Nicole Astra: Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. We have a lot to discuss today. My guest today is Eugene Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Sophie's BioNutrients. Welcome, Eugene.

Eugene Wang: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Nicole.

Nicole Astra: Let's dive right in. And I would like to ask you to explain bioprocessing and why you think it is the future of protein production.

Eugene Wang: So, bioprocessing, simply put, is growing or doing a lot of work in a bioreactor. So, think of the previously pharmaceutical industry and nutraceutical industry. You see a lot of fermentation tanks, so to speak, that they're using to grow their microorganism or virus for the active ingredients they're looking for. That technology was previously reserved for the pharmaceutical industry and new nutraceutical industry. What we're trying to do is trying to make it affordable to all the food manufacturing industries going forward.

            So, bioprocessing, in my personal opinion, will be the future of all the food production, of all the material production as well, of all the agriculture aid production as well. So, simply put, is that going forward, we can grow a lot of nutrients in the very condensed confined meadow tank and grow it a lot more efficiently. And at the same time, we can contain all the contamination, all the pollution within the tank. And then we can deal with it very easily so that, number one: we don't have to deforest, number two: we don't have to create more pollutants in the environment, and number three: we can produce a lot of value in a very small confined space by 2050.

Nicole Astra: From the consumer's perspective, it gets a negative connotation, but in this industry, processed foods... That's what we're talking about. So, I want to get your take on it and why it's not all bad.

Eugene Wang: A lot of people pointing the fingers at us, the plant-based food industry, they're saying that most of the plant-based foods are too processed. Because why? Reading at the ingredient list, not only it's long, but also it has a lot of ingredients that you will really be struggling trying to pronounce it. Well, all that is true, but I think they fail to understand the thing that they think is natural and healthy is no longer as natural, as healthy as they think. Let's just take an example. A lot of my friends say, "Oh, you know what? I'd rather eat a real beef burger or Wagyu beef burger than a Beyond or Impossible beef burger." Because why? It's natural. There's no ingredient list. What they fail to realize is that if the animal farming industry were forced to put all the chemicals used during the lifetime of that animal on their label and make it an ingredient list, I can guarantee you, that list will at least be as long as what we're making on the plant-based meat and seafood, if not longer. In my lifetime, it possibly will be longer.

            Because why? There are estimated 1,200 to 1,600 different chemicals that we're using on all the animals. Now, then you may say, "What about seafood?" Maybe seafood is healthier. Well, quite frankly, you're wrong. Why? The ocean today, thanks to human activities, has become so polluted and so complicated. A lot of these sea creatures, in their lifetime, they're exposed to a lot of the heavy metals and a lot of the microplastics. So what you are taking in may not be the natural seafood that you envision that's available 30, 40, or even 50 years ago. What you are digesting in, if I can list that all as ingredient list, will be a lot of super surprising, heavy metal and microplastic that you don't want to take into digest system.

            Now, welcome to processed food. 2.0, what I call the like in Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. Why I call them processed food 2.0? Number one: the first reason they do the kind of foods that they're doing is not because of profit. It is because of a very noble and very important cause, which is the sustainability issues, which is the health issues of all the human beings on this planet. That's number one. Number two: thanks to the technology, the mobile phone you hold in your hand, and the social media, I say transparency is a must. No company, and possibly even no one, can escape the scrutiny of all the consumers' evaluation.

            So, if you do something tricky and you don't disclose it, sooner or later consumers will report you and you are screwed. So transparency in nowaday is a definitely must. And so that's why I said transparency is there for processed food 2.0. And last but not least is that these processed foods, processed food 2.0, actually holds a very key answer to our future, in the sense that are we able to rely on all the animal protein that we are eating today forever? With all the people, all the population on this plant still growing, and you think you can still have the animal meat that you have today at the same quality and at the same price? Think about it.

            That is a big question mark. And if you want to feed the world sustainably, you definitely need to rely on this processed food 2.0 in order to make the world a comfortable place, or at least as comfortable as we are enjoying today down the road in 20, 30 year or even 50 years into the future. And so that is reason why I think processed food 2.0 is very different and we should really do all we can to support it.

