring an alien to them eventually. 

J: You mentioned a lot of different markets in the US, Europe, Israel, and Singapore. Have you noticed differences in the customers in each place? Maybe customers have different preferences, or it has to be given to them in a certain way? 

A: Yes and no at the same time. Our consumers are millennials and Gen-Z and they care about what they eat and care about investing in themselves. And then, when you look at it, the first difference between the countries is the culinary element. We have five different recipes. One of them has beetroot, spinach, and quinoa, and in Singapore, they told us how nobody eats beetroot. And then we spoke to a Russian lady. And she said, ‘that’s my favorite.’ You can talk about pasta. The Italians don’t want pasta in their meals because they know they do it better, but the rest of the world desires pasta.

The understanding of the culinary element is a very local element: What type of ingredients? What type of produce to use? What’s interesting? What’s weird? What’s familiar? So first, the culinary element. And yet, I will tell you that the differences we have expected to be bigger, but it appears that there are more similarities than what we have expected. When we showed them our recipes, there were only adjustments, mainly in the seasoning, not in the whole concept of the recipe. And I was actually curious about it, and I think there’s more similarity in that generation rather than Gen X because of social media. They’re more exposed to the same culinary element. And yet, there are differences.

The second one is about instructions on how to cook. For example, do you give a range of timing of cooking? Do you prefer words or icons? There’s a lot to how you communicate information. But what’s very amazing is that it doesn’t matter if it’s the US, the land of convenience. If it’s Singapore, which I think is the gate to innovation for tech in the Far East. Or if it’s Spain or Israel or Italy, which are very traditional countries when it comes to cooking. The acceptance of the product is unheard of, and everybody appreciates a good home-cooked mouthfeel experience with convenience.

J: So it’s not just about the product but about the experience and how the user sees it, what kind of instructions and images are used? 

A: The most important thing is the mouthfeel and the taste and flavor experience. We know how to control when and how the pod will break down during the cooking process since not all the ingredients get the same amount of time to cook. The pod from the outside is cooked the whole time, while the filling inside is cooked only part of the time.

What is the result? It’s multi-texture because when you cook different things at different times, it’s not that everything is soft. And then people do not understand that. But they say ‘Wow, it tastes like home cooking, it tastes like each ingredient got a different treatment of cooking.’ And this doesn’t exist in the food industry. 

J: Is this a prototype, or is this what you sell? 

A: This is what we sell now in Israel. We have already planned to do a joint venture with Strauss which is the second-biggest food company in Israel. 

J: Where can people buy this? 

A: Mainly online. 

J: I want to ask about is scaling. You have a very unique technology with the food as a laminate, and I imagine this packaging is also custom. How do you tackle the challenge of scaling up? 

A: We are supported by engineers. We have an advisory board that comes to support us so that we scale up in an efficient way. We already have the capacity to produce a few thousand units a month, and there’s a full plan for mass production. We have to do it as fast as possible to get to the most efficient objectives. 

J: What does the timeline look like for entering other countries? 

A: This year, we’re already doing the pilots in the countries I’ve told you about. 

J: How did this idea start? 

A: I met my other two co-founders, Meydan Levy and Esti Brantz. They are industrial designers from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.  They invented the product. They wanted to overcome the challenge of food waste and ugly produce, and they saw it as a phenomenon that only increases with time. With their knowledge, ability, and their artistic way of looking outside of the box, they brought a lot of techniques from other industries to produce all this starting with the laminate and eventually building the pod.

They came to the Kitchen Hub, which is where I met them. The Kitchen Hub creates new teams of founders, allocating technologies, products, innovation, and ideas, and then bringing the right CEO who invents the business.

J: I saw Anina last year in New York at the NY-Israel Foodtech Bridge conference. From your perspective, what was your experience of that conference? 

A:  I met a lot of interesting people that we are even today still thinking of how we can collaborate within the US market. I think the exposure to the US market was very interesting.

J: How would you say Israeli startup founders are different? 

A: There’s a thing in Israel about getting to the bottom line: it looks like being rude. And a lot of Israelis, if you live here, it feels like it’s rude, but we cut to the chase. You can be aggressive in your movement and still be a friend when you finish the meeting, and that’s something that doesn’t exist in the world. I think there are a lot of benefits to that.

Joy Chen is a contributor at the Spoon and has been writing about robotics and alternative proteins for the past year and a half. Although originally from the United States, she is currently studying at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Sigh. It Looks Like Misinformation is Coming For Food Waste Technology Too

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how misinformation has real potential to harm the nascent cultivated meat industry. As it turns out, meat grown in bioreactors is not the only food tech-related misinformation floating around nowadays.

