Ingredient Optimized is a different kind of protein startup. While others in the space are focused on perfecting plant-based burgers and growing more protein-rich peas, the biotech company uses a novel process to alter the physical structures of proteins, making them easier for the body to absorb.
The company announced today that it has completed a Series A funding round led by Continental Grain. Last week, The Spoon joined company co-founder Stephen Motosko on Zoom to find out more about the company’s protein optimization technology and goals for this round of funding.
Motosko and his co-founder Chris Flynn-Rozanski both have personal connections to the issue of protein absorption. Both founders have family members who suffer from sarcopenia, age-related loss of muscle mass. “With my grandma, it started small, with her struggling to open a ketchup bottle. And as it progressed, she struggled to get out of a chair, and then couldn’t get out of bed by herself,” says Motosko. “That really opened our eyes to protein malabsorption.”
Insufficient protein intake can contribute to the condition, and older adults tend to synthesize protein less efficiently.
Motosko and Flynn-Rozanski set out to create a more efficient protein product that would be more readily absorbed by the body. There were existing technologies that could make protein more digestible—like hydrolysis, a process that breaks down long protein strands. But those technologies were far from perfect: Hydrolysis is expensive to perform, and gives protein powder a bitter taste.
Because of his background in the plastics manufacturing field, Motosko already had experience with ionized plasma technology. “It’s been around for a number of years, primarily in other industries, and it’s slowly starting to get into the food space,” he says. “We saw what it was capable of doing and thought, with this technology, combined with protein, we could actually make products better and less wasteful.”
The founders adapted the technology to break down proteins in a way that makes them easier for the body to absorb without changing what they are. Motosko compares the process to making a smoothie: “You take strawberries, you put them in a blender, you blend it. It’s still strawberries. All the components are the same. It’s just in a slightly different physical form that makes it easier for your body to actually digest it.”
The plasma technology would normally be used at a small scale, to process one or two grams of a powder at a time. Motosko says that scaling up the technology was one of the company’s biggest challenges. “If you’re doing a couple grams at a time, it’s never going to be commercially viable. We had to develop a process that not only works, but works at a high enough capacity that we could operate within the margins—which tend to be razor thin—of a CPG company.”
In order to understand the effects that the plasma process would have on the end ingredients’ delivery of nutrition, the team partnered with universities and researchers to sponsor a total of ten human clinical trials. “We’ve shown that we increase the absorption of whey protein; we increase the absorption of pea protein; you can actually use less protein in the formulation to get an equivalent result,” says Motosko.
Ingredient Optimized has already launched Performix, a sports nutrition brand that debuted in specialty retail stores like GNC and Vitamin Shoppe, and is now available in Walmart. But Motosko says that Ingredient Optimized views itself first-and-foremost as a technology company: “We don’t make the ingredients themselves. Our partners can continue getting their protein from whoever they want in their supply chain—we’re kind of protein agnostic. We take that protein, and make it better for the consumers.”
The company has also partnered with five brands, and plans to expand through further partnerships. “We’re looking for brands that can not just connect with consumers and sell products, but have an educational component as well,” says Motosko. “Our biggest challenge moving forward is: How do we educate consumers that the protein they’re consuming may not actually be completely absorbed, and that they could be getting a much better experience with something else?”
With the Series A round of funding, the company will work on boosting consumer education. The team also plans to expand their product line, getting io into new food products such as plant-based burgers.
The company did not release the dollar amount of the Series A raise. “We want the focus to be not on the addition of capital but on our validated, human-tested superior technology and products,” a company representative told The Spoon via email.
They’ll also explore new uses for the plasma process, like creating more nutritionally available animal feed. “If we can make an animal feed that has an increased absorption, we reduce the environmental impact of the livestock industry, which is a huge contributor to global warming,” says Motosko.
The global plant protein market could be valued at over $162 billion by 2030 (up from $29.4 billion last year), according to a Bloomberg Intelligence report. With a unique value proposition and a flexible technology, Ingredient Optimized seems well-positioned to take advantage of that growth.
