In the season finale of our 10 part series Feeding 10 Billion, we focus on one word that has come to dominate our discourse and perfectly captures our theory of change - leapfrog. The themes in our podcast this season have given you an inkling of the range of work happening in the new protein sector - from cultivated and sustainable seafood to plant-based protein enriched foods. We hope it has also underlined the fact that however you approach this - be it through the lens of climate change, public health, malnutrition, farmer incomes, water shortage, land use, species extinction or animal welfare - we need to leapfrog over the industrial animal agriculture that has led to a broken food system. The analogue to mobile telephony or digital payments exist but to create new pathways in food (which is also socio-culturally loaded in our country) we need all the insight we can get. This episode we speak to Michelle Adelman, the CEO and Founder of Infinite Foods, who also heads the companies, Go Fresh and Accite Holdings. Michelle works in South Africa, Botswana and beyond to bring the most exciting plant-based foods like Beyond Meat, JUST egg and Miyoko's cheese as well as Oatly milk to these developing markets. Her lessons from this continent have tremendous import for the work to be done in India. And with that, it's a wrap on this season of Feeding 10 Billion. We hope you enjoyed this season, and we will catch up with you again in the new year in 2020! Organizations, Institutes and Companies: M-Pesa M-Pesa is Africa's most successful mobile money service. It provides access to financial services to the millions of people who have a mobile phone, but do not have or have only limited access to a bank account. M-Pesa provides people with a safe, secure and affordable way to send and receive money, top-up airtime, make bill payments, receive salaries, get a short-term loan and much more. Accite Holdings Accite is a boutique project development and impact investment firm that focuses on technology-led, sustainable commercial agriculture projects that spur economic diversification and employment of youth and women. Accite's investment philosophy marries proven western technologies with localized business models to create pioneering businesses. Accite believes that technology-led, sustainable agriculture is a viable growth sector for Africa's transformation. Infinite Foods Infinite Foods is a go-to-market platform for the best tasting plant-based food brands to reach Africa and emerging markets faster, with low risk. Infinite provides a turn-key capability to manage the regulatory environment, educate consumers, create markets, amplify brands, sell, distribute, source ingredients and enable manufacturing while being responsible corporate citizens. Go Fresh! Botswana Go Fresh! Botswana's vision is to improve the quality of life for people and the environment by growing Grade 1 fresh vegetables year-round. Using hydroponics and controlled-environment greenhouses, Go Fresh! Botswana uses a fraction of both the land and water used in traditional irrigated farming to provide people with the freshest locally-grown produce. Additional Reading Read more about Infinite Food's mission in this article in Vegconomist and read more about Michelle Adelman's work in this article about helping Africa leapfrog to plant-based foods in Forbes. Watch Michelle Adelman's interview about plant-based burgers on CNBC Africa here A quarter of US millennials claim to be vegan or vegetarian. Read more about that here Why India is a priority for plant-based and cultivated meat innovation: GFI Blog Meat is the new mobile - Leapfrogging our way to the future of food - Varun Deshpande, TEDxKITCoEK

It's no secret our oceans are in trouble. Climate change and bad policy continue to contribute to major shifts in one of the most complex ecosystems on the planet. Among the most pressing challenges are ocean acidification (the ocean today is, on average, 25% more acidic than in pre-industrial times), overfishing (a staggering 93% of all fisheries are being fished at or beyond capacity, while demand for seafood continues to rise the world over) and plastic pollution (about half of which is a direct result of fishing and seafood consumption; more than 640,000 tons of "ghost gear" — discarded fishing equipment — ends up in oceans every year). And while efforts to address these issues have ramped up in recent years, they have often focused on the wrong things. In this episode of Feeding 10 Billion, Varun and Ramya sit down with Jen Lamy, manager of the Sustainable Seafood Initiative at the Good Food Institute, to discuss the problems facing our oceans, the complex and opaque seafood supply chain and why plant-based and cultivated seafood are the best way forward. SHOW NOTES: What is plant-based meat and seafood? Plant-based products are direct replacements for animal-based products, such as plant-based meat, seafood, eggs and dairy. These include products that use the biomimicry approach to replicate the taste and texture of meat, as well as plant-forward products (like jackfruit, seitan, tofu and tempeh) that serve as functional meat replacements. Source What is cultivated meat and seafood? Cultivated meat (often referred to as cell-based meat or clean meat) is genuine animal meat that can replicate the sensory and nutritional profile of conventionally produced meat because it's comprised of the same cell types and arranged in the same three-dimensional structure as animal tissue. It isn't imitation or synthetic meat; it's actual meat that is grown from cells outside of an animal. Source Dr Mark Post's Ted Talk at TedX Haarlem in 2013: Meet the new meat What is aquaculture? The term aquaculture broadly refers to the cultivation of aquatic organisms in controlled aquatic environments for any commercial, recreational or public purpose. The breeding, rearing and harvesting of plants and animals takes place in all types of water environments including ponds, rivers, lakes, the ocean and man-made "closed" systems on land. Source What is ocean acidification? Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period of time, caused primarily by uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Source Organizations, Institutes, Cultivated, and Plant-Based Companies: The Good Food Institute's Sustainable Seafood Initiative  Developing and commercializing plant-based and cell-based seafood is the most tractable path for ensuring seafood sustainability and improving the health of our oceans. GFI's Sustainable Seafood Initiative provides targeted research and support with a laser focus on accelerating this sector.   FAO The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to tackle food insecurity, world hunger, and food sustainability.   IPCC The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.   Shiok Meats Shiok in Singapore and Malay slang means fantastic and delicious. Shiok Meats is the first cell-based clean meat company in Singapore and South-East Asia. Their mission is to bring delicious, clean and healthy seafood like crustacean meats (including shrimp, crab and lobster) by harvesting meat from cells instead of animals. Their meats are animal-, health- and environment-friendly with the same taste, texture, more nutrients and no cruelty.   Avant Meats Avant Meats Company Limited is a start-up that focuses on R&D of cell-based agriculture. They strive to bring down the product costs of cell-based meat by researches (sic) and collaboration with companies of tangential technologies.   BlueNalu, Inc BlueNalu's mission is to be the global leader in cellular aquaculture™, providing consumers with great tasting, healthy, safe, and trusted seafood products that support the sustainability and diversity of our oceans. Their aim is to supplement current industry practice, in which fish are farmed or wild-caught in our ocean and seas, by producing real seafood products directly from fish cells, that are as delicious and nutritious as products that have been grown conventionally, in a way that is healthy for people, humane for animals, and sustainable for our planet.   WIld Type  Wild Type's mission is to create the cleanest, most sustainable seafood on the planet. They use cellular agriculture technologies to address the most pressing challenges of our generation: climate change, food security, and health.   Finless Food Finless Foods is a food startup working toward a world where everyone has access to healthy, delectable seafood, without the environmental devastation or the health hazards of traditional fishing and aquatic farming. Starting with bluefin tuna, they use cutting-edge cellular-agriculture technologies to grow marine-animal cells, creating fish and seafood products enjoyed around the world.   Good Catch The Good Catch team are passionate culinary rebels with a cause—seafood without sacrifice. They bring you the rich flavors and flaky textures of fine seafood—from fish-free tuna and burgers to crab-free cakes—made with nutritious, sustainable ingredients. Their mission is to "preserve the ocean's natural resources while introducing awesomely delicious "seafood" choices that benefit you and the world. Nothing fishy about it."   Ocean Hugger Ocean Hugger Foods offers healthy, delicious and sustainable plant-based alternatives to your favorite seafood proteins. Created by one of America's top chefs, Certified Master Chef James Corwell. Their flagship product, Ahimi™, is the world's first plant-based alternative to raw tuna, perfect for use in sushi, poke, tartare, ceviche and more.   ADDITIONAL READING: Find more information about Maharashtra's ban on single-use plastics here Read about Indian Prime Minister Narandra Modi's pledge to ban single-use plastic here Read why the push to ban plastic straws — when fishing accounts for 46% of all ocean plastic — is well intentioned but misguided *here** More information about the dire state of our oceans and why plant-based and cultivated seafood are the best way forward can be found here Read more about Canada's seafood traceability issue here  Read IPCC's "The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate" report here More information about the rising levels of microplastic in our oceans can be found here Read more about the Van Cleve Seafood Company's first plant-based seafood launch, Wild.Skinny.Clean, here Here's an article about Northern Harvest's salmon die-off and cleanup efforts.

Through this season of Feeding 10 Billion, two names that have cropped up in nearly every episode are the pioneers of plant-based meats: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Beyond Meat had the biggest IPO in North America in the last two decades this year. Impossible Foods was first served in Michelin starred restaurants in 2016 and is now making waves at chains like Burger King thanks to its plant-based beef burger being served as the Impossible Whopper - leading to BK's best quarter in the last four years. On this special episode of Feeding 10 Billion, we feature a conversation between senior executives of these companies (Seth Goldman - Executive Chairman at Beyond Meat, and David Lipman - Chief Scientific Officer at Impossible Foods) and representatives of organisations like FAIRR, Centre for Biological Diversity and Institute for the Future's Future Food Lab, along with Varun Deshpande, Managing Director at the Good Food Institute India. The conversation took place at a panel during the blockbuster second iteration of the Good Food Conference in San Francisco. With 900 people in attendance, the session focused on some of the weightiest issues surrounding plant-based and cultivated meat's potential to address antibiotic resistance, global malnutrition and poverty, climate change and natural resource utilization. Of course, this is a massive undertaking that needs to balance business with issues such as biodiversity as well as global access to good food. The government, investors, companies, and even themselves - these panelists pull punches for nobody! Show Notes- This episode features panelists from the panel: The "Why": Mitigating Environmental and Public Health Risks at the Good Food Conference held in San Francisco this year. If you would like to look up the other panel discussions held at the event, you can find them on the GFC website. If you want to learn more about how India fits into the puzzle of the global alternative protein's dizzying growth, or are keen to collaborate and build this new protein sector as an entrepreneur, investor, food corporation or scientist, please do visit the Future of Protein website and register