After two years of hosting their Future Food-Tech Summit online, Rethink Events invited attendees to join in person for the event this year in San Francisco. One of those attendees was Mervyn de Souza, Chief Science Officer for Elohi Strategic Advisors, and he’s joining us to break down the event.
Joey Thurman: Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. Today, in person, Mervyn de Souza, Chief Science Officer, Elohi Strategic Advisors. Mervyn, thanks for being here.
Mervyn de Souza: My pleasure.
Joey Thurman: It's nice to actually see you're tangible. You're real, right.
Mervyn de Souza: That's right.
Joey Thurman: Now, FFT just happened and it was quite exciting because it was different from the past couple years, correct?
Mervyn de Souza: Absolutely. So the fun thing about FFT this year in San Francisco was being done in person. I think the energy was palpable. It was much needed, people have been doing this remotely and in a hybrid situation for about two years and I think everyone was ready to meet. So it was masks off, people hugging, shaking hands, having those really great conversations that you can only have organically when you are in person that just don't happen when you're online.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. I imagine you really felt that energy and people weren't freezing on you or to check sound or anything, right?
Mervyn de Souza: Yeah. Absolutely. And it was people reconnecting. So I think there was the need to reconnect. So it was fun for me to get catch up with people I had only seen on Zoom meetings or Team meetings for the past couple years and pick up, because I think the relationships, it's a small field and the relationships are really important in terms of moving things forward.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. I mean, especially that, and then some things, especially with food.
Mervyn de Souza: Yes.
Joey Thurman: That you're not able to do over Zoom. I mean, we don't have Smell-O-Vision or anything yet.
Mervyn de Souza: That's right.
Joey Thurman: This isn't Willy Wonka. So, like what was the most exciting thing in person that you're able to do?
Mervyn de Souza: Yeah. I think you touched on something really important. So, foods where it's at, right. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And I think with vegan and plant-based solutions, there are some amazing pictures, you can look at products that are made, plant-based and they look amazing, but do they taste amazing? So what was fun for me was to actually be able to taste these. So with Current Foods and their tuna, I'm a sushi fan and this looked like the real thing. It smelled like the real thing. It tasted like the real thing, they had the bounce right.
Joey Thurman: Really.
Mervyn de Souza: And it was just amazing. It was served up in a way that wasn't hiding anything. It was just the tuna. And so that was phenomenal.
Joey Thurman: Wow.
Mervyn de Souza: And then they had a Mongolian beef by Next Meats and the conversation at lunch and even afterwards, "Are you sure there wasn't beef?" So they nailed the texture and the taste. And there's a number of other options, but it was nice to taste and touch and feel and see and experience some of these products. Because at the end of the day, we're all consumers. And there's great technology, but the technology will only be successful if you get products out there that people love and like, and want to go back and buy again.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. I mean, if you're a business you want to be profitable, so your food should be palatable.
Mervyn de Souza: Absolutely.
Joey Thurman: And it was the biggest difference between, let's say a Mongolian beef that you would try now, versus even a couple years ago.
Mervyn de Souza: Well, I think it's a combination of looking at things holistically and the texture, the fibers, a lot of times plant-based products were okay in terms of maybe nutrition, but the quality really wasn't there. Now, there's just, you don't have to sacrifice quality when you're looking at a plant-based product. And what's fun is to hear people like, Magi Richani, who's the CEO and co-founder of Nobell Foods, really stress the need to have affordable food, not just for the haves, the have-nots. Looking at scalability so you can make sure they're affordable and put nutrition back in. So it's not just the plant-based buzz or hype, but getting past that and making sure it's good for you when you eat it.
Joey Thurman: So you have the taste factor, sustainability and the texture. I mean, it all kind of goes into it. Especially, I remember back in the day when I had my first plant-based protein powder, you go, "This tastes like plants." And now it's like, "Oh, this tastes like plants." Like it's a different context and it's actually delicious now. Now, speaking of that, like you guys gave out a couple of awards, what were a couple that were really unique to you?
Mervyn de Souza: So there were a couple of challenges that were out there. I think Danone had one really focused around texture, because when you think about dairy protein and you think about cheese, we've all had plant-based cheese and it may look okay, but it doesn't melt. It doesn't stretch.
Joey Thurman: Yeah, it's a little rubbery.
Mervyn de Souza: It's a little rubbery, how do you put it on pizza? What does it look like? And so they had a challenge out there to say, "Can you help us with texture?" And so the winner for that one was Alfred's Food and they have a technology called Planet, but it's really about layering proteins and the product that they had was amazing in terms of the fact that it bent, it was flexible. It stretched, it melted and they're still working on the texture, but the advancements that they've made have been amazing.
Joey Thurman: Wow.
Mervyn de Souza: And then Givaudan had one related to immunity where they wanted a challenge to the point about getting nutrition back and what have we learned from COVID? We need to take care of our health. We want to be good for the planet, but be good for people. And the winner there was Comet Bio and I love these folks because I've been talking to them for the last three to five years and they've advanced significantly, but their product is called Arrabina and it's fiber.
