Walnuts are a healthy nut but are often only looked at during the holidays in pies and sweets. This heart and brain-healthy nut is being used in many ways and is even now being incorporated into the alternative meat product lines with Walnut meat. Keith Seiz joins TPP and gives us the low down on crushing ingredients featuring walnuts.
Joey Thurman:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein, I'm Joey Thurman. Today my guest Keith Seiz, we're going to talk all about walnuts, Keith, welcome.
Keith Seiz:
Thank you for having me.
Joey Thurman:
Now Keith, what's your title and your job?
Keith Seiz:
Yeah, I'm with the California Walnut Commission, I focus on food and beverage manufacturers, so my job is to get more food and beverage manufacturers to develop products, whether that's beverage products, bakery foods, plant based alternatives, all using walnuts.
Joey Thurman:
Okay. Now why walnuts? Why do we need to be eating walnuts? Why is this such a good option?
Keith Seiz:
Yeah, there is a whole lot of reasons. It's funny because we're kind of on this kick of do more with walnuts because people think of walnuts as kind of that holiday nut, something to either crack the big shell or to put in a pie. But if you think about walnuts as kind of an ingredient that could go in a bunch of different products, the opportunities are limitless.
Keith Seiz:
Kind of the big reasons that people are focused on right now is obviously healthy eating. So with it being February and American Heart Month, it's really great because walnuts are a certified heart healthy food, so that's one of reasons why we should be eating more walnuts.
Keith Seiz:
The other big reason is omega three fatty acids. We all know the benefits of those. If you look at all the nuts walnuts are the only nut that is a significant source of omega-3 fatty acids. So it's a plant-based source, too, so as the growth of plant-based food comes there's only limited kind of ways you can get those omega-3s from plant-based sources and walnuts is a great one.
Joey Thurman:
Yeah. I always say walnuts kind of look like a brain and they're also good for your brain, right?
Keith Seiz:
Yes.
Joey Thurman:
That kind of makes a lot of sense, oh yeah, walnuts can help the brain, and those omega-3s with a host of positive benefits and walnuts are now being used in a number of different ways. Can you talk about a few of those ways that might be obvious and one that is probably not so obvious.
Keith Seiz:
Yeah. I'll start with the not so obvious one first because it's really the most exciting I feel, which is a plant based ground meat. So everybody who's listening to this knows the popularity of plant-based foods and walnuts kind of offer a really unique take on how you can create really a clean label, and I mean super clean label plant-based ground meat. If you think about a walnut, put it in a food processor at any other legume in there, whether that's a black bean or a garbanzo bean, and pulse it a couple times and you get right there a pretty close to a ground beef substitute. It's pretty unbelievable how close that texture is. There's a lot of food service restaurants mainly on the taco side that are actually serving plant-based ground meat tacos using walnut meat. And all you have to do is really create that mixture and then season it with whatever you want, and you've got a really great product.
Keith Seiz:
We also have a couple packaged sauces out there now, one from Canadian based Como Foods and another one from Hudson Grain here in the United States, that they're making bolognese sauce. So traditional meat sauce, if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you can't eat bolognese anymore sauce. But what they're using is a combination of walnuts because if you think about it's not too hard, not too soft that texture, and putting it in those kind of packet sauces so you can get it. So that's really the kind of exciting thing is this use of walnuts and some sort of legume, and then seasoning, and you have a shelf stable really a ground meat.
Keith Seiz:
Where we're also seeing a lot of excitement is on the food bar side. So whether that's a energy bar, whether that's a granola bar, things like that, walnuts are very good with the omega-3 fatty acids and all the polyunsaturated fats, but they also have countless other health benefits. There's tons of research that we follow and kind of invested on a regular basis that really looks at walnuts and their ability to benefit everything from healthy aging, things like cognitive decline, how you said it looks like a brain if you cut it open. I think mother nature is trying to tell us something. So there's a whole host of things, but I think the food bar side is really where somebody can take advantage. Those products right now already have lots of nuts in them and creating something functional based like a functional with omega-3 fatty acids food bar is a really great way to give that consumer kind of that extra benefit in a truly clean label product.
Joey Thurman:
Yeah, I'm going to have to try to make my own walnut meat if you will.
Keith Seiz:
Yes.
Joey Thurman:
I mean, that sounds really interesting. I could even see how people are trying to make a transition from being more carnivoristic, if that's a word right, to being plant based, maybe they even mixed it together. So you start cutting down the meat consumption but yet that's really interesting, I never would have thought about walnut tacos, but tacos are my favorite food so I might be going for a little walnut meat.
Keith Seiz:
Yeah, no, it's interesting, it's something that we've been promoting and current times it really didn't really take off until Lizzo did a TikTok about how she was making a vegan nachos and she was using brussel sprouts and a walnut ground meat. And ever since that day the buzz has been huge, that everybody's now looking at walnut says, wow, I didn't even think about this.
Joey Thurman:
Wow, Lizzo, little nutty, how many times [inaudible 00:06:02]
Keith Seiz:
Exactly.
Joey Thurman:
I couldn't talk to a walnut guy and not say nutty.
Keith Seiz:
I'm used to all the puns, all the puns.
Joey Thurman:
All right. Now coming up you're speaking at Future Food Tech in late March, can you tell me about that discussion?
Keith Seiz:
Yeah, it was really a great panel because it's one thing I'm passionate about and it's what I kind of considered the holy grail of product development. How do food manufacturers, how do beverage manufacturers, create something that is healthy but also tastes great? So this notion of there's no need to sacrifice anything to really eat healthy and indulgent products. So whether you call it helpful indulgence or the big thing now is permissible indulgence, I'm going to be sitting on a panel to talk about that. And whenever we think about walnuts we've already talked about all the health benefits, but I mean think of your favorite holiday bakery foods, your brownies, your cookies, so many of those products have walnuts in it. Their kind of original positioning was this notion of this is an indulgent kind of premium product way to take a normal cookie into something special, or a normal into more premium, more indulgent by adding walnuts. But now we can see that being used in really any category to bring not only those health benefits, but also that really indulgence and premium feeling of the product.
Joey Thurman:
I love that, all the way from cookies to walnut meat. Keith, thanks for coming on and where can people find you?
Keith Seiz:
You can find us at walnuts.org.
Joey Thurman:
Awesome, appreciate it.
Keith Seiz:
Perfect. Thank you.