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Internet of Food

October 13, 2017

Are Personalized Food Profiles The Next Big Thing In Food?

One of the big discussion topics at Smart Kitchen Summit this week was the need for data standardization in food. As we digitize the various stages of the food journey from farm to factory to the kitchen, many feel a lack of standardized data sets is inhibiting innovation.

Another trend on people’s minds at SKS was personalization.  There’s a growing consensus we are moving away from one-sized-fits-all food production to personalized food tailored around taste, health profiles and real-time nutrition needs.

Hearing folks talk about these two trends at SKS got me thinking about the possibilities for personalized food data profiles. Apparently I’m not the only one.  During a panel on the first day titled, “From Cloud To Cart: The Future of Grocery,” Mike Lee of the Future Market and Alpha Food Labs talked about the opportunity he sees for a data standard around food preferences.

“I’ve always believed there needs to be this interoperable data standard that encapsulates what your food preferences are,” said Lee. “Something that can be used from this app to this app to this grocery store. Much in the same way you have single sign-on with Facebook, I can log in somewhere, and it can show me content that’s sculpted to what I have.”

The insight came as part of a response to a question posed by session moderator Brian Frank, who asked if anyone besides Amazon could scale to fulfill the last mile in food delivery. Lee pointed out that Amazon’s resources and scale mean they could play a large role in creating a de facto standard for data interoperability around a person’s food preferences.

“If a Mozilla type organization is not going to create this type of food ID standard, Amazon probably has the best chance to create enough scale for this standard to become interoperable,” said Lee.

Innit COO Josh Sigel agreed. Sigel said that a personalized food profile is not that different than our existing online identities, only instead of a profile built around our business or social graph, it would be one based on our food preferences and eating behavior.

“Similar to your Linkedin profiles for your business and Facebook for your social media, we see a great opportunity to create a universal ID that carries with you,” said Sigel.

The potential applications for a personal and portable food data profile that travels with us as we traverse our various food experiences are intriguing.  Lee pointed out one use case tailored for restaurants that sounded pretty cool:

“We have so much food choice, and there’s a real opportunity to encapsulate that in a way that is portable. If the four of us go out to dinner, we can see four different kinds of menus. That is a truly multibillion-dollar opportunity.”

You can hear the full exchange on the question posed by Brian Frank below. We are publishing this as part of our Daily Spoon podcast where we highlight one interesting story a day. We will also be publishing full sessions as part of the Smart Kitchen Show podcast and also will have video of sessions in about a week, so make sure to check back.

October 9, 2017

This Company Uses Blockchain To Fight Global Food Fraud

Sometimes bad food is caused by undercooking or leaving fresh foods out too long – but often it’s because the item was either fake or contaminated before it even reached retail or a restaurant. After suffering a terrible case of food poisoning likely due to this problem while visiting Shanghai, Mitchel Weinberg was inspired to do something about international food industry fraud.

A former trade-consultant, Weinberg founded Inscatech, a global network of investigators that down evidence of food industry fraud and malpractice. Inscatech’s agents inspect a variety of reports of counterfeit and contaminated food products before they reach retailers and food producers with most problems originating in China.

“Statistically we’re uncovering fraud about 70 percent of the time but in China, it’s very close to 100 percent,” Weinberg told Bloomberg Technology. “It’s pervasive, it’s across food groups, and it’s anything you can possibly imagine.”

Currently, Inscatech is in the process of creating molecular markers and genetic fingerprints to help more effectively identify natural products and determine what’s real and what’s not.  Other companies are taking a digital approach and developing technology to monitor where that product originated.

As more Chinese food companies become part of the global supply chain, big supermarket companies, including Wal-Mart Stores, are recognizing the reputational danger of food fraud. Wal-Mart recently completed a trial using the technology, blockchain to monitor their pork supply chain in China. Blockchain, an eight-year-old technology that cryptographically records transactions, helped Wal-Mart to reduce their tracking time from 26 hours to only a few seconds.

