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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

alternative protein

Asia Pacific Leads in Plant-Based Meat IP According to Report

While many think innovation in plant-based meat is a fairly recent phenomenon, companies, researchers and entrepreneurs have looking for ways to leverage plants as an alternative to animal agriculture since the sixties.

However, there’s no doubt the pace of innovation has accelerated in recent decades amidst a worsening climate crisis and a rising global population, and one way to quantify the innovation is through an analysis of the growth in intellectual property. And now, thanks to a new report published by researcher Roots Analysis, we can do just that.

Source: Roots Analysis

According to the Roots report, the number of cumulative IP publications for plant-based meat has grown by nearly 3x over the past decade, going from 2,388 in 2012 to 7,126 by 2022. In addition, the growth in patent filings, granted patents, and amended patents (the three of which make up the bulk of IP-related publications) has grown nearly every year over the past decade, with the annual growth of publications going from just over one hundred per year for the decade prior to 2012, to around 900 per year in both 2020 (915 new IP documents) and 2021 (891 new documents).

Source: Roots Analysis

According to the report, most IP documents in the plant-based meat space are patent applications (77.4%) and granted patents (18.7%). When breaking the documents down by region, Asia Pacific is responsible for over half of all IP (3,717), compared to about 18% for North America (1,277 documents) and Europe (1,310 documents).

While Asia Pac dominates in terms of the total number of patent filings and granted patents, the report points out that some of the most valuable intellectual property in the early market is owned by larger North American and European food companies. The report points to Impossible Foods, Cargill, Mars, and Solae as some of the leading IP stakeholders in plant-based meats.

The report also broke down the key phrases used within the intellectual property documents to give an idea of the focus of the innovation. The top categories of keywords within the filings are production methods, proteins, preparations, and products. The report also analyzed the various types of plant-based meats in which researchers and companies create intellectual property. Some of the different plant-based meat categories include plant-based seafood, structured/textured meat analogs, plant-based meat for pet food, processed meat analogs, amorphous meat analogs, and dehydrated meat analogs.

You can find out more about the report here.

Israeli Startup Mermade Gets Seed Funding for Its Lab-Grown Scallops

Mermade is more than just another food tech startup with a laboratory-oriented process to manufacture an alternative protein. The Jerusalem-based company’s method of using algae to create scallops has set it apart and attracted significant early-stage investment.

The company has announced an oversubscribed $3.3M seed round as it showcases a circular cellular agriculture technology for producing cultivated scallops. In doing so, Mermade attacks two problems at once: bringing sustainable, good-tasting scallops to the public at a below current market price. Most cultured meat companies struggle with the economics of meeting or beating the cost of beef, chicken, or conventional seafood.

In an interview with The Spoon, company Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Einhorn explained the differences in his company’s business and technology approach. “We thought is why not pick some meat product that eliminates as much as possible of that food engineering challenge and just focus on those huge biological challenges,” Einhorn said. “Scallops, they have a fairly similar size, and each unit is a fairly similar size and shape. And texture taste is the same all throughout the cuts. Those are huge unfair advantages compared to our direct competition– other startups trying to replicate the more complex meat products.”

Mermade says it is the first company in the world to produce scallops using cellular agriculture. The company intends to develop a product and reach laboratory-scale production by 2023, reaching consumers and restaurants after that. Mermade will use the funds to employ more stem cell and algae researchers, accelerating the company towards this goal. The scallop is the first product the company will develop out of a diverse seafood portfolio that will gradually arrive on the market.

The use of algae to recycle the cells’ growth substrate is a clear distinction for Mermade. This cellular interpretation of traditional aquaponics was termed by the company Cytoponics, and the company has filed several patent applications related to this circular production method.

Related to the cost issue, Einhorn states, “It’s a big market segment and one that it has a very high price point, which is important because the main challenge right now is driving costs down. We’re trying to integrate all parts of our design into this prototype to bring cost even close to market parity.”

“In the next few years, consumers worldwide will be able to buy cultivated scallops (Coquilles Saint Jacques) made by Mermade in a supermarket or restaurant, at an affordable price and with the same quality and taste as the original food. Using Cytoponics as our production platform, we could also produce a variety of other cultivated seafood products such as calamari, shrimp, crab meat, and more.”

The company was founded in July 2021 by Daniel Einhorn (CEO), Dr. Rotem Kadir (CTO), and Dr. Tomer Halevy (COO). Investors in the seed round include the investment platform OurCrowd, Israel’s most active venture firm; Fall Line, an American VC fund specializing in AgTech; and prominent Dutch investor Sake Bosch.

Alternative seafood—both plant-based and cell-cultured—is a hot area. As The Spoon reported in April, Good Food Institue’s report, which looks at the entire alternative seafood category across plant-based, cell-cultured, and fermentation-based products, said 2021 investment brought the total invested in the category to $313 million from 2013 through 2021. Cultivated seafood startups commanded two-thirds of all investment in alt-seafood last year at $115 million, compared with $58 million invested in plant-based seafood startups and $2 million in fermentation-based seafood.

Among the companies active in this space are Wildtype, UPSIDE Foods, Gathered Foods, and Finless Foods. With all the activity in this forward-looking space, the United States—in the form of the USDA and FDA—has yet to give the green light for sales of these lab-grown alternative proteins. Only Singapore, Qatar, and to some degree, The Netherlands have given their stamp of approval.

Here’s Our Q&A With Ranjani Varadan, Who Just Became Shiru’s New CSO After a Decade With Impossible Foods

When she became the first scientist ever hired by Pat Brown at Impossible Foods in 2011, Ranjani Varadan became a pivotal part of the R&D team for one of the earliest entrants in the modern plant-based meat industry. Over the next decade, she would play a part in helping guide Impossible through many technical milestones, from the very early days in its stealth lab all the way to commercial scaleup.

And now, Varadan hopes to witness many more seminal moments in the alternative protein space as part of her new role as the Chief Science Officer for Shiru, a company that makes ingredients for CPG companies building plant-based meats and other alternative proteins. Varadan will oversee all aspects of R&D, from discovery and screening to ingredient pre-production.

I sat down with Varadan to talk to ask her about her time at Impossible, the decision to come to Shiru, how she believes her new company differentiates itself in a fast-growing alt protein market, and what she sees going forward for the plant-based foods and alternative protein industry. Answers have been edited slightly for readability.

