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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Supergut’s Marc Washington Believes the Way to Better Health Is Through Our Stomachs

The Spoon recently sat down with Supergut CEO Marc Washington to hear about his company’s mission and the inspiration that drives him.

To call Supergut Marc Washington’s passion project is a gross understatement. The former Princeton University football player and Harvard MBA built on his background in the health and fitness industry to create a company whose sole aim is to improve our health through our stomachs. It was more than a noble mission that inspired Washington to start this now two-year-old company; his work is inspired by loss.

“Her name was Monica,” Washington told The Spoon. “She had an unbelievable personality. You know, she was the party and an amazing mom, I’d say, you know, hilarious, even inappropriately. But she was like the life of the party. And she was my little sister. And the biggest challenge throughout her adult life was health.” As Marc Washington said, battling several chronic conditions, Monica died during childbirth, a tragic event that shook him to the core.

And so, the idea for Supergut (formerly Muniq) was born. And the term “resistant starches” (starches such as green bananas that feed your good gut bacteria by fermenting in your large intestine) became a mantra for Washington. Available through its website, Supergut is a proprietary blend that contains unripened green bananas, resistant potato starch, oat beta-glucan, and soluble vegetable fiber. Currently, it comes in the form of a shake (four flavors), bar, and fiber mix.

How did Monica’s death lead you to start your company?

It lit a fire that just never has never been extinguished. It’s like this didn’t have to happen. There had to have been better ways to get better control of her health, which could have let her down a different pathway. And this kind of built up over time. And there’s a point where if you want to make a difference, it’s like ‘If not you, then who?  If not now, then when?’

Looking at the masses, it’s not as though we’re getting healthier. And despite all the advances in science and technology and food, there’s got to be a better way to move the needle and bend the curve of health outcomes and actually potentially impact public health, and things like that could have changed Monica’s trajectory. And so, yeah, that was my inspiration to throw my hat in the ring, and I started this company a couple of years ago. 

How did you get from the desire to improve our health to an actual product?

I like to describe it as the moments in the Matrix where Neo has decisions to make. I think it was an awakening to see just how pervasive the impact of the gut is on our overall health and that it was actually a pathway to activate this vision that I had. You could reorient your body more healthily, and the gut could be that pathway. So I credit some scientific and medical experts, along with my original investors, for helping me with the approach taken with resistant starch.

How do you use resistant starch to formulate Supergut?

We do have our proprietary blend that is resistant starch and other prebiotic fibers as well as other plants. And a lot of that was based on clinical evidence, like literally looking through close to 200 different studies to show what kind of impact that you can have and what form factors, what dosage levels, what concentration levels, what other things you to combine with it, etc. to get to what we felt like was the most productive.

The first thing was, let’s put it into a shake, which was our first product. We had a prototype within a few months, but it tasted like shit. So, for the next year, modulating the taste work with our suppliers or flavor experts, etc., to get to a shake that would work and that you could enjoy. So we did lots of iterations to get a shake that we’re incredibly proud of and our customers love the taste of. And we now find that in bars and other products.

What was behind the name change from Muniq to Supergut?

Muniq is a combination of Monica and Unique. We looked at many names, but one of the benefits of Supergut is that it just reads as if people get it right away. Since we’ve introduced it, I talk to people like, what do you do? I founded this product that creates nutrition for a super gut. With today’s attention span and the shorter and shorter range, you’ve got like 3 seconds to get across. So (the name) Supergut is helping us open doors and open conversations because it says we are all about gut health.  

Your website proudly states that Supergut is a Black-Owned business? Is there a message there?

My aspiration for what we aspire to do is to impact public health significantly. We want to move the needle; if we do that, we can play an important role in closing health disparities disproportionately affecting black and brown communities. When you look at all the factors that make up our public health crisis, 70% of people are overweight or obese. You know, 50% have some form of diabetes or pre-diabetes. 50% some form of cardiovascular health risk. Keep in mind the, African American, Brown, and Latino communities have a 50% higher incidence of almost every single one. This health disparity gap has been something that has led me to create a solution from the very outset. My goal is to help close that gap.