to attend. The event is on from Nov 11 to 12 in New Delhi and entry is free! COMPANIES MENTIONED: Beyond Meat is a ten-year-old company that had the biggest IPO in North America in the last two decades this year. Beyond makes meat directly from plants and its revolutionary food-tech products made out of proteins like peas, mung or fava beans, brown rice and sunflower and fas like cocoa butter, and coconut, sunflower or canola oil that replace burgers, sausages, mince or ground meat can be found in 58000 grocery stores in the US. Impossible Foods which was formed in 2011 and was the first plant-based meat to be offered by Michelin restaurants in 2016 and soon made it to the menus of White Castle followed by Burger King last year. Impossible Burgers are made with 96% less land, 87% less water and 89& fewer green house gas emissions than burgers made from cows. FAIRR - Established by the Jeremy Coller Foundation, the FAIRR Initiative is a collaborative investor network that raises awareness of the material ESG (Environmental, Social or Governance) risks and opportunities caused by intensive animal production. FAIRR helps investors to identify and prioritise these factors through cutting-edge research that investors can then integrate into their investment decision-making and active stewardship processes. Centre for Biological Diversity : Based in Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit membership, this is an organization with approximately 1.1 million members and online activists, known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism Institute for the Future's Future Food Labs: The Institute for the Future is a California, US–based not-for-profit think tank that was established, in 1968, to help organizations plan for the long-term future, a subject known as futures studies. IFTF's Food Futures Lab identifies and catalyzes the innovations that have the potential to reinvent our global food system. We help stakeholders—multinational food companies, farmers, chefs, entrepreneurs, and more—make sense of emerging technologies, social behaviors, and scientific breakthroughs and take action toward a more resilient, equitable, and delicious future of food. Honest Tea - a product mentioned in the podcast by Seth Goldman - is the top selling organic bottled tea brand in the US and was founded by Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff in 1998. It was sold to Coca Cola in 2011 and sales have been reported in the 100 million dollar range post acquisition. BIBLIOGRAPHY Max Elder writes about the opportunities driving the future of affordable nutrition in the report titled Good Food is Good Business Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index analyzes companies like Hormel and the Brazilian meat firm JBS, finding that many of the 60 largest in the sector aren't taking the necessary steps to reduce their environmental impacts. Amara's Law by Roy Amara, the former president of the Institute for the Future, states that: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Food makes the world go round - with apologies to Shakespeare! And what makes food so irresistible are ingredients - which can be broken down into the flavour components that build the dish. A simple tempering of spices in our home kitchens inform the flavour bombs of a dish. This process is researched and replicated on an industrial scale by flavour companies across the world, who have to get the recipe exactly right to create the perfect food product. In the alternative protein sector, as companies seek to bio-mimic meat with plant based or cultivated meat, flavours and fragrances are a crucial piece of the puzzle. On this episode of Feeding 10 Billion, we talk to Dr Ganesh Bagler, associate professor at IIIT Delhi and a pioneer in the exciting field of computational gastronomy. His work applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to culinary data on flavours, has created a wealth of insights on food - including a recipe index with more than 118,000 thousand recipes from across the world! Tune in for insights about what makes Indian food so unique, why seafood is an open frontier, and the work still needed to unlock the science of food. SHOW NOTES: If you want to hear from speakers like Ganesh Bagler, register for our Future of Protein Summit being held in New Delhi on November 11 & 12th! IIIT DELHI : The Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, is research-oriented state university focused on computer science and related areas. FlavorDB : This is a database created by the complex systems lab at IIIT Delhi. It comprises of 25,595 flavor molecules representing an array of tastes and odors. It is intended to facilitate an exploration of flavor molecules for divergent applications, including finding molecules matching a desired flavour or structure, discovering novel food pairings and finding the molecular essence of food ingredients.Data-driven studies based on FlavorDB can pave the way for an improved understanding of flavor mechanisms. RecipeDB : RecipeDB is a structured compilation of recipes, ingredients, and nutrition profiles interlinked with flavor profiles and health associations. The repertoire comprises of meticulous integration of over 1,18,000 recipes from cuisines across the globe (6 continents, 26 geo-cultural regions, and 74 countries), cooked using 268 processes (heat, cook, boil, simmer, bake, etc.), by blending over 23,500 ingredients from diverse categories, which are further linked to their flavor molecules (FlavorDB), nutritional profiles (USDA) and empirical records of disease associations obtained from Medline (DietRx). DietRx : DietRx provides a platform for exploring health impacts of dietary ingredients by integrating interrelationships among food and key molecular agents. The resource assimilates dietary factors (food and chemicals), their health consequences (diseases) and genetic mechanisms to facilitate queries for investigating associations among these entities. Also see BitterSweet INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS AND FRAGRANCES IIF is a global leader in the development of scents, tastes, experiences and ingredients for a variety of different products. Headquartered in New York, it has over 110 manufacturing facilities and 100 R&D centers across the