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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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The EVERY Company Uses Iconic Product to Showcase Its Animal-Free Egg Whites

It’s common for musicians to play their most challenging piece to open a concert. Not only is the goal to calm the nerves, but it is also a way to showcase talent and let the audience know what they can expect. Using this model, EVERY Co. figures a great way to let the world know how exceptional its EVERY EggWhite is to have Bay Area’s Chantal Guillon, use it in its signature French macarons.

“From the day we founded the company, we have been asked by customers when will we get our hands on it (egg whites),” Arturo Elizondo, CEO, and founder of EVERY, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We wanted to launch it in the most iconic application that really is the holy grail of functionality and with a customer that lives or dies by the ingredients.”

Founded initially as Clara Foods in 2014, the company rebranded in 2021 to better illustrate its mission of providing animal-free proteins that can be used in a vast array of applications. Unlike cell-cultivated and plant-based proteins, EVERY uses a 3D model of an egg protein and puts it through a fermentation process to achieve three products that serve different high-value markets. Elizondo says the resulting fermented egg white has the perfect consistency and mouthfeel, an ideal substitute ingredient.

In addition to releasing its EVERY EggWhite, the company has EVERY ClearEgg. This clear, highly soluble protein can be used in beverages and fortifying agents. Elizondo said that his company has been partnering with AB InBev, which is experimenting with using ClearEGG in protein drinks and other drinks. EVERY has a similar relationship with cold-pressed juice and plant-based snacks brand Pressed to use its soluble protein in the juicer’s Pressed Pineapple Greens Protein smoothie.

The third product from EVERY is its EVERY Pepsin, a digestive enzyme that is Kosher, Halal, vegan, and vegetarian. Pepsin is often used in dietary supplements and food processing.

With no background in science, Arturo Elizondo brings an element of cache and evangelism to the company that is the backbone of every conversation. His passion for a global future of food security caused him to leave his job in Washington, D.C., and move to the Bay Area without a job or place to live.

“I didn’t want to just sit on the sidelines, and so once I learned about the impact of animal ag,” Elizondo said. “I felt I had to do something about this. “I was in D.C. and Geneva and realized that if we as a world were going to have a shot at averting this climate crisis, I need to at least try and give it a shot.”

Elizondo met his future partners at a conference in the Bay Area. Seven years later, the company hopes to provide a cruelty-free alternative to egg whites and products that use whites as a primary ingredient. The decision to go after the egg market was deliberate.

“The egg is in everything,” EVERY’s CEO said. “I remember when I first went plant-based and was in a grocery store, reading the label and saw eggs in everything. The egg is universally loved across cultures and in so many foods we eat. We wanted to be the first in the world to use this technology for one of the big multi-hundred million animal protein markets.”

Rather than using its three products to go directly to consumers, EVERY wants to enable third parties such as bakeries, beverage companies, and any industry that uses egg whites. “The technology is only as useful as the impact that it has on products,” Elizondo added. “Our products must work in every application. They have to be able to perform across the board. We want to give eggs a run for their money.”

This takes us back to the iconic French macaron. Beginning today, March 23, the macarons, using EVERY’s EggWhites, will be available in-store at Chantal Guillon’s San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif. locations and for Bay Area delivery via partners like GrubHub, UberEats, Seamless, and Allset on Wednesday, March 30. It is interesting to note that products using these alternative egg whites won’t be labeled “plant-based” (a standard marketing term) but are vegan as no animal is used in their creation. Elizondo believes that vegans will, for example, welcome baked goods back into their lives that have been missing for years because of their use of animal-based eggs.

“I miss eating the angel food cake we used to eat at Xmas every year. Now I can eat that. There’s something really magical about that. We’re not guilting people into comprising. You can truly have your cake and eat it too.”

Report: How Microbiome and DNA-based Personalized Nutrition Will Change the Way We Eat (Spoon Plus)

The “first wave” of personalized nutrition is already here. These are companies that use data from wearable devices to track consumers’ weight, exercise quantities, temperature and other factors that can shape food and beverage suggestions.

