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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Personalized Food

Founders of PeaPod Launch Sifter, a Grocery Site for People with Dietary Restrictions

The founders of one of the earliest online grocery sites, PeaPod, announced this week the launch of a new grocery platform called Sifter (hat tip: Grocery Dive). The new platform is essentially an online shopping cart that allows customers to put together grocery lists based on dietary preferences, allergens, and medical conditions, and send that list on to partner retailers for fulfillment.

On Sifter’s website, shoppers select different “SiftTags,” which allow them to select different dietary and allergen filters. If you are managing a health condition, like IBS or diabetes, for example, the site then populates items that are identified as acceptable for these conditions. The RecipeSifter feature on the site enables a customer to paste in the URL of different recipes, and the site will determine if the recipe is acceptable for your dietary preferences, allergens, medical conditions, etc. Sifter will then show all of the ingredients listed in the recipe, and allow you to add these items to your cart.

Once grocery items are selected on the Sifter’s site, the customer is then directed to the retailer’s site to complete the purchase. As of right now, Sifter has partnered with retailers like Stop & Shop, Giant Foods, Walmart, and Amazon to fulfill the grocery orders. Though, it should be noted, a single retailer might not be able to fulfill all of the items on a particular list.

Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, the use of online grocery shopping has seen a spike, and it is predicted that by 2024 that online grocery shopping will be adopted by 55% of consumers in the US. Sifted is one of a crop of new companies looking to help people with dietary restrictions get their food. Through Dinner Daily, customers are offered personal meal planning and can shop for ingredients through stores like Kroger, Ralph’s, and Fred Meyers. eMeals partnered with Albertsons and Safeway to fulfill groceries needed for the meal recommendations it provides.

Sifter is available now throughout North America.

Video: Genopalate’s Sherry Zhang on the Past, Present, and Future of DNA-based Nutrition

If the first wave of precision nutrition was all about wearable devices tracking information like weight and exercise regime, the second wave relies on far more granular information about the individual. Companies can now (with a user’s permission, of course) pull and analyze information from our own DNA sequences and gut microbes to make food, health, and lifestyle recommendations based on actual biology, not third-party data. 

Genopalate is one such company helping this second wave of precision nutrition to rise. By analyzing a person’s genetic markers, Genopalate’s technology can understand how an individual’s body digests and processes foods as well as whether a person is predisposed to certain diseases.

Over a video session recently, Dr. Sherry Zhang, Genopalate’s founder and CEO, explained how these diet-gene interactions have shaped the whole of human biology and how we can leverage the information they provide to live healthier lives overall.

View the video below to catch our full conversation, in which we cover, among other things:

  • The role of diet-gene interactions throughout human history and biological evolution
  • How our DNA can determine our susceptibility to different chronic diseases (e.g., obesity, autoimmune disorders)
  • The kinds of data precision nutrition tools and services must analyze in order to understand biological needs at the individual level
  • How we can put that data to better use in order to help individuals change their health habits

As well, the goal of precision nutrition is in part to help the average person analyze the way they shop for, cook, and eat food. Our conversation below digs into how Dr. Zhang, Genopalate, and other companies working in the precision nutrition space are now making this level of personalization possible for our everyday diets.

The Spoon Conversation with Genopalate’s Sherry Zhang from The Spoon on Vimeo.

GenoPalate Raises $4 Million Series A for its Personalized Nutrition Platform

Personalized nutrition company, GenoPalate, announced yesterday that it completed a $4 million Series A round of funding. In the press announcement, the Milwaukee-based company said the new financing came from local investors. This brings the total amount raised by the company to $5.7 million.

GenoPalate was founded in 2016 by Yi Sherry Zhang, Ph.D, who described the what the company does for The Spoon last year, saying:

Through a simple swab test, GenoPalate’s nutrigenetic home test analyzes 100+ genetic markers that determine a person’s specific needs for 24 vital nutrients such as carbohydrates, vitamin D, and sodium, and sensitivities to lactose, gluten, caffeine and alcohol. The company combines genetic results with millions of nutritional variables to recommend the foods a person should eat more of. Then each client receives a report that includes their genetic results, what they mean, and a personalized list of the 80+ foods that benefit that specific client the most. Using its genetics-based personalized nutrition technology, GenoPalate is changing how people choose, shop for and eat food for better health.

