Veggie Digest #15
Plant-based chicken with skin & bones, mushrooms grown on coffee waste, genetically engineered golden rice, and much more!
Welcome to the latest installment of the Veggie Digest, the newsletter that keeps you on top of the latest in sustainable food innovations.
Headlines and Trends
A curated roundup of interesting food tech news and opinions.
📰 Nestlé Invests in Maker of Fake Chicken that has Skin and Bones (Bloomberg)
Swiss food giant Nestlé has been investing heavily in alternative proteins as more and more people shift to plant-based diets. The conglomerate is betting on a vegan startup, Sundial Foods, that is trying to mimic chicken with fake skin and bones. The skin is made of a protein-lipid film that helps lock in moisture while the “bones” are made of bamboo stalks. The faux chicken contains 27g of protein per 100g of plant meat. Sundial hopes the realistic appearance will “add to the cooking experience and provide an interesting texture while eating.”
📰 Impossible Foods Raises $500M (USD) (Food Dive)
Impossible Foods recently closed a $500 million funding round led by Mirae Asset Global Investments. To date, Impossible has raised over two billion dollars. This latest round will help the company expand its global footprint. Impossible is now the fastest-growing plant-based meat company on the planet, and its products are currently available in 22,000 grocery stores and 40,000 restaurants around the world.
🎙How I Built This: Back to The Roots (NPR)
In this podcast episode, listeners learn how two UC Berkeley seniors developed the fastest-growing organic gardening brand in the country called Back to the Roots. Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez learned that they could grow mushrooms on used coffee grounds. Intrigued by the business potential, the duo began salvaging old bags of coffee grounds, planting mushroom spawn, and selling their crop to local grocers. Eventually, they stopped farming fungus and started selling tabletop grow kits, seeds, and potting soil. Their products are now sold in 10,000 stores across the country.
📰 Men’s Meat-Heavy Diets Cause 40% More Climate Emissions than Women’s According to Recent Study (The Guardian)
A recent UK study found that men’s meat-heavy diets are responsible for 40% more climate-heating emissions than diets of women. Researchers also found that 25% of diet-related emissions were from “optional” food and drink, such as coffee, alcohol, cakes, and sweets. One of the scientists noted that the research did not assess why men ate more meat, but it could be because men generally eat more food than women, and that “men may eat more traditional meat-based diets.”
🎙 The Struggle of Keeping Fresh Produce Fresh (Red To Green)
A conversation with Matt Schwartz, the CEO of Afresh, the first Fresh Operating System, built specifically to help grocers buy the right amount of fresh produce, manage their inventory, increase sales, stock fresher food, and most importantly: reduce waste. 30% of all food goes to waste, and with it goes the land, water, and greenhouse gases used for its production. Afresh’s goal is to use its technology to allow more people to have access to healthier, more affordable fresh food, and to keep it out of landfills. He discusses how artificial intelligence can help retailers buy the right amount of produce at the right time, and how psychological biases and structural issues lead to overbuying and excess food waste.
Food Lingo: “Biofortification”
There’s a lot of jargon in the food technology and sustainability space. Each week I highlight an important concept to improve your food lingo literacy.
Biofortification is the process of breeding crops to increase their nutritional value through agronomic practices, conventional selective breeding, or genetic engineering. Using Biofortification, plant breeders search seed banks for existing varieties of crops that are naturally high in nutrients and crossbreed them with high-yielding varieties of crops. This results in a seed that has both high yields and increased nutritional value.
📰 Golden Rice’s Appearance on Philippine Store Shelves and the Rise of Biofortification (Hackaday)
On July 21st, 2021, the Philippines became the first country to formally approve the commercial propagation of golden rice. The golden rice strain has been genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene in its grains. The lack of β-carotene — the pigment which gets converted into vitamin A — can compromise the immune system, cause blindness, and can increase the severity of infections. This deficiency mainly affects newborns, children, and pregnant women, according to the World Health Organization. Biofortification efforts such as golden rice can dramatically improve the lives of millions of people around the globe by reducing the impact of vitamin A deficiency.
Sustainability Beyond Food
A handful of non-food-specific pieces to keep you abreast of other environmental items of interest.
📰 Electric Cars Aren’t Enough to Hit Climate Targets: We Need Better Public Transport Too (The Conversation)
Transport is responsible for 24% of energy-related carbon emissions worldwide. Half of those emissions are from carrying people from one point to another – also known as “passenger transport”. Recent research shows that introducing eclectic vehicles will not be enough to reach climate action targets aiming to stop more than 2 °C of global warming. The UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change advocates for an approach to passenger transport planning called “Avoid, Shift, Improve”:
Avoid: reducing the need for transport by planning new urban areas and redeveloping old ones to be more organized so people will not have to travel far for work, school, shopping, education, etc.
Shift: switching to more sustainable modes of transport. Moving away from single-occupancy cars to buses, trains, bikes, scooters, or walking paths.
Improve: switching bus, rail, and car transport from fossil fuels to electric.
📰 The Sustainable Industrial Revolution Is Just Getting Started (New York Times)
Heavy industries like shipping, manufacturing, and steel, use nearly 150 million terajoules of energy every year. It’s a huge engine behind the economic engine and a significant source of carbon emissions. Fortunately, new regulations, climate-friendly policies, and innovative technologies are beginning to present a sustainable way forward. One positive development is a fossil-free steel-making process known as “Hybrit.” This “fossil-free steel” is the result of a Swedish joint venture. The process replaces coal-based steel with hydrogen and a near zero-carbon footprint.
———
Thank you for reading the Veggie Digest newsletter. If you’re enjoying it, be sure to share it with your friends and colleagues.
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, visit this link to subscribe.
You can reach me by replying directly to this email or by adding a comment on Substack.