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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

candy

Jelly Belly Creator Launches (and Sells Out of) CBD-Infused Jelly Beans

Ever since I blindly got a vomit-flavored jelly bean from the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans box, I’ve been pretty wary of the candy.

But that might be about to change. The creator of Jelly Belly, David Klein, has launched a line of jelly beans infused with cannabidiol (CBD), the non-hallucinogenic compound in cannabis (h/t USA Today). The beans come in 38 flavors including many Jelly Belly-inspired favorites, like my personal ride-or-die roasted marshmallow. There are also sour and sugar-free options, and each bean has 10 mg of CBD.

Kelin’s company, Spectrum Confections, sells the jellies in bulk: each order includes a whopping 800 beans, so it’s probably not for the casual candy or CBD lover, unless you’re stocking up for a 4/20-slash-Easter party for the books.

Even if you are, you’re out of luck. All beans are already out of stock, but Spectrum Confections notes on their website that they are still taking orders over phone and email.

Putting CBD into jelly beans is a pretty sweet idea (sorry). Demand for the non-hallucinogenic cannabinoid, which some herald for its healing and relaxation properties, is high.

However, CBD’s rise is somewhat hampered by the fact that the FDA still considers it to be an illegal food ingredient, meaning it’s technically not allowed to be sold in food or drinks. That hasn’t stopped companies from making and selling everything from CBD-infused chocolates to sodas. However, recently New York City health inspectors cracked down on local shops selling food products with cannabidiol, so really it’s just unclear what exactly is allowed and what’s not in the CBD edibles space.

Clearly that lack of clarity isn’t stopping Klein, or his jelly bean-loving customers.

Big Appliance Makers Start Cooking With Camera-Enabled Smart Ovens

When June launched its smart oven a couple years ago, the idea of having a camera inside to intelligently determine cooking parameters was pretty darn novel.

And ok sure, while having a CTO like Nikhil Bhogal -- one of the chief contributors to much of the iPhone’s early imaging innovation -- on the founder team made it all make sense in retrospect, I would still argue that an oven with machine vision was pretty far-fetched.

Now however, fast forward a couple of years and June is no longer the only game in town when it comes to machine-vision enabled consumer ovens. In fact, some of the kitchen’s bigger players are jumping on board with the idea of a camera-powered cooking cavity.

One company which recently joined June with its own camera-enabled oven was Hoover, a division of Italy’s Candy. The Vision, which Hoover announced last fall, has a built-in camera within the oven cavity as well as a touch display on the front which allows users to use apps like Spotify and view cooking centric content such as recipes and video-guided cooking instructions.

You can see the £1,499 appliance in action in a demo reel below:

Hoover Vision Oven

And now, Electrolux is joining the camera-enabled oven party. Last month, Europe’s biggest appliance manufacturer announced a new oven with a camera inside, the CombiSteam Pro Smart. The oven, which has built-in sous vide capabilities, will first be available in Sweden and Norway.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Electrolux has announced a camera-enabled oven. The company first floated the concept in 2014 and made an announcement about the AEG ProCombi Plus at IFA 2015, but from what I can tell this first product never shipped.

And while there’s been other crazy ideas like a camera-enabled air fryer (thanks Gourmia) over the past couple of years, the only company to really make a go of camera-powered consumer cooking is June.

Now, that’s about to change as big appliance makers look to leverage cameras to help the consumer do more in the kitchen.

Hole-y Sweet Tooth! Nestlé Restructures Sugar to Use Less of it

“Sugar monster” is what we call my son after he’s had too much candy or cake at a birthday party and is all wound up. Yes, I know sugar doesn’t actually make kids hyper, but the term is a way of warning him off overindulging his sweet tooth.

“Eat any more and you’ll turn into a sugar monster,” we’ll say, totally sounding like parents.

But a new technology from Nestlé could automatically give him less sugar when he’s enjoying treats. The company introduced the Milkybar Wowsome this week, which has 30 percent less sugar than comparable bars. Don’t panic, candy lovers! The Wowsome, Nestlé promises, will still taste just as good as the classic Milkybars.