Congratulations on your move. Tell us a little about your journey before you got to Shiru.

I have a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland, and then I was a postdoctoral fellow for several years.

And at the end of my postdocs, I was thinking about what to do. A fairly traditional route for folks with my training is the biopharma industry, and that was not particularly compelling to me at the time. I wanted to do something that was meaningful. So I was very fortunate in that I was put in touch with Pat Brown who had just founded Impossible in 2011

For me, that was the first time that I could put climate change, food security, and animal welfare all in one sentence. And it was really eye-opening and very compelling for me. It was a vision Pat had at the time with a very small team of people, so I joined because it was really so refreshing and such a different way of thinking about the problem.

What attracted you to the opportunity at Shiru?

I’m excited to be joining Shiru because I think we really need a way to rethink ingredients. Even for companies like Impossible, for them to make the next game-changing product, you really need access to ingredients that will not carry whatever other sentiments of the plants they’re extracted from, or be limited in the type of functionality like soy proteins. So I think for technical reasons, ingredients are going to bring the next big change to plant-based foods, and I’m very, very excited about Shiru doing that.

Talk about that transition from Impossible, an early stage, vertically integrated plant-based meat company which essentially built the entire ingredient list for their consumer products, to Shiru, which is a B2B company building novel ingredients for other plant-based meat companies, who in turn build consumer-facing products.

At the time (at Impossible), we were really trying to extract every different thing, every different protein so we could to play with it, understand what it does, and formulate a product with it. Ultimately, I think when you see the reality of what it takes to commercialize a product, it is very difficult for a single company to be vertically integrated for each one of these ingredients. Because the mission is not to create one SKU for plant-based meat or whatever other product a company is making. You want to be able to make a variety of different products for the economic viability of the company itself.

This is one of the reasons I find Shiru to be very interesting and fascinating because instead of trying to do it like that, you’re saying ‘we’ll create the toolkit’, right? And not only is it going to be a viable business model for Shiru, but it’s also going to help the entire community.

My understanding of Shiru is that you’re building alternative protein building blocks, but you’re not trying to create animal identical ones like you might see like with some other precision fermentation-focused companies. It’s actually looking within plants and looking for functional equivalency rather an exact equivalence with an animal protein. That’s an interesting switch for you.

Shiru is trying to create an ingredient toolkit coming from natural sources. Not just plants, it could be algae, it could be fungi, or other sources of proteins, but all naturally occurring sequences. And like you said, not looking for the exact one to one match. It’s an orthogonal way to think about the problem in a scientific way, because ultimately what you care about is the way the protein behaves. What is the texture, appearance, flavor, or whatever other aspects of the protein you are trying to create – can this protein do the same thing? As long as you’re satisfied that, it doesn’t matter whether it’s exactly the same protein or not.

One of the differentiation pitches I think I’ve heard from Shiru is this idea of building a massive database of potential plant-based protein ingredients. You’re using machine learning or AI to mine that. Talk about that. Is that is that a new thing for you?

A typical traditional approach is to say, ‘here are all sorts of plant proteins – soybeans, peas, what have you – let’s look at what these proteins can do for us? And then you find that it’s very limited. So now we have to find other sources of protein.

I think what Shiru is doing very intelligently is really leveraging validated tools from AI and machine learning and, I don’t want to get too technical, but using the sort of tools that are available for language modeling. So in a way that you might translate from one language to another, for example, using tools that have been developed for those types of things and applying that to proteins to really understand if I have a protein that looks like this, what are their proteins are going to look like that? So they’ve been able to utilize millions of protein sequences available in the public domain and use these machine learning tools to really find these matches. That’s why the library can be billions and billions, 10s or hundreds. And that’s unique, right?

It seems a lot more efficient. If you’re spending all this time trying to get an exact match to get an animal identical protein, it’s a very finite target you’re kind of aiming at. Whereas if you’re looking for functional equivalency, you have a much wider swath and I think it could accelerate time to market, correct?

Yes, And that’s why for a young company so early in their lifecycle, they already have targets. For a company with a team of forty or so people, to be at a stage where you have targets waiting to take into commercialization, is fantastic.

And because I believe that access to these types of ingredients will really create the next game-changing plant-based foods, for me it makes sense as the logical next step. I spent all this time kind of understanding the whole landscape of plant-based foods, helping to create them at Impossible. I was leading the initiative for strategic ingredients at Impossible before I left. And now to say, ‘Okay, actually here’s a completely different way of thinking about it.’

Does Shiru have a wet lab?

Yes, they do have a wet lab. I think the team is about 10 people in the lab right now. They have robotics set up to help do the rapid high throughput screening.

From a process perspective, like they’re you’re using algorithms to look through this huge dataset, sift through it, come up with promising candidates, and then you then move things into the lab?

Yes, and I think ultimately you would set up your platform for you to feed everything back the output from the wet lab right back into your learning.

What are you looking to accomplish over the next year?

I think in the very near term, really to absorb everything that’s going on at Shiru, but really to help commercialize their first few targets that are already in the works. That will be a great thing for Shiru, because it brings a lot of credibility to what they’re doing and brings in revenue which we can invest back into R&D, which is really the heart of the company. So I think that that’s just the beginning. And, you know, for all the reasons we talked about, very excited about how it’s gonna take off and really revolutionize the way we’re thinking about it.

Tell us a bit about Shiru recruiting you.

Shiru approach to me once my profile changed on LinkedIn. I was committed to teaching the entire year, so I took on advisory roles in several companies. In retrospect, I was very fortunate. I wasn’t going in too blind. I had the time to really talk to several folks and companies and really take a step back and look at what’s going on out there to understand what should be the next thing I want to do. So I’m glad I have that opportunity. I think Jasmine is an exceptional leader. You’ve talked to her. The team is wonderful. They have a great board. The board is also full of people with a lot of experience. So I think it’s going to be fantastic

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

With European Governmental Approval, Ynsect Moves Forward With Its Plan to Feed the World, Save the Climate

Will bugs save the world?

Save may be a strong word, but Paris-based Ynsect, a producer of insect protein and natural insect fertilizers, believes in the dual mission of feeding the world and protecting our diminishing climatic resources. That vision moves a step forward with backing from a European food safety agency and data that supports a change in consumer attitudes toward a diet containing bugs and insects.

