What is life without learning from our mistakes? For Eat Just, which is relaunching its popular and much-litigated mayo, this is a definite do-over. Ideally, it goes more smoothly for the embattled startup.
Just Mayo hasn’t been on the shelves since 2019. But starting today, you can pick up a jar in two flavors—original and chipotle—in the refrigerated aisle of Whole Foods Market stores nationwide.
Read MoreThe cofounder and CEO of Eat Just and Good Meat is embattled yet again. He’s got advice for his younger self—and everyone else in alternative proteins.
He’s certainly war-scarred from his efforts to mainstream first plant-based replacements for mayonnaise, then eggs, and more recently cultivated meat from chicken cells.
Read MoreYou know things are hot when celebrities are signing term sheets. While helpful, it’s not their money that’s propping up the food-tech ecosystem. So the question here is this: Do VCs have the fortitude to continue supporting the more than 150 startups seeking to design a cell-cultured analogue to cheap meat? Perhaps the better question is: Should they?
Read MoreMycelium may not be popular enough to be considered a hot ingredient, but in the alternative protein space, it’s fire. The biggest name selling myco-protein foods is Quorn, which you can find in the frozen aisle, but Boulder-based Meati is launching its “chicken” jerky that will compete in a far more ambitious category: snacks.
Read MoreTissue engineering doesn’t sound very foodie, but turns out it’s the primo specialization needed for reimagining meat. Experts in the field aren’t easy to steal away from the medical world, but it’s happening. Sometimes they even launch their own company, like Ali Khademhosseini, who started Omeat.
Whether it’s food or medicine that’s more crucial to humanity is up for debate.
Read MoreCell-cultivated meat may appear to be proceeding ever closer to being on sale in the United States, but production, cost, and formulation issues are still bedeviling the one-time disruptors.
This month, the USDA approved labeling of the food once called lab-grown meat. In quick succession the regulatory agency granted Eat Just and then Upside Foods approval of what the startups could call their product. The verdict: cell-cultivated meat.
Read MoreEric Schulze helped Upside Foods score the first U.S. regulatory approval for its cultivated chicken, and he’s just getting started.
Eric Schulze likes to cook meat. Roasted, basted, smoked, rubbed, cured, pulled, even spatchcocked—you name the preparation, and he’s tried it. This makes Schulze a typical American carnivore, but his habits do set him apart at his day job.
Read MoreYou can now order cultured meat for dinner, as long as you live in Singapore. This landmark move comes from Eat JUST, which now sells chicken nuggets made from a hybrid mix of plant protein and cultured chicken cells.
Read MoreYou may have overlooked this tiny organism until now, but 2017 might very well be the year of algae. Don’t believe it? It’s already in baking mixes, cookies, milk, nondairy creamers, vegan eggs, salad dressing, ice-cream, smoothies, and protein powders, to name a few. Soon, the extract from spirulina––a form of microalgae––will provide the color for blue M&Ms. Prefer the green ones? It can do that, too.
Read MoreGeorge Tenedios, the owner of Fresh&Co, a small New York chain of fast-casual restaurants, is constantly on the hunt for new ingredients. He’s experimented with all sorts of odd meat substitutes, from homemade tempeh to Silicon Valley darling Beyond Meat. But even he was stumped by a photo of what appeared to be a tuna sushi roll—shiny, bright-red "meat" with sesame seeds dotting the top—but which he knew was made not from any fish but from tomatoes.
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