To achieve this wizardry, Nestlé scientists actually restructure the sugar when making the new Wowsomes. Genius Kitchen has a great explainer, likening it to cotton candy:

“Sugar, powdered milk and water are sprayed into hot air, which causes the particles to dry out and stabilize while filled with microscopic holes. This sugar structure causes the sugar to dissolve more quickly upon contact with liquid (in this case, on your tongue). The sugar tastes just as sweet, but since it’s porous, there’s less of it.”

SWEET!

Nestlé said that it will expand the use of this technique to more children’s chocolate brands.

This move is part of a larger global trend of companies looking to reduce the sugar they serve, as consumers become more conscious of what they put in their bodies and lawmakers flex legal muscles to reduce sugar consumption. In the U.S. Pepsi is fighting the soda sales slump with its Drinkfinity line of flavored water. Down under in Australia, Nutrition Innovation has developed Nucane, a “healthier” sugar made by altering the refining process. And Bayn Europe created SugarReduced, an online community and platform that provides tools to help food and beverage producers reduce and replace sugar in their products.

Sadly, Europe is where you need to be if you want to try out the new Milkybar Wowsome. The restructured sugar bar will hit store shelves in the U.K. and Ireland over the next few weeks.

Happily, however, I will definitely seek out and purchase this miracle of modern science while attending our Smart Kitchen Summit Europe in Dublin, Ireland June 11 – 12. Come say hi to me at the show and I’ll share one with you. (No sugar monsters allowed.)

This Startup Just Figured Out How to Create the Perfect Vegan Gummy Bear

For hundreds of years, humans have used gelatin to create consumer goods: as a cooking agent, in medicines and cosmetics, and as an essential element of candies like marshmallow and gummy bears.

Trouble is, making gelatin basically involves dropping the skin, bone, and connective tissue of animals into acid or alkaline baths—a process that doesn’t exactly line up with today’s rising standards for cleaner eating.

But don’t give up on those Haribo frog candies yet. Geltor is currently at work engineering a solution for those with a sweet tooth who prefer not to eat acid-dipped horse bones. The company programs microbes so they produce produce collagen—from which gelatin is made—via a fermentation process, leaving out the animal parts altogether.

Geltor grows the microbes in large fermentation tanks in its San Leandro, Calif. facility. The microbes, which naturally produce protein, are given instructions in the form of DNA sequences to create the collagen.

“Recombinant proteins are critical to the post-animal economy,” Geltor CEO and founder Alex Lorestani said in an interview last year. “They are also difficult and expensive to manufacture.” Lorestani believes his company’s platform can help build the necessary proteins for animal-free gelatin at a lower cost than was previously possible. Food manufacturers might then be able to seriously consider gelatin alternatives in their foods that can mimic the form and consistency of the real thing without having to include animal parts in the process.

The gelatin market is right now close to $3 billion. At the same time, however, there’s rising demand for alternative forms of gelatin that don’t rely on animal proteins to produce. It’s not just vegans causing this demand. Those with religious restrictions around food have to steer clear of some gelatins (namely, pork-derived gelatin, which is neither halal nor kosher). And there are concerns about animal diseases making their way into gelatin-based candies (BSE, for example).

While there are some substitutes already available on the market—pectin, agar, guar gum—anyone who’s ever tasted a “vegan gummy bear” knows it’s notoriously difficult to replicate the real deal.

Geltor’s platform addresses this very issue. The big question is whether it can do so at scale.

Lorestani and Co. say they are about five years from producing their gelatin in commercial-sized quantities for food industry buyers, though they reportedly already have a long wait list of potential buyers. The company also has to consider regulatory issues—namely, proving their product is a safe alternative.

Right now there’s not much in the way of competition. That will undoubtedly change over the next five years, since it’s more than just the candy makers need gelatin to make their products. Once the pharmaceutical and personal care companies get onboard, expect to hear lots of noise coming from this corner of the biotech world.

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