According to Ynsect’s CEO Antoine Hubert, approval by the European Food Standard Agency for Ynsect’s Lesser mealworm for human consumption will allow his company to quickly move forward with its efforts to create its line of insect-based products as well as work with third-part food manufacturers.

“Our company was born from a passion for helping tackle climate change through real solutions. Insect protein, which can easily be incorporated as a powder into a whole range of products, is healthier than plant protein and more environmentally friendly than traditional animal proteins,” Hubert told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We’re excited to see the EFSA approval come through in line with consumer demands; conscious consumers become increasingly informed of better choices for both them and the environment.”

Coinciding with the EFSA green light results from an independent research firm gave further credence to Ynsect’s timing. OnePoll, a British market research company, surveyed consumers to gauge their willingness of participants to consume insects as an alternative source of protein. At first, only 59% were open to the idea, but after learning the benefits of insect consumption, over 70% responded favorably. More than half of vegans and vegetarians responded favorably once the benefits were explained.

Mealworms are the larval form of the mealworm and Buffalo beetles, an insect that Hubert says is rich in protein and fat. The mealworm as a bug has been part of Southeast Asian diets and can reproduce prolifically. Ynsect uses vertical farming techniques to “grow” these insects and deploys chemical-free produce to turn them into a range of products, including fertilizers and pet food. Recently, Ynsect expanded its footprint by acquiring Protifarm, a Dutch mealworm producer, and then by incorporating Nebraska-based Jord Producers, a start-up mealworm farm, into its portfolio.

Ynsect’s consumer product is called AdalbaPro, a minimally processed ingredient line offering meat replacement and protein fortification solutions. Working with European partners, AdalbaPro products are already in several baked goods, sports nutrition, pasta, and meat alternatives. AdalbaPro contains all essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals as a high-quality animal protein.

As Hubert chronicles his company’s path, not only has it shown organic growth by evolving from a fertilizer/aquaculture company to pet food and then to a product for humans, but Ynsect’s approach has also overcome the issue other alternative protein companies face in building infrastructure. The company has carefully conducted its mealworm growing processing plan, which allows it to remain nimble for an opportunity in Europe and, hopefully, after governmental approval, the U.S.

To date, Ynsect has raised more than $400 million from such companies as OurCrowd, SuperNova Invest, and Caisse d’Epargne. The company also has captured the imagination of the real-life Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. The actor/investor recently touted Ynsect’s product on Steve Colbert’s late-night show.

(Extract) Robert Downey Jr - The late Colbert show with Stephen Colbert

Gavin Newsom and California Legislators Allocate $5 Million for Cultivated Meat R&D

When California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the California Budget Act of 2022 into law this week, the state of California directed billions of dollars of tax funds to be allocated to everything from mental health support to gun buybacks to transportation infrastructure.

But also nestled inside the $308 billion budget is a provision of particular interest for those in the alt protein industry. Under Section 190, which allocates roughly $5 billion in budget for the University of California system, there is a small little provision that says this:

Of the funds appropriated in this item, $5,000,000 shall be available on a one-time basis for the Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Davis campuses to support research and development of plant-based and cultivated meats.

That provision – number 38 of Section 190 – marks for the first time ever that the state of California is dedicated funding directly to the research and development of cultivated meat. The funding, which will be dispersed across three colleges in UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC Davis, will give additional momentum to California universities (particularly Berkeley and Davis) that have already established names for themselves in the future of meat.

For Davis, the funding will further work done by the university’s consortium formed in 2020 headed by professor David Block. That program, which got a grant of up to $3.55 million from the National Science Foundation to run over five years, is working on developing cell lines for cultivated meat, plant-based cell-cultured growth media, and evaluating the taste and nutritional aspects of cultivated meat.

Berkeley, which established its Alt Meat lab in 2017, is at the epicenter of the Bay area’s alternative meat industry. Startups like Sundial Foods, Orbillion, and others often get their start at Berkeley and get fast-tracked into local accelerators and onto venture capitalist watchlists. This funding will likely only solidify the university’s strength in future food.

UCLA, which sits alongside Berkeley as one the most prestigious schools in the University of California system, got its start in cultivated meat research in 2018 and received its first outside financial support through grants from The Good Food Institute and New Harvest in 2019. The school received federal support through research grants from the USDA and NSF and most recently received private funding in the form of a quarter-million-dollar grant last year from the California NanoSystems Institute to start researching cell-cultivated meat.

There’s no doubt that companies who benefit from the University of California’s strength in churning out future food scientists and their innovations are excited to see the state invest in this category. One of those companies is UPSIDE Foods, which launched its new pilot production plant for cultivated meat last year just down the street from Cal Berkeley. According to a statement sent to The Spoon, UPSIDE actively advocated on behalf of the schools, inviting legislators to tour its cultivated meat production facility and discussing the importance of the funding.

“This historic investment in research and development across the University of California system will ensure that California remains a leader in food and innovation. At UPSIDE Foods, we believe strongly in the need for open access research to build a robust cultivated meat ecosystem that benefits all.“

While the US federal and state governments haven’t shown the same level of commitment we’ve seen from countries like Israel, Singapore, and China in alternative protein, this and other recent investments in research and curriculum development at our university system is a positive sign. Politicians are finally beginning to see the strategic importance of future food to the country’s economic, national security, and environmental sustainability goals. As a result, it seems they are beginning to ever-so-slowly allocate public funding into innovation areas that – up to this point at least – have been disproportionately funded by private investment dollars.

(Update: The article was edited to include information about UCLA’s research background and external funding history for cultivated meat research.)

Coming Out of Stealth, Paleo Unveils Six Animal-Free, GMO-Free Varieties of Heme

In 2024, imagine walking into Burger King and ordering a mammoth burger. No, not one that is bigger than your head; this Whopper will taste like the extinct proboscideans that roamed the earth millions of years ago. It’s all part of the magic from a Belgium-based food ingredient company called Paleo.

After two years, Paleo has come out of stealth mode to announce its technology to bring the authentic taste and aroma of meat and fish to plant-based meat and fish alternatives with a non-GMO, animal-free heme. As part of that announcement, the World International Property Organization has published Paleo’s patent application, finally allowing Paleo to share details of its precision fermentation technology. 

