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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Tasty Jungle Launches Pasta Made From Breadfruit

Used in the tropics as a staple food for thousands of years, breadfruit is a globular fruit with a scaly green exterior and a starchy inside. Tasty Jungle, a start-up based in Santa Monica, has capitalized on the potential of this tropical fruit with its flagship product — breadfruit pasta.

I spoke with Tasty Jungle Co-Founder, Megan Roberston, last week to talk about the pasta and using breadfruit as an ingredient. She said one benefit of using breadfruit as the main ingredient in Tasty Jungle’s pasta is its neutral taste and aroma. The pasta will come in an “extended elbow” shape; apparently is has a similar texture to a chickpea or brown rice pasta and a plain flavor that allows any sauce to be paired with it.

This is the first time we’ve seen breadfruit being used for pasta (shoot us a tip if you know of another one), but due to its nutrient content and versatility, breadfruit has the potential to become the next big ingredient in the plant-based space. The fruit can be used like a potato, and similarly has a high starch content. However, breadfruit has a higher protein content than a potato, with 4 grams of protein per half-cup, as well as magnesium, potassium, and B vitamins. Besides being used in pasta, breadfruit can be used as a thickener, flour, in dough, in dips, or even in a veggie burger.

Tasty Jungle’s pasta is not available in retailers yet but is available direct to consumer on the company’s website. For a total of $29.99, consumers can buy a four-pack of pasta and have it shipped directly to their house.

Aleph Farms Debuts Commercial Production Platform for Cultivated Steak, Starts Construction of Its ‘BioFarm’

Today, Aleph Farms announced a platform for the commercial production of its cultivated beef steak. The company says this platform will allow it to eventually produce meat grown from cells of a living cow affordably at scale, putting its cultivated steak at price parity with factory farmed meat.

The new production process is the first part of a phased build-out of what Aleph Farms is calling its BioFarm, a pilot plant the company intends to have fully operational by 2022.

“One of the big challenges of cultivated meat is the ability to produce large quantities efficiently at a cost that can compete with conventional meat industry pricing, without compromising on quality,” said Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms, in today’s press release. “We have developed five technological building blocks unique to Aleph Farms that are put into a large-scale production process, all patented by the company.”

The company has created a prototype of beef steak produced through its new commercial production platform and will debut it via a virtual cooking demonstration at the Agri-Food Innovation Summit on November 20th.

With its new process, Aleph says it is trying to emulate the tissue regeneration process of meat produced through traditional animal farming, only outside of the animal’s body and under controlled conditions. The company also is growing whole meat (rather than minced) by using a plant-based matrix that mimics that extra-cellular matrix founds in animals.

This announcement is another indication of how the cultivated meat market is transitioning into a new phase as companies like Aleph and Matrix Meats lay the groundwork for a more scaled production of cultivated meat produced from animal cells. This development of lower-cost production is a necessary step if lab-grown meat is to ever to become a widely consumed alternative to traditional, animal-farmed meat products.

While some skeptics like Pat Brown say that these companies will never be able to get production to the point where prices will be at parity with traditional meat, others, like Josh Tetrick, say that day will definitely come, even if it takes us a decade or more before we’re buying a piece of cultivated meat at the local fast food joint.

And with today’s news by Aleph, it looks like we may have taken another step forward towards into a more sustainable, alt-protein future.

Future Food: How Might COVID-19 Affect Alternative Protein Sales in the US?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Whether you’re in the office, practicing social distancing, or trying to stock up on oat milk, there’s no way to avoid it — talk of COVID-19 is everywhere. We spoke to a few startups this week who have been impacted by the coronavirus, and while some cited production delays or higher material cost, I was intrigued to see one response from plant-based cheese company Grounded Foods (whose fermented cauliflower cheese I sampled last month). Here’s what Grounded’s co-founder Veronica Fil had to say:

When coronavirus hit… I imagine dairy supply came under more threat than ever (especially coupled with supply shortages arising from Australia’s post-bushfire economy). I think that’s why Grounded suddenly had such a spike in interest. There’s a lot of focus around our products providing a more resilient alternative to dairy, and one that’s not so reliant on international trade forces.

Fil’s response made me wonder — how is the COVID-19 outbreak affecting other alternative protein companies in the US?

Photo: Beyond Meat

First, let me say that since the coronavirus has only been on the world stage for a few months, we don’t yet have any cold, hard data on how it’s affecting sales of animal vs. non-animal foods. Everything that follows is speculation on my part, based off of talks I’ve had with other industry insiders and my friends and family.

One thing we do know is that there’s no evidence that food is a vector of disease spread for the coronavirus. But there is evidence that the disease began in animals and then migrated to humans in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China. So while you’re definitely not going to get coronavirus from eating meat, in an overabundance of caution some consumers might still be wary of consuming animal products — and more amenable to sampling plant-based options.

Plant-based foods often have longer shelf lives than their animal-based counterparts. This might not be as much of a deciding factor for meat, which you can easily freeze, but is more relevant for dairy. As consumers stock up on staples like canned goods and toilet paper, they might be more apt to throw alt-dairy in their cart (like the aforementioned oat milk), assuming they’d stay fresher for longer.