Blockchain works as a database of records. It can potentially improve traceability by creating a chain of history that is impossible to alter without destroying the current sequence. Alibaba has also recognized the potential for blockchain within their platforms and is planning to implement a project with food suppliers in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Australia Post and auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“Food fraud is a serious global issue,” said Maggie Zhou, managing director for Alibaba in Australia and New Zealand told Bloomberg Technology. “This project is the first step in creating a globally respected framework that protects the reputation of food merchants and gives consumers further confidence to purchase food online.”

However, Inscatech has its concerns about blockchain. Their agents focus on working with informants who bring attention to the exact location where the food-fraud is taking place and believe that blockchain is only as reliable as the person providing that data. As of right now, blockchain is still the best system in place against fighting food-fraud. In a global food industry that relies mostly on just paper records, blockchain will help identify those putting data into the system and if incorrect, allow them to be held responsible.

October 2, 2017

Are Digestible Food Sensors The Answer To Our Food Waste Problem?

We humans waste a whole lot of food.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, roughly one-third of food gets spoiled, which translates to about $1 trillion annually. At almost double the size of the US grocery industry, it’s safe to say we have a food waste problem.

One way to reduce food waste is to maintain optimal environmental conditions such as temperature, moisture levels, and UV exposure. If we could strike the right balance for these environmental factors during transport, in the warehouse, at retail or even in our homes, it would extend the life of our food and help to reduce waste significantly.

Normally this type of job is perfect for the Internet of Things. Today low-cost sensors are used everywhere to track a variety of conditions across the worlds of agriculture, warehousing and in grocery stores. But food is a particularly thorny challenge since it’s difficult to accurately monitor food conditions with sensors that are not consumable by humans.

But now there may be hope. That’s because a group of researchers led by Giovanni Salvatore at ETH Zurich have developed a biocompatible microsensor that can be directly applied to food and is safe to eat. The sensor is made from a combination of edible materials such as magnesium and a compostable polymer made with corn and food starch.

According to Salvatore, the sensors can be used in a variety of scenarios, including transportation of food on cargo ships. “In preparation for transport to Europe, fish from Japan could be fitted with tiny temperature sensors, allowing them to be continuously monitored to ensure they are kept at a cool enough temperature,” said Salvatore.

While these types of edible sensors hold lots of promise, we’re still a ways off from seeing them in everyday use. One issue is cost: making them is currently very expensive, compared to pennies or even fractions of pennies for traditional RFID tags. But the biggest challenge for this technology is bio-compatible sensors will still require a local transmitter to send signals to the outside world. That transmitter and power source would typically be something like a Bluetooth radio and battery, and as of today, researchers have not figured out how to make these systems digestible.

But according to Salvatore, that’s only a matter of time. Per Futurity:

Salvatore predicts that these biodegradable sensors will be part of our everyday lives within 5 to 10 years, depending on the level of interest shown by industry. By that time, the battery, processor, and transmitter would probably be integrated into the microsensor, Salvatore explains.

You can find the research paper from Salvatore and his team here and see a video produced by the team below.

Biodegradable microsensors: the link between food products and the Internet of Things?

September 11, 2017

Visual Search Holds Great Promise for the Future of Food

The fruits of advances in visual search technology offer great promise for the future of food in a wide range of applications.

Applying such technologies as computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence and the ability to delve deeply into tags and other metadata, innovators can build applications that can assist in identifying food properties. These can be valuable to help build healthy eating habits or even speed up the line at your average fast food restaurant. KFC in China is working on using a facial-recognition payment system geared to moving people through long waits at record pace. Ant, a financial subsidiary of Alibaba has the means to identify a person in two seconds and match them with a photo ID that lives on the Alipay network. Using a special algorithm, Ant says it is nearly impossible to spoof the system using a photo instead of a live shot, as well as being able to identify an individual even if he or she is wearing heavy makeup.