The next step, or “second wave,” on the evolutionary path of personalized nutrition will get even more granular in terms of the information about each individual that services can pull and analyze. Instead of drawing on data from wearables, third-party companies will use information gathered from inside individual bodies, either from gut microbes or DNA sequences. Using this data, companies will be able to create truly personalized diet plans driven by lab results and deep analysis, instead of the more generalized metrics that are available through wearables. These second-wave services can create meal journeys that are absolutely unique to each individual based not on of general trends or self-reported data but actual biology.

This report will examine the biomarker-driven, personalized nutrition landscape. It will examine key drivers, market players, opportunities and challenges, and make forward-looking predictions about what this market will look like over the next 12 months, 5 years and 10 years.

Companies profiled in this report include Viome, Sun Genomics, Genopalate, DNANudge, DayTwo and Nylos.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

I Used GenoPalate to Create a Custom Nutrition Plan based on My DNA

A few weeks ago I rubbed my cheek with a swab, slipped it a vial of liquid, and sent my DNA off to be tested. This was part of a service from GenoPalate, a startup that uses information gleaned from DNA to create personalized nutrition plans for users. Having never done any sort of DNA test before, I was surprised at how simple it was: the entire process took maybe three minutes, including creating an online account.

Cut to 10 days later and I got an alert that my GenoPalate report was ready. I downloaded the GenoPalate app, logged in with my email and password, and prepared to get new insights into my ideal diet.

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.

I also got a list of my recommended fruits, vegetables, starches, proteins, and cheeses. These included raspberries, squash, and lettuce, as well as bagels, spaghetti, gruyere cheese, eel, and chicken liver.

Is it fun to discover that my “best” fruits include kiwis? Sure. But after reading through my GenoPalate results, I realized that I didn’t really discover anything I didn’t already know. Basically, the test told me I should be eating a pretty basic healthy diet.

That said, I’m not necessarily GenoPalate’s target audience. I’m already quite conscientious about what I eat and have done a good bit of trial and error to determine what foods make me feel healthy and energized. For someone with a chronic illness, or who suffers from low energy or persistent digestion issues with an unknown cause, GenoPalate’s reports could be more revelatory.

I also didn’t get to try GenoPalate’s recommended recipe service, which, for an additional $30 ($199 as opposed to $169), will give you five recipes based off of your genetic profile. In retrospect, that would have been helpful insight to have. Five recipes aren’t a lot, but they could provide some building blocks for future meal plans and guidance on how to turn the barrage of information in the nutrition analysis (e.g., eat raspberries, not blueberries) into something actionable.

In fact, that’s really the problem with GenoPalate. You can see its potential — discovering which foods to eat to make you feel your best — but right now the technology is too early-stage to be all that helpful for the average person (i.e. me). I haven’t tried them yet, but I imagine services like Viome (which does include recipe recommendations) and Sun Genomics, which also give personalized nutrition reports, are at a similar place. One of the more useful services is DNANudge, which also uses your DNA to guide your grocery shopping outings and push you towards brands that are a better fit for your biology.

Overall these services can give you some high-level information, but they’re not quite ready to be a granular guide. That said, I still think there’s huge potential in the space. As the technology evolves I imagine these services will be able to become more helpful, possibly even linking up with recipe recommendation services as well as health trackers to create a super-curated, all-in-one dietary guide. With these added capabilities, services like GenoPalate could create personalized, shoppable meal plans, and even tweak recipes to meet your health goals (losing weight, training for a marathon, etc.)

If you’re curious about the potential for personalized food and nutrition, then you’ve got to join us at our Customize event on February 27th (next week!) in NYC. GenoPalate’s CEO Dr. Sherry Zhang will be there speaking about biology-driven dining. If you want to come, you can use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tickets.

CES 2020: DNANudge Guides Your Grocery Shopping Based Off of Your DNA

Unless you’re a nutritionist or really adept at reading nutrition labels, it can be tricky to tell which brands of peanuts/chocolate/crackers are healthiest for you. Especially when grocery stores offer dozens and dozens of SKUs for every possible food item.

