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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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SKS 2019: The Key to Sustainable Protein Might be Fermentation, not Plants

When you hear the term alternative proteins, your thoughts likely jump to plant-based foods, or maybe even cultured meat.

But there’s actually a third way to create high-protein meat alternatives without plants by leveraging a relatively old technology, and that is fermentation. At SKS 2019, Dr. Lisa Dyson of Air Protein, Perumal Gandhi of Perfect Day, and Morgan Keim of Motif FoodWorks discussed how their companies are using genetically engineered microbes to ferment sustainable, highly customizable proteins.

If you’re intrigued by all the buzz around the alternative protein space, it’s worth watching the whole video below. (You get to learn how Air Protein makes protein from air, c’mon.) Here are a few takeaways from the conversation:

Fermented protein is super sustainable
Plant-based protein is certainly more environmentally friendly than animal protein, but fermented protein has the potential to be even more sustainable. Dr. Dyson noted that their protein is made using only energy (which can come from solar or wind) and elements of the air. Bonus: unlike farming, it can scale vertically, is independent of weather conditions, and makes protein incredibly quickly.

It’s more efficient, too
One of the perks of fermenting protein is you can get really granular about which molecules you want to create, eliminating waste. “If you just want one part of, say, a dairy molecule, why create the whole thing?” asked Keim onstage. “Why not just make the one part you actually need?” Having that sort of control over the protein leads to more efficient R&D processes for all sorts of animal alternative products.

Fermentation isn’t *that* out of this world
Dr. Dyson noted that growing protein from fermentation “may sound like science fiction,’ but it’s actually quite close to our current standard methods of growing many staple foods — including yogurt and beer.

Gandhi echoed this sentiment. Perfect Day, which dubbed their proteins “flora-based” after the microflora used to create them, noted that fermenting protein isn’t anything new. “We’ve been using it for 40 years now,” Gandhi said. “We’re just applying [the technology] in a new way.”

Watch the full video below to learn more about what Keim called “the next generation of what non-animal foods will be.” It’ll make you rethink the protein on your plate.

SKS 2019: Growing Protein: The Emerging Food Tech Ingredient Market

Future Food: The New Wave of Protein Might Come from Air, Not Plants

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Konichiwa! Greetings from the muggy, beautiful city of Tokyo, where we’ve set up camp this week in preparation for SKS Japan. I’ll be leading a panel on alternative proteins with speakers from JUST and Integriculture/Shojinmeat, so keep an ear to the ground for coverage on that conversation.

Tokyo really does seem to be a city of the future — especially when it comes to food. From sushi burritos delivered in cubbies to ramen via vending machine, the dining experience here is always incredibly thoughtful and efficient.

My time here has got me thinking about what sort of simple, elegant solutions might be out there for our food system right now that are right in front of our face.

One that comes to mind is Kiverdi. The San Francisco-based startup feeds carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen to special single-celled organisms to create edible proteins.

It almost sounds too good to be true. Since neither Kiverdi nor other companies turning air into protein (yes, there’s more than one!) have a product to market, it’s too early to tell if they’ll be able to deliver on their goals of creating affordable, super-sustainable protein from the air around us. But the timeline isn’t too distant: both Kiverdi and Finnish gas fermentation startup Solar Foods are hoping to bring a product to market in two years.

At that time, we’ll be able to see if Kiverdi and others can indeed make a neutral-tasting protein from carbon dioxide in a cost-competitive manner (which they claim they can already do). If so, it could rock our food system.

It could be used as an ingredient to make high-protein pastas or breads. It could become a sustainable vegan protein powder. It could be mixed with burgers or chicken nuggets to make blended meat products, further cutting down on emissions by reducing our meat consumption.

That’s just the start. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing our society today, and one of its biggest causes is the amount of carbon trapped in the atmosphere. If there’s a technology that sucks up excess carbon and not only sequesters it, but transforms it into something that can help feed the planet, I’d call that the future of food.

Photo: the Impossible Whopper at Burger King.

Vegan… ish?

If you’re grabbing a plant-based Impossible or Beyond burger at one of the many fast-food restaurants that now serve the burgers, you probably expect that the food you receive will be vegetarian.

Except not really. While the burger itself may be 100% free of animal products the finished combo meal might still have traces of meat due to the restaurant’s cooking process.

Most fast-food joints don’t have the space to carve out a special area just to cook plant-based meat. Burger King has admitted that the patties for its Impossible Whopper are flame-grilled in the same broiler as its chicken and beef products. Likewise, when I tried the Beyond Famous Star burger at Carl’s Jr. earlier this year the manager told me that the burgers are in fact cooked on the same grill as typical beef burgers. (Interestingly, White Castle has a completely separate grill surface to cook the Impossible sliders.)

I’m guessing it’s the same story at most fast-casual restaurants that serve meatless meat. Rare is the restaurant that has the capacity to designate a completely separate area to cook vegan items, unless that place already caters specifically to vegan diners. In fact, last year I went to a Seattle burger chain to try the Impossible burger for the first time (memories!!) and was told that the chefs try to prep the burger on a separate area of the grill, but when it gets busy that doesn’t always happen.

There’s also the fact that many plant-based meat options at fast-food aren’t inherently vegan: they’re dressed up with cheese and mayonnaise and served on egg-based buns. All of which makes sense, since QSR’s aren’t targeting vegans with their newly-adopted Beyond and Impossible products. Instead, they’re hoping to capture the curiosity of flexitarian diners looking to cut down on their meat consumption without sacrificing on flavor.