It’s Personal: Nourished 3D Prints Vitamins Tailored Exactly to Your Needs

If you’re like me, when shopping for vitamins you might pick up whatever’s on sale. After all, vitamins are mostly one-size-fits-all, right?

British startup Nourished would very much disagree. The Birmingham, U.K.-based company is trying to shake up the supplement space by using 3D printing technology to create personalized vitamins made specifically for you.

First you answer a short questionnaire on the Nourished website describing your lifestyle, health issues and nutrition goals. Nourished’s algorithm then builds you a unique “stack” out of their 28 “nourishments.” (You can also build your own stack if you already know what ingredients you want.) The company then 3D prints bespoke, layered vitamins just for you out of vegan gel — which end up looking like rainbow gummy candy — and deliver to your door every month.

Why 3D print the vitamins? According to Nourished’s Head of Brand, Caitlin Stanley, manufacturing supplements via 3D printing opens up a whole new world of personalization possibilities. Typically, active ingredients that show up in vitamins — like ashwagandha and Vitamin A — interfere with each other when combined into the same capsule. However, by printing these ingredients on top of each other, Nourished can fuse them into the same bite-sized supplement.

Each Nourished box comes with 28 stacks meant to be taken once a day. The vitamins are individually packaged “to maintain efficacy,” according to Stanley, who added that the packaging is compostable.

Photo: Nourished

If there’s one thing that might put people off of Nourished, it’s the price. The service costs £39.99 (~ $51.00) a month, which is significantly more than your average vitamin bottle off the pharmacy shelf. However, the cost is on par with other personalized D2C vitamin services, like Care/Of.

When I asked about competitors, Stanley was adamant that Nourished is the only company out there right now creating a truly personalized supplement. Care/Of basically just aggregates a variety of pills into a single pouch, while Nourished actually combines all of the ingredients into a bespoke bite-size supplement made specifically for the individual.

Nourished just launched a little over six weeks ago, so it’s in the very early stages. Right now it’s only shipping in the U.K. However, Stanley told me that the company plans to head to the U.S. in 2020. The company has raised a seed round for an undisclosed amount and currently has a team of twenty-five.

Personalization is a hot trend in the food space right now. Consumers want all aspects of their diet tailored to their exact preferences, from recipes to drive-thru orders to the foam topping your craft cocktail. But when it comes to health and nutrition, customization should be “first and foremost,” said Stanley. We’ll see if Nourished’s 3D printing strategy can help them be first and foremost in the personalized vitamin space, too.

If you’re interested in what’s coming next in personalized nutrition, you’ve got to be at Customize. The one-day event in New York City will explore the world of food personalization throughout the meal journey. Grab your Early Bird ticket before they’re all sold out!

Nutrient App Lets You Create a Personalized Meal Plan and Order Groceries

Oftentimes, meal planning services only provide one piece of the strategic cooking puzzle. They’ll help you decide what recipes to make for the week, but you’re often left on your own figuring out what you already have in your pantry and fridge and doing the actual shopping for ingredients part.

Startup Nutrient is trying to make meal planning a more streamlined process — one that’s also tailored to your specific dietary goals. Users go to the Nutrient website or download the app. They’re prompted to fill in a short questionnaire to determine what sort of calorie intake and nutrients best suit their lifestyle and goals. The app also takes into account any dining restrictions (meat-free, etc.). Nutrient then generates a meal plan of healthy recipes, all of which are developed internally.

From there, users can either download a shopping list or buy them through online grocery service FreshDirect, which they can do without leaving the Nutrient ecosystem. The Pantry page also lets users input what’s in their pantry and fridge, so the app can omit ingredients you already have from shopping lists or suggest recipes featuring ingredients it knows you have on hand.

Founded in Prague, the startup recently moved to New York City to attend the Food-X Accelerator. In the U.S. Nutrient is piloting its technology with a small group of friends and family. When I spoke with Nutrient’s CEO Roman Kalista over the phone earlier this week, he told me it plans to launch in November in the New York City area where it will integrate with FreshDirect for grocery fulfillment and delivery. The company plans to continue operations in their native Czech Republic, where they still have around 1,500 users.