With DNANudge, a London-based personalized nutrition startup, the key to optimizing your grocery shopping is on your wrist. The company’s app links up with wearable bands which scan CPG products and give you real-time feedback on whether they’re a good fit for you to eat — or not.

We stopped by DNANudge’s booth at CES 2020 to get a tour of how it works. First you send off a saliva sample to the company’s HQ in Covent Garden, London. DNANudge analyzes your DNA to give you a breakdown of your nutritional profile — sensitive to salt, low risk of diabetes, etc. — which is available via the company’s app. (Your sample is then destroyed.) The app also connects to DNANudge’s wearable armbands, available online or in its London retail store. 

Then the fun begins. You can scan the barcodes of edible CPG products with the armband, which will either flash green (a good match for your biology) or red (not so much). After the band flashes, you can check on the app to get a more detailed breakdown of why the food is/isn’t a fit for you, and also get recommendations for products that might be a better match. Which kind of makes me wonder why the armband is even necessary — couldn’t you just scan all the products with your phone? Though I guess it looks #fashion and saves you the step of pulling out your phone, if you just want a quick yes/no in the grocery aisle.

Speaking on the CES show floor, DNANudge’s co-founder and CEO Chris Toumazou told me that he started the company in 2015 to empower people to eat healthier. “If you want to eat a biscuit, you’re going to eat a biscuit,” he explained to me. “But you can eat the best biscuit for your biology.”

DNANudge’s scanning currently works with all CPG SKU’s in major U.K. supermarkets, except for Marks & Spencer. The entire system — DNA test, wearable, and app — is currently available in the U.K. for 120 pounds ($158). Toumazou told me that they were planning to launch in the U.S. soon, possibly in L.A. He estimates that the system will retail for $120 stateside.

Personalized nutrition — either based off of DNA or gut microbiomes — has become quite a trend lately. Viome and Sun Genomics make dietary and supplement recommendations based off of your microbiome. The most similar offering to DNANudge is GenoPalate, which also uses a saliva swab to map DNA and make suggestions about which foods people should eat. However, GenoPalate doesn’t have the wearable aspect, so it can’t make recommendations on a case-by-case basis like DNANudge does.

There’s no doubt that more people want more personalized dietary guides, but how exactly to do that — and protect consumer data — is still unclear. If you’re curious this emerging space you should come to Customize, our food personalization summit on February 27th in New York City. See you there!

SKS Q&A: GenoPalate’s Sherry Zhang on How Your DNA Can and Should Dictate What You Eat

In Western cultures we tend to go to the doctor to get medicine, but there’s a growing movement advocating for food as the first step towards healthier bodies. (Which, when you think about it, is pretty obvious.) But determining what foods to eat to make you feel better can be tricky, especially in our age of fad diets and fast-food.

Dr. Sherry Zhang founded company GenoPalate to try and solve the whole what-do-I-eat-to-feel-better question for individuals by looking at genetics to create personalized nutrition programs. Sort of like Ancestry DNA for your diet.

Zhang will be speaking at our flagship Smart Kitchen Summit {SKS} conference in Seattle this October, exploring the burgeoning trend of food as medicine. (Psst — Early Bird ticket sales end tomorrow, so grab yours before the price goes up!) We asked her a few questions to get a better sense of how exactly GenoPalate works, and what sort of role it could play in mapping out our dining future.

Tell us more about GenoPalate. How exactly does it work?
GenoPalate revolutionizes how people eat healthy based on their unique genetics. 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.

How do consumers get access to GenoPalate’s technology? Is it offered as a solo service? Do you work with partners? A combination?
It is easy to get access to GenoPalate’s technology. Consumers can order their GenoPalate nutrigenetic home tests by going to its e-commerce platform at genopalate.com. It is offered as one streamlined experience and each service comes with GenoPalate’s genetics-based nutrition analysis, a personal nutrition and food map report followed by Activate, a 12-week digital coaching program that provides individual consumers actionable knowledge to eat for their genes.

