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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

food waste reduction

CES: Tackling Food Waste With Technology (Video)

The topic of food waste and innovation is so important — in the US alone, $408 billion worth of food is wasted each year. But the topic is too often overlooked when it comes to food tech conversations.

That’s why we invited experts to join us at the CES Food Tech Conference last month to talk about waste at different points in the food supply chain as well as the systemic issues plaguing the global food system.

We welcomed Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Innovation with the International Fresh Produce Association to moderate this panel with participants including Spencer Martin, CEO of Clew, Adian Mouat, Co-Founder & CEO of Hazel Technologies and Tim West, President of True West Ventures LLC.

The full panel — “Tackling Food Waste With Technology” is ready for viewing below.

Researchers Have Developed a Chameleon-Inspired Solution to Keep Fish Fresh

Red light, green light. Your first thought may be Squid Game, but these two colors are part of new food technology used for real squid.

Researchers invented a material that changes color to measure how fresh seafood is, inspired by (you guessed it) chameleons. It can save consumers from eating spoiled fish and can keep food waste out of landfills.

Why does your fish smell so fishy?

You probably are familiar with fish that smells… well, too fishy. This unpleasant odor comes from volatile gases in seafood, such as dimethylamine or ammonia. As the temperature of fish rises, its acidity changes, and ammonia is released.

Your salmon or shrimp has definitely spoiled if you can smell this gas — but ammonia can increase to dangerous levels before your nose can detect it. “Seafood easily spoils due to microbial growth that produces volatile amine gases,” said researcher Tao Chen in an interview.

A key part of seafood production is the ability to detect these volatile gases. Current standards take about four hours to find ammonia or dimethylamine in just one sample of fish.

Imagine if the commercial fishing industry had to set aside four hours for every piece of fish in their warehouse. The process would take days, and all the food would be at risk for spoiling. In reality, most fish inspections are done visually and are highly prone to error.

Here is where a team of food scientists and chemists enters the picture. New technology from Chen and his team at the Key Laboratory of Marine Materials detects when seafood has spoiled.

Chameleon skin inspired this material.

The skin of a chameleon can shift its hue to blend into different environments in just a few seconds. In a similar show of colors, the hydrogel can change its fluorescence from red to blue to green in a few minutes. These three colors allow scientists to visualize changes in response to stimuli.

The hydrogel changes color as heat and ammonia levels rise. The technology is easy to use, as the hydrogel can be placed directly into any package to check if fish or shellfish are safe to eat. Though customers should not eat the gel, it will not affect the product’s taste.

The soft material is unique in its ability to change colors. Both chemists and material engineers have struggled to design a synthetic fabric that could change colors. Until this study, scientists have been unable to model the structure of panther chameleon skin in a lab.

“Is it possible to mimic this unique structure into artificial color-changing materials? As described in our paper, the answer is yes,” Chen said.

“Up to now, the responsive color-changing capacity of synthetic materials was still far inferior to that of the natural chameleon skin,” researcher Patrick Théato said in an interview. Théato collaborated with the team in China for this bio-inspired project.

Science: Taste the rainbow.

The team discovered that the secret was in the separation. Instead of placing all fluorescent materials onto one sheet, each color has its own layer.

As seen in the diagram below, at the core of the hydrogel is a red layer that stays true to its hue. A middle blue layer measures the temperature of the seafood, and an outer green layer tests acidity and ammonia levels.

The hydrogel changes color in the presence of ammonia (NH3) or heat. It shifts to a green hue when ammonia is present or becomes more purple as the temperature rises. At either end of the spectrum, the fish in question is unsafe to eat.

The blue hydrogel layer changes color from purplish red to blue when the temperature rises. At 20º Celsius, the material appears to be purple or red, and when the heat rises to 50º Celsius, the hydrogel turns blue. The whole hydrogel turns green when ammonia is present and has no color change if ammonia is not present in the sample.

Not only do the different layers mimic the skin of a chameleon, but they also let scientists test the environmental variables on their own. Existing methods combine heat and ammonia into one reading and are less accurate. For example, current technologies would likely miss a slight change in acidity if the temperature stayed static.

Almost one-third of food in China is wasted.

Chen spoke to his personal motivation to create seafood-focused technology. His team hails from Ningbo, a coastal metropolis in China. “Many people in this city love seafood very much,” Chen said.