Supply chains are another thing that could well be affected by COVID-19. Import restrictions in China have dramatically slowed down the country’s exports of meat and poultry. Alternative protein companies who import their plant-based ingredients from other countries, especially China, could also face production slowdowns as trade slows.

COVID-19 doesn’t seem to be slowing plant-based meat companies’ focus on the Asian market. Beyond Meat, for example, still plans to open a new facility on the continent by the end of 2020. That update came a few weeks ago on the company’s recent earnings call, so it’s unclear if recent virus escalation has upset those goals.

As I said above, it’s too early to make any sort of sweeping generalization about whether coronavirus is boosting or hurting sales of plant-based foods. But with the pandemic far from contained, we’ll likely soon start to see more data on how the disease is affecting the entire food system in general, including alt-protein.

For now, I turn to you, Future Food readers. Have you (or your company) noticed any shifts over the past few months? Please email us at tips@thespoon.tech to share!

Houston, we have cell-based meat (and fish)

This week I wrote a story about how NASA scientists determined that some red lettuce grown on the International Space Station (ISS) was not only safe to eat, but was just as nutritious as lettuce grown on terra firma.

As someone who always has alternative protein in the back of her mind, I couldn’t help but think back to October when Israeli startup Aleph Farms announced that it had successfully grown animal muscle tissue cells in space, also aboard the ISS. Then I saw a tweet from Mike Selden, the co-founder of cellular aquaculture company Finless Foods, reminding me that their technology was also in use during the aforementioned test.

https://twitter.com/MikeSeldenFF/status/1237830865461239809

Finless Foods collaborated with Aleph Farms and Russian biotech company 3D Bioprinting Solutions, which provided the 3D bioprinter to extrude the animal tissue cells. What I didn’t realize was that during the experiment Finless Foods printed some cells of their own: fish cells.

We’re light years away (figuratively, not literally) from astronauts being able to print enough meat or seafood to sustain themselves on multi-year journeys. But maybe soon, NASA will do a study on the nutrition of 3D printed, cell-based animal or fish tissue, just like they did with the lettuce.

Photo: Beyond Meat

Protein ’round the web

Stay safe out there and remember, #CancelEverything.

Future Food: Impossible Burgers During Lent? Meatless Meat and Religious Dietary Laws

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

The world is full of scary headlines right now (wash those hands!), but flexitarians at least got some good news this week when Impossible Foods announced it would be cutting wholesale prices 15 percent to help the product reach price parity with traditional beef. As I wrote in my piece covering the news, this is a significant step for Impossible as the company sprints towards its goal of replacing all animal agriculture by 2035.

But no matter how close Impossible Foods gets to imitating the flavor, cooking properties and even bloodiness of meat, it’s still not, well, meat. Given that, do the products even carry the same significance as meat?

That question came to mind this week when I read a story in Food & Wine discussing the issue of Catholics eating Impossible — and other meatless meats — during Lent. Lent is traditionally a time when Catholics and other Christians eschew all meat (besides fish and seafood). But do plant-based beef and pork that taste very uncannily like the real thing count as meat?

Impossible’s new plant-based pork [Photo: Impossible Foods]

The Bible doesn’t cover this one. (For its part, the Church has not come out with a statement about whether plant-based meat is appropriate for Lent.) But as plant-based meat improves and starts tasting and behaving just like the real thing, its role within certain diets will become more and more relevant.

Just like some vegetarians and vegans see no reason to eat meatless meats — why would they when they’re perfectly happy with vegetables and legumes? — I expect some who adhere to religious diets won’t be tempted to try Beyond, Impossible and the like.

Others will. While this is just conjecture on my part, I’m sure there’s a contingent of kosher folks, for example, who will be very keen to sample Impossible’s new plant-based pork, which is certified as both halal and kosher by the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA) and Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU), respectively. At least some restaurants are on board — for example, this month the Halal Shack will begin serving the Impossible Burger.

The larger question at play is this: As the offerings from Impossible and Beyond get closer and closer to imitating meat, at some point do they actually become meat — at least in terms of meaning, taboo, and cultural connotations?

It’s a complex quandary to be sure, and one that we won’t solve in this newsletter (sorry!) But as Impossible and others make better-and-better imitations of meat, it’s a topic that will likely become more contentious.

And once cell-based meat — which is actual meat, just made without killing an animal — comes on the scene? That’s when things will get really sticky.

Grounded Foods’ camembert, made of cauliflower and hemp. [Photo: Catherine Lamb]

The next realm of plant-based innovation? Cheese.

Something that’s a little less controversial than the religious significance of plant-based meat? Vegan cheese. An ever-growing number of consumers are seeking it, but, at least according to this writer, no company has yet to truly nail the concept.

But last week when I was in New York for Customize, our food personalization summit, I tried some products that were pretty darn close. Grounded Foods is a new startup that ferments everyday ingredients like cauliflower, oats, and hemp seed to make surprisingly realistic plant-based cheese, including camembert, gruyere, feta, and more.