Nutrient isn’t the only meal planning service to integrate with online grocery fulfillment. In the U.K. Mucho works with grocery delivery service Ocado, and eMeals has partnered with Walmart, Kroger, Instacart and more for grocery fulfillment.

However, according to Kalista, their service is the only meal planning app that allows users to go through the entire process within the app ecosystem: finding recipes, grocery shopping, checking out, etc. He also said that many other services end up being super expensive because they do a poor job translating recipes into ingredient lists. Nutrient, however, promises to be so efficient with its shopping recipes that users can pay as little as $1.75 per serving for their groceries. The platform also breaks down price per serving so you can see how much your meals are costing.

For now, Nutrient makes money by adding a small markup to all of its groceries. As they grow across the country and add more grocery partners, Kalista told me they hope to switch the cost over to the retailer side.

It’s too early to tell if Nutrient can follow through on its promise to streamline the meal planning process. But the startup does hit on a few big trends we see a lot of at The Spoon: personalization, shoppable recipes, convenience, and food as medicine (which Kalista said they’ll incorporate more of in future iterations). Perhaps most importantly, Nutrient doesn’t lock users in. Unlike meal kits or certain recipe planning services, users can use the app for as often — or rarely — as they’d like.

After they finish the Food-X program, we’ll see if Nutrient can indeed deliver on its promise to be the all-in-one solution to meal planning.

Impossible Foods Practices Right Jab, Warming Up for More Attacks against Plant-Based Meat

Early last week Rachel Konrad, the Chief Communications Officer for Impossible Foods, published a fiery rebuttal against Mom’s Across America (MAA)‘s recent article that stated Impossible Burger tests 11 times higher for Glyphosate weed killer than Beyond Meat burgers. Impossible’s clap-back was impassioned, to say the least; Konrad used the words “charlatans” and “quackery,” among others.

MAA is a vocal opponent to GMOs and is against Impossible’s use of genetic engineering to make heme, the ingredient that gives the plant-based burgers their bloody taste and hue. Claims about weed killer are questionable at best, and the whole post (and Konrad’s response) is arguably something of a footnote in the grand scheme of plant-based meat. However, both highlight an important point: Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and other alt-protein companies will have to prepare themselves for a lot more of these sort of attacks in the coming months and years.

Both companies have enjoyed relatively little pushback up until this point. They’ve been getting glowing publicity, locking down buzzy new fast food partnerships, and Beyond blew past already high expectations with their wildly successful IPO.

However, as these companies become more successful, they compete with bigger and bigger players. In the future, Impossible and Beyond will have to look out for attacks from organizations with a lot more reach and funding than MAA.

Big Beef, for one, has made it quite clear they don’t approve of companies branding plant-based products as “meat.” Organizations like the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association or the National Chicken Council have even tried to ban vegetarian burgers, sausages and the like from using the word “meat” on their labels.

In some ways, Big Meat’s reaction is unsurprising. Plant-based options for dairy and meat are projected to take over 10 percent of the $1.4 trillion global meat industry over the next decade. That’s a lot of pressure for Big Meat to live up to, and not all of those companies are going to pull a Tyson or a Cargill and invest in their own disruption.

It’s not hard to guess traditional meat companies’ lines of attack. They’ll likely frame plant-based meat as “unnatural,” “unhealthy,” and full of suspect ingredients. In short: fake news — er, meat.

So far, it seems like Impossible has come out swinging — perhaps a little too hard, at least in the case of Konrad’s Medium post. Hopefully Impossible and friends can find a sustainable way to deal with the quackery from Big Meat and their friends, because it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

CES 2019 Video: Lumen Gives You Personalized Diet Plans with One Breath

There are a bunch of companies offering personalized gadgets at CES this week, from smart mirrors to color-changing jewelry to toilets (for real). But Israeli startup Lumen is applying personalization to what’s going on inside your body. The company’s handheld breath detector measures your metabolism, then builds specialized meal plans based on that information and your dietary preferences.

We spoke with Lumen cofounder Dror Ceder on the CES show floor to learn more about the breathalizer-like device, and why he thinks it can help people diet more effectively and eat healthier.

