The world’s biggest chemicals and food companies, owned by a dozen multinationals, are diving deeper into the protein alternative movement as more people turn to veganism. DuPont, the chemical company that makes teflon, lycra, polyester, and lucite, will now be making artificial salmon, using spirulina, a type of algae. They have partnered with an Israeli company to harvest and isolate the reddish-orange components from the algae to give the taste and texture to the cultivated salmon.

I just finished a green veggie shake made with spirulina this morning. Known for its rich in a range of vitamins and minerals essential for maintaining a healthy immune system, like vitamins E, C, and B6, some research finds that spirulina also boosts the production of white blood cells and antibodies that fight viruses and bacteria in your body.

But fish-in-a-lab from spirulina? Why not just eat it as it is? This is one of the growing problems with the food industry today: making fake meat and fish and marketing them to consumers who might be better off just eating the same vegetable based products in their original form. Read here how the Slow Food movement is rallying against fake meat. 

But the news is in, DuPont, now known as IFF-DuPont is joining up with an Israeli foodTech start-up called SimpliiGood to develop the first commercial smoked salmon analog made entirely from a single ingredient: fresh spirulina. The company is growing its spirulina in the Israeli desert under ample sunshine. 

Mercury free fish?

The plant-based salmon-like cut is uniquely crafted to take on the appearance, color, texture, and flavor of smoked salmon, reports the companies in a joint press statement, yet without the ocean pollutants that living fish are commonly exposed to. These include compounds such as mercury, fossil fuels, and industrial waste. The final product contains 40% protein. 

In the new partnership SimpliiGood provides the raw material and texture and color qualities of fake salmon, while IFF-DuPont contributes the flavor and smells. The product is expected to hit the market by the end of 2023. In 2020, the global sales value of salmon amounted to approximately 15 billion USD.

SimpliiGood specializes in cultivating and harvesting fresh blue-green algae, as well as producing of a range of spirulina-centered food products.. Its current portfolio encompasses a range of meat substitutes, including hamburgers and chicken nuggets, as well as popsicles, ice cream, crackers, and beverages where spirulina serves either as the base ingredient or as nutritional enrichment.

“Our spirulina can act as a complete replacement for animal-based protein or be easily integrated into existing food products as an added-value ingredient, as it has a neutral flavor and maintains its full nutritional value,” says Lior Shalev, CEO and Co-founder of Algaecorem the parent company of SimpliiGood.

Spirulina is heralded as one of the most nutrient-dense plant-based forms of protein on the planet, being a naturally rich source of whole protein, plus antioxidants, chlorophyll, vitamins, (including B12), and minerals, especially iron.

The spirulina market is relatively young and is dominated by dried and powdered forms of the ingredient which is easy to use when making shakes, baking breads or sauces. An orange, salmon-like hue has been expressed through identifying and isolating the native beta carotene pigment naturally present in spirulina. 

Who else is making lab fish?

Plenty of companies from around the world are looking to print salmon and other kinds of fish to stop over fishing and over consumption of fish in the wild. The Israeli startup Plantish showed a prototype of whole-cut vegan salmon filets earlier this year. The “meat” offers a flakey texture, it’s buttery in the mouth and created to duplicate the sensation of salmon. 

One other startup working to reel in the big fake fish is Good Catch Meals which offers an American-made salmon burger. The “salmon” burger is made from six plants: peas, soy, chickpeas, faba beans, lentils, and navy beans. They also offer a vegan tuna and different seafood appetizers and entrées to offer customers a fish substitute.

Hong Kong-based OmniFoods known for its plant-based pork products launched OmniSeafood. They are looking to replace fish with vegan options and products include alternate options to canned tuna, breaded fish, and filets and its first vegan crab muffins launched on the menu of Starbucks Hong Kong. This month, its plant-based fish made it onto the menu at McDonald’s in Hong Kong. 

From greenhouse-to-fork?

Like all the hydroponics farms touting “sustainability”, the makers of animal alternative protein are doing the same though there is yet little justification for it, except for animal suffering. Critics of alternative meat companies (links to the NY Times which needs a subscription) say that the extensive process of making these products cannot yet claim to be good for the environment, though it’s a feel-good proposition that wins favor with the public. The term for that is “green-washing”.

