With Thanksgiving around the corner, your head might already be filled with ingredient lists, seating charts, and oven schedules. But before you start brining your turkey or prepping your pies, catch up on these food tech news stories. We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite from around the web to send you into the pre-Turkey Day weekend right.
WePlenish Java’s smart coffee and tea container available on Amazon
Starting this week, you can buy the Java Smart Container on Amazon for $39.99. Made by WePlenish, the containers integrate with Amazon Dash to automatically reorder coffee pods, tea, snacks, and other pantry goods when its sensors detect you’re running low.
Daily Harvest expands into cookies, no subscription required
Superfood subscription service Daily Harvest, which sends healthy foods like smoothies, overnight oats, and cold soups to your door, expanded its offerings this week with… cookies! Healthy cookies, of course. The frozen cookie dough, which can be baked or eaten raw, comes in packs of 12 for $48, and is the first of Daily Harvest’s products that doesn’t require a subscription to order. According to Nosh, the company will sell the cookies through the holidays and decide whether to continue based on performance.
Beyond Burger (finally) makes it to the U.K.
This week Beyond Burger, maker of plant-based meat-like patties, officially made it onto the shelves of more than 350 locations of U.K. grocery chain Tesco, according to the Guardian. The burgers were supposed to launch in the U.K. this August, but it was delayed because of “much higher than expected” demand. Hopefully Beyond has that problem under control and can feed the ever-growing number of Brits looking to follow a more plant-based diet.
Photo: MIT Media Lab, via Techcrunch
MIT research uses RFID tags to flag contaminated food
This week TechCrunch shed light on a story about new MIT research that uses RFID tags to test if food is contaminated. The study shows how they turned RFID tags on food bottles or jars into “tiny radio frequency spectroscopes” which could signal information about the food within and tell whether or not it has been contaminated. Right now the system can only tell whether baby formula is contaminated with melamine, and between various types of pure ethyl alcohol. But the MIT team is working to apply it to other products.
Photo: Chris Albrecht.
Kitchen United expands into Chicago
L.A.-based “culinary on-demand startup” Kitchen United opened up a new kitchen center in Chicago this week. This comes almost two months after GV led a $10 million investment in Kitchen United. The new location, which is the second after the flagship in Pasadena, CA, will start serving Chicagoans in January. Next year the company is planning to open facilities in fifteen cities, from Seattle to NYC.
Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech to let us know!
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