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- FoodTech Weekly #17 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #17 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
September 18, 2020 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #17
Hi there,
I wrote a piece for Nutrition Connect -- also cross-posted on the Rockefeller Foundation website -- together with Peiman Milani, called 'The Two Fast Tracks of COVID-19' (we're deeply grateful to Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, Professor of Nutrition at Tufts University and Dean at its School of Nutrition Science and Policy, for his contributions to the article).
The tl;dr of our article is that people infected by COVID-19 run a much higher risk of being hospitalized, and dying, if suffering from chronic conditions such asobesity, diabetes, and hypertension, and that these conditions are mainly the result of poor diets. The article also notes that adopting a protective diet -- rich in minimally processed foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, and beans -- can change metabolic indicators in just a few months. Thus there are two distinct tracks, of poor diets and protective diets, and each leads to vastly different outcomes.
The infographic was produced by the outstanding Na'im Samimi-Moore and his team at LVL.
So when your mom told you to eat your vegetables, she was (of course) right. Read the entire piece here.
Highlights
Conversations: Eslam Salah (Lupinta)
Noteworthy: Cultured meat companies making progress in Africa, Singapore, and Texas; Infarm raises $170M; JUST Egg now in 17,000 retail locations; True Cost Accounting for food.
The Profile: Amy Novogratz
Random Stuff: Great questions when pitching VCs; apocalyptic drone footage from San Francisco; why chiropractors are extra busy these days. And more.
Conversations
Had a chance to catch up with Eslam Salah this week. Eslam started working with food at age 8 in his native country of Egypt, helping out the family business in the afternoons, after school had finished. By age 11, he ran his father's shop by himself, buying farmers' produce such as eggs, grains, beans, and butter, pricing the items based on the daily market value. Fast forward some years, and Eslam was studying agricultural sciences at Al-Azhar University, before relocating to Sweden to study at SLU, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He eventually went on to establish the startup Lupinta; the company uses lupin beans to create meat substitutes, such as tempeh, falafel,'chicken strips', etc. Eslam's dream is to reduce the level of European animal farming and the import of 32M tons of soy (which is leading to biodiversity loss in other parts of the world). In July 2020, Lupinta started manufacturing its product and is already selling to various grocery stores and foodservice actors. The company plans to raise a Seed round later on but is currently raising SEK 1M (appr. €100K) in bridge funding. If you'd like to get in touch with Eslam, you can do so here.
Eslam Salah, Lupinta
Noteworthy
Africa now has its first cultured meat startup - Mzansi Meat Co, in South Africa. The startup plans to produce cell-cultured ground beef, burgers, and nuggets in the next few years. In Texas, BioBQ plans to harvest its first cell-cultured brisket in 2023. And in Singapore, Shiok Meats (which has raised $7.6M so far) aims to sell its first cell-cultured product in Singapore by 2022. Its current production cost is about $5,000 for a kilo (2.2 lbs) of shrimp meat, but Shiok plans to bring that cost down to $50 per kilo (2.2. lbs).
Shiok Meats shrimp dumplings. CC-BY Shiok Meats
In related news, Israeli startup MeaTech (that bioprints meat using stem cells) is acquiring an unnamed international company for $17.5M; this company manufactures cultured fat tissue, derived from animal stem cells, which can be combined with cultured meat to give the texture of real animal meat [Any readers out there who know what unnamed company this is? Cubiq Foods? I'm just curious.] MeaTech, by the way, is one of the very few publicly traded cell-based protein companies in the world.
German vertical farming company Infarm has raised a $170M 'first close' of a Series C. Infarm's modular farm systems -- that grow things like herbs, lettuce, and other vegetables --are placed in e.g. grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, and school. The system uses 99.5% less space than soil-based agriculture, 95% less water, 90% less transport, and zero chemical pesticides. Infarm has operations across 30 cities in 10 countries worldwide and harvests more than 500,000 plants monthly.
Insect-as-feed producer Entoprotech (with HQ and R&D in Israel, and a small production facility in Russia processing 15 tons of food waste per day) plans to build large facilities that can process 150 tons of food waste per day, and use Black Soldier Fly larvae to turn that waste into protein and frass. The company is raising a $20M round, and so far has commitments for $5M of that target. Meanwhile, a team of scientists have mapped the entire genomeof the yellow mealworm (a.k.a. Tenebrio molitor). They hope this insight can help optimize the use of this insect specie in insect-as-feed production.
