Food From Thought: April 2022

Tender Food raises $12M seed round, Black Sheep Foods is on Delta's in-flight menus, and Meati begins direct-to-consumer sales.

Food innovation is a sustainability story.

As the world’s population grows, alternative protein development will help to ensure that we are able to produce enough healthy, affordable food to support 10 billion people or more. It’s about creating a more sustainable, resilient food system.

But that’s just part of it. As the last few years have highlighted, the global food supply chain is also a potential failure point, falling victim first to Covid-related disruptions in 2020 and more recently to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. About 9% of the world’s wheat exports come from Ukraine — rightly called the “breadbasket of Europe” — and its port of Odessa is a key hub in the European food supply chain. If the conflict continues to drag on there is a very real chance that its impacts will start to echo around the world.

Innovation in alternative proteins — whether it’s plant-based, cell cultured, fermented, or otherwise — is helping break this dependence on traditional, global supply chains and it can’t happen a moment too soon.

Speaking of innovation, we recently invested in 2 companies developing plant-based meats that are textured to look and feel more like the real thing: Plantish and Tender Food. Plantish salmon is a fully structured boneless fillet while Tender Food is spinning plant-based fibers into “whole muscle” cuts like chicken breasts, pulled pork and steaks. Take a look at their technology in action here.

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Abbot’s Butcher

• Five innovations from the International Pizza Expo

Aleph Farms

• Aleph Farms Reveals Plan to Replace the Whole Cow as Alternative to Intensive Cattle Farming

• Aleph Farms to make cell-based collagen

• Aleph Farms is About to Send Cow Cells to Space. Here’s What They’re Looking to Learn

• Cultured Collagen? How Aleph Farms is Using Technology to Replace the Whole Cow

Alpha Foods

• We Tried These New Vegan Products Hitting Stores Soon

Beyond Meat

• Why PepsiCo is Betting Big on Beyond Meat's Vegan Beef Jerky

Black Sheep Foods

• Delta Upgrades Vegetarian Catering With New Plant-Based Menu

• Earth Month: How Delta is doing our part for a sustainable future

• Will Your Nose Know Lamb? Black Sheep Foods is Betting it Will

BlueNalu

• Loaves and Fishes: How the War in Ukraine is Sending Shockwaves Through the Food Industry

Gathered Foods

• Good Catch’s plant-based tuna gets supermarket rollout

• The Best Vegan Seafood Products That Taste as Good as the Real Thing

• Powered by Plants

• Plant Based Seafood Catches On

Geltor

• ‘No longer a pipedream…’ Geltor completes commercial-scale manufacturing run of PrimaColl ‘animal-free’ vegan collagen for food and nutrition market

Imagindairy

• Cow-free proteins signal possible new day for dairy

Matrix FT

• Matrix Meats Rebrands as Matrix F.T.

Meati Foods

• I ate the mycelium chicken backed by David Chang. And it’s stupidly good.

• Boulder-Based Meati Creates the Superfood Protein Category with Debut of Highly Anticipated Whole-Cut Meat Alternative

• Meati Foods & The Better Meat Co. Lawsuit Escalates Over Mycelium

• Meati Begins Direct to Consumer Sales of its Meat Alternatives

Miyoko’s Creamery

• How Miyoko's Creamery Made the World's First Dairy-Free Cottage Cheese from Watermelon Seeds

• Vegan Cheese is Notoriously Hard to Melt. So Miyoko's Made Liquid Vegan Cheese That Could Change how you Make Pizza

• Renewal Mill debuts upcycled cookie with Miyoko’s Creamery

Mosa Meat

• Cultured Meat Law Breakthrough in the Netherlands as Public Samplings Approved

• The Netherlands House of Representatives Passes Motion to Legalize Samples of Cell-Cultured Meat

Nobell

• Plant-based cheese maker expands in South San Francisco with lease

Plantish

• Plantish fishes for restaurant partners to try plant-based salmon filets

Tender

• Tender Food Raises $12 Million Seed Round Led by Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital to Scale Production of Plant-Based Whole Muscle Cuts of Beef, Pork and Chicken

UPSIDE Foods

• New Doc 'Meat the Future' Chronicles the Lab-Grown Meat Industry's Revolution

• UPSIDE Foods Invites the Public Into “World’s Most Advanced Cultivated Meat Facility”

• Investors Are in Love With Cultivated Meat and Fermentation

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Ag Update: How do alternative proteins impact beef demand?

Food Navigator: Milk producers weigh into cultivated meat labeling debate: ‘The lexicon must incorporate the considerations of diverse companies in this space…’

Green Queen: Israel’s Alt Protein Sector Saw 450% Increase In Investments In 2021, Says New Report

JDSupra: U.S. District Court Grants Summary Judgement Against Louisiana Alternative Protein Labeling Law

McKinsey: Make room for alternative proteins: What it takes to build a new sector

Meat + Poultry: Addressing price parity with plant-based protein

New York Times: New York’s Mayor Is Building an Agenda Around Food. Will It Satisfy?

TechCrunch: Here's Y Combinator's Answer to Cultivated Meat's Scaling Problem

Wall Street Journal: Oatly’s Growing Pains Trip Up Pioneer of Oat Milk