The long arm of visual search can touch the food industry in ways that use the power of the smart home with great utility. Amazon, for example, has its Rekognition technology which uses deep learning and a massive database to identify images, including pictures of food. Rekognition’s API is available to developers who could apply its power to many smart kitchen appliances, such as the family fridge. Take Samsung’s smart fridge as an example. Its ability to see what’s inside the appliance, take a recipe and identify what needs to be purchased can be married with a database using visual recognition. That list then is passed on to Alexa (which pairs with Samsung’s appliances) and within hours, everything a cook needs to make a special dinner is on hand.

While many of the culinary applications of advanced visual search are a bit “blue sky” in nature, especially as they apply to the smart home, there are enough efforts in market to show the concept’s promise. Pinterest and Google have individually developed what could be called “Shazaam for food.” Pinterest’s version of Lens allows users to snap a photo of food and bring up recipe images for that ingredient. As with other search products, Pinterest’s Lens still is in learning mode, not able to distinguish between a yellow squash and a banana.

Google’s visual search product, also called Lens, was announced at its May developers conference and is not yet available. Google plans to incorporate Lens into its smart home portfolio using Google Assistant.

And then you have an idea that looks good on paper but perhaps has too many moving parts to be viable on a mass scale. Smartplate, is a countertop device that works with a specially designed plate/tray combo that works with an app. The app weighs and identifies your food, and then tracks your dietary intake. The plate uses built-in cameras to take photos of the food and matches the contents to a database that lives in the cloud. The results from a search can be saved to a personal journal or synched to other devices such as a smartwatch.

The application of visual search into the core of the smart kitchen will depend on how easily the individual pieces (and who owns them) of this puzzle fit together. Marrying multiple technologies, image database, hardware and delivery mechanism are just a few of the elements that need to come together. Even Amazon, who owns much of the necessary components, won’t be able to crack the visual search code alone. The speed that valuable partnerships can be built will dictate how this market fares moving forward.

September 5, 2017

From Safety to Savings, Blockchain Technology Will Disrupt the Food Scene

Behold the blockchain. The disruptive new technology promises to make traditional paper ledger-based transactions obsolete, replaced by digital ledgers. Headlines appear every day heralding how blockchain technology will revolutionize financial services markets, which remain burdened by unwieldy paper trails and costly proprietary software applications. But blockchain technology will also have a transformative impact on the food industry and many other industries. From cost savings to removal of intermediaries to more efficient and precise tracking of contamination, the food business will derive many benefits from blockchain.

None of this is lost on titans in the food industry and technology giants are focused on blockchain, too. IBM has announced a blockchain collaboration with food giants including Walmart, Unilever and Nestle. Big Blue has announced that it will help global food businesses use its blockchain network to trace the source of contaminated food instantly.  Because blockchain uses digital means to track transactions and trace the flow of food, contamination trails can be solved by data-centric means rather than paper-based ones. Officials from Walmart have demonstrated how this kind of contamination tracking can take place in under three seconds.

According to the World Health Organization, one in ten people will fall ill every year due to contaminated food. Children under 5 years of age are at particularly high risk, with 125,000 children dying from foodborne diseases every year. Blockchain technology will have a giant impact on these problems. The full list of food companies signed on to work with IBM’s blockchain network is as follows: Dole, Driscoll’s, Golden State Foods, Kroger, McCormick and Company, McLane Company, Nestlé, Tyson Foods, Unilever and Walmart.

In this video, Walmart’s VP of Food Safety discussed the huge impact that blockchain will have:

According to Forbes: “By using blockchain, when a problem arises, the potential is to quickly identify what the source of contamination is since one can see across the whole ecosystem and where all the potential points of contamination could be using the data to pinpoint the source. As such it is ‘ideally suited’ according to IBM to address these challenges because it establishes a trusted environment for all transactions.”