Hermes Sanctorum, CEO and co-founder of Paleo: “When we set out to create the ultimate animal-free meat or fish experience, we quickly zeroed in on heme. Without exaggeration, we can say that we cracked the code of heme, allowing us to produce GMO-free heme that’s bio-identical to the most popular meats and tuna – as well as mammoth.”

More about the mammoth burger shortly.

Heme, a precursor to hemoglobin, is an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal. In short, it makes meat taste like meat, giving it its mouthfeel and umami sensation. Paleo has created a bio-identical heme that, through precision fermentation, can be adapted to add a specific taste to beef, pork, chicken, and even fish. Heme is essential when it comes to resembling conventional meat products. Heme is responsible for the taste and color of meat. Before cooking, heme will give meat alternatives a red color that turns brown during cooking. Heme also offers superior nutritional value. The iron in heme is easier for the human body to absorb than iron in vegetables.

In an interview with The Spoon, CEO Sanctorum explains the process: “We make the yeast release the protein to the environment, which means you can separate your protein. It’s a pure protein that you have separated from the yeast cells, making it a non-GMO product. We can produce an animal protein identical to what you find in nature but on top GMO-free. So that’s, I think, our unique proposition.”

“It’s like basically like brewing beer,” Sanctorum goes on to explain. “Instead of making alcohol, it makes a protein that you want. Instead of brewing or making wine, it’s producing the animal heme.”

Although the company has been working on its technology since 2020, its patent announcement is a significant step forward that inches closer to realizing a finished product. Sanctorum expects to have market-ready products in 2023, even with the number of steps that need to be tackled. Given precision fermentation at scale is a cap-ex-heavy investment, one reason to share their patent with the world is to attract investors. To date, Paleo has raised $2.5 million in seed funding and $ 2.5M in seed funding and is working on a Series A round to bring its products to the market and broaden its portfolio. 

Another issue is the breadth of products. The ability to create a variety of hemes may sparkle in a press release, but, as Sanctorum acknowledges, focusing on one area to start is a more prudent approach for a young company. Part of that B2B process is working closely with prospective customers. “A lot will depend on demand from our clients,” he said. “We are talking to big and small food manufacturers like small ones, and it will be all about testing those heme proteins and to see how they behave in their commercial recipes.”

Opening its technology kimono also brings potential challenges for Paleo from other companies working on similar approaches. Impossible Foods filed a lawsuit against Motif Foodworks, claiming the company’s HEMAMI protein derived from precision fermentation infringed on Impossible’s patent for making plant-based burgers containing 0.1% to 5% heme protein. Sanctorum calls the legal battle a “side event” and refuses to let it impede his or Paleo’s vision moving forward.

Back to the mammoth burger. Creating hemes for popular foods of today’s world is obvious, but reaching back hundreds of centuries—the question is why?

“Well, it was basically it started as a challenge to us,” Sanctorum said. “I mean, we were thinking, okay, if we can make the obvious ones, can we do that for an ancient protein that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Perhaps the better answer is, why not?

SCiFi Foods Raises $22M With Andreessen Horowitz’s First Investment in Cultivated Meat

SCiFi Foods, a Bay Area-based food tech startup, announced that it has raised a $22 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), making it a16z’s first investment in the growing cultivated meat market. The company, formerly known as Artemys Foods, also announced that it will be adding a new board member, Myra Pasek, the General Counsel of IronOx, who will be utilizing her expertise from Tesla and Impossible Foods to help SCiFi Foods bring its novel plant-based and cultivated meat hybrid through regulatory approval to the market. 

The new funding raises SCiFi Foods’ total funding to $29 million and will primarily be used to scale R&D efforts, build out the leadership team, and market the company. 

The Spoon sat down with CEO and co-founder, Joshua March, to learn more about SCiFi Foods’ new name, a hybrid meat product, and what it looks like to raise funding from one of the most famous venture capital firms during a recession.

What’s the story behind the rebrand? 

The original company name had always been a holding name. Over the last year, we spent a lot of time doing research and thinking about our brand strategy and positioning. First, while I’m really excited about our strategy, and I think what we’re doing is pretty unique and will give us the ability to get to market, we know that we’re going to be launching a brand in a very noisy old meat market. We knew that if we wanted to be able to have a shot of building a truly defining brand, we needed to do something that was really distinctive, and very different to anything else that was out there today. 

We also knew that in the cultivated meat space, one of the biggest concerns that consumers will have is that it’s too scientific. The vast majority of average consumers are calling it lab grown meat. A lot of the attacks from the meat lobby, also go off on it for being lab grown meat. We think it’s really important to confront that head on, not by trying to hide the science, but by being really authentic, transparent, and bold about it. 

Besides the branding, how does the technology of SCiFi Foods stand out from other types of cultivated meats, alternative proteins, and other meat hybrids? 

It’s the combination of plant based and cultivated meat. What we found was that cultivated meat was having incredible effects on flavor, creating a much more beefy flavor and aroma than any plant based trial. Fundamentally, the most important thing is to create incredibly tasty products. And by taking a blended approach, it massively simplifies our ability to bring a product to market because we don’t need to do more tissue engineering, 3d printing scaffolding, and other complex technologies that are required if you’re trying to create 100% cultivated meat, which no one today actually knows how to do at scale cheaply. 

Our approach allows us to create really transformational products, but also allows us to actually get to market from an equal timeframe with costs that are actually closer to conventional meat. Taste and cost define the market size for meat alternatives. 

Besides taste and cost, another challenge can be regulatory approval. How does having a hybrid product help you navigate the uncertain regulatory landscape today? 

If anything, it helps. The FDA and the USDA have a pretty clear regulatory framework on how to bring cultivated meat to market. Because our approach means that we don’t have scaffolding and tissue engineering, that reduces the amount of things that we need to take through regulatory approval. 

What are your plans to scale your product and bring it to market? 

Over the next couple of years, we’re planning on building out a pilot facility and going through the regulatory approval process. Once we’ve gone through that process, and we’ve had the facility approved, then the plan will be to do a small scale commercial launch.

Do you think consumer willingness will change between now and when you’re ready for commercial launch? 

