In the past couple of months, I’ve been narrowing my interests in extremely powerful food technologies.
This article is a combination of the power stuff I learned in the NorthEastern Lecture Series, my time in Expo West, and a variety of other ventures that are top secret as of now.
These trends and technologies are exciting, yet there is a lot to solve. I implore you that if you are interested in this type of thing, then go all in and solve it. It will take years before these things even come to critical mass.
Food Authenticity
Everyone is freaking out in what’s in our food. Not only the consumers but also the manufacturers. This is a good thing.
There are a lot of ingredients that can be easily adulterated and due to the specialized stresses and strains of the food industry, the hit rate of things being adulterated, though still low, has increased quite a bit.
Botanicals need to have a certain active in them to be considered legitimate but this is hard because botanicals are hard to grow and it’s very hard to get the proper % actives.
One cool trick when qualifying botanicals is to not even care about extract ratio and just focus on the % actives. This saves you a lot of heartache and you can also tell if your botanical supplier did do their homework.
Protein is easier, yet not. As mentioned before, plant proteins are under a lot of supply chain stress and new ones are coming out every year. Protein testing is a huge deal and I predict that nitrogen testing proteins won’t cut it anymore. Luckily, a lot of analytical companies are focusing on improving this. Unfortunately, you bet your butt it’ll be more expensive to scan for gene defects than to burn things.
Yet one of the coolest technologies coming out comes down to the gene. Not only is Whole Genome Sequencing getting more and more well known, but technologies used to identify authenticity is getting better.
Though many people say blockchain is the holy grail of food safety, I’ve been hearing so many pros and cons and really have concluded no one has any idea what it is. Even the experts. Darin has a few blockchain experts I will call on in the future to get to the bottom of it. As of now, I have no opinion of it and it’ll be a while before t;s digestible for the average joe.
Big Data and How to Analyze It
Todd Barr and David Mahoney’s company uses big data for plants. This data can be collected by drones or tractors, or satellites. It’s a pretty cool/ scary world we live in when we can do this.
Yet this data is very robust and the technology it takes to analyze this data is an ever growning field. I think Big Data will keep on improving so it’s a good time to get into it if you have no diea what to do in your life.
To learn more about data, Todd and Uwe suggest learning python.
Just like your failure trying to learn to code in your free time, perhaps it’s ok to not learn the tools to analyze data.
As Uwe Hohgrawe said, it’s more important to be a knowledgeable expert on the subject you’re trying to extract data from and use the big data tools from other experts to get results. This is the same as saying that you as the subject matter expert can ask the right questions instead of being a big data expert, and chasing the wrong ones.
The Transformation of Protein
I have been getting more involved with the plant-based meat and clean meat space and boy do we have a lot of work to do. Not only that, but I just learned how they alter protein functionality at my bar training course.
Protein is an intense, and powerful macromolecule that has a tremendous amount of science behind it. With 20 amino acids with different functional groups, they are all mixed together
Yet what if you add acid to the protein? You can manipulate the charged parts of the amino acids depending on the pH and crazy stuff starts to happen with its functionality. Things I can’t even fathom.
As we go deeper and deeper into the world of proteins, there are still tons of things to explore as we try to manipulate the structure of the protein.
How many current proteins have been extruded at the moment? I can count on my hand how much. It’s not much. For every new plant protein coming out, what types of tests are being conducted to rank its solubility? Emulsification properties? Water absorption? How do they test it? Are they trade secrets or AOAC method approved? If you need to think of a thesis, look into this.
The Power of Customization
As the world gets pickier, customization and personalized nutrition become forefronts in this debate. As a mass produced product where scale decreases costs, how the heck do you do that?
There are some really smart ways to do this.
There is a point where this trend can get absurd. I do have a hunch that there is a glass ceiling of sorts when it comes to customization and it’s crazy when convenience will overtake the joy of cooking. I have a hunch that we will eventually convince people that cooking is actually ok to do. Perhaps the innovations happening in the meal kit industries is one avenue where customization isn’t taking full effect. Now since the distribution model of meal kits has been proven wrong, a lot of meal kits are now in storefronts. I think if done right, this can be a very powerful avenue to grow customization
Consumer Philanthropy
This bar saves lives has to add $0.40 cents to their costs because that’s how much a packet of Plumpy-Nut is to send to Australia. This is a huge cost that not many people consider to
Is it ok to tell the consumer that? Is it transparent and is that transparency the reason why it’s a premium bar? This is really hard to say and I don’t have the answer. I do agree that taste is the biggest factor in this segment. I have a hunch that you can’t have a super healthy product and a philanthropic product at the same time.