IBM has already conducted several pilots focused on food safety in order to demonstrate the ways in which blockchain can benefit global food traceability.

All participants in the global food supply chain stand to benefit from blockchain technology, ranging from growers to suppliers and distributors. Beyond tracking contamination, blockchain promises to usher in much more efficient, trusted financial transactions that can remove many types of intermediaries. According to a new market intelligence report by BIS Research, titled ‘Blockchain Technology in Financial Services Market – Analysis and Forecast: 2017 to 2026′, cost savings of $30 to $40 billion per year will be achieved in trade finance.

The move to blockchain does not necessarily mean buying into expensive proprietary platforms, either. While IBM’s blockchain network resides on the IBM Cloud platform, The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project is squarely focused on keeping blockchain open source and blockchain solutions free. Many powerful companies are partners on the project, and are committed to keeping patent wars and proprietary shenanigans out of the blockchain ecosystem.

“Blockchain technology enables a new era of end-to-end transparency in the global food system – equivalent to shining a light on food ecosystem participants that will further promote responsible actions and behaviors,” notes Walmart VP Frank Yiannas. “It also allows all participants to share information rapidly and with confidence across a strong trusted network.”

August 14, 2017

The Spoon’s Video Top Three: Designer Biohacking, VR in the Bar, Smart Coasters

Welcome to the Spoon’s first video review of the three of the most interesting stories from the past week about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen.

This week we’ve got stories about the intersection of design and biohacking, how virtual reality could be used to enhance your experience at the local watering hole, and how bars and restaurants are deploying smart coasters to engage with customers and better understand what they’re up to (I think I’ve got the answer: drinking).

P.S. Let us know what you think of this new format!

July 27, 2017

Forget 3D Food Printers. The Future Will Have Home Food Reactors

If the idea of personalized food fabrication using bionsensors and 3D food printers isn’t enough to blow your mind, what about home food reactors that make food using only electricity, carbon dioxide and organisms from the air we breathe?

If researchers from Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have any say in the matter, some day we may have just that.

That’s because the joint study group has successfully produced single cell protein in the lab using only water, electricity, carbon dioxide and small organisms obtained from the environment. The end result is a breakthrough that, if commercialized, could result in solar powered home food reactors that produce protein and carb-packed food.

The idea of creating food from essentially nothing is both mind-bending and potentially world-changing. And while I would love to have a food reactor in my home that could produce interesting food with practically zero inputs besides electricity and air, the biggest implications are clearly for those areas of the world facing significant resource challenges.

“In practice, all the raw materials are available from the air,”said Juha-Pekka Pitkänen, Principal Scientist at VTT. “In the future, the technology can be transported to, for instance, deserts and other areas facing famine.”

The process and the resulting protein could be used to produce food for both humans and livestock.

“Compared to traditional agriculture, the production method currently under development does not require a location with the conditions for agriculture, such as the right temperature, humidity or a certain soil type,” said Professor Jero Ahola of LUT. “This allows us to use a completely automatised process to produce the animal feed required in a shipping container facility built on the farm.”

Lab equipment used to create single cell protein from electricity, carbon dioxide and microbes. Image Credit: JAA TÄMÄ KUVA

The researchers plan to take what they’ve done in the lab and move it into pilot production that produces larger quantities of food products to enable testing. Once that is achieved, they believe the concept could be commercialized.

“The idea is to develop the concept into a mass product, with a price that drops as the technology becomes more common,” said Ahola.

And how soon until food reactors make their way into our homes?

“Maybe 10 years is a realistic timeframe for reaching commercial capacity, in terms of the necessary legislation and process technology,” said Pitkänen.

July 15, 2017

Startups Aim To Bring Fresher Choices To The Office Vending Machine

Office life can often mean tight deadlines, which in turn often means making tough choices like ‘Funyuns or Fritos?’ when lunch rolls around.