The major trends of more people, recognizing the huge environmental cost, especially with beef, is only getting bigger. People are also getting more comfortable with technology being used in the development of food. Younger generation of consumers feel those things even more strongly. 

Even with transparency around technology, there’s still questions about the development and environmental impacts of cultivated meat. How is SciFi Foods targeting those questions? 

We’ve done a lot of work, understanding those impacts. We’re very confident that the climate impacts of our products is a fraction of the climate impacts of eating conventionally. 

Beef is the least efficient of all meats in terms of calories in calories out is 3-10% efficiency, it’s a small percentage; fundamentally growing cells in a bioreactor in terms of energy in and energy out is 97% efficiency, so drastically different. And with beef, up to 80% of deforestation in the Amazon, can be traced back to the cattle industry, either pasture land or as to grow crops, that animal feed. All the methane emissions that come up like 30% of methane emissions in the US come from cattle, one of the most potent greenhouse gas emissions. 

And when you look at the emissions of complicated means, it’s basically no land use changes, minimal water, no methane emissions, you do have energy usage for powering the bioreactors. That’s less than the emissions from a cow. And, if you count that for renewable energy, then the climate impact becomes zero.

Is there a reason why SciFi Foods is targeting cultivated beef first, rather than dairy, chicken, or other meat products? 

There’s a number of reasons for focusing on beef. It does have the biggest climate impacts. It’s also one of the biggest markets. It’s also the most expensive. The highest demand for meat alternatives is also beef. And yet, in the cultivated meat space, most cultivated meat companies are going after chicken, which is complex. And the reason for doing so is basically that it’s scientifically easier to manufacture chicken cells.

What makes a16z a great partner for funding at this stage? 

a16z is one of the best investors in the world and a key part of their model is that they’re not just financial investors, but they also bring a lot of support, in terms of, help with HR, recruiting, the best practices, introductions to other investors, and various different areas. I’ve worked with a lot of VCs over my career, and they definitely have the best set of support functions and ways of helping founders and entrepreneurs that I’ve ever seen.

A lot of a16z’s track record has been with technology and they just announced a new crypto fund. What specifically are you looking for in terms of help with foodtech? 

It’s worth noting that they have a very substantial bio fund, which led our investments. And that fund is completely focused on the intersection of biotech and synthetic biology. In many ways we combine those things. Yes, we do consumer food and food tech, but we’re also doing synthetic biology and biotech and sitting at that intersection. They have a huge amount of experience, and connections with VCs, and executives, scientists, and advisers in a lot of the real scientific work that we need to do to bring our product to market.

A lot of private funding lately hasn’t been very active and it’s been hard for startup founders to raise. What has navigating that landscape and raising a round been like for you? 

The market is very volatile right now. There’s always capital looking for really great companies that have a very differentiated approach and the ability to drive a significant IP advantage and who can have a defensible advantage. Fundamentally, that’s what an investor needs in order to be able to pack a company that can have a big impact on the world, but also have a great financial return.

Brevel Raises $8.4 Million to Scale Nutrition-Rich, Neutral-Flavored Microalgae Protein

Move over pea protein and soy, there’s a new alt-protein in town made from microalgae, and it’s cheaper and more sustainable. Brevel, the Israeli company behind this alternative to the omnipresent ingredients in everything from plant-based burgers to dairy-free cheese, aims to become the number one choice for plant-based protein worldwide.

Brevel’s vision now becomes a business reality with the announcement of $8.4 million in a seed funding round. The funding will be utilized to build a commercial pilot factory which will serve as the basis for scaling the company’s proprietary technology and enhancing its research and development capabilities. Investors include FoodHack, Good Startup VC, Tet Ventures, and Nevateam Ventures.

The fermentation of microalgae as an alt-protein has been under consideration but has not made the headlines because of its cost and issues with flavor. Brevel says it has found a solution by combining sugar-based fermentation of microalgae with a high concentration of light at industrial scales. The company says its nutritionally rich, neutral-flavored microalgae-based protein solves issues with plant-based dairy and egg products that lack a valuable nutritional profile.

In an email interview with The Spoon, Brevel CEO and Co-Founder Yonatan Golan shared some additional details.

Will the company make its own microalgae foods or sell them to other manufacturers? Have there been any sample products created yet?

Our protein comes as a dry powder which can be simply added directly to formulations. Today, our partners add it in different forms – either directly as powder, or apply some processes such as homogenization, secondary fermentation, etc. to increase its solubility, extract additional flavors, and more. This depends on their specific needs and preferences.

In terms of functionality – at the moment, for our first segment of partners, we actually try to be as inert as possible – increase the nutritional profile of products without changing taste, color, texture, or cost for the end consumer. One of our piloting partners described it as a “ghost protein” – it increases protein content without you noticing it is there. In the second stage, we will be looking to provide functionalities such as gelation, texturing, emulsification, and more, which are most suitable for fish and seafood alternatives.

We are piloting with many different food manufacturers worldwide who are very excited about our ability to increase their nutritional profile without changing taste, color, texture, or cost for the end consumer.

Later in June, we will be at the largest alternative protein conference (Future food tech) in NYC and will have an exclusive tasting room where we will showcase several of the products our partners developed with our protein – plant-based cheese with a high protein content which melts on pizza, sunny side up eggs with our protein both in the white and the yolk.

How did the company land on microalgae? From previous research?

My co-founders are my two brothers: Matan is an MD who brings the health angle (plant-based food products today have a very low nutritional value which must be solved if we want to have a healthy future), and this is a key element in our vision. The second, Ido, is a genius engineer who happens to have a vast background in microalgae and manages to invent this entirely new way of producing microalgae efficiently and at a very high quality. I am vegan both from a moral and sustainable standpoint and am enthusiastic about finding solutions to feed our growing population sustainably and ethically. I have three children who are also vegan, and I am very concerned about the future they will live in if we don’t make drastic changes. As a physicist, I view this challenge very rationally and believe that microalgae can become the ultimate solution, like many experts and companies. However, to date, no one has been able to solve the cost and quality barriers to make this vision become a reality.

This is why we decided to dedicate ourselves to working hard on this problem and have managed to break through the glass ceiling this industry has seen for too many decades.

To educate those who do not know what exactly is microalgae?