It’s about damn time! We have made plant-based versions of meat, fish, milk, and ice cream that are good enough to if not fool the average consumer then at least keep them satisfied. But cheese has long eluded even the most innovative of plant-based companies, despite the dozens of SKUs on the shelf.

Are Grounded Foods’ products as good as actual cheese? No. But they do come the closest of the offerings that I’ve seen and tasted thus far. I’m hoping that 2020 will be to cheese what 2018 was to plant-based meat: the year when we start to see a variety of actually good-tasting options hit the market. I’ll get my crackers ready.

Photo: Good Catch Foods

Protein ’round the web

That’s it from me this week. I’m off to go stockpile some oat milk, just in case.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Personalizing the Alt-Protein Revolution

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Right now at The Spoon, we’ve all got personalization on the brain. That’s because we’re in the final sprint towards Customize, our food personalization summit happening in NYC one week from today, on February 27. (Want one of the last remaining tickets? Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off.)

So it’s pretty natural that I’ve been marinating on how personalization could affect the alternative protein space in the future. Here are a few thoughts:

Nutrition
I recently tried out GenoPalate, a service that gives you personalized nutrition recommendations based on your DNA. My end report stated that, for me, a high protein diet would lead to “reduced waist circumference,” AKA weight loss. It also gave me a list of my “ideal” protein types, including eel, chicken liver, and tofu.

I’m a vegetarian, so the first two proteins on that list aren’t especially relevant. But the report nonetheless got me thinking about how these personalized nutrition services could promote alternative protein consumption, especially amongst folks that are trying to avoid meat for health reasons. As these platforms get more sophisticated, they could sync up with your specific diet (pescetarian, vegan, flexitarian, etc.) to recommend plant-based proteins that are the ideal fit for your health goals — high-protein, low fat, low sodium, etc.

Novameat’s 3D printed plant-based steak

3D Printing
In order to accurately replicate the texture of whole muscle cuts of meat (e.g., steak, chicken breast), some companies, like NovaMeat and Redefine Meat, are turning to 3D printing.

The technology is still in the R&D phase, but down the road it could open possibilities for serious plant-based meat customization. Do you like your “steak” thin-cut and tender? You can print it out that way. Maybe a restaurant is trying to create chicken breasts that are shaped a certain way for a high-end dish. Set the printing specifications and go.

Because while you can’t make cows or chickens grow meat in a certain shape or texture — at least not without a couple hundred generations of breeding — 3D printing technology could allow everyone from foodservice establishments to individuals to create their own custom alt-meats.

Cultured
Cultured (or cell-based) meat also has a lot of potential for customization — though none of it will happen for a while yet. Cultured meat is not even available on the market, but for the sake of argument let’s project into the future:

Say a restaurant is looking for an especially tender cut of beef that is also low in cholesterol. Or they want a super-fatty piece of beef for an especially indulgent dish. That might be tricky to do with meat from a cow, which has biological constraints and also takes much longer to create. However, with cell-based meat, a scientist could theoretically tweak a formula to make exactly what’s needed with a much quicker turnaround than actually raising an animal. This opens up some real possibilities for customized protein.

Okay, so the idea of hyper-personalized protein is pretty futuristic. But there’s plenty of time to develop it. After all, we’re currently in the midst of the plant-based revolution — and just at the forefront of the cell-based one. Once these technologies become more mainstream (and affordable), the possibilities for customized protein could become a lot less out-there and a lot more feasible.

Photo: Impossible Foods

An argument for plant-based burgers

This week nutrition scientist Dr. PK Newby wrote a guest post for The Spoon outlining all the reasons why meatless burgers are not only beneficial for the planet but also a strategic business play for restaurants.

It’s a pretty inspirational post. But to me, Dr. Newby’s most intriguing point was the sheer heat that plant-based burgers are attracting because of their newfound popularity. We’ve already seen widespread criticism in the form of negative SuperBowl ads, online smear campaigns, and even lawsuits against vegan meat and dairy alternatives.

“Novel food technologies will always have haters,” writes Dr. Newby in her article. As the popularity of plant-based meat grows, those haters will likely become more vocal. But what shape will their protests take, and how much will they threaten the growth of meat alternatives?

Keep an eye on this newsletter to find out.

Photo: White Castle

Protein ’round the web

  • White Castle will start offering vegan cheese on March 1st to complement its Impossible Slider (h/t VegNews).
  • Is insect fat a viable butter replacement? Food & Wine says… maybe.
  • Israeli startup Equinom raised $10 million to develop higher-protein seeds, like pea and sesame.

I’ll miss you all next Thursday since I’ll be busy moderating panels and networking at Customize. I’d love to see you there — get your tickets now and come hang in NYC!

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Is the Honeymoon Over for Fast Food and Meatless Meat?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Valentine’s Day is coming up, and love is in the air — but it looks like the once hot-and-heavy relationship between plant-based meat and fast-food is experiencing some bumps.

