Nicole Astra: Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. My guest today is founder and CEO of Nuritas. Please welcome Dr. Nora Khaldi.

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Hi, nice to be here. Thank you.

Nicole Astra: So, you are a scientist and a mathematician. You have affectionately called what you do "Data mining for molecules." Explain that.

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Yeah, so it's funny, but as humans, despite all the technological capabilities that we have, we're not really using nature and food in general to its full potential. We know more about space exploration than we do know about what we eat every single day. And that's literally crazy and I still don't understand that at all. In fact, more than that, not only do we know very little about what we eat, but we've really lost touch with nature and food in general. And this really has come as a consequence of the whole industrialization of food. For example, our ancestors used to use fermentation, bacterial fermentation to enhance the properties of a product. For example, milk or kefir from milk, kombucha from tea, for example. These are fermentations that not only enhance the shelf life of the product, but they actually enhance the properties, the health beneficial properties of the products.

So, it's not just an extraction of a health benefit within the product, it literally is the same exact finished ingredient. So, finished source material, but with added health benefit. And what Nuritas is really doing and what I as a scientist have done many years, is how can we access that potential of different foods around us and different source materials and different plants to really identify these incredible molecules that can improve human health or could replace active ingredients currently used in the food industry that are either synthetic, or are not performing in the right way?

Nicole Astra: And how are you hoping this reconnects us to the food we eat?

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Yeah. So, the question we asked our scientists at Nuritas when we first started, was, well, "How can we use that ancient wisdom and that connection to food that our ancestors had with the latest technologies to make truly natural ingredients, that are grass, are still the whole food ingredient, the whole food material itself, but that carry not only the nutritional benefit of the source material, but that carry also the health benefit of it?" So, more than just a nutritional benefit, you're carrying a very precise health benefit that can promote certain aspects like improving your glucose management or in general, improving your muscle, improving your energy, helping you to sleep, helping your immune system or boosting it and so forth. And that's really the question we ask. Can we really fuse both together to take that ancient knowledge and mingle it with new technologies to really explore nature better and identify these molecules and bring them to market?

Nicole Astra: This is a hot conversation because the question on the table is moving from just nutritious to really optimizing health. And, so what would you say to that as far as the technology leading us into optimal health and not just something that's going to nourish?

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Yeah, because by fusing that ancient understanding of how you can access benefits in food that otherwise you lose. Because for example, if you eat tea or drink it, you would get certain nutritional benefits and health benefits, but when you change it into kombucha, for example, you get a whole spectrum of new health benefits that you don't get in that source material originally.

So, the question here is how can we use technology to access those in a more precise way? Because obviously, our ancient ancestors did it, but did not do it in a precise way. So how can we access it in a more precise way, in a more targeted way, in a more personal way? Identifying the right plant with the right hidden benefits and targeting the right population with those benefits. And this literally is what we're doing here at Nuritas.

And what's interesting about this, is that not only are we allowing new health benefits to appear, so identifying new health benefits are important, but also replacing things that are in the food industry that are currently harmful by more natural ingredients that perform in the same way. And by doing that, we're adding a whole new spectrum to sustainability itself. Because if you don't use a plant for example, to its full potential, you are wasting it. And that's what these types of technologies are able to do and that's what Nuritas is doing.

Nicole Astra: You're going to be part of a panel discussion on leveraging AI to find new compounds and ingredients with Future Food-Tech coming up September 30th and October 1st. What can we expect from that discussion?

Dr. Nora Khaldi: I think it's important to mention that, bringing new technologies to an old area is always very challenging. You have, the very old, the very new, and it really is very challenging to marry them together and to actually create tangible products at the end.

So for example, at Nuritas, we don't stop at just a prediction on the computer or saying, "Okay, well, this plant has these health benefits." I think the biggest challenge is okay, how do we create these tangible products? So, how do we go from a prediction on a computer to physically creating something that is tangible that a food company could use in its own products. That ingredients not only are health promoting, for example, but they also obey this industrialization requirement, which is taste and texture and so forth.

And we've already launched two ingredients so far. And a lot of the products that will contain those ingredients will come on the shelves very soon, fingers crossed. But very soon we'll see global launches of our ingredients within different products. We have an array of other ingredients that we're developing behind the scene from gut microbiome, modulation to immune modulation, sleep and so forth. We've launched actually our own consumer product called Elio Restore on elioife.com, which again, is all of our ingredients and we're just doing customer testing and it's a pilot launch.

So, it's really creating going from taking ancient techniques, marrying them with technology and really concretely creating tangible products that industries as a whole, from food to dietary supplement to personal care and so forth can use on scale.

Nicole Astra: This is so exciting. The discovery has its own challenges and is innovation at work. But the scale up and distribution, I think that's really what people need to tune in to the panel at Future Food-Tech, because you really give people hope that it is possible. And this is what's emerging in the industry for a sustainable future for all of us.

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Nicole Astra: Thank you, Dr. Khaldi. We appreciate your time.

Dr. Nora Khaldi: Thank you.