Microalgae are microscopic organisms that use photosynthesis to grow very resource efficiently. Microalgae evolved more than 2 billion years ago. For the first time in the prehistory of earth transformed most of the CO2 in our atmosphere into oxygen and enabled the development of more advanced forms of life. Even today, microalgae account for more than 50% of the oxygen production cycle daily.

Microalgae naturally contain 40%-60% protein alongside a variety of healthy ingredients.

Microalgae grow everywhere on our planet – lakes, rivers, oceans, and even deserts and the arctic. More than 500,000 different strains exist in nature, and only a small fraction have been researched. A handful is used for food, feed, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, fertilizers, and biofuel production. Brevel uses non-GMO microalgae grown in a unique breakthrough technology that enables the highest quality of sustainable protein production at cost levels comparable to pea and soy, the leading plant-based protein source today.

Move over pea protein and soy, there’s a new alt-protein in town made from microalgae, and it’s cheaper and more sustainable. Brevel, the Israeli company behind this alternative to the omnipresent ingredients in everything from plant-based burgers to dairy-free cheese, aims to become the number one choice for plant-based protein worldwide.

Brevel’s vision now becomes a business reality with the announcement of $8.4 million in a seed funding round. The funding will be utilized to build a commercial pilot factory which will serve as the basis for scaling the company’s proprietary technology and enhancing its research and development capabilities. Investors include FoodHack, Good Startup VC, Tet Ventures, and Nevateam Ventures.

The fermentation of microalgae as an alt-protein has been under consideration but has not made the headlines because of its cost and issues with flavor. Brevel says it has found a solution by combining sugar-based fermentation of microalgae with a high concentration of light at industrial scales. The company says its nutritionally rich, neutral-flavored microalgae-based protein solves issues with plant-based dairy and egg products that lack a valuable nutritional profile.

In an email interview with The Spoon, Brevel CEO and Co-Founder Yonatan Golan shared some additional details.

Will the company make its own microalgae foods or sell them to other manufacturers? Have there been any sample products created yet?

Our protein comes as a dry powder which can be simply added directly to formulations. Today, our partners add it in different forms – either directly as powder, or apply some processes such as homogenization, secondary fermentation, etc. to increase its solubility, extract additional flavors, and more. This depends on their specific needs and preferences.

In terms of functionality – at the moment, for our first segment of partners, we actually try to be as inert as possible – increase the nutritional profile of products without changing taste, color, texture, or cost for the end consumer. One of our piloting partners described it as a “ghost protein” – it increases protein content without you noticing it is there. In the second stage, we will be looking to provide functionalities such as gelation, texturing, emulsification, and more, which are most suitable for fish and seafood alternatives.

We are piloting with many different food manufacturers worldwide who are very excited about our ability to increase their nutritional profile without changing taste, color, texture, or cost for the end consumer.

Later in June, we will be at the largest alternative protein conference (Future food tech) in NYC and will have an exclusive tasting room where we will showcase several of the products our partners developed with our protein – plant-based cheese with a high protein content which melts on pizza, sunny side up eggs with our protein both in the white and the yolk.

How did the company land on microalgae? From previous research?

My co-founders are my two brothers: Matan is an MD who brings the health angle (plant-based food products today have a very low nutritional value which must be solved if we want to have a healthy future), and this is a key element in our vision. The second, Ido, is a genius engineer who happens to have a vast background in microalgae and manages to invent this entirely new way of producing microalgae efficiently and at a very high quality. I am vegan both from a moral and sustainable standpoint and am enthusiastic about finding solutions to feed our growing population sustainably and ethically. I have three children who are also vegan, and I am very concerned about the future they will live in if we don’t make drastic changes. As a physicist, I view this challenge very rationally and believe that microalgae can become the ultimate solution, like many experts and companies. However, to date, no one has been able to solve the cost and quality barriers to make this vision become a reality.

This is why we decided to dedicate ourselves to working hard on this problem and have managed to break through the glass ceiling this industry has seen for too many decades.

To educate those who do not know what exactly is microalgae?

Microalgae are microscopic organisms that use photosynthesis to grow very resource efficiently. Microalgae evolved more than 2 billion years ago. For the first time in the prehistory of earth transformed most of the CO2 in our atmosphere into oxygen and enabled the development of more advanced forms of life. Even today, microalgae account for more than 50% of the oxygen production cycle daily.

Microalgae naturally contain 40%-60% protein alongside a variety of healthy ingredients.

Microalgae grow everywhere on our planet – lakes, rivers, oceans, and even deserts and the arctic. More than 500,000 different strains exist in nature, and only a small fraction have been researched. A handful is used for food, feed, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, fertilizers, and biofuel production. Brevel uses non-GMO microalgae grown in a unique breakthrough technology that enables the highest quality of sustainable protein production at cost levels comparable to pea and soy, the leading plant-based protein source today.

Mikuna Foods Hopes Its New Funding Will Take Its Superfood Chocho To New Heights

If there’s a category of superfoods that has the potential to surpass super, Mikuna’s line of chocho protein products aspires to claim that title. The competition is intense, but the uses for a clean, gluten-free, low-glycemic, multipurpose powder-like food go well beyond juices and smoothies.

“Chocho is the future of plant-based proteins, and as we look ahead to the brand’s product and innovation pipeline, Mikuna is poised to lead the plant-based industry back to its clean, whole food roots,” company CEO Tara Kriese said in a company statement.

 Chocho is a lupin that, once milled, becomes a protein-rich powder. It is indigenous to South America in the Andes Region, particularly in Ecuador and Peru (where it is known as Tarwi). Mikuna’s founder, Ricky Echanique, is a fifth-generation farmer from Ecuador who suffered from digestive issues. He found the answer in his backyard, discovering that this plant provided solutions to his ailments. After discovering the power of this superfood, it became Echanique’s mission to bring chocho to the world.

 Kriese, a former SVP for plant-based meat company Impossible Foods, brings her market knowledge and personal passion to the company. In an interview with The Spoon, the CEO spoke about her daughter, whose multiple life-threatening childhood allergies took her to the plant-based, clean food world long before it was fashionable.

 After being introduced to Echanique in 2020 and learning of Mikuna and chocho, Kriese knew she was on to something big. “I couldn’t believe that no one was using this amazing crop,” she said. And it’s no one-trick pony, something borne out by the company’s relationship with Erewhon, which features the protein in juices that it features in its in-house Tonic Bar and in juices it sells in the store.