Over the last couple of weeks, viral media posts have circulated about the fresh produce life extension coating made by Apeel. These tweets and posts often reference Bill Gates’ investment in the company and present a mix of conspiracy theories ranging from claims that the Apeel coating will make users sick, cause skin or eye damage, or increase the population’s reliance on the pharmaceutical industry.

Some of the early posts pointed to a fact sheet which, according to a fact check by the USA Today, was about an industrial cleaner – also called Apeel – instead of the food coating. But even after it became clear that the warnings in the fact sheet were about a product meant for cleaning floors and not for the Apeel food coating, it didn’t seem to deter some on social media from suggesting the ingredients in the Apeel product were harmful or a part of some weird food control plot by Bill Gates.

The primary active ingredient in the Apeel coating mentioned in the posts is mono- and diglycerides. While there is a legitimate conversation to be had about whether excess mono- and diglycerides in our diets can be harmful, the posts suggest that Apeel’s coating is a danger to all those who consume it, despite the fact the company received a ‘no questions’ GRAS notification from the FDA that the additives are safe for their intended use. The posts also largely ignore that mono- and diglycerides are commonly added to various foods, such as bread, peanut butter, and ice cream, and for products with peels like avocados or bananas, the Apeel coating won’t actually be consumed (unless someone chooses to eat the peels for some reason).

Although this recent surge in misinformation does not seem to have the same potential impact as those surrounding cultivated meat, there is no doubt that it has been a concerning development for Apeel. Food misinformation is widespread today, sometimes due to deliberate efforts by organizations with vested interests in a product, and other times simply because self-proclaimed health or food experts raise the alarm based on something they have seen or read.

Bottom line: as new technologies for food become more commonplace, so will bad information about them. The companies behind these products need to work to educate customers and proactively address the flare-ups in the wild before they start burning out of control.

Home Are Still the Biggest Source of Food Waste (44M Tons), and It’s Only Getting Worse

Last week, ReFED released its latest edition of the Food Waste Monitor, which is part of the ReFED Insights Engine, an interactive tool that tracks food waste sources, solutions, capital, and impact.

The organization monitors food waste through the lens of excess food production, which means how much excess food is produced that ultimately doesn’t get consumed. According to ReFED, there were 91 million tons of excess food in the US in 2021 (the latest year for which they have data), of which almost 36%, or 32.7 million pounds, ended up in landfills.

Other destinations for the excess food included sewer (6.91 million tons, 7.6%), composting (16.6 million tons, 18.3%), food that is not harvested at the farm (12.7 million tons, 14%), and animal feed (7.81 million tons, 8.6%) among others.

The Food Waste Monitor also breaks down where in the system food waste is happening. Consumers have long been known as being the biggest culprits when it comes to food waste, and we’ve only gotten worse over the last five years, going from 45.6% (39.6M tons) of excess food in 2016 to 48.4% (44.1M tons), which means the home now accounts for almost half of the total excess food in the US.

In addition to quantifying the total size of excess food in our system and how much is wasted, the ReFED Insights engine also has a solutions database that examines and quantifies the different solutions for reducing food waste. As can be seen in the graphic below, the database breaks solutions down by where they touch the food along the value chain (each category is called an ‘action area’), from harvest to consumer environments and beyond, and quantifies the net collective financial benefit the various solutions targeted at each stop along the way could potentially have.

According to ReFED, reshaping consumer environments has the biggest potential to reduce excess food, with an annual net financial impact of over $30 billion in total food value. Within that category, ReFED estimates that the biggest potential lever for reshaping environments is consumer education campaigns, which would help consumers better understand the problem of food waste and how to address it in their meal planning, how they store their food, etc.

A breakdown of the financial and environmental benefits of consumer education campaigns is below. It breaks down not only the direct dollar impact, but shows the total amount of food diverted (3.22M tons), emissions reduction (18.7M metric tons of CO2e), and water saved (795B gallons).

While the ReFED solutions database touches on ways in which consumers can reduce food by employing technology (smart home or food life extension technology) it doesn’t show the economic impact these types of solutions could have. That’s not really ReFED’s fault, because the reality is there hasn’t been a whole lot of innovation in this space.

One category I didn’t see in the consumer solutions that could be added is consumer food tracking and meal planning apps, which have been active areas in terms of new products and consumer adoption (though it’s unclear how impactful they have been).

There is a lot more data and insights in the ReFED Insights engine, so you should definitely check it out for yourself.