world. FIRMENICH Firmenich is the largest privately-owned perfume and taste company, founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1895. GIVAUDAN Headquartered in Switzerland with local presence in over 145 locations, Givaudan is a global leader in the creation of flavours and fragrances. SHIOK MEATS  Shiok in Singapore and Malay slang means fantastic and delicious. Shiok Meats is the first cell-based clean meat company in Singapore and South-East Asia. Their mission is to bring delicious, clean and healthy seafood like crustacean meats (including shrimp, crab and lobster) by harvesting meat from cells instead of animals. Their meats are animal-, health- and environment-friendly with the same taste, texture, more nutrients and no cruelty. ALEPH FARMS Aleph Farms is the food-tech startup specializing in high-quality sustainable cell-grown meat. Aleph's proprietary 3D technology uses the four core cell types of farmed beef to recreate a real food experience. It grows slaughter-free steak without the need for devoting vast tracts of land, water, antibiotics usage and other resources to raise cattle for meat. Aleph Farms recently became the first company to grow meat in space. Bühler Group Bühler is a Swiss-based family owned company that is a global, industrial solution provider for processing foods and for manufacturing advanced materials, contributing to food security and high energy efficiency. SCIENTIFIC DEFINITIONS Computational gastronomy as defined by Dr Ganesh Bagler: Cooking forms the core of our cultural identity other than being the basis of nutrition and health. Starting with a seemingly simple question, 'Why do we eat what we eat?', data-driven research conducted in our lab has led to interesting explorations of patterns in traditional recipes, their flavor composition, and health associations. Our investigations have revealed 'culinary fingerprints' of regional cuisines across the world, starting with the case study of Indian cuisine. The increasing availability of culinary data and the advent of computational methods for their scrutiny is dramatically changing the artistic outlook towards gastronomy. Application of data-driven strategies for investigating the gastronomic data (such as traditional recipes, molecular constituents of ingredients, percepts of flavor compounds, and health associations of food) has opened up exciting avenues giving rise to an all-new field of 'Computational Gastronomy'. This emerging interdisciplinary science asks questions of culinary origin to seek their answers via the compilation of culinary data and their analysis using methods of statistics, machine learning, natural language processing, pattern mining, and chemo-informatics. Backed with complementary experimental studies, it has the potential to transform the food landscape by effectively leveraging data-driven food innovations for better health and nutrition. Bibliography: The Weizmann Institute continuously monitored post prandial blood sugar levels in 800 people for a week and found that bodily response to all foods was highly individual. So we need more data to understand how diet prescriptions can work as medicine, especially in the case of lifestyle diseases like Type 2 Diabetes Data driven approaches to leveraging food for better health | Dr. Ganesh Bagler | TEDxDAIICT The digital way forward for Indian Cuisine by Dr Ganesh Bagler

The famous writer and philosopher George Santayana's quote says 'those who cannot remember their past are condemned to repeat it' but perhaps the more pertinent iteration of that question for our times would be "to know your future, you must know your past". If you examine some of the biggest technology shifts that occurred in food systems in the holocene era, as the Royal Society, (the UK's national academy of science) did in 2012, these have typically meant selective breeding of strains of crops to fermentation, pasteurization and even refrigeration. What do these innovations portend for the big shifts underway in sourcing our food more ethically and sustainably? In this freewheeling episode of Feeding 10 Billion, we speak to Kurush Dalal, an assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Mumbai, Centre for Extra Mural Studies, who also runs Katy's Kitchen, one of Mumbai's foremost Parsi catering companies. As a trained archaeologist, historian and culinary anthropologist, Kurush has some fascinating answers for the question: where did our food come from and how will that inform how we source it in the future? BIBLIOGRAPHY : The Atlantic: The 20 most significant inventions in the history of food and drink Firspost: How potatoes and chillies conquered Indian cuisine IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science: History of Tomato: The poor man's apple Archaeologist caterer Kurush Dalal dissects the evolution of modern foods Kurush Dalal's research project at the Western Ghats in Maharashtra - examining the excavations and structures from 1800 CE at Chandore Land use for Agriculture: FAO

If you want to make a fortune in food, forget about reading the future in coffee grounds and follow the big trends in the food service or the HoReCa (Hotels, Restaurants and Café) sector. This sector is traditionally the make or break point for any food innovation and it is often the first point of contact for exciting new products. We don't just mean cloud eggs, cronuts or Instagram friendly rainbow coloured food but also foods that are tech-forward flavor bombs like plant-based food and in the near future, cultivated meat. In the US, iconic chefs like David Chang (of Momofuku fame) have heralded the charge of products from companies like Impossible Foods in their restaurants. In a matter of a couple of years, these products went from being exclusively served in upscale restaurants to becoming ubiquitous in fast food chains. In India, will we see a similar trickle down effect from restaurants to our grocery stores and finally our homes? We pose this and many other questions about the food service world to Gauri Devidayal, the co-founder of exemplary Mumbai restaurants like The Table, Miss T and the industrial kitchen, Magazine Street Kitchen. SHOW NOTES: Food Matters India: Gauri Devidayal is the co-founder of the iconic Mumbai restaurants like the The Table and Miss T and