Just Egg, a mung bean-based egg replacement produced by JUST, will be available in 17,000 U.S. grocery stores by the end of September (the plant-based egg category grew 192% in 2019). It's not yet widely available in Europe but I brought some home from the U.S. and tried it out, last year (see video). When cooking, it goes from a liquid to a scrambled egg substitute. The texture is good, the scent and taste are somewhat different from egg. Another startup to watch in this space is Israeli ZeroEgg - with a blend of plant proteins, the company delivers a powder that foodservice actors can use to cook omelets, scrambled eggs, cakes, cookies, etc. ZeroEgg sells products in Israel and the Netherlands (and soon also in the U.S.), has taken in funding from The Kitchen Hub and New Crop Capital, and is currently raising a Series A round.
Surplus food startup Hungry Harvest has closed a $13.7M Series A. The company collects e.g. fruits, vegetables, and other items deemed cosmetically unfit for mainstream retailers, and then deliver them in custom subscription boxes to end-consumers. Other companies in this space include e.g. Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Perfectly Imperfect Produce, Karma, and Grim. Supply chain issues account for 40% of food waste in North America. The U.S. alone spends $218B each year to grow, process, transport, and dispose of food that is never eaten.
German discount grocery chain Penny has opened a new store in Berlin, which (for certain products) shows the 'true price' next to the retail price (h/t Arman Anatürk). The true price includes things like greenhouse gas emissions, the consequences of over-fertilization, and the amount of energy used in production. In a study commissioned by Penny, the scientists calculated that e.g. conventionally produced meat would increase by 173% in price if hidden costs were taken into account. (If anyone feels like geeking out on True Cost Accounting, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food has done some great work on this topic; this FoodSIVI report is also excellent).
The true price of food. Photo: DPA
KosterAlg and Bohus SeaCulture (website in Swedish) have applied for environmental permits to develop a 30-hectare sea farm to grow seaweed (macroalgae) off the west coast of Sweden. They believe the industry could be worth $6M to $9M annually. The seaweed is used in e.g. salads, pesto, burgers, and gin. The startups are also exploring replacing plastic cups and straws with a plastic made from alginic acid, a polysaccharide found in the cell walls of brown algae. The new material looks like plastic, is edible, and biodegradable. Dental clinics alone in Sweden use 50M plastic cups per year that could be replaced.
The Profile
Amy Novogratz had an exciting career, e.g. leading the TED Conference's annual TED Prize for almost 10 years. In 2010, she met Dutch serial entrepreneur Mike Velings on an ocean conservation research ship in the Galápagos. They became a couple, and after Novogratz had successfully recovered from a brain tumor surgery, she and Velings decided to establish a sustainable aquaculture fund, to drive the entire industry toward more sustainable practices and reduce pressures off of the oceans. Today, the fund, Aqua-Spark, has taken in around $150M from almost 200 investors in 29 countries and has holdings in 19 companies valued at $180M. The fund posted an internal rate of return (IRR) of 21.75% last year. Portfolio companies include e.g. Protix (one of the largest insect-as-feed companies in the world), Calysta (single-cell proteins as animal feed), eFishery (automatic fish feeding machines), and XpertSea (AI and computer vision, etc for more efficient fish farming). Aqua-Spark is today recognized as the perhaps leading global sustainable aquaculture investment fund, and Amy Novogratz (and Mike Velings) were recently included on Forbes Impact 50 list of the most notable impact investors in the world, alongside people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Skoll, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, Vinod Khosla, Laurene Powell Jobs, and John Doerr.
Amy Novogratz, Aqua-Spark
Random Stuff
In case you didn't know, one teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth.
If you're running a startup, I highly recommend this article on 40 questions to use in pitch meetings with VCs, to help you learn from the investors as well as establishing a more authentic relationship.
This drone video footage from the (wild fire-induced) red skies of San Francisco, combined with the score from Blade Runner 2049, is apocalyptic and eerie.
Chiropractors report a surge in neck, back, and other body pain issues as millions of Americans have worked from home, in non-ergonomic spaces, during 2020. Meanwhile, there has also been a surge in demand for playlists that mimic the background noise of an open office environment (to try it out, check e.g. The Sound of Colleagues or Calm Office).
More than 500 people have registered for Sweden FoodTech Big Meet, which takes place Sep 30 - Oct 1. It's free, it's online, and I will moderate one of the sessions, focused on 'Producing in the city'. Sign up today.
I love you.
Daniel
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