Former Spoon writer, Catherine Lamb tried GenoPalate for herself earlier this year, and wrote about the experience, saying:

What I found was surprisingly . . . unsurprising. I was told I should eat a diet that’s moderately high in carbohydrates, high in fiber, and has low levels of sugar and saturated fat (but is high in “healthy” fats). I’m likely lactose intolerant (can confirm: yep) and likely not sensitive to gluten. I’m a fast caffeine metabolizer and a normal alcohol metabolizer. I have gene variants that indicate I might need to consume higher levels of Vitamin A, E, and D, among others.

Personalized nutrition is certainly a trend we’re following at The Spoon, covering other players in the space such as Viome, Sun Genomics, Genopalate, DNANudge, DayTwo and Nylos. You can check out our market report How Microbiome and DNA-based Personalized Nutrition Will Change the Way We Eat on our Spoon Plus membership service for a deep dive on the personalized nutrition market.

Heali Launches its AI-Based Nutrition and Meal Planning App

Heali, a Los Angeles-based startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create more personalized nutrition advice and meal planning for people, announced today the beta release of its mobile app.

The Heali app helps people adhere to their choice of 30 different diets (Vegan, Low FODMAP, Paleo, etc.) through recipes as well as grocery shopping and restaurant meal selection guidance.

Heali uses a number of features to help people with their nutritional choices. It has optical character recognition (OCR) so a user can take a photo of a menu description or a product’s nutritional label and the app will understand what ingredients are in that item. There’s a barcode scanner for use on products at the grocery store. Heali also has a meal planner, which analyzes the nutritional makeup of hundreds of thousands of recipes, products and meals to provide its nutritional guidance.

But the Heali app isn’t just for people wanting to eat fewer carbs. I spoke with Heali Founder and CEO Kyle Dardashti last month, who explained that his app can also provide guidance for people with certain medical conditions. For example, if a user has Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), they can use the app when grocery shopping to see if products contain certain emulsifiers that exacerbate their condition.

Heali is part of the personalized nutrition/food-as-medicine movement, and there is certainly no shortage of players in that space. There are other mobile apps like Yes Health and Foodvisor, hardware devices like the Mixfit, and meal delivery services like Kaigo. All of these are looking to help you eat healthier.

When asked what separates Heali from all the other competitors in the space, Dardashti told me, “Others have taken 10 diets or so, they have their subset of recipes in their app. They’ve tagged those few hundred recipes for how it adheres to those 10 diets.” He added that Heali has “built the engine that can do it all programmatically. Now it’s not just one of 10 tags. It has been done programmatically with AI.”

This, according to Dardashti, makes Heali, the most personalized dietary engine on the market.

The proof, as always, will be in the (diet-approved) pudding. The Heali app is free on both iOS and Android, and those interested can join the waitlist. Beta users will be admitted in cohorts.

Food Tech News: Bee-Free Honey, Menu Items With Low Carbon Footprints

It was an exciting week in food tech with the annual SKS Summit happening earlier this week (if you missed it, check out the highlights of day one, day two, and day three). Outside of this week’s virtual event, a few other stories stood out to us, including bee-free honey, low carbon footprint menu items at Panera, Minnow partnering with two restaurants, and anti-stress nutrition bars.

Melibio is creating bee-free honey

Melibio is using microbial fermentation and synthetic biology to create honey without the use of bees. The process will mimic the process a bee would take to create honey and will use real flower nectar. Honey is often touted for its health benefits, and Melibio’s honey will contain small amounts of the amino acids, minerals, and enzymes found in real honey. The company plans on launching a product for food and beverage companies by late 2021.

Panera Bread releases climate-friendly labels on menu

Starting this week, Panera Bread’s menu will include “cool food” badges that signify which of its menu items have a lower carbon footprint. Around 55 percent of the chain’s existing menu items will have a cool food meal badge. Ingredients that are considered to have a low carbon footprint include vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes. Medium carbon impact ingredients include fish, eggs, cheese, nuts, and poultry, and beef has the highest carbon footprint. Last month, Just Salad also released a Climatarian menu that shows menu items with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.