the industrial kitchen, Magazine St Kitchen, under the umbrella of her company Food Matters India. A law graduate from University College London and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, England and Wales, she worked as a tax consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London and Mumbai before turning restaurateur and founding The Table. The Table: The Table, a celebrated restaurants in iconic Colaba neighbourhood in South Mumbai, offers globally inspired cuisine and hospitality since opening in 2011. From introducing the concept of small and large plates to providing a true farm to table experience with produce from its own farm, The Table continues to be at the forefront of Indian hospitality. With an ingredient-driven focus, global accents and nuances, the menu is a commitment to simplicity and purity of flavour, a philosophy inherited from San Francisco. Miss T: A restaurant and cocktail lounge located behind The Taj Palace, Colaba, Miss T features cuisine inspired by the food from the Asian Golden Triangle. Launched in 2018, it is a collaboration between two of the cities premier restaurant groups - Gauri and her partner Jay Yousuf who run the The Table and Magazine St Kitchen, and Abhishek Honawar, Pankil Shah and Sumit Gambhir, the team that pioneered the casual dining space with Woodside Inn, The Pantry Café and Bombay Vintage – Café & Bar. Magazine St Kitchen: Founded in 2016, this is a culinary playground for intimate dinners, cooking workshops and more housed in a restored heritage structure in Byculla. The Kitchen is also the base for the wholesale and retail bakery - Mag St. Bread Co and the group's catering arm, Dining Table. This 2500 sq. ft space features a fully air conditioned kitchen outfitted with custom built cooking suites of the highest caliber. It also includes a private dining area, fully operational bakery, climate-controlled butchery suite, and walk-in cold storage and deep freezer. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eater: Achieving the Impossible: How David Chang, Michael Symon, and Chris Cosentino helped sell foodie types on the Impossible Burger The Economic Times: Keto to low carb diets get a leg up at 5 stars Food Navigator Asia: Tackling the taste-health paradox: Indian snack manufacturers advised to focus on health, nutrition and Indianness Quartz: For Indian consumers living a healthy life trumps travelling the world or making better friends  

Feeding a billion plus Indians is big business - the Indian food and grocery market is the sixth largest in the world. Food processing in the country is worth over $250 billion and contributes 14% of India's GDP through manufacturing. So what does this prophesize for the growth of alternatives to meat, eggs, and dairy? Pegging the sector accurately and charting its expected growth curve is imperative to mapping how new protein can transform the food system in India. To help us do that, this episode of Feeding 10 Billion features Mark Kahn, the Managing Partner of Omnivore, an impact venture fund that invests in Indian startups developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture, and the rural economy. Mark's background in agri-business companies like Godrej Agrovet and Syngenta and his current investments in food and agri-technology startups make him uniquely well-positioned to tell us how analogous new protein could be to agri-tech and what the ecosystem needs to spawn a billion dollar plant-based or cultivated meat company. Show Notes- VENTURE FUNDS: Omnivore : Omnivore is an impact venture fund that invests in Indian startups developing breakthrough technologies for food, agriculture, and the rural economy. Omnivore believes the key to transforming rural India lies in increasing the profitability, improving the sustainability, and reducing the uncertainty faced by smallholder farmers.   Big Idea Ventures : Big Idea Ventures is solving the World's greatest challenges by supporting the World's best entrepreneurs. They are a Venture Capital + Accelerator Fund undertaking deeper due diligence in the world's best seed & growth stage companies using acceleration and investing in top performers. New Protein Fund I is their first fund and they are raising USD$50M+ to invest in the best companies in the plant-based foods, ingredients and alternative protein ecosystem. They combine capital and partnership to support and grow the world's most compelling plant-based food and alternative protein companies.   New Crop Capital : New Crop Capital is a specialized private venture fund that primarily provides Angel, Seed and Series A funding, with investments ranging from $50,000 to $1,000,000. They view conventional animal agriculture as an antiquated and inefficient food products system with serious vulnerabilities that is ripe for innovation and large scale disruption. They invest in companies developing meat, dairy, eggs and sea-food with plant-based ingredients or through cellular agriculture, as well as companies that promote and distribute these products. They are an evergreen fund managed by Unovis Partners, a global investment firm focused on companies developing replacements to animal protein products. Unovis' mission is to transform the global food system by investing in solutions that facilitate sustained behavioral change and eliminate the production and consumption of animal protein products. Post investment, Unovis supports founders by sharing their culinary knowledge, understanding of consumer habits, experience in food manufacturing, and network of industry experts to de-risk investments and build strong, resilient brands.     COMPANIES MENTIONED: TYSON FOODS: - Fortune: Tyson is the latest player to enter the hot plant-based meat market Quartz: The CEO of America's biggest processor of meat is betting on a meatless future GFI: Tyson Announces Animal-Free Products Coming in 2019 CARGILL: Protein Innovation: Cargill invests in cultured meats Cargill invests in cultured meat company Aleph Farms The Wall Street Journal: Cargill invests in startup that grows 'clean meat' from cells GFI: World's third largest meat producer Cargill invests in Aleph Farms' cell-based steak BIBLIOGRAPHY: GFI's State of the Industry Reports AgFunderNews: Why technology could make animals obsolete CK Prahalad and the Fortune at the Base of the Pyramid Size of the BOP population in India Impact of food processing on the fight against malnutrition