However, a significant amount of this catch ends up in landfills. A new study shows that 27% of all food in China is wasted per year. To put that number in perspective, food waste emissions in China are equal to total emissions in the United Kingdom.

How is the country keeping food out of the garbage? Well, President Xi Jinping declared war on food waste last year. As of April 2020, it is illegal to order too much food at a restaurant. ‘Mukbang‘ videos are similarly discouraged and were removed from many social media sites.

Another potential solution? The hydrogel. It can help reduce food waste on an industrial level. Commercial fisheries can use the gel for faster and more accurate readings and take immediate action if some of their seafood is beginning to spoil.

Color in cephalopods.

Théato, Chen, and many of their collaborators are working on a new project inspired by a different type of animal: Cephalopods.

These ocean dwellers – cuttlefish and squids, to name a few – are masters of camouflage. They can change their color faster than a chameleon. The researchers are creating a fluorescent hydrogel that takes notes from octopuses.

The team’s original hydrogel looked to acidity or temperature as the catalyst for color change. The new version has an electric stimulus, which is easier to control and free from any chemicals. It is currently under development for larger-scale applications.

Seems that octopuses are teaching us, after all.

Capital One Ventures Makes First Impact Investment in Food Waste Specialist Goodr

Capital One Ventures, the venture arm of financial services giant Capital One, has invested in food waste specialist Goodr. The investment, the amount of which was not disclosed, was announced via a Medium post by partner Adam Boutin.

From the post:

Jasmine and her team are tackling one of the most baffling paradoxes — 80 billion pounds of food is ending up in our landfills every year, meanwhile 40 million Americans are food insecure. While most of us are aware that food waste and hunger are massive problems (with both environmental and societal implications), the scale & complexity of the issues is astonishing….

The investment marks the first move by Capital One Ventures into impact investing. According to Boutin, who is leading the impact investing efforts for the venture arm, they plan on making more in coming months in the areas of financial inclusion, environmental sustainability and future of work.

We’ve been writing about Goodr here at The Spoon for some time, in part because the company is one of the first startups to utilize blockchain as a way to better track food and help reduce waste. Here’s how company CEO Jasmine Crowe described the company’s platform back in a 2018 interview:

Goodr is a sustainable waste management platform that leverages technology to reduce food waste and combat hunger. We provide an end-to-end solution for businesses seeking to reduce their overall waste, save money and empower their local community.

Our technology coordinates the collection and distribution of food donations. Unlike our competitors, Goodr’s platform also provides an IRS audit-friendly donation record, real-time food waste analytics, and community impact reports thanks to blockchain.

In addition to providing a technology forward platform for helping corporations reduce how much food they throw out, Goodr’s also extremely active on activating partnerships in communities of need to make sure the food ends up in the right place. It’s been inspiring to watch Crowe and her team spring into action over the past year to help those hit hard by COVID-19 with efforts like their pop up stores and emergency meal kits.

Goodr is one of a number of startups in the food waste and sustainability space that are getting extra attention nowadays from investors. While food waste reduction and innovation hasn’t always gotten as much investor attention some of the other food tech spaces, COVID-19 shined a light on the fragility of the food system and made it even more clear how reducing waste made good economic sense.

Spoon Plus: The Consumer Food Waste Innovation Report

Nowadays, governments, grocery retailers, industries like agriculture and grocery, tech companies, and many others are working to fight food waste at both the local and international level. In the developed world, at least, much of that focus over the last 12 months has been on the consumer kitchen, which is responsible for by far the most food waste in those regions.

This report will examine why so much food is wasted in the consumer kitchen, what new technologies and processes can be leveraged to fight that waste, and the companies working to change consumers’ relationship to both food and waste.

Report highlights include:

  • One-third of the world’s food goes to waste annually. In the U.S. and Europe, the majority of that waste happens downstream, at consumer-facing businesses and in the home.

  • Food waste at home is a three-part problem that stems from a lack of awareness about waste, inadequate information and skill sets around home cooking, and the convenience economy driving consumer behavior.

  • Grocery store shopping, current recipe formats, inconsistent date labels, and a lack of smart storage solutions for grocery purchases and restaurant leftovers are the main drivers of at-home food waste.

  • The refrigerator itself may be one of the single biggest contributors to food waste. Moving forward, appliance-makers will need to consider overhauling the appliance’s entire design to help consumers fight food waste.