The Spoon look at Lumen, a handheld breath detector for measuring metabolism

Better Juice Uses Microorganisms to Reduce Sugar in OJ (and Beyond)

On the weekends if I go out to brunch, I like to treat myself to a tall glass of orange juice along with my pancakes and eggs. Which seems like a healthy choice: OJ, after all, is fruit — it’s got to be good for me, right?

Apparently, not so much. According to a study in the journal Nutrition (via NPR), fruit juice has a fructose concentration of about 45.5 grams per liter — which is only a smidgen less than soda, which averages at 50 grams per liter. Just one cup of OJ has 21 grams of sugar, which is almost half of the FDA’s recommended daily sugar limit.

But you don’t necessarily have to ditch your OJ just yet. A company called Better Juice is developing a way to cut down on the amount of simple sugars in fruit juice, honey, agave, and more. Founded in 2017, the Israeli startup has created a column-shaped piece of hardware which contains mobilized non-GMO microorganisms.

The column is adjustable and electric powered. After the juice is squeezed workers pour it into the column, which uses pumps, heat exchangers, and cooling to pass the liquid through the micro-organisms and out the other side. As it goes through, the microorganisms convert the fructose, glucose, and sucrose (basically, all the molecules that make food taste sweet) in the juice into fibers that will, um, pass, instead of absorbing into your body.

“We’re not actually removing the sugar,” explained Better Juice CEO Eran Blachinsky over the phone. “We’re leaving it in the juice, just in a non-digestible form.” Blachinsky wouldn’t disclose what kind of microorganisms they used (algae, yeast, etc.) but told me that they were food grade. The entire process takes about one hour from start to finish.

Jenn Marston wrote about Better Juice earlier this year, stating that its low-sugar, high-fiber product “basically solves the two biggest gripes about fruit juice out there right now.”

Of course, reducing the digestible sugar content also means the juice will taste less sweet, so the company has to strike a balance between health and flavor. “We are able to reduce 87 percent of the sugars,” said Blachinsky. “But most people enjoy a 30 percent reduction.” According to him, that percentage maintains the sweet taste while still allowing the beverage company to label their product as “reduced sugar,” targeting health-conscious consumers.

Better Juice currently has six employees and has received approximately $500,000 from Israeli food tech incubator The Kitchen Hub. The company has just completed its prototype and will be piloting it abroad with three beverage companies: one in Israel and two “abroad.”

Each liter of Better Juice’s micro-organism-filled column can treat 1,000 liters of juice. Blachinksy didn’t disclose exact pricing details, noting that the number depends on the quantity in production, but said that 1 cubic meter of column would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 total. While the hardware will last indefinitely, the company has to replace the micro-organisms ever 2 to 3 months.

Reduced sugar beverages are growing in popularity — soda sales are down, while low-sugar or sugar-free ready-to-drink (RTD) products are on the rise. With its B2B technology that allows any juice (or honey, or ice cream, etc.) company to reduce the amount of sugar in their product, without sacrificing taste, Better Juice could help a large range of companies break into the burgeoning healthy drink market.

The only issue I could see is adoption difficulties on the manufacturing side. Blachinksy asserted that Better Juice’s column is easy to install and wouldn’t require specially trained or skilled employees, but it’s easy to be optimistic before the real-world test of a pilot program. If the column is indeed as easy to plug into manufacturing practices as Blachinsky hopes, it could be a pretty sweet (sorry) deal for all involved.

Personalized Nutrition Analytics Platform Nutrino Raises $8M

Yesterday Nutrino, the Israeli personalized nutrition company, announced the completion of its $8 million Series A funding round. Nielsen Ventures, Pereg Ventures, and Gandyr Group joined existing investors, including the New York Angels group, who led the company’s seed round. This latest raise brings their total capital to $10 million.

Founded in 2011, Nutrino synthesizes information from scientific reports, menus, and food nutrition breakdowns and matches that to data points on your health and eating habits, which it gets from wearables, health apps, or information you input directly into their Nutrino app. It feeds all this information into FoodPrint, their analytics platform, which then uses machine learning and AI to create an individualized nutrition profile and personalized dietary recommendations.