Nicole Astra: And the consumer's focus, like you said, is laser-focused right now on transparency, and their voice is really louder than ever before, and is driving some of this innovation to market. Are they going to be able to get on board with even the 3.0? There's some major things happening in this industry. I don't even know how to classify some of the things coming out of the new technology. So it leads the question to, are we mimicking doing something better or more nutritious for what we have now? Or are we creating something new?

Eugene Wang: That is what I call 64 million question I don't have answer.

Nicole Astra: Right.

Eugene Wang: A lot of the reasons why food manufacturers are doing processed food 2.0, and even possibly down the road 3.0, initially, in my opinion, is because the consumer feedback. Look at how popular Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are today. So, if they can be popular, that tells you that is exactly what the consumers are hoping, are looking for. Now, going forward, taking us 20, 30 years into the future, are we seriously hoping that all the consumers keep wanting the product evolution to be going this way? I don't know. I hope not. Because, quite frankly, using all sorts of efforts to create a plant meat that tastes just like the beef, to me, fundamentally, is wrong. That is something I totally agree as well.

            What I think the world or the industry should do is that, take it for example, tofu and tempeh. Those two things are perfect example. They use conventional, should I say the ancient people, use very natural technology and transform the plant-based protein into something that is flavoring-wise pretty good and texture-wise also pretty pleasant. But then again, they don't resemble any of the animal products that we know of today in the market.

            And that, in my personal opinion, really should be the way going forward in the sense that whenever we develop a new alternative protein, we should try to come up with some textured version of the protein that will tell people, " There are multiple ways you can eat this protein, but we're not simulating it to replace any of the animal product that you obviously had. We're trying to create a whole new experiences for you, a meat-like texture that's made by pea or by our microalgae. But then again, it doesn't have this beefy or chickeny flavor. It have its own totally distinctive flavor that you will still like it. And we can, by this way, minimally process it and make it a wonderful product."

            That, in a way, in my personal opinion, really should be the future of this industry. However, what I can tell you is that whatever the industry is doing, is definitely driven by the consumers. So, if the consumer, when they're talking about the product has to taste good, and that tastes good means that the thing they're eating still need to be beefy, still need to taste like pork, or taste like chicken.

            Then the consumers are asking for flying dragon or asking for the king's new clothes, that's something that would never happen. And the food manufacturer would just have to try to come up with all sorts of rationale, and all sorts of ways that is regulatory, okay. But then again, some of the consumer will say, "Okay, this is too much processed." So, I think consumers themselves have to take the blame of what the industry is doing today because everything that the companies are doing are really consumer-driven. If the consumers want the industry to do something differently, I think consumers fundamentally have to change their expectation. And then that will be the time the whole industry can look at a whole new different way to make these products [inaudible 00:12:06].

Nicole Astra: And do you see there's room for everyone or are we really at war, plant-based world versus meat-world?

Eugene Wang: I don't think we should be at war. And I will say that we will never have to be at war. To feed that many people by the year 2050, close to 10 billion people, we need to push at all fronts to solve one single biggest issue. And in this case, the food security issue, the food crisis that we're going to face down the road in the future, especially should I say protein crisis. And in order to solve that problem, we really have to push at all fronts, meaning that I guarantee you that animal protein is not going to go away in the foreseeable future, possibly not even within a hundred years. Because why? You will always have some folks who will still want to enjoy the animal flavor, and animal texture. But as the resources of this planet becomes scarcer and scarcer thanks to global warming, thanks to more deforestation, thanks to more population so that we have more urbanization, and so that there's less resources to grow those animal protein.

Nicole Astra: So a couple of questions out of that. One, do you see a classification clash coming our way?

Eugene Wang: Thanks to all the advance in our technology, our language, our jargons just cannot keep up with all the technology development. It is hard for people to change their language preference and use a totally new phrase or terms to describe something. That is why we oftentimes borrow the "0" conventional technology or "0" conventional phenomenon and to describe something new. Not that we're trying to steal the wisdom from the conventional industry, but that we're trying to make it easier for people to understand, for the majority of the consumers, these terminologies should not be a problem. So the clashing, in my opinion, should never really have to take a place at all because, quite frankly, it's a must for the industry evolution. And there are a lot of things that the companies and the regulatory bodies are already asking to make it perfect so that people don't get any kind of confusion.

Nicole Astra: We are looking to the future with you, Eugene. Thank you so much for joining us today on Talking Plant Protein.

Eugene Wang: Thank you.