Personalization is a growing trend in the food space. Why do you think it’s having such a moment lately?
There are definitely radical changes in the expectations, needs and wants of food shoppers lately. I think the driver behind this trend in consumer behavior is the advancements in the technology world that enables 1) the dramatically increased amount of information on sources, ingredients and manufacturing processes to the food we have access to today; 2) the level of precision in health information that we now are able to access and analyze for better understanding the impact of food and nutrition on a person’s health and wellness by the high-paced advancement in the field of clinical genomics. Consumers have always had the appetite for personalized food options for their needs but it was not possible to meet those needs at greater scale. Now we have the technologies to offer that, it is reasonable that consumers and the industry they influence cannot wait for taking it on.

How do you address the issue of privacy around the personal data you gather to create nutrition profiles for GenoPalate?
Keeping our users’ genetic and other personal information private and safe is important to us at GenoPalate.

We implement de-identification procedures along with encryption of each individual’s data to ensure secure storage and complete anonymous separate of your genetic and personal information. Only automated GenoPalate product services have access to both of this information to deliver our product to each user.

As a business, we do not sell, lease or rent users’ personal information to third-party without user’s consent. User’s genetic information may be used by our product development team to enhance our services to our users. In this case, users’ data will be de-identified and aggregated before analysis to preserve anonymity.

To learn more about our data security and privacy measures please visit, https://www.genopalate.com/legal.

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Keep an eye out for more speaker Q&A’s as we ramp up to our fifth year of SKS on October 7-8 in Seattle! We hope to see you there.

23AndMe Can Predict Your Favorite Ice Cream Flavor. How Do We Feel About That?

Genetic testing company, 23AndMe, can determine where your ancestors hail from, if you’re at risk for certain medical conditions, and, apparently, your favorite ice cream flavor.

Well, as long as it’s either chocolate or vanilla. A few days ago 23AndMe released a trait report that, among other things, can estimate whether you’re more likely to prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream (h/t Food & Wine).

The company used data from 980,000 23AndMe research participants to determine a statistical model which showed whether each person was predestined to prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream (those are the only two flavors the report covers). The same report can also indicate users’ preference for salty or sweet snacks, as well as whether or not they have an aversion to cilantro. 23AndMe has done similar preference reports centered on beer in the past.

Having the power to determine whether someone likes chocolate or vanilla ice cream based on their DNA is obviously not a groundbreaking use of genetic science. Most people know their favorite ice cream flavors already (Team Mint Chocolate Chip!), and if they don’t, it’s pretty darn easy to find out.

Take a longer view, however, and it becomes clear how this sort of technology could have significant implications for the future of food personalization. As food becomes more and more digitized, companies can access your profile to determine dietary preferences, allergens, and general preferences.

It’s starting to happen already. McDonald’s has begun using Dynamic Yield to suggest new menu items to drive-thru customers based off of external factors like weather, trends, etc. But as The Spoon founder Mike Wolf pointed out recently, right now “personalized doesn’t really mean personalized, but instead it just means something slightly different based on a set of localized and current environmental factors.” Add DNA into the mix, and personalized could mean not only personalized based on your purchase history or pre-set preferences, but based on your actual genetics.

There are a ton of ways that companies could use your genetic predispositions to sell you more food tweaked towards your exact tastes. Perhaps your phone would ping you to try a new seasonal flavor at a brewery, or your local taco spot could know to automatically omit cilantro from your online orders. At best, these sort of nudges would make you try something new or save you from picking off cilantro. At worst, they’re super annoying.

However, providing this sort of data could have a lot bigger implications than just marketing nudges. What happens if the food you should or shouldn’t eat based on you genes gets shared not just with a restaurant, but also with your insurance company? Do you want it (and their rate hikes) keeping tabs on what you order? That’s a pretty extreme example, but your genetic makeup is the ultimate in private data. Revealing and sharing it could have far-reaching consequences which are not always obvious, or pleasant.