Nutrino isn’t the only company out there offering personalized nutrition. Just a few weeks ago we wrote about Sage Project, a platform which breaks down nutritional information for a variety of products and will soon offer individualized dietary recommendations. Habit uses personalized nutrition information to create customized meal kits. And last year, Amazon partnered with EatLove to offer meal planning and recipes tailored to personal health profiles.

Photo: Nutrino blog.

Two things seem to set Nutrino apart. First is its specialization in curating dynamic nutrition profiles for people with diabetes. In 2016 Nutrino launched a partnership with Medtronic, a producer of continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps, to help people with diabetes better customize their diets. Users could sync their monitors and pumps to the Nutrino app, which would use data from the person’s glucose and carbohydrate levels to offer food suggestions. They can also use the app to scan grocery barcodes and get a nutritional breakdown of each item, or, if they’re in one of the 200,000 restaurants that fits with Nutrino’s technology, get personalized menu recommendations based on their glucose and carbohydrate levels.

Which, if you’re someone suffering from diabetes, is critical. There are an estimated 415 million people around the world living with diabetes, and the number is expected to grow to 642 million by 2040. Managing diets is a key part of staying healthy with the disease, and Nutrino’s responsive app seems like a helpful tool.

The second thing that sets Nutrino apart from other personalized nutrition platforms is its food database, which collates information on the eating habits of its millions of users. Companies in food & beverage and fitness use this data to shape their products and marketing strategies. So Nutrino doesn’t only serve individuals; it also uses their data to market its services to companies who want more data on nutrition and consumer eating habits (though promises to protect user confidentiality).

Nutrino will use its funding to expand its database, grow its personalized nutrition services, and explore new partnerships in food analytics for diabetics.

Personalized nutrition and meal recommendations are getting a lot of buzz right now. And Nutrino’s recent funding raise seems to indicate that these trends aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.

Bone Broth’s $103M Funding Shows Food Supplements Are A Hot Industry

How would you like to have your bone broth and drink it too?

Ancient Nutrition, a company best known for its bone broth-based protein supplement powder, just snagged a $103 million investment. The funding round was led by private equity firm VMG partners along with Hillhouse Capital and Iconiq Capital. It also included participation from over 100 current and former players in craft food companies such as Noosa Yogurt, The Honest Company, and Stone Brewing.

Ancient Nutrition’s new boost in funding shows that the market for supplements—especially ones that are “natural”—is still booming. The company’s main product is powdered bone broth, a trending meal supplement (which is essentially broth) sipped by health fiends and hipsters alike. Bone broth has particular appeal to people on the ketogenic diet, who believe that we should be eating more like our ancestors: high fat, lots of protein, and minimal carbs. The rising popularity of this and other low-carb diets, such as the paleo diet, have led to a higher demand for protein supplements.

Ancient Nutrition also offers bone broth-derived supplements such as protein powder, which comes in flavors like “French Vanilla” and “Greens.” These can be used in your post-workout smoothies or as a meal replacement, which is another category that has been on the rise lately thanks to veteran Soylent and startups like Bear Squeeze and Ample.

Ancient Nutrition has a serious health food pedigree. Co-founder Jordan Rubin started Canadian dietary supplement and probiotic company Atrium Innovations, which was acquired by Nestlé last year for $2.3 billion. He then took his natural products know-how to start Ancient Nutrition in 2016 alongside Josh Axe, the man behind the popular health & fitness website Dr.Axe.

This funding indicates a strong consumer market for health supplements, especially ones derived from natural products instead of chemicals. Throw the words “superfood” and “whole food” in there, and Ancient Nutrition is capitalizing on three consumer trends: natural, unprocessed foods, miracle health ingredients, and low-carb, high-protein diets. Plus they’ve got convenience going for them; by turning bone broth from a beverage that takes hours to cook into an instant, portable supplement, they’ve made it uber accessible.

Ancient Nutrition plans to use their funds to develop new healthy lifestyle products like fungi, probiotics, and essential oils, presumably all of which will come in French Vanilla.