 The well-known Los Angeles-area gourmet supermarket’s use of chocho is part of Mikuna’s current multipronged strategy, which will evolve with its new investment dollars. The company sells its original or pure product along with vanilla and cacao varieties direct to consumers via its website. They also are available at Amazon and in retailers and foodservice locations across Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and California.

Mikuna’s seed round investors include Olympians and World Champion athletes like Leticia Bufoni, professional skateboarder and six-time X Games gold medalist, professional surfer, and three-time world champion Mick Fanning; and professional snowboarder and Olympic gold medalist Sage Kotsenburg.

“I’ve always wanted a protein powder that’s clean, and Mikuna is as clean as it gets with just one simple ingredient, chocho,” says Professional Surfer Mick Fanning. “With Mikuna, I’m investing in both the future of nutrition and our planet, and to join such an impressive community of individuals to support Mikuna’s growth was a natural fit for me.”

Backed by more than hype, Kriese senses that, like her, when consumers learn of the power and versatility of this Andrean superfood, they will have a “chocho moment” just as she did.

Betterland Foods Launches Better-For-You Chocolate Using Perfect Day’s Animal-Free Whey Protein

Move over Hershey and Mars, WOO is coming, and it’s fixing to make a sweet, healthy impact on the candy category.

betterland foods, a Napa-based company that recently introduced its cow-free milk, is taking the alternative whey protein it created to take on the alternative dairy market and now aiming at making noise in the candy space with WOO. This better-for-you candy bar competes with the big names on taste but without guilt.

“Candy has not been disrupted since 1934,” company CEO Lizanne Falsetto said in an interview with The Spoon. “Keep in mind that Hershey and Mars can buy up the shelf space, but they still can’t get to the core of what we believe people want today. They want to have a decadent treat that’s better for them and better for the planet.”

WOO (as in Moo or Whoo) is now available direct to consumers before being launched in retail. WOO’s layered chocolate bar, built using Perfect Day’s whey protein, contains organic chocolate, caramel, peanuts, and cow-free nougat. Falsetto quickly points out the dramatic difference between WOO and its entrenched competitors.

Falsetto explains that most candy bars on the market have 28 grams of sugar, while WOO had nine. The betterland’s bar has six grams of fiber compared to one in most others and eight grams of protein versus four.

Falsetto and her partner, company president Bill Pikar come to the “healthy” food space with a significant win under their belts. Falsetto is the founder and former CEO of Think! A pioneering protein bar that she developed in her kitchen. The company was sold in late 2015, after which Falsetto began working with women leaders in her Holistic Success Network.

Always keeping an eye on the alternative protein space, Falsetto and Pikar were ready to jump at the chance at another chance to (as she puts it) “blow up a category.” The Perfect Day folks reached out to the former nutrition bar creator and suggested a new type of bar using cow-free whey. Not one to focus on their “been-there, done-that” space, the betterland’s team suggested they produce a “better for you” candy bar.

“We decided the candy category would need a disruptive product, and that’s why candy was the choice.” Falsetto commented. She also jokes that betterland’s newest product has a deja-vu experience. “Interestingly enough, we were making nutrition bars on candy equipment in 1995, and now, in reverse, we are now making candy on nutrition bar equipment.”

Having gone through retail product placement with THINK!, Falsetto has developed a clear marketing strategy. Initially, protein bars, she says, didn’t have a set home in a retail store, and she sees the same route for WOO. A “dual placement” strategy, where the vegan-friendly candy bar sits with its category competitors and at the cash wrap for impulse purchases.

WOO’s initial direct-to-consumer campaign aims to create consumer familiarity and tap into social media awareness. When betterland approaches Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods of the world, the company will be in a better position for retail acceptance.

Falsetto’s take on marketing speaks to her success at finding and fulfilling a market need: I would say when it comes to a market campaign., all we want to put the food into people’s mouths, and we want them to eat it alongside a Snickers bar—like the Pepsi Challenge.”

Without going into detail, likely, we’ve not heard the last of betterland’s relationship with Perfect Day and its alternative whey. “Lizanne’s experience as a protein innovator and retail disruptor made her our first choice to launch candy made kinder and greener with Perfect Day’s whey protein,” said Ryan Pandya, co-founder, and CEO of Perfect Day. “Lizanne has already proven what she can do with betterland milk, and we are thrilled to now bring animal-free layered chocolate candy to consumers who have been excitedly awaiting more products made with Perfect Day protein.”

WOO candy bars will retail for $2.69 and are available at woobars.com

NotCo Built a Unicorn Using AI To Accelerate Food Innovation. CEO Matias Muchnick Tells The Spoon How They Did It

When Matias Muchnick started NotCo in 2015, food innovation was a slow-moving process.

“Food R&D was three guys in lab coats, doing trial and error in a developmental kitchen,” said Muchnick in a recent interview with The Spoon. “Reading research papers from 1980 about using soy to replace animal-based ingredients. That was it. So whenever you have an industry that has a very obsolete technology, then a lot of bad things happen.”

He and his co-founders wanted to create new plant-based food products, but they wanted to do it in a new way that didn’t rely on antiquated methodologies. Eventually, they started wondering if using technology like artificial intelligence could help them make better decisions and help create new types of food faster.

They decided yes and started building an extensive database of information about all the components that create the taste and experience of food.

“Your machine learning will always be directly proportionate to the amount of data and the dimensions of data that you collect,” said Muchnick. “So from the very beginning, understanding what data was relevant for the objective that we were trying to do, which was replacing animals with plants, was important to us.”

Their database was comprised of chemical and biological attributes that made food what it is and the attributes that impacted the human perception of taste, texture, smell, and color. The goal, said Muchnick, was to create a large enough database of information to use their AI (which would eventually be called Guiseppe) to create a whole line of new plant-based food products.

“We wanted to build a general-purpose artificial intelligence,” he said. “Not an algorithm that is only great at doing mayo, or a burger, or yogurt. The things you’d like from a burger are very different from what you’d like from yogurt, so (we wanted to know) how we could get a real understanding of the human brain to create an algorithm that would attack all of the categories of products. That was super important from the get-go.”