The world agrees we need to eat less meat and eat more plants if we want to save the planet from disastrous climate crises. But that's easier said than done. In fact, our meat consumption is only set to rise. It was the highest in the U.S. this past year at 100 kilos per capita and by 2030, continents like Africa and Asia Pacific will see tremendous growth in the appetite for protein. But it doesn't have to come from animal sources. Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as well as JUST are paving the way for meat made from plants, that taste, smell and even bleed like meat. And in India, companies like Good Dot and Only Great Foods / Supplant are pioneering the plant-based protein space. In this episode of The Power of Plant Protein, we talk to Abhishek Sinha of Good Dot and Chirag Sabunani of Only Great Foods to find out how they are growing the plant-based foods eco-system in India and approaching it from the polar opposite perspectives of an animal lover and a meat eater!. ORGANIZATIONS, INSTITUTES AND CELL-BASED MEAT COMPANIES MENTIONED: Impossible Foods : Impossible Foods is an American company headquartered in California that makes plant-based meat substitutes. Made from a blend of soy and potato protein, their meat's characteristic flavour comes from soy leghemoglobin, which makes their burgers cook, taste, smell and bleed like real beef. Impossible Foods have recently partnered with fast food companies in the US, including Burger King and White Castle, to offer the Impossible Burger to consumers all over the country. In September 2019, they partnered with grocery chains to sell a raw version of their ground beef in select stores in Southern California. Learn more here.  Beyond Meat : Beyond Meat's mission is to engineer the future of protein by moving beyond traditional and antiquated animal agriculture to create meat made from plants. In doing so, they aim to address climate change, food security, animal welfare and human health. Their plant-based burgers, crumbles and sausages are made primarily from pea protein. After going public in May 2019, Beyond had one of the year's best IPOs, with a post-IPO surge of over 700 percent. McDonald's recently started offering a "PLT" (plant, lettuce and tomato) burger made with Beyond Meat patties in Canada, the first significant step the fast food giant has taken towards offering more plant-based options on its menu. Learn more here and here. JUST : JUST is an American company based in California that makes plant-based mayonnaise (and mayonnaise-based salad dressings) and eggs, made from yellow split peas and mung beans, respectively. Their products are retailed across the US in grocery stores such as Whole Foods and Walmart. They can also be found on menus in US-based chains Bareburger, Veggie Grill and Silver Diner as well as Canadian chain Tim Horton's. They recently sold their 10 millionth egg. Learn more here. Good Dot : Good Dot is an Indian company manufacturing plant-based meat products that appeal to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. They use food technology to produce meat that is good for all — the animals, the planet and human health. Their CEO, Abhishek Sinha, a devoted animal lover, was a former Deputy Commissioner of Income tax before he quit to oversee Good Dot's R&D and manufacturing. Their products include Veg Bytz, Proteiz and Proteiz Plus. They recently rolled out their QSR initiative called GoodDo in major cities across India. Learn more here. Only Great Foods: Only Great Foods is a research, development and manufacturing firm that develops ingredients for gluten-free bakery with its primary customers in the US and Canada. Given Chirag Sabunani's passion to feed the world in better ways, and the movement of R&D heads from gluten-free towards 'plant-based' companies over the last year, Only Great Foods launched a sister entity, Supplant Foods, with a focus on developing and producing vegan ingredients for the ready-snacks and 'plant-based' sector. The new firm has a range of hydrocolloids specifically designed for the 'plant-based' industry, is now starting production of its patent-pending flavorless and functional chickpea flour, and is in the final stages of developing flavorless functional proteins from inexpensive and abundant feedstocks. The goal: supply these ingredients to plant-based companies in the West and help them improve quality while lowering costs AND eventually develop a range of plant-based eggs, dairy and meat for us in India!   SCIENTIFIC DEFINITIONS: Plant- based meat: Plant-based food refers to meat, eggs and dairy made from plants. They use a bio-mimicry approach to replicate the taste and texture of meat while some plant-forward products like seitan, tofu and tempeh, serve as functional meat replacements. Although not biologically classified as plants, fungi and algae based products are also included in plant-based foods. Hydrocolloids: A hydrocolloid is any substance that forms a gel in the presence of water. In food, hydrocolloids are functional carbohydrates used in foods to enhance their shelf-life and quality. These additives are used to modify the viscosity and texture of food products like ice cream, salad dressings, gravies, processed meats, and beverages. Some examples of hydrocolloids used in food include xanthan gum, gum arabic and agar. Learn more here. ADDITIONAL READING AND RESOURCES: Think fake burgers are just for vegetarians? 95% of Impossible's customers are meat-eaters. Read more here. Watch Bruce Friedrich, Executive Director of The Good Food Institute, throw away eight plates of pasta to explain how market forces and food technology will save the world here. If you'd like to learn more about what consumers think of plant-based and cultured meat — including how open they are to trying them — check out this report by Frontiers Journal here. Still not convinced plant-based meat tastes like the real thing? Here's an article by two beef farmers on how realistic Burger King's Impossible Whopper really is. Want to learn more about the rapidly evolving plant-based and cultured meat industries? Check out the Good Food Institutes State of the Industry reports here.