I’d rather see a world where people eat real food and real meat products, unprocessed in a lab, including real meat and real fish, products that are trapped, hunted from healthy forests and fish caught from unpolluted seas. We’d rather, as a species, be better informed about consuming animal products and if we choose to eat them, do it much, much less, while focusing on quality over quantity.

We need to focus on reducing our need for ready-made packaged products. Make our own real food, plant our gardens or buy from locals who have made farming a better way of life for them and their community. 

Strauss shows the stressors of globalization

Strauss, a food company from Israel, which has heralded the support of alternative protein companies through its investment arm The Kitchen (also supported by the Israeli government using grants from the Office of the Chief Scientist), has invested in Flying Sparks (makes protein from insects), Aleph Farms (meat in a lab), and Wanda Fish, a company that makes alternative fish proteins. Last week Strauss suffered from a massive financial blow after its food products were recalled due to a salmonella outbreak.

It is one of the largest food recalls in Israel’s history and its impact will be global. Friend and fellow environmentalist (and Eco Bible author) Yonathan Neril noted: “There are likely millions of food items included in this recall. Once the products are returned from the stores, Strauss destroys them. This is food waste on a tremendous scale.

“We live in a strange world. In Yemen, 2,000 km southeast of Israel, about 25 million lack enough food, with many experiencing severe malnutrition. Ditto for 25 million Afghanis, a few thousand km to the east.

“Food contamination is a dark underbelly of industrial food production. If modern society produced food on a smaller scale, if would not have to discuss obscene amounts of food when salmonella or e-coli bacteria are food in the production process.

“How many of the 800 million people on this planet would be happy to take the tiny risk of eating these chocolate bars, wafers, cookies, and cakes, in order to experience the satiation of eating a normal amount of calories for one day? Can food recalls involve distributing the food to people facing severe malnutrition, and just include a warning label– there’s a tiny chance that this food is contaminated with salmonella– eat at your own risk?” Neril asks.

Or for now eat from food made by your own hands that don’t come in so much packaging and your risks and expenses will be much less? 

In March, Ferrero, the makers of Nutella and other products faced a global recall. The World Health Organization said a salmonella outbreak reported in the UK on March 27 was linked to chocolate produced by the Ferrero Corporate plant in Arlon, Belgium, which has been distributed to at least 113 countries.

A global alert was released by the International Food Safety Authorities Network, initiating a global product recall of Kinder products marketed to young children. So far, a total of 151 genetically related cases suspected to be linked to the consumption of the relevant chocolate products have been reported from 11 countries.

The affected countries are Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.

Is the Ferrero contamination linked to Israel where some of Ferrero’s raw materials might have been used? We’ll know more soon, I am sure. 

But back to the fake meat, fake fish, fake food: I was excited about Impossible Foods and the ISO Group and the Beyond Burger for a while and I chose to pay 4 times the price of real meat to consume no animal protein but after a dozen or so burgers couldn’t get over the coconut oil flavor that permeates everything — and the hard to digest pea protein that is prone to give digestion problems. In that I mean stomach upset and extreme gas. So don’t eat one before a first date or working at the office.  

There is no verdict here. You have to look deeper and decide for yourself. After living in Israel for more than 20 years I can see how real, fresh food goes a long way to satisfy the tastebuds and soul. Let’s ditch all the business models, marketing and greenwashing and just go back back to basics. Regenerative farming anyone? Or on the flipside, our collective climb into technology and food might bring us eventually to the right place, one hundred or one thousand years into the future.

Last thought: a new new study finds that the fishing industry is making the habitats of dolphins unsustainable. An ethical reason to stop eating fish?

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Leonardo DiCaprio, known in his movie roles for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Titanic –– and for dating Bar Refaeli – has invested in not one but two alternative meat companies, Aleph Farms, based in Israel, and Mosa Meat from the Netherlands. Unlike the Impossible Burger and the OSI Group which creates alternative protein from peas, which is tasty, but hard to digest, Aleph and Mosa create meat in a lab using original cells from a real animal.

The idea is to create real meat that tastes like meat, not a plant-based substitute. But lab meat is exactly like meat, removing the suffering and methane gas production, oh and antibiotic use, so the argument goes. 

“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers,” said DiCaprio.

It’s common for celebrities to invest in startups, especially Israeli ones. Leonardo is in the footsteps of other Hollywood actors like Ashton Kutcher. 