Minnow launches pilot program in fast-casual restaurants

Minnow, the recent winner of the SKS Startup Showcase, launched a pilot program for its contact-free delivery and pick-up solution. The Minnow Pickup Pods will be located at Crisp Salads in Portland, Oregon, and bNatural Kitchen in New Haven, Connecticut. Similar to the design of an Amazon locker, the pods disrupt the use of expensive third-party delivery services like Doordash or Postmates. Additionally, the pods have a touchless interface for pick-up, and the cubbies are insulated to keep food fresh.

myAir releases stress-reducing nutrition bars

Tel-Aviv-based startup myAir makes nutrition bars infused with different herbal compounds to manage stress. The personalized nutrition company offers a short three-minute quiz on its website to determine a customer’s level of stress, and then the customer’s heart rate, sleep quality, physical activity is tracked through smartwatches. This data is then used to determine what combination of bars would be most beneficial for the customer. The gluten-free and vegan bars cost $3 each, and are available in flavors like Calm Green (infused with lemon balm extract) and Sleepy Gray (infused with hops).

Welcome to Sushi Singularity. Did You Have a Reservation and Submit Your Biosample?

Just offering 3D printed sushi would be enough for a restaurant to land a story in The Spoon. But Sushi Singularity, a restaurant opening in Tokyo later this year, is taking the concept one step further by requesting you kindly submit a biosample from which they will 3D print a personalized meal created specifically for you.

Oh man, 3D printing and personalized nutrition? That’s like catnip for us.

My Modern Met reports that the Sushi Singularity restaurant is from Open Meals. You might recall that Open Meals made headlines a couple years back by teleporting sushi, which the company called “the world’s first food data transmission.”

Now Open Meals is looking for a different type of data: yours. When you make a reservation at Sushi Singularity, they mail you a home health kit to collect biosamples. According to Mashable Southeast Asia, “You’ll have to send them samples of your DNA, urine, and other bodily fluids first. They call this your ‘Health ID’.”

Okaaay… That’s a little, personal, but whatevs! You’ll be dining in the future, and how else are you supposed to get a completely personalized meal?

At the restaurant, you’ll be treated to beautiful 3D-printed dishes built bit by bit into sushi such as Cell Cultured Tuna, Powdered Sintered Uni, and Negative Stiffness Honeycomb Octopus. Aside from the eye-popping design of each piece of sushi, it will be crafted specifically for your health profile (though exactly what that means remains unclear).

Video via Open Meals

As noted, Sushi Singularity sits firmly at the nexus of two trends we follow closely at The Spoon: 3D printing and personalized nutrition.

It’s actually been a busy year for 3D food printing. Redefine Meat announced high-volume 3D printing for plant-based steaks. Legendary Vish is 3D printing plant-based salmon. And SavorEat has developed a technology that 3D prints and cooks plant-based meats.

As 3D printing evolves, it promises to open up new levels of bespoke food creation tailored to your specific dietary and health needs. For example, a company called Nourish is using 3D printing to create personalized vitamin supplements. As raw ingredient materials advance and resolution improves on the machines, even greater levels of specificity with meals and personalization will be unlocked.

Neither the Sushi Singularity website or coverage of the restaurant mentions prices, though if you have to ask, as the saying goes, you probably won’t be able to afford it. If that winds up being the case, don’t take it personally.

Mixfit Debuts Its Second Generation Personalized Nutrition Device. Will Consumers Buy It?

Here at The Spoon, we’re big believers that personalized food and nutrition are going to be a big deal someday, so much so we had a conference on the subject in the ‘before times’ when people still gathered in large groups.

One of the big ideas we discussed at Customize, our food personalization summit, was how what we eat will eventually go from one-size-fits-all food to meals made specifically for each of our specific dietary and biological profiles.

This idea has already arrived in some ways in the form of 3D printed vitamins and DNA-driven diet plans, but products that make on-demand food tailored for our specific biomarkers and nutrition profiles at the point of consumption are still in their embryonic stages.

That said, one company by the name of Mixfit has been working on exactly this for the last few years. Mixfit makes a system that whips up personalized vitamin-packed beverages customized around a person’s nutrition profile as well as data from wearables or even photos they’ve taken of food on a given day.