It may sound like science fiction, but it's coming to your plate in the near future! Cultivating our meat using just a small sample of animal cells is now a reality. Companies like Memphis Meats and scientists like Dr. Mark Post have pioneered this technology to develop products spanning the gamut of chicken, fish, pork, and other meats. Closer to home, companies like Shiok Meats are also cultivating seafood from cells. The future looks bright, but challenges remain. While in India we can leverage our expertise in the bio-pharma and manufacturing sectors to crossover to this new exciting field, there are barriers to entry and distribution in the form of high costs, regulation, and scientific know-how. In this episode of Feeding 10 Billion, Varun and Ramya talk to Dr. Sandhya Sriram of Shiok Meats to find out how she is working on breaking through these barriers to bring cell-based shrimp, lobster, and crab to our plates! NOTES- ORGANIZATIONS, INSTITUTES AND CELL-BASED MEAT COMPANIES MENTIONED: MEMPHIS MEATS : Memphis Meats is the world's first cell-based meat company. Co-founded by Dr. Uma Valeti, a Mayo Clinic trained cardiologist originally from Vijayawada, Memphis Meats' mission is to bring delicious and healthy meats to consumers by harvesting it from cells, instead of animals. Memphis Meats makes its food by sourcing high-quality cells from animals and cultivating them into meat - think of a farm at a tiny scale. They cut some steps from the current process (like raising and processing animals) and bring tasty nutritious meat to consumers - keeping the benefits of conventional meat but that's also better for animals and at scale uses significantly less land, water, energy and food inputs. Their process also produces less waste and dramatically fewer greenhouse gas emissions. MOSA MEAT : Dr Mark Post ate the $330,000 cell-based hamburger (created in a research project funded by Google co-founder, Sergey Brin) during a press conference in London in 2013, and two years later, he co-founded Mosa Meat to bring cultivated meat products to market. Mosa Meat intends to commercialise cultured meat (also known as clean meat) and bring it to plates everywhere. Thanks to significant scientific breakthroughs, Mosa Meat has scaled up their production process and brought the price of their meat down and intends to have their first products in the market in the next four years. SHIOK MEATS : Shiok in Singapore and Malay slang means fantastic and delicious. Shiok Meats is the first cell-based clean meat company in Singapore and South-East Asia. Their mission is to bring delicious, clean and healthy seafood like crustacean meats (including shrimp, crab and lobster) by harvesting meat from cells instead of animals. Their meats are animal-, health- and environment-friendly with the same taste, texture, more nutrients and no cruelty. INSTITUTE OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY (ICT): The Institute of Chemical Technology or ICT (formerly UDCT) is chemical technology research institute located in Mumbai, India. ICT partnered with the Good Food Institute, India, to set up the world's first government research centre for the development of clean meat. Read more about the partnership here  CENTRE FOR CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (CCMB): The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology or CCMB is an Indian biotechnology research establishment located in Hyderabad that operates under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. In April 2019, The Government of India's Department of Biotechnology granted $640,000 (Rs 4.5 crores) to CCMB and National Research Centre on Meat (NRCMeat) — the largest ever government investment for cell-based meat research. Read more here  What is cell-based meat? Cell-based meat (often referred to as clean meat or cultivated meat or even cultured meat) is genuine animal meat that can replicate the sensory and nutritional profile of conventionally produced meat because it's comprised of the same cell types and arranged in the same three-dimensional structure as animal tissue. It isn't imitation or synthetic meat; it's actual meat that is grown from cells outside of an animal. Dr Mark Post's Ted Talk at TedX Haarlem in 2013: Meet the new meat  What is Cellular Aquaculture? Cellular agriculture is defined as the production of agricultural products from cell cultures rather than from whole plants or animals. With growing interest in cellular agriculture as a means to address public health, environmental, and animal welfare challenges of animal agriculture, the concept of producing seafood from fish cell- and tissue-cultures is emerging as an approach to address similar challenges with industrial aquaculture systems and marine capture. Cell-based seafood—as opposed to animal-based seafood—can combine developments in biomedical engineering with modern aquaculture techniques. Biomedical engineering developments such as closed-system bioreactor production of land animal cells create a basis for the large scale production of marine animal cells. Aquaculture techniques such as genetic modification and closed system aquaculture have achieved significant gains in production that can pave the way for innovations in cell-based seafood production. Source: Cell-based Fish  : A Novel Approach to Seafood Production and an Opportunity for Cellular Agriculture, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. SANDHYA'S BLOG Curvaceous Women in Fashion: If you want to read Sandhya's blog on fashion, click here  DID YOU KNOW? World Firsts in Cell-based Meat: a) In 2013 Professor Mark Post created the world's first cell-based burger patty b) In 2016, Memphis Meats created the world's first cell-based meatball c) In 2017 Finless Foods created the world's first cell-based fish d) In 2017, Memphis Meats created the world's first cell-based chicken and duck RESOURCES: Read more about cultivated meat on GFI's website : Dr Liz Specht's Article on Food Technology: Is the future of meat animal-free?  