Both Mosa and Aleph have demonstrated the ability to grow beef directly from animal cells, with the unveiling of the first cultivated hamburger by Mosa Meat in 2013 and the first cultivated steak and ribeye by Aleph Farms in 2018 and 2021 respectively. The meat made still costs a mini fortune but new investments will help the companies scale production and cut back costs.

Some of us have turned vegan or vegeaware or at least participate in Meatless Mondays. Eating meat –– until we find a better solution to satisfy meat eaters –– is here to stay. New innovations might help alleviate climate problems, as well as a growing interest to return back to the land, hunt one’s own meat, and eat less or whole animal meat eating. 

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Aleph Farms and its research partner at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, have successfully cultivated the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak, using three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology and natural building blocks of meat – real cow cells, without genetic engineering and immortalization.

Aleph now has the ability to produce any type of steak and plans to expand its portfolio of quality meat products.

Unlike 3D printing technology, Aleph Farms’ 3D bioprinting technology is the printing of actual living cells that are then incubated to grow, differentiate, and interact, in order to acquire the texture and qualities of a real steak.

A proprietary system, similar to the vascularization that occurs naturally in tissues, enables the perfusion of nutrients across the thicker tissue and grants the steak with the similar shape and structure of its native form as found in livestock before and during cooking.

Are steak growers on Mars out to lunch?

“This breakthrough reflects an artistic expression of the scientific expertise of our team,” said Didier Toubia, Co-Founder and CEO of Aleph Farms. “Additional meat designs will drive a larger impact in the mid and long term. This milestone for me marks a major leap in fulfilling our vision of leading a global food system transition toward a more sustainable, equitable and secure world.”

The cultivated ribeye steak is a thicker cut than the company’s first product – a thin-cut steak. It incorporates muscle and fat similar to its slaughtered counterpart and boasts the same organoleptic attributes of a delicious tender, juicy ribeye steak you’d buy from the butcher.

“With the realization of this milestone, we have broken the barriers to introducing new levels of variety into the cultivated meat cuts we can now produce.

“As we look into the future of 3D bioprinting, the opportunities are endless,” says Technion Professor Shulamit Levenberg, Aleph’s Co-Founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and a major brainpower behind the company’s IP. Levenberg is considered a global leader in tissue engineering and has amassed over two decades of research in the field at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States and at the Technion, in Israel. Levenberg is also the former Dean of the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion.

Aleph Farms’ zealous plans to diversify its offering align with its mission to create a global platform for local production, leveraging a highly scalable technology to create culinary experiences that can be adapted for the different food cultures around the world.

With the advent of synthetic milk or meat- or animal-free products cultivated in the lab, or alternatives to honey grown in an engineered bee stomach (another Israeli invention) –– some people think all this “progress” in the lab is really people out to lunch. Read our story about engineered honey for some alternative points of view to animal substitutes and our farming story on high tech hydroponic solutions that also may be out to lunch. The big solution may be simpler – regenerative agriculture. That what Woody Harrelson says, cow farts and all. 

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It’s a sign of the times: a vegan cheesemaking company in Israel is considering listing on the TASE – or Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Two meat or animal product substitute companies already list there and now Vgarden, which makes vegan cheese is looking to raise capital. A report in the local paper Haaretz says the kibbutz-based company plans to list next year at a valuation of $102 million. 

Israel has more vegans per capita than anywhere in the world. And the company already has dozens of companies looking to offer a plant-based alternative to meat or animal based products. 

Yofix in Israel already sells its soy-free yogurt alternative made from oats, legumes and seeds. The fermented, cultured products contain protein, fiber, calcium and iron, have no added sugar or preservatives, and are pre- and probiotic.

Vgarden produces sliced cheese, cream cheese, ricotta, and feta –– all without milk of any kind. And it’s marketed under the brand Mashu Mashu, which means “wow, that’s something” in Hebrew. I have tried the sliced cheese and it’s a satisfying and convincing alternative. It’s firm and tasty and has a cheesy smell and flavor likely from yeast – which the African Israelites have been using as a seasoning for decades. They are an all-vegan village in Beersheva. 

The transition to complete veganism hasn’t been difficult for mainstream Israelis because as part of the Jewish lifestyle and dietary laws it is already known if a food product contains traces of animal products as it’s not allowed to eat meat and milk together, for those who observe the customs and traditions known as kashrut.

They are similar to the Muslim dietary laws called halal but are more restrictive – except for one – Jews are allowed to drink alcohol, Muslims are not. 