In the end, I can see how vegans might be annoyed to learn that they can’t really eat plant-based burgers. But I imagine to many, the end result — more people eating meatless meat — justifies the means. Perhaps if meatless meat gains enough popularity fast-food chains will create designated vegan cook areas.

Photo: Subway

Eat Fresh (Plants)

For a limited time this September, Subway will be testing out Beyond Meatball Marinara sandwiches in 685 locations in the U.S. and Canada. That’s a relatively small fraction, as Subway is the largest and fastest-growing fast-food chain with over 25,000 locations in the U.S. alone.

Then again, Beyond has now forged a partnership with the largest and fastest-growing fast-food chain globally. Forget McDonald’s (though they definitely haven’t) — this partnership indicates, as if we didn’t already know, that plant-based meat is becoming more and more of the norm.

Interestingly, the sandwiches feature Beyond meatballs developed specifically for Subway. It looks like more and more plant-based meat companies are developing unique products specifically for their fast-food partners. Dunkin’s new sandwiches contain Beyond breakfast sausages developed specifically for the chain, and Impossible created plant-based sausage specifically for Little Caesar’s.

This move tightens the screws on other QSR’s dragging their feet on adopting meatless meats. I think we’re one step closer to seeing a plant-based McGriddles sandwich.

Photo: Tyson Foods.

Protein ’round the web

  • eat.life, a food delivery app that only has vegan dining options, will launch in London in 2020 (h/t VegNews).
  • Tyson announced it will start selling its Raised & Rooted plant-based chicken nuggets (which contain egg whites) in 4,000 stores, and roll them out in foodservice this September.
  • FoodNavigator wrote a profile on FUMI Ingredients, a Dutch starting making a vegan egg substitute from yeast.

That’s it for this week! I’m off to eat my body weight in 7-11 Egg Salad sandwiches (yes they are actually *that* good).

Eat well,
Catherine

Kiverdi Uses NASA Technology To Make Protein, Fish Food, and Palm Oil from CO2

What if there was a single solution to food supply issues, plastic waste and soil degradation — and it was something that’s in front of you right this very second?

Hayward, California-based Kiverdi is working to solve a variety of daunting problems facing our planet by leveraging carbon filtered from the air. Kiverdi co-founder and CEO Lisa Dyson was looking for solutions to solve climate change on Earth when she stumbled upon a technology that NASA was exploring to feed astronauts over long interplanetary journeys. Scientists discovered particular single-cell organisms, that, when fed carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen from the air, would output protein in a process she called carbon fermentation. In 2011 Dyson and her co-founder John Reed decided to use this technology to solve food supply issues on Earth and started Kiverdi.

“We built this company to be able to commercialize solutions to the world’s tough issues,” Dyson told me over the phone this week. Those issues include protein supply, of course, but that’s only one facet of Kiverdi’s business. The company is also using carbon fermentation to create sustainable fish feed, fertilizer and palm oil. It’s even transforming waste through a very rad-sounding process called “gasification,” in which plastics are broken down into carbon and hydrogen, then reformed into biodegradable materials.

The whole process may sound something you need to have a PhD in science to understand (and Dyson does), but she described it to me as very similar to brewing beer or making yogurt. The company currently has over 46 patents granted and pending on their technology.

Dyson said that they’re going to commercialize through partnerships and enter the market over the next few years through multiple verticals. She couldn’t name any specific air protein partnerships that are in the works, but did mention meatless meat and protein powder as potential products. Kiverdi also has several investors and some government funding, though Dyson wouldn’t disclose exact funding numbers.

It’ll be a while — probably two years or so — before anyone gets to bite into a plant-based burger made with air protein. The company is not going to commercialize until their product is “economically attractive,” as Dyson put it. And for that to happen, they’ll need to scale up significantly.

The company currently ferments all of its protein in-house in its manufacturing facility. But since their technology relies on so few outputs (air, water, and electricity) and requires no land, they can actually scale up relatively easily. All they have to do is add more fermentation tanks and voila — more protein.

Kiverdi’s technology is akin to gas fermentation, a technology we’ve covered before on the Spoon in which genetically engineered microbes turn air, water and electricity into edible proteins. The process is used by companies Solar Foods, Novo Nutrients and Deep Branch Biotechnology, but Dyson claims that Kiverdi’s technology separates itself from the pack since it uses a unique metabolic pathway.

Solar Foods seems to be Kiverdi’s closest competitor, as they’re the only other company using gas fermentation to make protein meant to go into marketable foods. The Finnish company plans to have its protein to market by 2021, so they’re on a similar timeline to Kiverdi.

But Solar Foods seems to be slightly further ahead in certain ways: it has already started pre-engineering on its factory, and has applied for a novel food license in order to legally sell its ingredients in Europe. Kiverdi hasn’t disclosed anything so concrete in terms of manufacturing or timeline, though Dyson did say that she didn’t anticipate any regulatory hurdles since their production methods are very similar to that of yogurt, beer, and even Impossible Foods’ heme, all of which are FDA-approved. Kiverdi’s protein is currently approved for specific applications in Europe.

Then again, I don’t think competition will be too much of an issue at first. Solar Foods is based in Europe while Kiverdi is in California. And when it comes to a food ingredient as novel — and sustainable — as protein made from air, odds are there will be ample market opportunity.

That’s just on Earth: Solar Foods is currently developing technology for the European Space Agency and Kiverdi is working with SRI International. But while gas and carbon fermentation could help sustain astronauts traveling through space, they also have the potential to solve pressing issues here on Earth. Good thing we’re not running out of air anytime soon.