The device works like this: It uses an app called MINA, where a user enters their nutrition profile and connects to wearables like Apple Watch for activity data. All of this information is then used to create a custom beverage recipe. When a customer wants a drink, they send their drink order to the Mixfit, which dispenses a mix of vitamins and flavors from different various pods in the form of a personalized beverage.

The company is launching its second-generation system this summer. Generation two will sell for $180, and the consumables, which consist of a mix of vitamin and flavor pods, come in the form of a $59 a month subscription.

I had a chance to check out the first-gen appliance, which is no longer available for purchase, at CES in January 2019. Here’s a shot of the inner chamber where the nutrient pods are inserted.

Mixfit (Gen 1) Vitamin Pods

While new hardware is always risky, Mixfit has the backing of large nutrition conglomerate DSM, which acquired a 50% ownership stake in the company in 2018. DSM will provide the vitamin and nutrient ingredients that come as part of the consumable subscription.

Will consumers go for the Mixfit? My guess is the product makes more sense in health clubs than on kitchen counters (the company plans to sell to both). Still, there might be enough consumers among the millions of households who spend significant amounts of money on nutrition products which jump at the chance to get custom-built beverages.

The biggest challenge for Mixfit will be consumer education. It’s a nuanced product that needs to shown to consumers, and so it needs a sales channel where the product is adequately demoed. One venue could be physical retail, but selling hardware like this is new for the nutrition business, so chains like Super Supplements or Vitamin Shoppe might not know what to make of the Mixfit. Another option could be TV-based shopping networks where the product’s capabilities can be adequately demoed to prospective customers.

Long term – think a ten-year time horizon – on-demand personalized nutrition will most likely be commonplace. The question is how exactly that nutrition will be delivered. Some, like Pablos Holman, thinks much of it will be in the form of 3D printed food. Others see AI as a big part of the picture.

But before we get to that science fiction future, we need products to help push us on our way. Mixfit is one of those early products. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if consumers are ready for that first step into the future.

Lumen, the Handheld Metabolic Breathalyzer, Goes on Sale

If you’ve been sheltering in place for the past couple of months, you’ve probably been eating a ton of carbs. Between that and the constant wearing of sweatpants, you may have put on unwanted pounds (or maybe you welcome them!).

If that’s the case and you want to get back to your pre-pandemic weight, perhaps you can pick up a Lumen, which is now available for purchase. Lumen is a handheld breathalyzer that promises to help you “hack your metabolism” by measuring the CO2 in your breath. The device then tells whether you are burning fat or carbs and provides personalized nutritional guidance based on your metabolic efficiency.

You can check out this video Catherine did with with Dror Ceder, the Founder and CEO of Lumen at CES last year.

The Spoon look at Lumen, a handheld breath detector for measuring metabolism

The device started out as a crowdfunded project on Indiegogo back in 2018, and has gone on to raise more than $2.5 million dollars. In September of last year, Lumen raised an $8.5 million round of funding (the company has raised $15 million in total). At that same time, Lumen said that it had sold 11,000 devices.

Now the Lumen is available to general public for purchase. The device is available through Lumen.me, costs $299 and is shipping worldwide.

We can’t speak to the device’s accuracy, but we do know that Lumen isn’t the only company out there that wants you to breathe out. The Keyto breath sensor is $99 and gauges whether or not your body is in ketosis.

Exhaling has certainly taken on new weight during this pandemic (wear a mask!), but perhaps breathing out can be a way to help people find some post-pandemic fitness.

Melissa Snover of Nourished on How 3D Printing is the Key to Personalized Food (Spoon Plus)

Since Nourished lies at the intersection of two burgeoning food tech trends — personalization and 3D printing — I reached out to Snover to learn more about Nourished. In our interview she clued me in on how they settled on 3D printing (fun fact: she actually invented the first ever 3D food printer!), why she’s not rushing to link up with DNA analysis, and sets the scene for a futuristic vision where your health is managed autonomously by wearables and home 3D printers.