Gattaca stuff aside, this sort of granular data could present a big opportunity to personalized food companies like Spoonshot, Tastewise, or Analytical Flavor System. Right now they rely on external factors like consumer trends and the molecular makeup of food, but add DNA into the mix and they have an entirely new —and extremely personal— dataset with which to design your ideal flavor combination. CPG brands could, in turn, use these hyper-personalized flavor preferences to then sell to you through hyper-targeted marketing. Futuristic, sure — but not honestly, it’s probably not that far out.

There’s also the fact that living in a world where all your taste choices are predetermined sounds kind of, well, boring. Because even if I know that I love mint chocolate chip, I still like the excitement and the (admittedly tiny) risk of trying a new flavor, and waiting to see if I’ll like it or not.

23AndMe users can check out their ice cream flavor preference report here.

Personalizing Food, Directed by Your DNA

What if, at the press of a button, you could have food generated for you that is customized for your genetic code and up-to-the-minute nutritional needs? With that in mind, Dr. Amy Logan, a team leader for dairy science at The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), has just launched a three-year study into the personalized fabrication of smart food systems.

As News.com.au reports, Dr. Logan has delivered a presentation on how personalized nutrition will converge with 3D printing so that custom food will be generated based on measurements of physiological markers through biosensors. Think of how sensors on a car warn us when, say, tire pressure is low. In Dr. Logan’s eyes, biosensor-based measurements can then trigger the automatic generation of nutritionally optimized food.

According to a mission statement for Dr. Logan’s study:

“Our scientists and engineers at CSIRO are working towards this future where food, nutraceuticals and other products will be personalized based on an individual’s genetic makeup, and a reality where optimum well-being for each person is a reality. We are building the underpinning science required to: Develop a personalized and instant food processor, providing the smart, structured soft materials (food and cosmetics) on demand and personalized for you on the day, incorporating sensor technologies that measure food – body and cosmetic – body interactions coupled with personalized genomics and phenotype (lifestyle) data.”

Dr. Logan’s study has participation from CSIRO’s Agriculture and Food and Manufacturing divisions, and it will go beyond focusing solely on conceptual advancements. The idea is to move toward instant ways to precisely detect what an individual’s body needs and instant ways to fabricate customized food to meet those needs.

Logan’s research team will focus on instantly available diagnostics and how 3D printing or similar technologies can fabricate genetically targeted food to correct deficiencies. The diagnostics may leverage, of all things, human sweat. At the Inside 3D Printing Conference, Logan said: “The vision we have is that in 20 years time, someone would wake up in the morning [and] their physiological markers will have already been measured in a really unintrusive way, potentially through their sweat while they’ve been sleeping using biosensor technology.”

CSIRO’s “The DNA Diet” site explores these ideas further. The goal is not just to optimize nutrition for performance-oriented reasons, but to essentially hack the body to defy disease. “DNA damage is the most fundamental cause of developmental and degenerative disease and accelerated aging,” The DNA Diet report notes. “Pioneering CSIRO research has demonstrated that damage to the bodies DNA is a fundamental disease that can be diagnosed and partially reversed. A team of CSIRO scientists identified nine micronutrients that are significantly associated with DNA damage. The group also showed that supplementation with certain micronutrients can reduce DNA damage.”

Through work headed up by Dr. Michael Fenech, CSIRO has already developed a technique for measuring DNA damage that can serve as a model for Dr. Logan’s team to take further. According to The DNA Diet: “Reach 100 [is] a medical clinic offering diagnostic blood tests that measure DNA damage and information relating to the nutritional, life-style and environmental factors that influence it. The team at Reach100 checks the levels of important micronutrients in the patient’s blood, including red cell folate, serum folate and Vitamin B12, which are all essential for the body’s ability to replicate healthy DNA. Reach100 doctors then make recommendations about the health of the patient’s DNA, based on the results of these tests.”

Is it wildly exotic to think that in the future 3D printers might fabricate our food? Actually, many such concepts have been shown at the 3D Food Printing Conference in Venlo, the Netherlands.  Chefs have created five-course 3D-printed meals, and scientists have created 3D-printed beef. The object of Dr. Logan’s research, though, is to improve health outcomes through the instant fabrication of genetically targeted food.

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