This week Burger King reported overall sales growth of 0.6 percent for Q4 of 2019, which fell short of Wall Street estimates. That’s a marked dip from just a few months ago, when BK’s sales increased roughly 15 percent globally, in large part due to the success of the recently-launched Impossible Whopper.

It was with a much more muted tone that Jose Cil, CEO of Burger King’s parent company Restaurant Brands International, mentioned the plant-based burger on the company’s most recent earnings call (h/t CNBC):

… the Impossible Whopper was a big highlight of 2019 and continued to be an important sales driver in the fourth quarter, generating healthy levels of incrementality at a premium price point.

The dip in excitement could be attributed to a confluence of several factors. First and foremost, the novelty of plant-based meat is starting to wear off across the QSR space. When Burger King first decided to start selling the Impossible Whopper, the news made headlines everywhere (including here). That media blitz likely attracted lapsed vegetarian/vegan consumers as well as consumers who were curious to try this whole fake-meat-that-bleeds concept. In all likelihood, at least some of those diners tried the Impossible Whopper then decided that it wasn’t worth reordering, or that they preferred their regular beefy order.

Another issue is over-saturation. Burger King was one of the first (and the largest) fast-food chains to embrace meat alternatives on its menu. Now it’s becoming the norm for QSR’s, from Dunkin’ to KFC, to serve vegetarian meat — with the noted exceptions of McDonalds (in the U.S.) and Arby’s.

We also can’t discount price as a factor in this decline. Depending on the location, Impossible Whoppers cost one to two dollars more than a regular Whopper. Overall that’s not much, but it’s a heckuva lot more significant in a fast food context where an extra buck can get you anything from fries to a large soda. Maybe the price difference didn’t scare off people who wanted to try the next buzzed-about burger, but was too much for them to justify paying on the regular.

Burger King is clearly aware that the Impossible Whopper’s cost is a problem. That’s why they recently added the plant-based offering to its 2 for $6 menu, but it may be too late for those who have already categorized the Impossible Whopper as an expensive option.

Photo: Burger King.

In a Future Food newsletter last year, just as QSRs were starting to debut meat alternatives left and right, I asked a question: Is fast food’s love affair with plant-based meat going to last?

To continue with the romance analogy, I don’t think the two are ready to split up. Instead, they’re settling into coupledom — things are less hot-and-heavy but more consistent.

So it might be time for fast food and plant-based meat to spice up their relationship and experiment by introducing new products (fried chicken! bacon!) or trying cost-saving promotions (like Burger King is doing now).

The honeymoon period might be over, but the foundation is still there. Time for phase two of the relationship.

Should we be discussing plant-based dog food?
Meatless meat may be cooling its love affair with fast-food, but it’s heating up in a very different space: pet food. According to market intelligence agency Mintel, roughly one third of all U.K. dog food buyers want to purchase more plant-based food for their pets.

I’ve considered covering meat-free pet food in this newsletter before, but something always stopped me. We at the Spoon cover human food tech news, right?

But then I read a crazy statistic, that in the U.S., dogs and cats are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of total meat consumption. If they were their own country, they would rank fifth in the world. That’s huge! And as the population grows and pet ownership increases in developing countries, the total meat consumed by dogs and cats will only go up. It might make sense to start thinking seriously about the future of pet food, after all.

What do you think? Would you be interested in coverage on pet food — new ingredients (cell-based meat!), distribution methods, etc? Tweet your thoughts to @TheSpoonTech and let me know!

Alpha Foods

Protein ’round the web

  • Alpha Foods raised $28 million for its frozen plant-based proteins and premade meals.
  • FUMI Ingredients, an ingredient developer which has made plant-based egg whites, snagged a €500,000 ($552,000) investment (h/t AgfunderNews).
  • Meatless Farm has partnered with meal kit company Gousto to create kits featuring its beef alternatives.

Future Food: So… Lab-grown Breastmilk is a Thing Now

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

Here is a sentence I never thought that I would type: It looks like lab-grown breastmilk might be a thing.

I first heard of this technology back in December when I interviewed the team behind TurtleTree Labs, a Singaporean startup that uses lactating mammary gland cells to produce milk. They can use the cells of any animal, but the company is starting with human breastmilk because a) it has a higher price point and thus can enter the market more quickly, and b) nobody else is doing it.

Then yesterday I spoke with BIOMILQ, a U.S.-based startup doing basically the same thing. However, while TurtleTree will eventually use its tech to develop a suite of milks, BIOMILQ is focused exclusively on developing human breastmilk.

It’s strange how quickly you get used to an idea. Back when I first heard about TurtleTree, I wrote a Future Food newsletter asking whether or not the world is ready to accept the idea of human breastmilk grown in a lab. (Conclusion: Maybe not yet, but soon.) Now that more companies are entering the space, I’m no longer questioning if people will accept this new technology, but when we’ll be able to put it to the test.

That’s why it’s so exciting to cover this space. Eating a “bleeding” plant-based burger sounds offputting, then Impossible Foods gets on the menu at Burger King. The idea of growing milk from genetically modified microbes starts out sounding far-fetched, then a few months later you’re eating ice cream made by Perfect Day.