So it's Arabinoxylan, that's present in almost all plants. It's the most widely available fiber you have, but they extract it in a way that it can be used in applications broadly. So people can have foods and now make them functional by adding this fiber to it. And it's easy on the stomach. So when you think about fiber, you think about, "Okay, what's going to happen next?" But the interesting thing that Rich Troyer made, the CEO of the company, was millennials are not eating fiber for regularity, or for the reason that people used to think of fiber in the old days. They're eating fiber because they know about the microbiome. Or they're concerned about immunity and they want it to taste good. So it was interesting for me to see that evolution, in terms of where things are going and how the field is keeping up.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. And that's really interesting, because fiber, one thing that you think of when you go to more of a plant focused nutritional eating profile is the fiber. You're like, "Oh my God, my gut is going to get used to this and microbiome." But that you're able to absorb it now and maybe not have as much gastric distress while you're getting used to it. It's great that companies are doing that. And speaking of things that are innovative, are there any startups that you're really excited about?
Mervyn de Souza: Yeah. There's a couple that I thought were pretty amazing. So just to take a quick step back, what Future Food Tech did was also have these 60 second, now you're here now you're gone, in terms of pitches and then step up to the plate where they actually had companies come up with chefs, and cook on stage-
Joey Thurman: Like elevator pitches.
Mervyn de Souza: ... Like elevator pitches, but they were actually cooking food. And at the end of the session, when they were done, people were allowed to kind of swarm the stage and then just taste what was actually cooked on there. So this wasn't pretend, this was for real, right. So a couple that jumped out at me that I think you might have talked to at some point earlier, one was Sundial Foods and they have an amazing product that looked like the real thing, tasted like the real thing. And it was this skin that covers the protein. So when you're eating this drumstick and you take a bite out of it, it really feels like there's a crispy skin outside.
Joey Thurman: Wow.
Mervyn de Souza: There's protein inside. It tastes amazing. So it's all the way from the visual interaction with the product to the sensory perceptions, to the taste that you have, which was phenomenal. And then there was another one called Umami Foods that was very insightful in terms of the way they presented it. But this is a whole cut chicken breast. So these are an advancement in the field because a lot of people were doing crumbles and strips, but to get a whole cut, to look like a chicken breast is a big deal, but they've worked a lot to get the texture right. And something, they said that was amazing and insightful to me was, no two pieces are the same. And they said, when you go to a store, the two chicken breasts that you might get in a packet, don't look identical and you're okay with that.
But when you buy these plant based foods, sometimes they made in a mold or whatever and they look cookie cutter and the first thing you see is if you see a piece of rectangles or you see two things that's shaped identically that it looks artificial, it looks like it's contrived. So what they're doing is that no two pieces are the same. So from the time you buy this product to the time you cook it, where it caramelizes and you get those Maillard reactions on the outside, it looks, smells, tastes, feels like the real thing.
Joey Thurman: Wow.
Mervyn de Souza: o those were the kinds of insights that I thought were really, in hindsight, they seem like, "Duh." But, what a good way to think about it when you think about the consumer and its consumer acceptance and education as well.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. I mean, we eat with our eyes first.
Mervyn de Souza: Absolutely.
Joey Thurman: And then we smell it. So all of these factors have to be in place, especially if you're trying to go with a replica meat, if you will. Right.
Mervyn de Souza: That's right.
Joey Thurman: Now, what are you most excited about in the plant-based industry?
Mervyn de Souza: What I'm most excited about hearing and what I took away was the clarion call for cooperation. It's pretty clear that in this space we won't have one solution. It's going to be plants, it's going to be insects. It's going to be cell-based, it's going to be fermentation and there's room for all of them. So it was really great to hear multiple panels and speaker after speaker, talk about the need in this space for people to collaborate. So that you can actually get to something that's scalable. The other point was, sales don't equal scales. Right. And you have to scale something for it to be economically viable, for it to be accessible, for it to be affordable. So, that was exciting. And then the role of AI, so it's R&D 4.0 if you will, we've kind of blown through one, two and three where you're looking at artificial intelligence and machine learning, that's being employed to get the right ingredients.
And you've got companies like Natco, that are out there that are expanding really quickly. And when I talk to them, most of us, I'm used to 18 months, when you send an ingredient to a company to the time it's used in applications and scaled up, they can take things out in a matter of six weeks from lab to actually getting a product, six to eight weeks. They move that fast.
Joey Thurman: Wow.
Mervyn de Souza: But they're using artificial intelligence combined with their knowledge in the food application space to come to solutions that you might not have come to if you just sat in the lab and tinkered around. So, there's so much going on right now that we are really at an inflection point when you think about where this is going. But what's fun is, it doesn't have to go in one particular direction to be successful. And I think the fact that it is going in multiple directions is good for all of us.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. Mervyn, thank you so much for coming on Talking Plant Protein, Future Food Tech, truly multidirectional. I'm Joey Thurman and thanks for being here.