  • Solutions for fighting food waste will come from a range of different players. For tech companies, areas of focus will include more smart appliances and more tech-enabled storage systems as well as meal-planning and meal-sharing apps.

Companies profiled in this report include LG, Samsung, Vitamix, Smarter, Ovie, Bluapple, Mimica, Blakbear, Silo, Mealhero, MealBoard, Kitche, No Waste, Ends & Stems, and Olio.

Introduction: The Size of the World’s Food Waste Problem

In 2012, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released the first edition of its now-famous report, “Wasted, How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food From Farm to Fork to Landfill.” That report proved to be a groundbreaking look at the inefficiencies in the U.S. food system that lead to massive amounts of food waste from the farm all the way into the average person’s kitchen. 

The report also proved to one of the biggest catalysts for change in recent years. Since its publication, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced federal targets to cut food waste by 50 percent by 2030 — the first goal of its kind in the U.S. Similarly, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 seeks to “halve global food waste at retail and consumer levels, as well as to reduce food loss during production and supply.” As NRDC noted in the second edition of “Wasted,” published in 2017, food businesses have made commitments to reduce waste, and 74 percent of consumers polled say fighting food waste is important to them. Most recently, the Consumer Goods Forum launched its Food Waste Coalition that aims, in part, to support SDG 12.3 by focusing on consumer-facing areas of food waste like home and retail. And these are just as sampling of the countless efforts happening on both international and local levels in the war on food waste.

Even so, the oft-cited figure, that one-third of the world’s food supply goes to waste, is as relevant now as it was nearly a decade ago when NRDC first published its report.

In 2020, food waste is a multibillion-dollar problem with environmental, economic, and human costs that grow more urgent as the world advances towards a 10-billion-person population. The United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimates food waste’s global carbon footprint to be 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases, and that economic losses of this food waste total $750 billion annually. The United Kingdom’s Food Waste Recycling Action Plan (WRAP) notes that keeping food scraps out of landfills would be the equivalent of removing 20 percent of cars in Britain from the roads. Meanwhile, over in the U.S., rescuing just 15 percent of the food we waste could feed 25 million Americans each year, or well over half of the 40 million Americans facing food insecurity.  

Worldwide, different regions waste food in different ways. UN estimates show that per capita waste by consumers in Europe and North America totals to 95-115 kg/year. That number drops significantly, to 6-11 kg/year, in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeastern Asia. Overall, 40 percent of losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels in developing countries. Not so in developed nations, where over 40 percent of food waste occurs at retail and consumer levels.

Given the enormous amounts of waste occurring at the consumer level in Europe and North America, it makes sense that recent efforts towards fighting food waste now go towards understanding how and why food gets wasted downstream, at grocery stores, restaurants, and, most importantly, within consumers’ own homes.

The full report is available to subscribers of Spoon Plus. To find out more about Spoon Plus, click here. Use discount code NEWMEMBER to get 15% off an annual or monthly subscription. 

This Alternative Sweetener Is Made From Upcycled Apples and Pears

Overconsumption of sugar is responsible for illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and some cancers, a problem that’s hard to avoid because American food is full of the stuff. Many people and companies lean on alternatives to avoid sugar, but while research has proven that consumption of aspartame, sucralose and others is safe, many people have concerns about them. Stevia is another sugar alternative that’s made from leaves, but its odd aftertaste disqualifies it for use in many products.

This conundrum in the multi-billion-dollar sweetener industry presents an opportunity for Fooditive, which hopes to provide another option that is not only natural, but also reduces food waste. The Netherlands-based startup’s sweetener is made through a fermentation process that extracts fructose from apples and pears sourced from Dutch farmers that have brown spots or off colors and can’t be sold in stores, Fast Company reports. The company, founded by food scientist Moayad Abushokhedim, has also developed carrot waste into a preserving agent for soups, sauces and bakery items, as well as thickening agents made from banana skins and emulsifiers from potato extracts.

The company is following a B2B model and will distribute the sweetener to food and beverage companies across the Netherlands. There’s no word on when it will go on sale to the general public, although the company’s website says online ordering will be coming soon. Fooditive said it has plans to expand to Sweden, the U.K. and Abushokhedim’s native Jordan. 