Growing breastmilk in a lab might have a slightly longer adjustment period, but given the increasing interest in other cultured foods like meat and dairy, I really think it will become normalized. Provided these companies can actually scale and reach their pricing goals (admittedly, a big “if”), the technology could also have a massive potential in lower-income parts of the world without access to consistent infant nutrition.

Kind of makes you wonder what will become a “thing” next, huh?

Photo: Impossible Foods

Impossible Food claps back against Big Beef ad
If you’re one of those people who only watch the Super Bowl for the ads (guilty), you might have seen a very pointed spot attacking alternative meat. The next day Impossible Foods released a parody of that ad on YouTube.

You can see the full commercials here, but I’ll summarize and say that both featured spelling bees with cute kids having to spell words that are unappetizing ingredients — one found in meat alternatives, the other in beef. P’s and Q’s aside, it’s interesting (though not altogether surprising) these types of attack ads are happening at all. We’re used to seeing them around politicians, but meat? Not so much.

Clearly Big Beef and its friends are nervous about the growth of meat alternatives and are trying to throw money at the problem. Meat lobbying groups are already fighting plant-based meat in the courtroom over labeling restrictions, with Tofurky stepping up as leader of the resistance. It seems like Impossible is ready to do the same in the advertising field.

But fighting groups with funds hefty enough to pay for an ad during the Super Bowl ad will be a tough battle — alternative meat companies better come prepared for the fight.

Protein ’round the web

  • Canadian startup Noblegen has unveiled its first product: a plant-based “egg” that can work in scrambles as well as in baking (h/t FoodNavigator).
  • Purple Carrot, the plant-based meal kit company, is now including products from meatless meat brands Lightlife and Field Roast in its pre-prepped kits.
  • Ripple is launching a line of ice creams made with its signature pea protein-derived Ripptein (via Vegnews).
  • Israeli cultured meat company Aleph Farms is launching an educational center to educate consumers on cell-based meat.

Not sure what to get your S.O. for Valentine’s? How about some plant-based bacon? Prime Roots will be doing a one-day presale of its fungi-based “bacon” on February 14 — you can pick some up here while supplies last.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: A Rollercoaster Week for Beyond Meat

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Subscribe to get the most important news about alternate and plant-based foods directly in your inbox!

You win some, you lose some. That’s how you could sum up news this week for Beyond Meat.

The plant-based protein company announced yesterday that it would begin selling meatless fried “chicken” at more than 70 KFC locations in Charlotte, NC and Nashville, TN. This news comes roughly five months after the viral success of KFC’s one-day test of Beyond Fried Chicken at a store in Atlanta, GA.

It’s not surprising that KFC is rolling out Beyond Meat chicken at more locations. The Atlanta test drew huge crowds, attracted tons of media attention, and sold out in under five hours. Clearly there’s a demand for plant-based poultry in fast-food.

What surprised me more is how long it took KFC to begin expanding the Beyond Fried Chicken. The test was so popular, I thought that KFC/Beyond would move quickly to roll out the product, much like Burger King did after the success of the Impossible Whopper.

But then I read that the new locations will be selling Version 2.0 of the “chicken,” which is meant to look, taste, and — most importantly — pull apart like chicken breast. While the Atlanta test drew huge crowds, reviews of the actual product were pretty lackluster. Since this fried chicken is a new product for Beyond, it makes sense that they would take a step back and do some additional R&D before rolling out on a bigger scale. Especially since once the novelty wears off, they have to rely on taste alone to keep attracting buyers.

Overall I think the Beyond Fried Chicken could be a huge win for both sides of the relationship. I haven’t tried the new-and-improved plant-based chicken yet, but it’s already garnered some positive reviews. If the new rollout can continue to draw in consumers — even at a fraction of the Atlanta test — things are looking pretty golden for the Beyond Fried Chicken.

Beyond Meat at Tim Horton’s [Photo: Tim Horton’s]

But that “if” is far from guaranteed, as is shown by some not-so-favorable news this week also concerning Beyond Meat. The day before the KFC announcement Canadian QSR chain Tim Horton’s stated that it had removed Beyond Meat’s products from all of its locations. Back in September the chain cut Beyond’s burgers from menus except in two provinces. Now they’re gone completely.

Tim Horton’s hasn’t completely closed the door on meatless meat, though. “We may offer plant-based alternatives again in the future, but we have removed it from the menu for now,” a spokesperson told Reuters. Maybe they’ll try again with a local alternative meat supplier, like Lightlife, which is owned by Canadian company Maple Leaf Foods (ironically the brand that KFC Canada used during its one-day test of plant-based chicken back in November!).

The Tim Horton’s rise and fall goes to show that just because Beyond Meat (or any plant-based meat) makes its way onto a fast-food menu, doesn’t mean it’s going to stay there. There are still a lot of pitfalls for meatless meat in QSR’s: production capacity, consumer acceptance, and pricing, for starters. When it comes to fast-food, Beyond Meat — and alternative protein as a whole — still has a lot of work to do. Developing improved product iterations is a good start.