But for those of us who believe that no time starved employee should have to sustain themselves on bags full of salt and high fructose corn syrup, things may be looking up: a new crop of startups are trying to revisit the office vending machine and bring fresher choices to those of us chained to our desk.

One of those startups is Byte Foods. The company operates a fleet of smart fridges installed in office break rooms and cafeterias throughout the Bay Area.  The company, started by the husband and wife team of Lee and Megan Mokri in 2015, licenses their fridges stocked with fresh food from local producers such as Blue Bottle and Mixt Greens. Companies pay a monthly service fee, and Byte manages food inventory, payments and allows the employer to check out purchasing patterns with a web based dashboard. Employees access the food by swiping their card, choose what they want, and a bill is sent to their smartphone.  Each food item has a small RFID tag on the bottom which helps the fridges determine which items the employee has chosen.

The Mokris ran food delivery startup 180 Eats before getting into fresh vending machines. The current version of Byte is a result of 2016 acquisition of Pantry, a company which made the fridge and software tech licensed by Byte when they launched in 2015. After a year of perfecting the combined offering of fresh food delivery with the product licensing model inherited from Pantry, the company is now looking to expand beyond the Bay Area with the cash from their recent $5.5 million funding round.

Another company bringing fresh food to office cafeterias as well as other locations such as O’Hare airport is Chicago based Farmer’s Fridge. The company, which operates in about 75 locations throughout the Windy City, stocks their fridges with fresh salads made in their kitchen. Customers can check their fridges for inventory with the Farmer’s Fridge app, which also helps them to find locations around town.

Like Byte, Farmer’s Fridge recently received an investment to fuel growth. The company recently received a $10 million investment led by French food giant Danone’s venture arm, Danone Ventures.  The investment team also includes former McDonalds CEO, Don Thomson, through though venture firm he founded, Cleveland Avenue.

It’s not just American startups who are rethinking the vending machine. Foodles, a French startup, is using a model similar to Byte where they will install turnkey connected vending machines stocked with food for $3,400 per month. The company, which is operating in a dozen locations throughout Paris, has raised just over $2 million in funding.

And as it turns out, big companies are also toying with the idea of fresher food from the vending machine. At SXSW this year, Panasonic showed off a smart vending machine called ‘Bento@Your Office’, which dispensed – you guessed it – bento boxes for employees.

In some ways, this new crop of startups is taking many of the ideas created by micromarket movement that’s started to gain traction over the past few years. Fresher food and better technology have started to push vending machine operators across the country evaluate new models. The vending market, which is a $20 billion plus market across food and other items, is a potentially significant opportunity for those looking to shake things up.

And that’s exactly what this new crop of startups bringing fresher food to offices looks to do. The race is on to create national footprints as these companies look beyond their home markets to find new customers for their turnkey fresh vending concepts.

And hopefully, for those of us racing to meet deadlines, we will soon have more choices than Funyuns or Fritos for lunch.

The Smart Kitchen Summit is less than three months away. Get your ticket today before early bird ticket pricing before it expires to make sure you are the the one and only event focused on the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. 

June 15, 2017

Smart Gardens Follow a Familiar Business Path

Entrepreneurs behind the recent raft of smart indoor gardens are following the digital commerce wisdom of those who understand the value of subscription-based businesses. The old, “buy the camera for cheap and we will sell you lots of film” concept has been successful for companies such as Keurig and Nespresso in maintaining multiple revenue streams.

Ava Byte, an Indiegogo project billed as “the world’s best automated smart garden,” may be the most trouble-free indoor growing appliance on the market. The Vancouver, B.C. startup has taken many of the features of its competitors such as Aerogarden and taken them to a new level. For example, the growing pods are soil free and include the necessary nutrients for optimal growth. The kit, with the standard smart garden goodies such as a base and grow light, also has an HD camera to monitor growing and sensors for precise watering. After getting Ava Bytes gardens into the hands of consumers, the company will be able to realize money from purchases of additional pods for about $6 per unit.