It was a super cool conversation that gives real insight into where we’re at right now, both in the 3D printing and personalization spheres. You can read the full transcript of my conversation with Snover, complete with synced audio. I also excerpted some of the most noteworthy parts of our conversation below. 

This Spoon Plus Deep Dive conversation is available only to Spoon Plus subscribers. Purchase a Spoon Plus membership to get access to this exclusive content and much more.

 

Gousto Raises $41M for High-Tech Meal Kit Business

London, UK-based Gousto announced today it has raised another £33 million (~$41 million USD) for its meal kit subscription service, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The round was led by Perwyn, with participation from BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures and online fitness guru Joe Wicks. It brings Gousto’s total funding to $179 million.

The new funds will go towards further developing Gousto’s technology, which is a huge component of both its customer interface and back-end logistics. On the consumer-facing side, Gousto uses an AI-powered personalization tool to recommend the most relevant meals to customers, who can select from over 50 recipes each week. Customers can choose a 2-person box or a family-size box, with recipes ranging from around $30 to $60, depending on the size of the box. According to the press release, Gousto currently delivers over 4 million meals to 380,000 U.K. households each month.

Behind the scenes, Gousto uses AI to automate parts of its supply chain and optimize overall logistics. The company also plans to launch a Next Day delivery service and build out its tech team over the coming months. 

If fundraising and headcount growth sounds a little out of place in today’s troubled economic times, remember that Gousto is a meal kit company whose primary goal is to serve people in their homes. The UK, where the service is available, is currently on lockdown in response to coronavirus that’s set to be extended until early May. That makes for a plenty of potential customers where a service like Gousto is concerned. The company told TechCrunch that demand for its business “has spiked upward” in recent weeks. In particular, Gousto has seen a 28 percent increase in family-style boxes. 

All that said, if you’re hoping to become a new Gousto customer, you’ll have to wait. A note on the Gousto website says the company is not accepting orders from new customers at this time, due to “extremely high demand.” There’s no word of how long that will last. Presumably, the new funding round and corresponding plans to increase headcount and tech development will help Gousto better reach the high demand for meal kits that will be around for some time.

Yes Health Raises $6M for Personalized Weight Loss and Nutrition Platform

We all know that sticking to diets is really hard work — especially when you’re stuck at home and the snack cabinet is never far from reach.

Yes Health is a digital health platform meant to help people reach their weight loss or diabetes prevention and management goals. Today, the startup announced that it had netted $6 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures (hat tip to Techcrunch).

Yes Health’s mobile platform is meant to help people do one of two things: lose weight, or prevent diabetes. New users select one pathway and answer a short questionnaire about what sort of coaching you prefer (cheerleader/straightforward), your top goals, and the biggest challenges you struggle with to reach those goals. The system then creates an individualized health plan and schedule which outlines when you should eat meals, exercise, and sleep, and tracks your progress via photos and a daily weigh in.

Yes Health costs $49/month for the one year diabetes program (which comes with a Fitbit and digital scale), or $69 for coaching only. The four-month weight loss program costs $49/month (and includes a Fitbit). Yes Health sells both directly to consumers and is included in some employee health plans.

The real value add of the app seems to be the ease with which the personalized coaching is woven into the system. Users can take a picture of their meals, which Yes Health shares with nutritionists for assessment — no need to manually enter every ingredient in their salad or soup. Users also get access to personalized coaching for their workouts, including feedback when they complete certain exercises.

Yes Health isn’t the only app out there to offer nutrition coaching via photo. Bite.ai is a food journal that automatically breaks down the nutrition info of your meals based on photos, and in France, Foodvisor does much of the same thing. But neither service offers the same level of exercise recommendations and coaching that Yes Health does.

True, the messages all come from computers, not actual humans, so the interaction isn’t as powerful as it would be with an in-person coach. But an in-person coach is going to cost a lot more than $69 per month — plus, we’re not allowed to see people in person anymore.

For that reason, I think COVID-19 will present some appealing growth opportunities for online healthy lifestyle services like Yes Health. Since we can’t go to gyms or restaurants, we have to create our own exercise and dining plans. Tools like Yes Health could help folks to create a structured plan for nutrition and exercise to stay on course during social distancing. And that’s especially critical at a time when health is on the top of mind for all of us.