Spices derived from crickets. Photo: Orchestra Provisions

So… are we ready to eat bugs?
In last week’s Future Food I asked the question: Should we give up on trying to make people eat bugs? Since that’s such a buzzy question (pun intended), we dove further into that topic on this week’s episode of the Food Tech Show.

You can listen to the full thing here, but overall I was surprised by how split the Spoon team was on the idea of eating creepy-crawlies. When it comes to tasting newfangled foods we’re a pretty open-minded bunch. So if you can’t even convince folks like us to give crickets a chance, how are you going to convince the average consumer who doesn’t spend all of their free time exploring what’s next in food?

We didn’t solve the whole “should we keep trying to make people eat bugs?” question in the thirty-minute podcast. But we did conclude that if insects had a prayer of entering the Western diet in a serious way, it would have to be as a ground-up powder; selling people on the idea of eating things with wings and antennae is just too buggy.

Photo: Trader Joe’s

Protein ’round the web

  • Trader Joe’s now has its own meatless meat burger! GroceryDive reports that “Protein Patties” are made from pea protein and beets and a 2-pack costs $4.49.
  • Starbucks will release a breakfast sandwich featuring a plant-based patty sometime this year. Which brand will it be? That’s TBD.
  • Denny’s is adding Beyond Meat burgers to menus of all of its 1,700 locations nationwide (h/t VegNews).
  • Four in ten Americans have at least tried plant-based meat, according to a Gallup poll.
Photo: Strong Roots’ “bacon” patch

Finally, who else wants to try this bacon scratch-n-sniff patch, which is supposed to curb carnivorous cravings?

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Cultured Meat is Gaining Major $$$, and Should We Give Up on Insects?

This is the web version of our weekly Future Food newsletter. Be sure to subscribe here so you don’t miss a beat!

Memphis Meats, the Berkeley-based cellular agriculture company that famously grew the world’s first cell-based meatball in 2016, announced this week that it had raised an eye-popping $160 million dollar Series B round. That’s more than had been raised by the entire cellular agriculture and aquaculture space up to now. It also brings Memphis Meats’ total funding to over $180 million.

In some ways, this massive infusion of cash makes sense. Over the past few years cell-based meat and seafood has gone from futuristic vision to actually feasible reality. Cultured meat and seafood companies have demonstrated their potential though recent culinary demos and a spate of partnerships with large ingredient companies. Some have even released plans for giant production facilities that can churn out millions of pounds of cell-based meat per year.

But the key word here is plans. It’s notable that a company which has yet to bring a product to market — and could potentially never do so affordably or on a large scale — has raised such an eye-popping amount of cash. Even though it’s been given a vote of confidence by big-name investors like Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Tyson Foods.

We’re living in a time when investors are throwing cash at any startup that claims to be “disruptive,” with decidedly mixed results. Interestingly, Softbank, which recently went through its WeWork ordeal, led the Series B funding round for Memphis Meats. So is cell-based meat at risk of the same boom-and-bust cycle we’ve seen with other high-tech startups?

Memphis Meats’ cultured meatball

Frustratingly, without a product to market, it’s too early to say. I, however, am optimistic about the future of cultured meat and seafood. Studies indicate that one-third of U.S. consumers are open to trying cultured meat. That’s nowhere near the viral popularity of plant-based protein, but as cell-based meat becomes more commonplace — and proves that the product can be as tasty as the real thing — those numbers could rise.

One safe bet is that we can prepare to see a lot more funding funneling into cell-based meat and seafood. Now the pressure is on for those companies to put it to good use by actually getting a tasty product to market.

Should we stop bugging people to eat bugs?
Cultured meat may still be years away from our plate, but insects are ready to hop right on as our new source of alternative protein.

The question is, Will we (meaning Western consumers) ever get over our aversion to bugs and embrace the idea of eating them? The Spoon’s Head Editor Chris Albrecht pointed out a tweet from Mike Bird of the Wall Street Journal that basically said we should give up on insects. People just flat-out don’t want to eat them. I kinda agree.

https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1220360879021015041?s=20

I’ve bought cricket chips and tried roasted grasshopper occasionally in the past, but am I ready to make bugs an everyday dietary staple? No way.

I feel pretty guilty about that. We’ve all heard the preaching about how eating bugs is good for the environment, a healthy choice, and can be downright tasty. They’re available everywhere from high-class restaurants to protein bars. They’re even sold at baseball stadiums, for goodness’ sake!

But no matter how much we know we should learn to love insects, I’m skeptical it will ever happen. At least as long as we can see the insects that we’re eating. Maybe the solution is to double down on insect-infused spices and protein powder, which lets you forget you’re eating things with wings and antennae.

Or maybe, like Bird points out, it’s just time to give up. Let’s leave the bugs outside and focus on making protein from plants and animal cells, instead.