AVA Byte: World's Best Automated Indoor Smart Garden. Get #AVAByte Now at AVAgrows.com

Ava Byte also jumps on the voice-based smart home assistant bandwagon by being compatible with amazon’s Echo and Apple’s HomeKit. The company is led by Valerie Song and Chase Ando, a former chef, born out of Startup Weekend Vancouver 2015. Song was frustrated by her inability to keep plants alive in her sunlight-challenged apartment. She teamed up with engineers, designers and horticulturists to develop the smart garden that brings a bit of nature indoors.

Another difference between Ava Byte and others in the market is that it claims to be able to grow more than the usual herbs, lettuces, and small tomatoes. According to the company’s crowdfunding page, it can grow peppers, berries and mushrooms in addition to the standard fare.

The company has surpassed its $30,000 goal by 125% and expects to ship in March 2018.

The smart growing pods are an interesting component of the smart garden space. Even though Aerogarden pods are affordable, there are a number of hacks that show how to inexpensively make replacements pods. Using proprietary growing pods does offer the ability for smart garden companies to license their technology to third parties, but could be a turn off to the DIY crowd.

Going from super high-tech to cool low-tech, another crowdsourced entrant in the indoor garden space is from Urban Leaf and is billed as the world’s smallest garden. The product is a growing pod insert that slips into the neck of a bottle (green or brown preferred). First, the bottle is filled up to the neck with water and the insert is popped in. The pod is filled with additional water and then placed in a sunny spot. An interesting component of this option is that it reuses bottles you already have (wine, soda, etc.) and does not require investment in additional containers.

The company founders are Nathan Littlewood and Robert Elliott. Nate worked in the finance industry before leaving to become a chef and took cooking classes around the world. Rob is a PhD whose focus is on Vegetated Infrastructure. After meeting Nate in 2016, the pair began working on urban food growing systems.

Kickstarter - The World's Smallest Garden

Urban Leaf has an all or nothing goal of $40,000. As of June 14, with less than a week to go, the offering is a little under $7,000 short of reaching its goal.

Make sure to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking, and the kitchen. Use the discount code SPOON to get 25% off of tickets. Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

June 13, 2017

Technology Innovation Adds New Dimension To Pasta Making

Alas, finally technology for those who like to play with their food.

Give its universal popularity, pasta is a natural prime target for entrepreneurs wanting to leave an imprint on the future of food. Living at the intersection of smart food techniques and future consumer trends are methods to shapeshift ordinary macaroni noodles into 3D wonders that delight the eye and tickle the palate.

Similar to those animal-shaped sponges that mysteriously grow when submerged, researchers at MIT have developed gelatin-based discs that separate and form origami-like three-dimensional shapes when dunked in hot water or broth. Not only are these creations fun to eat, their practical purpose is saving space during transport to retailers and consumers.

“We did some simple calculations, such as for macaroni pasta, and even if you pack it perfectly, you still will end up with 67 percent of the volume as air,” Wen Wang, a research scientist at MIT told the Tribune of India.

“We thought maybe in the future our shape-changing food could be packed flat and save space,” said Wang.

Shapeshifting pasta

According to MIT, researchers took their discovery to a chef at a leading Boston restaurant. The collaboration led to discs of gelatin flavored with plankton and squid ink, that quickly wrap around small beads of caviar. They also created long fettuccini-like strips, made from two gelatins that melt at different temperatures, causing the noodles to spontaneously divide when hot broth melts away certain sections.

The next step would be to see if the process will work with more traditional pasta ingredients such as eggs, flour and water.

Not to be left behind the innovation curve for indigenous food, Parma, Italy-based Barilla Group, has come up with a 3D pasta printer. In the works for more than three years, Barilla teased the market in 2014 by holding a 3D pasta printing competition. Winners made pasta in the shape of roses, Christmas trees and full moons, resulting in forms able to hold more sauce as well as dazzle the eye.

BARILLA - 3d pasta presented at Expo 2015

In 2016 at the CIBUS International Food Exhibition, Barilla showcased a working prototype of a pasta printer that is able to make four different shapes, each in under two minutes. The device, built in conjunction with Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) uses pre-made pasta cartridges loaded with Durum Wheat Semolina and water. Custom-made extruders deliver the final product.

At the 2016 event, Fabrizio Cassotta, Barilla’s Innovation Pasta, Ready Meals and Smart Food Manager, explained to 3ders.org, “All you need to do is load the dough cartridges in the machine and that’s it. It takes only a few minutes: you choose the pasta shape you want and the data is sent to the printer that materializes ready-to-cook pasta, shaped as cubes, moons, roses or many other shapes. Never seen before pasta shapes made with our favorite ingredients,” he says. Premade shapes can be selected using a tablet or smartphone.

Barilla will initially target restaurants and shops that sell fresh pasta before taking aim at the consumer market.

A second 3D pasta printing contest, sponsored by Barilla and administered by Desall.com, ended in early May with more than 1,100 entries with new designs. No winners have been announced.

June 12, 2017

Kickstarter Entrepreneurs Ride the Popularity Wave of Probiotic Foods

Probiotics are a budding segment of the food part of the crowdsourcing world. While most new efforts are focused on pickles, fermented sodas and kombucha, a team of Slovenian Kickstarter veterans are showcasing the wonders of probiotic cheese.

Kefirko Cheese Maker comes on the heels of the successful 2015 launch of Kefirko, a device that makes homemade kefir. Kefir is a fermented milk drink made with special grains that act as a fermenter/starter. The process can be laborious done in a traditional manner. The kefir is extracted from the grains by hanging a cheesecloth-like bag over a shallow bowl, allowing the liquid to separate from the starter. In recent years, this fermented beverage, which originated in the Caucasus Mountains, has grown in popularity with a renewed focus on healthy eating and the role of probiotics.

The team of Marko Borko and Andrej Glažar, with backgrounds in engineering and design, have extended the value of their kefir maker with their new probiotic cheese maker. The new appliance makes probiotic cheese from the kefir created by the Kefiroko or any other store-bought or homemade kefir. Beyond probiotic cheese, consumers can use the cheese maker to create mozzarella, mascarpone other non-probiotic varieties using milk that has been which has to be curdled with rennet or lemon juice.

There is no waste in the process which starts with pouring the kefir into the cheese maker and allowing it to strain into the attached glass bowl. The company says the whey liquid that results from the kefir-to-cheese process I is very rich with proteins, primarily of α-lactalbumin and β-lactoglobulin, bovine serum albumin and immunoglobine. It also contains vitamins and minerals and a very low level of fat. When whey is derived from kefir, it does not contain lactose, because it is already gone (99 %) during fermentation of kefir.

The length of the fermentation process determines the type of resulting cheese. The company says that fermenting overnight will result in a creamy style cheese while allowing the fermentation to go for one to two days will yield a semi hard cheese. When the cheese reaches the desired taste and consistency, users can flavor it with herbs, spices, oils or roasted vegetables.

The Kefirko Cheese Maker comes with a recipe book which also offers alternative uses for the device which includes tips on how to use the appliance to make tea, iced coffee and even almond milk. The company says it does not know whether the cheese maker will work to create nut-based cheeses, made with pureed soaked and peeled nuts instead of kefir.

As of June 9th, the Slovenian company has exceeded its “all or nothing” goal of $15,000. Some 1,740 backers have contributed more than $91,000. The company’s stretch goals include a larger jar and a spring-loaded lid to enhance the fermentation. At the same time, Borko, Glažar, and their team are introducing a new and improved version of their original kefir maker. According to their Kickstarter site, the new model has an easier-to-grip lid and improved airflow. They also added a Scrapper – a tool for mixing kefir grains during straining to make sure they easily separate from kefir drink. Also, by covering the hole on the Kefirko lid with the Scrapper the straining of kefir also becomes more practical and fast. Depending on pledge amounts backers can get the cheese maker, the newer kefir maker or both products. Delivery of the cheese maker and Kefirko 2 is Dec. 2017.