Learn more about cultivated meat by taking our free online course If you would like to read more about these companies mentioned in the podcast: Techcrunch: Shiok Meats takes the cultured meat revolution to the seafood aisle with plans for cultured shrimp  Forbes: Michael Pellman Rowland on Shiok Meats  Rolling Stone: Would you eat a lab-grown duck breast? Inside the alternate meat industry  Inc, Why This Cardiologist Is Betting That His Lab-Grown Meat Startup Can Solve the Global Food Crisis  CNBC, Inside the San Francisco lab that's growing meat in a petri dish 

It is time for a major food revolution. The way we source animal protein has remained the same for thousands of years. We grow crops to feed to animals and rear those animals to eat their meat. But this system is broken - in terms of resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. Add to that antibiotic resistance and zoonotic diseases and it's clear that protein is no longer healthy for humans or this planet. But, as companies like Beyond Meat, Memphis Meats, and Impossible Foods are showing, a new way is possible. With meat made from plants or cultivated from cells, we could finally shift away from animal rearing as a platform and make the jump to a post-scarcity vision of protein. Join hosts Varun Deshpande and Ramya Ramamurthy of the Good Food Institute India as they set the stage with their colleagues Dhruvi Narsaria, Aishorjyo Ghosh and Siddharth Bhide, and talk about how they are driving this food revolution. Here is everything you wanted to know about plant-based and cell-based meat, eggs and dairy but didn't know where to look: GFI Library of Essential Reading:  DEFINITIONS: PLANT-BASED MEAT Plant-based food refers to meat, eggs and dairy made from plants. They use a bio-mimicry approach to replicate the taste and texture of meat while some plant-forward products like seitan, tofu and tempeh, serve as functional meat replacements. Although not biologically classified as plants, fungi and algae based products are also included in plant-based foods.  CELL-BASED MEAT Cell-based meat (also referred to as cultivated meat or clean meat) is genuine animal meat that can replicate the sensory and nutritional profile of conventionally produced meat. It is actual meat grown from cells outside of an animal. It is comprised of the same cell types and arranged in the same 3D structure as animal tissue.  DEFINITIONS: Scientific terminology used on the show: Gellation: "Gelation may be theoretically defined as a protein aggregation phenomenon in which polymer-polymer and polymer-solvent interactions and in which attractive and repulsive forces are so balanced that a well ordered tertiary network or matrix is formed. This matrix is capable of immobilizing or trapping extremely large amounts of water." Source: SCHMIDT, R. H. (1981). Gelation and Coagulation. Protein Functionality in Foods, 131–147. doi:10.1021/bk-1981-0147.ch007 Retorting: "The retort processing of food is a process of terminal thermal sterilization of pouched packed ready to eat food. Food is prepared by conventional method and then it is packed in the retort pouch available for different types of food. Finally these pouches are sterilized by using "Retort Process Sterilizers". Maru A. and Musyuni P. Advancement in Food Technology through retort processing and food safety guidelines. International Journal of Applied Biology and Pharmaceutical Technology. Volume: 2: Issue-3: July-Sept -2011.  Homogenization: "Homogenization of dispersed systems (suspensions and emulsions) refers to the reduction of the size of the dispersed particles by applying some sort of shearing process. Several homogenization methods are in use and they differ in the mechanism of applying shear to the fluid." Zeki Berk, Chapter 8 - Production of single-strength citrus juices, Editor(s): Zeki Berk, Citrus Fruit Processing, Academic Press, 2016, Pages 127-185, ISBN 9780128031339, https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-803133-9.00008-4. LINKS: If you want to know more about the companies and products discussed on the show, do check out these profiles: Impossible Foods Beyond Meat GFI Founder Bruce Friedrich's Wired Article: Nerds over cattle, how food technology will save the world. GFI Founder Bruce Friedrich's TED Talk on the next global agricultural revolution.  3D Meat Printing Jo's 2050 dream of 3D printing meat may not be that far off. Bio-printing has so far been used to build 3D tissues and organ structures for regenerative medicine but this technology can be adapted to build meat products for consumption. Companies like Nova Meat and Redefine Meat are working right now to bring 3D meat to market.   For more, please read: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/05/novameat-has-a-platform-for-3d-printing-steaks-and-has-new-money-to-take-it-to-market/ https://www.fooddive.com/news/redefine-meat-raises-6m-to-produce-3d-printed-meat-alternatives/562828/ You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the new and improved IVM Podcasts App on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios