“Animal protein is a disassembly business. Alternative protein is an assembly business." 🫢
💡 Our Take:
The alternative protein business is still largely a disassembly AND assembly business. Most plant based meat makers, for instance, use ingredients like TVP (texturized vegetable proteins) as their base that start as peas or soy beans which are then dried, milled into a flour, the protein is chemically isolated (disassembled), the isolated protein is re-dried, and milled again, then extruded for texture (assembled), ground and dried again all before it goes to a company who will further "assemble" it into a product…along with many other ingredients. Each of which has their own separate suppliers and pre-processing.
We may be poking a beehive here, but change starts with education. And change is essential to the growth of the alternative protein industry.
❓”How are you minimizing the [environmental] impact of your food products?”
💡 Our Answer:
By starting with simple, whole agricultural ingredients like mushrooms, hemp seed flour, and spices that are unprocessed or minimally processed (e.g. packaged fresh or simply dried and milled). And by using multiple “upcycled” ingredients. We also keep the number of ingredients as low as possible.
💡 Food for Thought:
As an industry, we need to minimize the use of ultra processed ingredients as well as the number of ingredients in our products; without compromising on texture and flavor. By doing this we can greatly reduce environmental impact and make consumers happier at the same time. We will also have an easier time convincing the public that alternatives are in fact more sustainable and healthier for them than animal proteins.
No one is saying it's an easy task, but it is certainly possible. After all, multiple startups including us are doing exactly that.
#FoodForThought #AltProtein #AlternativeProtein #AlternativeProteins
💡 While alternative protein products certainly have strong climate advantages, they also come with a new set of challenges which we must be sure to address to achieve real change for food production.
📣 In a recent article published by Meatingplace Magazine, our Chief Investment Officer, Tom Mastrobuoni, emphasized the importance of sustainably managing every step of the supply chain involved in alternative protein production. This approach is vital to validate the industry’s sustainability goals.
“Animal protein is a disassembly business. We take an animal, we break it down into its component parts. Alternative protein is an assembly business. We take a number of different varied ingredients, put it all together and create a product.
All these different ingredients have to come from different places, and they’re brought together at a manufacturing facility. So there’s the environmental impact of five or six different suppliers to take into account.”
✅ How are you minimizing the impact of your sustainable food products?
#alternativeproteins #futureoffood #bigideas #supplychain #sustainability Andrew D Ive Henrietta Hearth
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President, Straus Family Creamery
1moExciting times! Congratulations to you, Caryl Levine, Kenneth Lee and the Lotus Foods team and to William Culler-Chase, Stephen Hohenrieder and everyone at Grounded Capital, on this mission-expanding partnership.