Make sure to check out the Smart Kitchen Summit, the only event about the future of food, cooking and the kitchen. Also, make sure to subscribe to get The Spoon in your inbox. 

May 15, 2017

Seedsheet Takes to QVC to Sell Simple Home-Gardening Kits

As momentum grows among innovators in the home/indoor gardening space, the focus has been on all-in-one home-grow kits. Such companies as NutriTower, Sprouts IO and Aerogarden are taking an approach in which their product’s value proposition is based on simplicity. The common formula of these visionaries includes hydroponic, tech-infused pot, built-in LED lights, seeds, and water. The goal is a home gardening solution without getting and dirt under your fingernails.

Vermont-based Seedsheet seems to believe that gardening, without touching the soil, takes the soul out of the experience. The company’s kit includes a weed-blocking fabric with pockets of non-GMO seeds (from High Mowing Seed Company) embedded in a growing medium, a cloth bag which acts as the planter, and stakes to hold the sheet in place. The process is simple enough to entice even the laziest gardeners, yet just tactile enough to appeal to traditionalists.

Featured on the April 7 episode of Shark Tank, Seedsheet grew out of a successful Kickstarter campaign which led to the product being available at Home Depot. The concept is the brainchild of Vermont’s Cam MacKugler, an architect with a passion for sustainable design. According to a company press release, the idea took root when he was housesitting for a co-worker and was allowed to tinker in the garden.

“I was spending my days in AutoCAD designing buildings, and one evening while harvesting dinner I noticed the spacing of the garden, the relationships between plants, and I saw a blueprint. I wondered why we weren’t approaching agriculture with the same precision as architecture,” MacKluger says.

“Food transparency and availability are critical issues in the country, and the world, right now. People want to know the story behind their food, whether pesticides and herbicides were used on the plants, and want to feel confident that they’re feeding themselves and their family safe and healthy food. Our goal is to make it ridiculously easy to grow your own, so you know exactly where your food comes from.”

With the able assistance of $500,000 from the “Queen of QVC,” Lori Greiner, MacKugler’s idea grew in new directions. As demonstrated in his first appearance on QVC, not only did Seedsheet provide its original sheet, it branched out to offer a fully equipped kit that included a seedsheet and cloth growing bag. Going beyond herbs and veggies, the company now has packages for those wanting to add flowers to their home or garden. Just add soil, and you are good to go.

Grow Your Own Garden Kit Seed Sheet by Lori Greiner on QVC

Seedsheet’s marketing approach differs from competitors in the home-grow space as the product is sold based on the vision of what consumers can do with the end results of their labor. Kits are cleverly designed with eye-catching packaging for creating herbs, salads, and Caprese (although cheese is not included). Each kit sold for $24.96 on QVC in early April.

The indoor gardening/desk gardening/home grow space is simultaneously moving in many directions. While Seedsheet’s concept is novel, the idea is more about packaging than a market disruptor. The internet is loaded with companies such as Bloomin’ who make “seed sheets” that can be put in a planter or a readily available cloth bag similar to the one with Seedsheet. In fact, inexperienced home gardeners can plant herbs or microgreens in a folded-over paper towel and achieve the same results as Seedsheet.

The vast range of startups hoping to dominate this interesting opportunity hopes to take advantage of millennials who want a food experience that focuses on healthy eating and convenience. The million-dollar (or more) question is whether the young post-digital, short-attention-span literati want to make the effort—as slight as it is—to tend to their techy gardens on a regular basis. What we will learn over the next year or so is whether this is a breakthrough idea or a solution in search of a market.

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