Photo: JUST’s new plant-based omelet

Protein Around the Web

  • TurtleTree Labs, a Sinagpore-based company growing lactating mammary gland cells in a lab (which produce milk!), secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding.
  • Sweet Earth Foods (owned by Nestlé) will begin selling its plant-based meats at so-called ‘Vegetarian Butcher’ deli counters at select supermarkets (h/t VegNews).
  • JUST is releasing a pre-made frozen vegan omelet made from mung beans, which will be sold in grocery stores and foodservice.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Forget Beef — Meat Alternatives are Setting Sights on Breakfast

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The Most Important Meal of the Day

In the pilot episode of Arrested Development, the excellent comedy series about a wealthy family’s shenanigans (skip Seasons 4 and 5, though), there’s an iconic scene. Michael Bluth, the family anchor, asks his teenage son George Michael: “What have we always said is the most important thing?”

Michael says “family” as his son responds “breakfast.” “Family, right,” says George Michael. “I thought you meant of the things you eat.” Well, it seems that breakfast might indeed be the most important thing to plant-based foods companies. Or at least it’s on track to be.

This week Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s announced that they would both start selling a breakfast burrito and breakfast biscuit made with Beyond sausage, beginning this month. The news comes just over a month after Dunkin’ accelerated the nationwide rollout of its Beyond Sausage Sandwich due to favorable sales. All of this means that by 2020, Beyond breakfast offerings will be available at over 11,000 QSR locations.

Photo: JUST.

The plant-based breakfast trend doesn’t stop at meat. JUST announced this week that Whole Foods Market will begin offering a JUST Egg scramble at the hot bar of 63 stores starting in January. It will also sell three new breakfast sandwiches, all of which feature a JUST Egg patty and are completely vegan. Whole Foods is also developing a vegan breakfast pizza featuring the mung bean-based “egg.’

In an email to The Spoon, JUST’s Global Head of Communications Andrew Noyes noted “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… breakfast is the next plant-based boom.”

The timing is pretty ideal. As The Spoon’s Head Editor Chris Albrecht pointed out, the rise in plant-based breakfast patties is coming at a time when the USDA is reducing the number of inspectors at pork plants. Simultaneously, the African Swine Flu is decimating pig populations in China, the world’s largest exporter of pork, which could lead to an increase in pork prices during 2020.

Aside from the seemingly isolated case of Tim Horton’s, which stopped selling all Beyond products (including breakfast sandwiches) back in September, that seems to be the case. JUST Egg is popping up on more fast-casual and QSR menus, and just made a factory acquisition to ramp up manufacturing. In the retail space, plant-based yogurts are popping up one after another, even from big players like Yoplait and Chobani.

One thing’s for sure: there won’t be any arrested development in the plant-based breakfast train.

TacoBell x Omnipork

The Taco Bell Test

Speaking of fast food, this week Taco Bell in China began serving a Crunchy Taco filled with plant-based OmniPork. This marks the first time that Omnipork will be available on a fast-food menu, and the first time that a Chinese QSR will serve meatless meat.

For now the Tex Mex chain will only sell 6,000 of the meat-free tacos. Yum China, Taco Bell China’s’s parent brand, didn’t note if the company was planning to put the OmniPork Crunchy Taco OmniPork on the menu.

This limited-edition pilot could give key insight into whether or not the Chinese market is interested in meatless meat. Sure, Beyond and Impossible has captivated Western consumers and made its way onto many QSR menus. But will China offer as hungry a market?

Alternative meat companies certainly hope so. In addition to OmniPork, which was the first plant-based meat to be sold in mainland China, Impossible and Beyond have also been vocal that they want to break into the Chinese market.

They’ll have to hope the OmniPork Crunchy Tacos are a runaway hit.

Beyond Fried Chicken at KFC

Beyond Meat Heads into Poultry

“You’ll see some exciting things from us in the poultry space in 2020.” That’s what Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown said in an interview with Bloomberg TV this Monday.

While Brown said he couldn’t name any specific partners or developments, there’s a least one we can make a pretty safe bet on: KFC. This August KFC did a one-day trial of Beyond Fried Chicken at a single location in Atlanta. They sold out in only five hours.

This success means that KFC would have to be bird-brained not to roll out Beyond Fried Chicken to more stores in 2020. With other plant-based poultry players quickly entering the U.S market — from Big Food to small startups — Beyond would be smart to start leveraging its brand recognition and lock up partnerships fast, before they get swooped up by someone else.

BlueNalu’s cell-based yellowtaill

Protein ’round the web

  • Burger King is giving out free Impossible Whoppers to travelers with delayed flights (h/t FastCompany).
  • Dutch company Protifarm has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding to scale its “tofu” made of high-protein beetles (via Agfunder).
  • Kroger is testing dedicated plant-based meat sections within its meat department in 60 stores, according to FoodNavigator.
  • Cellular aquaculture startup BlueNalu did a culinary demo of its cell-based yellowtail, which can cooked or served raw.

Happy holidays! I’ll be taking next week off to spend time with family and perhaps do another White Castle Impossible slider eating competition.

Eat well,
Catherine

Future Food: Are We Okay with Breast Milk Grown in a Lab?

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“Wait, human milk?”