Seven years later, his company is an alt-protein unicorn: the company is growing very fast in the North American alt milk category, just started a joint venture with a food giant, and this week debuted a new alt-meat product at the natural foods show in Los Angeles.

So how does the platform that made all that possible work?

Muchnick gives an example of how the process would work if Giuseppe were used to, say, make a new kind of cheese.

“The algorithm comes up with this crazy amount of recipes and processes attached to each ingredient that we put into it,” said Muchnick. From there, they would take recipes and take them to the “AI test kitchen,” where a group of fifteen chefs try the product out, make the recipe, and then have it evaluated by a trained panel.

“The trained panel gives feedback to the algorithm. Maybe the formulation was good or bad, we feedback the algorithm with the good things and the bad things. So we feedback the algorithm with the many dimensions of the sensory aspects.”

Muchnick says its this continous loop where AI-generated concepts, recipes, and processes are tested in a kitchen, critiqued with feedback, which is then fed back into Guiseppe, which helps NotCo’s AI get better and better.

“You get an algorithm that is working on improving every single day with 1000 recipes.”

But it’s not just recipes getting better, but the optimization of processes around which they run experiments. Muchnick gives the example of a project on frothing plant-based milk. Instead of spending months experimenting with different ways to achieve it, Muchnick says it will help show faster routes to success to help deliver results in a week.

“Instead of starting from scratch with every food formulation you want to create, or any expression you want to create, the AI is telling the food scientist to go through different routes. The algorithm is optimizing every single set of experiments.”

And its this process and the success ultimately drew in Kraft Heinz to consider working with NotCo.

“Kraft Heinz said, guys, you do food products in a quality we’ve never seen before, at a pace we’ve never seen before, and with an agility and an execution that we haven’t seen before,'” said Muchnick. “‘How do you guys do it, and how can we partner up?'”

The answer to that question would eventually be a joint venture.

“They were like, ‘Why don’t we bring superior plant-based products with the familiarity of our brands and with your know-how of executing amazing R&D based products?'”

“And,” said Muchnick, “we’re like, ‘Yeah, I mean, that makes a ton of sense.'”

If you’d like to hear my full conversation with Muchnick about how they are using AI to accelerate food development, just click play below.

The Spoon Talks With ADM’s President of Global Foods About Trends Shaping Alternative Proteins in 2022

Even though ADM isn’t the first company you think of when it comes to alternative proteins, its sheer size and long reach into every sector of the food and ag value chain mean it will inevitably have a hand in steering just how fast the future food industry can scale.

Because of this, we thought we’d sit down with the company’s president of global foods and ingredients, Leticia Gonçalves, to hear what’s on her mind when it comes to trends shaping alternative proteins over the next year. The timing is good because ADM has just released its 2022 alt protein outlook which highlighted five trends the company sees as having a big impact in 2022.

The trends from the report featured are:

  • Introduction of novel protein sources, from cell-based to fungus and air
  • Advent of fermentation-as-aservice (FaaS)
  • Next generation, plant-based, whole-muscle solutions
  • Innovation and transparency from seed-to-fork
  • Price reduction of cultivated meat products
  • The rise of kid-friendly product formats

I asked Gonçalves about each of these trends. Here are some highlights from our conversation:

On the introduction of novel protein sources, from cell-based to fungus and air

“All those technologies are in the development phase. It’s not just the cell-based and fungi and air protein, but plant based solutions beyond soy including pea protein, technologies like cheap chickpeas, sunflower, even pinto beans. We see those new companies with the next-generation technologies advancing very quickly into bringing new technologies to market.

We see the trend of not only of new food startup companies investing, but many companies, including large companies like ADM, investing in those technologies. This is to help solve not only the technical needs to make sure that those technologies are not just viable from a technology standpoint, but also in terms of scalability and cost to achieve market success.”

On fermentation-as-a-service

“We see tremendous growing interest in microbial fermentation, especially as a novel method for developing alternative protein products. We have been expanding our fermentation capabilities and innovating in terms of new ways to serve food, beverage, and health and wellness brands. They’re seeking support, especially with downstream processing, lab services, and also consulting among other components essential to the food-grade fermentation. So it’s not only the novel technology but is how we connect that with the downstream processing, the lab services. Even how those technologies can be applied into final applications and get to the consumer acceptance at the end.”

On next generation, plant-based, whole-muscle solutions

“There has been a lot of technology evolving in that space. There are companies that are investing in how we can reproduce the texture realization of animal-based whole muscle cuts, from T bone steaks to shellfish to chicken nuggets. There is a lot of advancement in not only combining plant based and cultivated meat, for example, but also other binders and other texturants that can really bring that texture of the whole muscle meat. Sometimes it’s not just one answer one technology, but it’s how you bring all those pieces together to give the desired texture.”

On innovation and transparency from seed-to-fork

“Consumers are getting even more acquainted after the pandemic with where their food comes from, how we can protect animal welfare, and how can we all contribute to better climate solutions. The critical part of seed to fork is there are things you can do in the seed that can really drive lower cost and a better profile into the finished product. Not only to drive the transparency but to drive better throughput, starting with a seed composition that has a higher protein content, a better taste profile, better color profile. All of that will contribute to a better finished product at the end of the value chain.”

On price reduction of cultivated meat products

“Scale and price are connected. In December, Future Meat, said they are now producing cultivated chicken breast for just $7.70 per pound, which is down from approximately $18 per pound six months prior. So that’s a tremendous progress in just six months. But its still on a small scale. And the critical point, and then it’s something ADM has been contributing to finding a solution, is how you can scale and continue driving their price down to make sure that we get closer to to the price point that consumers will be willing to pay. It’s still an evolution, and I think the progress has been substantial. But there’s more progress to be made to make this a viable commercial and scale scalable technology.”

On the rise of kid-friendly product formats

“There are a lot of chicken nuggets or meatballs that are plant-based today, but what’s beyond that? Let’s think about what we can vary based on life stages and ages of kids, which can go from yogurt, to pizza to mac and cheese. Including different forms of veg forward products where they can find vegetables in a different way with more veg forward concept into ready meals. So those are all things that we are looking, you know, to bring more kid friendly product formats into the future.”

You can listen to my full conversation with Gonçalves below or find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.