While Fooditive’s sweetener is novel, using food and food scraps that would otherwise be discarded is part of a growing trend of so-called upcycled foods. Other companies with this model include Barnana, which turns misshapen and over ripened bananas into snacks, ReGrained, a maker of bars made from spent grain leftover from brewing beer, and Sir Kensington, a vegan mayo maker that uses chickpea liquid.

Aside from introducing alternatives, companies are also introducing ways to “improve” sugar so we don’t need to consume too much of it. There’s DouxMatok, which aims to make the sugar we already consume hit our tongues more efficiently, and Nutrition Innovation, a technology company using near-infrared scanning to better refine sugar.

Startups are approaching the issue of humanity’s dangerous sugar addiction from multiple angles, so thankfully there are plenty of sweet solutions emerging.

The Food Tech Shöw: Umlauts, Delivery Drones & Sweetgeen 3.0

After a mini-break following the Smart Kitchen Summit, The Spoon editors were back this week to record a brand new editor roundtable edition of the Food Tech Show.

Jenn Marston, Chris Albrecht, Catherine Lamb and myself jumped back on the mic to discuss the following stories:

As always, enjoy the podcast and please leave a review if you enjoy what you hear.

You can listen to the Food Tech Show by on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, by downloading direct to your device or just by clicking play below.

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Apeel Sciences Wants to Save Your Produce, One Edible Peel at a Time

Apeel Sciences founder and CEO James Rogers was more concerned with paint than produce when he first came up with the idea for the company.

At the time, Rogers was getting his PhD in Materials Sciences, developing a solar paint that could harvest energy. But after hearing a story on the radio about global hunger, he found himself wondering why such a thing existed if an abundance of food was grown every year.

The culprit, as Rogers would discover, wasn’t a lack of food; it was food spoilage. Thus Apeel Sciences was born, and Rogers and his team set to work developing a plant-based peel for produce that, once applied, extends the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. The product, called Apeel, acts as a barrier that retains water inside the produce longer and regulates how fast oxygen gets in.

Stepping away from paint for a moment, Rogers used his background in materials sciences to address the problem, applying the same concepts metallurgists used when creating a coating to protect steel from the elements. Since produce, like iron, degrades when exposed to environmental conditions for a long period of time, couldn’t we use the same solution—a barrier—to slow down the decay?

In trying to answer that question, Rogers discovered that everything needed to create such a barrier already exists—in the food itself. Out of that revelation, (and a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation), Apeel was born.

To create that barrier for produce, Apeel basically takes parts of plants left behind on farms (e.g., tomato rinds, seeds and pulps) and extracts particular lipids from them. Those lipids are then combined in specific ratios, which vary depending on the produce, to create the ideal protective barrier for each fruit and vegetable.

From there, the company sends its specialized Apeel to farmers and suppliers in the form a lightweight powder, which they combine with water and apply to the produce. “Once applied, [Apeel] leaves behind an imperceptible amount of edible plant material on the surface of the fruit that naturally slows down water loss and oxidation—the factors that cause fresh food to spoil,” says Michelle Masek, Head of Marketing for Apeel.

Of course, the product’s main appeal (please kill me for that) is that consumers will have food that stays fresher longer, and isn’t coated in wax for protection against the elements. For example, Masek says Apeel can, “at minimum,” double the shelf life of avocados. Considering that (at least up north) most avocados are already shriveling by the time they hit the major chain grocery stores, that’s welcome news.

But it’s not just consumers who win with the longer shelf life. “It benefits every member of the fresh food supply chain by minimizing waste and extending the transportability of the produce [for] farmers, shippers and retailers,” says Masek. In other words, less waste and longer transport time windows are a win for everyone involved in getting food from the farm to the store.

Right now, Apeel Sciences works with everyone from smallholder farmers and local organic growers to large food brands. It’s currently only focused on fresh produce. Masek also assures me the company is scaling as we speak: “We’re ramped up in a new 105k square-foot facility in Goleta, California where, as an example of scale, we can make enough product to service the global avocado supply.”

Whether the company does end up serving the global supply of avocados isn’t clear. By some accounts, the produce industry didn’t exactly welcome Apeel with open arms. That said, few industries have a uniformly positive reaction when a new player comes in with a “disruptive” idea. And with $40 million in funding so far, plus support from the Gates foundation, Apeel may very well have a real shot at replacing that wax that covers the produce at your local grocer.