I thought I’d misheard the two of the co-founders of TurtleTree Labs, a Singaporean company that creates milk from lactating mammary gland cells, as they described their product line.

But I had not. “Yep, any kind of milk,” said their CTO Max Rye. That encompasses everything from the usual suspects like cow to more niche products like sheep, goat, or even human breast milk.

In fact, TurtleTree’s first product — which they’ll be taste testing in early 2020 — will be milk made from human mammary gland cells. They chose breast milk because it will allow them to enter the market at a higher price. Right now a liter of any of their cell-based milk (any kind) costs just under $200. That’s incredibly steep compared to plant-based dairy, but on par with Prolacta, a service that pasteurizes and resells human milk to feed newborn babies in hospitals.

As a company, TurtleTree is remarkable for a few reasons. Firstly, as far as I know, it’s the first company to make cell-based milk. Perfect Day and New Culture are using a type of fermentation to create milk proteins, while plenty of others rely on plants to imitate dairy’s creaminess. TurtleTree, however, is using cellular agriculture to grow the milk directly, cutting out the middleman.

Two — they are making human milk. It’s a polarizing concept; everyone I’ve spoken to about it so far was pretty grossed out by the idea. Consumers are getting used to the idea of eating meat grown in a lab, but they might not be as open to a lab-grown alternative of something that’s typically made by humans. Especially something meant to be fed to babies.

It’s early days in the cellular agriculture field. And though I haven’t experienced it myself, I know that nursing children can be a frustrating, painful and difficult process for many women. As the idea of consuming cell-based foods becomes more accepted, I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea of cell-based baby milk becomes less polarizing, too.

If a startup tells me it’s working on human meat though? That one might be a bridge too far.

A plant-based burger from Upton’s Naturals

Put a label on it
This week the Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA) released the first standard for the labeling of plant-based meats. Basically, its goal is to create a consistent labeling protocol across the entire alternative meat industry. The standard says that alternative meat companies can use meat terms in on their labels — sausage, chicken, etc. — as long as they include appropriate qualifiers, like “vegan” or “plant-based.”

The PBFA’s new standard is clearly in response to recent legal battles meant to make it impossible for companies to use terms like “burger” or even “meat” when labeling their product, even if they make it clear that it does not, in fact, include meat.

So far, over a dozen states have passed meat labeling restriction laws. But the PBFA and others are fighting back. Just a few months ago PBFA member company Upton’s Naturals won a victory against the state of Mississippi, which was trying to regulate plant-based meat labeling language.

Clearly, the PBFA is hoping that by setting out a universal standard for alternative meat labeling will help the entire industry as they fight for their right to use basic language like “burger” and “sausage.” We’ll see if that will be enough to deter Big Meat.

Photo: Perfect Day

Big funding for animal-free meat & milk
Two startups creating animal-free products announced some major new funding this week.

First, Meatable, a Dutch cultured meat company, let fly that it had raised $10 million. A few days later Perfect Day, a startup developing animal-free dairy using genetically engineered microbes, announced a whopping $140 million Series C.

Obviously the Perfect Day funding is far more significant, at least in terms of numbers. But it also makes sense: Perfect Day has already brought its first product — flora-based ice cream — to market. Meatable has yet to publicly share a prototype.

When I spoke with Perfect Day co-founders Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya about their Series C, they told me that this is just the start of a series of upcoming announcements. “We’ve got lots coming up,” Pandya said. “Q1 [of 2020] is going to have to have really juicy stuff.”

I can’t wait to find out just what that “juicy stuff” could entail (flora-based cheese, please?). In fact, I expect to see a lot more meaty (lol) funding announcements coming into the alternative protein space over the next few months, especially in emerging fields like flora- and cell-based foods. 2020 is going to be an interesting one.

Photo: Siggi’s new plant-based yogurt.

Protein ’round the web

  • Icelandic yogurt company Siggi’s launched a new plant-based line with high protein and low sugar.
  • Nutriati, a company that makes plant protein ingredients, announced that it had raised a $12.7 million Series C.
  • Beyond Beef is hitting shelves in Canada (via VegNews).
  • Apparently McDonald’s could be selling more than 250 million of its plant-based PLT’s if it expanded them into its U.S. stores (h/t RestaurantDive)
  • Motif FoodWorks is partnering with the University of Queensland to research ways to make better textures in meat alternatives.

Eat well,
Catherine

From Edible Spoons to Adaptogen Chewing Gum, Here are 8 Startups Shaping the Future of Food

Super nutritious noodles. Cricket-based seasoning powders. Edible spoons to replace single-use plastics. Chewing gum that’s actually good for you.

These are just some of the awesome companies that pitched at the inaugural SKS 2019 Future Food Competition last month. Check out the video below to see the 8 finalists describe their company and explain why they’re the next “it” edible CPG company.

Once you’ve determined which startup you think should be the winner, click here to see if our judges agreed with you. And keep an eye on The Spoon to follow along as these companies grow, head to market and continue their efforts to shake up the way we eat.

SKS 2019: Future Food pitches