Israelis taking bite out of meat substitute markets

MeaTech in Israel 3-D prints meat alternatives and its shares have risen 120% on the TASE over the last year according to the Marker, an Israeli financial paper. SavorEat is developing a plant-based meat alternative using 3D printing and plant cellulose. 

Impossible Burgers have been on the Israeli grocery shelves for a couple of years already. But they cost about $8 a piece, which is more than double the price of a burger bought at a butcher. McDonalds in some locations in Israel is selling vegan burgers and for those observing dietary laws can for the first time order a cheeseburger from the famed fast-food chain. 

Redefine Meat from Israel says it is making the world’s first plant-based steak created using 3D printing technology. The Rehovot-based company said it will start testing the beef, which it calls Alt-Steak, at select high-end restaurants in Israel later this year.

Israelis are thrilled with the rollout of Beyond Meat and are clearly trying to take a bite out of this enviable market. Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2019-2026, “the global meat substitute market size was valued at $4.1 billion in 2017, and is expected to reach $8.1 billion by 2026.”

RilBite is ambitiously positioning itself as the basis for “The burger that saves the world.”

Founded by Barak Melamed and incubated in The Kitchen FoodTech Hub of the Strauss Group in Ashdod, RilBite is developing a “minced plant” product using only six ingredients: onions, tomatoes, textured vegetable protein (TVP) from soy, lentils, rice and spices.

There is Kinoko Tech developing a vegan protein with a meat-like texture and slight umami flavor. The secret ingredient is an edible mushroom tissue called mycelium.

FFW is creating a yeast-based meat alternative. Founder Leonardo Marcovitz says that yeast contains 50% protein and has all the essential amino acids. It’s cheap and easily available. But until now, no one has been able to create a textured product out of yeast or temper its strong umami flavor.

“For the past year, our food technologists have been working on solving those two challenges,” he says. “We’re deciding whether our first product will be in the form of pulled chicken, chicken nuggets or Bolognese.”

Taking on the humble chickpea, a staple of the Middle East diet: InnovoPro and ChickP have developed proprietary technologies for extracting neutral-tasting protein from chickpeas for use in the food industry. Although hummus everywhere unless it’s organic contains high amounts of cancer-causing Roundup. 

Sometimes, unless it’s my daughter begging to try a vegan bacon one day, I just have to hope: maybe we should just stop trying to create substitutes? The next generation of vegans won’t hunger for milk, cheese or anything that resembles meat if we educate them properly. Food grown simply from a garden and made into a homemade spread without a printer or complicated enzymes in a lab is really the healthiest and more sustainable way we can consumer our food. These foodtech companies may both help and hinder a meat-free transition. What do you think?

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Meatless burger startup Impossible Foods and major food processor OSI Group are poised to continue on their path toward financial success even in the face of a massive downturn in the global economy. As the younger generation continues to seek alternatives to traditional food sources such as beef, pork, and chicken, new research, new funding, and a vision for a healthy future spur this partnership forward. 

OSI Group and Impossible Foods Secure Partnership

In April 2019, Impossible Foods continued to expand its product placement through a partnership with Burger King that brought its meatless patties to over 7,000 restaurants nationwide. Faced with a sudden increase in demand, Impossible Foods struggled to fill orders while maintaining a focus on research for new product development. The answer to the problem came in the form of partnering up with OSI Group, the operator of massive food processing plants around the world. This allowed Impossible Foods to continue to meet surges in demand without sacrificing quality or turning all of its home office employees into factory workers. 

Demand for Meatless Burgers Soars as Supply Increased

Even as Impossible Foods reaped the rewards of its successful fast food rollout, its major competitor, Beyond Meat, further fueled the love for everything plant-based as it went public. 2019 turned into a golden era for the alternative food businesses as larger segments of the population tested out the new burgers and discovered that grilling in the backyard did not require red meat to be tasty. The impossible Burger saw increases in demand in the double digits. Meanwhile, OSI Group lost no production in its Mid-West facilities as the company was able to shift production time from beef to the newer meatless product.

Why the Global Demand for Meatless Burgers Now?

Just before the headlines were flooded with the global pandemic, a widespread infection of China’s pig population with African Swine Flu was reported. As the largest pork producer in the world, pork prices were prepared to skyrocket in European and American supermarkets for the 2020 year, if pork was exported from those geographies to China in order to meet consumer demand. Every year reports of e-coli, bird flu, and other food contamination grab the average consumer’s attention. Meanwhile, those supporting a more eco-conscious way of feeding the world have determined that turning plants into meat-substitutes is far less toxic to our environment. Ultimately, shoppers looking for a safer, competitively priced, and greener option for their meals are grabbing more and more meatless options for the dinner table.

Fresh Infusion of Cash Provides a Buffer Against Uncertain Economy

In the early days of 2020, the whisperings of a pandemic closing down China and many European nations began to filter through the media. Focused on future growth, Impossible Foods took vital steps to ensure that the fledgling food manufacturer could weather the impending economic storm. The company worked quickly to secure an additional $500 million in further investment funding, bringing its total investments to $1.3 billion since it was founded, and guaranteeing it could continue to produce and distribute its meatless burger during the crisis.  Before the federal government determined which businesses would be considered essential, OSI Group and Impossible Foods were positioned to reap the rewards of an entire nation seeking variety when faced with cooking at home for an extended period.

Impossible Foods and OSI Group are Positioned for Future Success Even in the Aftermath of COVID-19

Once the storm clouds recede, what else is on the horizon for this new segment of the food industry? Impossible Foods earmarked a significant portion of its investment funds for research as consumers around the globe begin to look for better alternatives to other animal-based proteins such as fish, pork, and poultry. Impossible Foods will also want to rapidly expand its product line as the public will be hypersensitive to illnesses caused by food-borne contaminants. Plant-based and processed foods like the meatless burger can reduce the chances of dangerous bacteria reaching the consumer’s table.

The processing power that OSI Group maintains combined with the cutting-edge food technology brought to the table by Impossible Foods leaves them both ready to meet a surge in demand while the world recovers from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Combined with the waning interest in traditional fast food choices like fried beef burgers, Impossible Foods can anticipate continual growth, a profitable first public offering, and a future bright with promise with partner OSI Group by its side.

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About a third of the food produced for human consumption is estimated to be lost or wasted globally. But the biggest part of food waste, which is not included in that estimate, may be through dietary choices that result in the squandering of environmental resources.

Consider that cows, chickens, pigs – whether for eggs, dairy, or meat – all need to eat plants – and farmers need to grow food for them. Imagine there were no more meat eaters? If we all become vegans or ate meat grown in a lab? How would that shift edible crops for us?

This is a good study for proponents of Alt Protein, alternative meat, fake fish and milk from a lab companies.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and their colleagues have now found a novel way to define and quantify this second type of wastage.

The scientists have called it “opportunity food loss,” a term inspired by the “opportunity cost” concept in economics, which refers to the cost of choosing a particular alternative over better options.

Opportunity food loss stems from using agricultural land to produce animal-based food instead of nutritionally comparable plant-based alternatives.

The researchers report that in the United States alone, avoiding opportunity food loss – that is, replacing all animal-based items with edible crops for human consumption – would add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, or more than the total US population, with the same land resources.

“Our analysis has shown that favoring a plant-based diet can potentially yield more food than eliminating all the conventionally defined causes of food loss,” says lead author Alon Shepon, who works in the lab of Prof. Ron Milo in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences. 

I had the pleasure of gardening with Alon a few years ago when he showed the parents of the Tel Aviv Waldorf School, Beit Hinuch Aviv, how to grow a permaculture garden. We’ve ben harvesting it ever since. Earlier he’s researched papers on why beef is much worse for the planet than chicken or pork. Read the brief on the study here.

In the 2018 study, the scientists compared the resources needed to produce five major categories of animal-based food – beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs – with the resources required to grow edible crops of similar nutritional value in terms of protein, calories, and micronutrients.

They found that plant-based replacements could produce 2 to 20 times more protein per acre than using that land for animal feed.

The most dramatic results were obtained for beef. The researchers compared it with a mix of crops – soya, potatoes, cane sugar, peanuts, and garlic – that deliver a similar nutritional profile when taken together in the right proportions.

The land area that could produce 100 grams of protein from these crops would yield only 4 grams of edible protein from beef. In other words, using agricultural land for producing beef instead of replacement crops results in an opportunity food loss of 96 grams – that is, a loss of 96% – per unit of land.

This means that the potential gain from diverting agricultural land from beef to plant-based foods for human consumption would be enormous.

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