Each day at 5 p.m. we collect the five top food and supplement headlines of the day, making it easy for you to catch up on today's most important natural products industry news.

April 20, 2018

2 Min Read
5@5: A better way to manufacture meat alternatives? | New stats on food waste
Thinkstock/Zcarovskiy96

Seattle Food Tech raises $1M to jumpstart plant-based meat manufacturing

Launched just last year, Seattle Food Tech is already attracting investors for its efforts to create a “chicken” nugget that’s scalable and price competitive with meat, made from wheat, oil, chicken flavoring and corn. Seattle Food Tech says its secret sauce is in the manufacturing—the company hopes to eventually create a facility designed especially to manufacture plant-based meat substitutes on a large scale. While other meat alternatives turn to restaurants and retail stores to sell their products, Seattle Food Tech plans to sell its products wholesale to school and hospital cafeterias. Read more at The Spoon…

 

The staggering environmental footprint of all the food that we just throw in the trash

New research from the University of Vermont, University of New Hampshire and the U.S. Department of Agriculture suggests that the average American wastes about a pound of food per day—more than previously though. That’s costing us a Pennsylvania-sized amount of cropland, 4.2 trillion gallons of water and 2 billion pounds of fertilizer, according to the research, published in PLOS One.  But the study's most interesting finding may be that healthier diets tend to yield more food waste, from fruits and vegetables. Read more at The Washington Post…

 

Sugar cereals not just for breakfast anymore … millennials eat them as a snack

Cereal sales have been on a downward slope over the last several years as alternative breakfast products, like yogurt and bars, have grown. But now manufacturers are finding an opportunity to pitch their sugar-laden products for other eating occasions. Mintel reports that in a recent survey, more than half of millennials said they eat cereal as a snack. Read more at Healthline…

 

Kicking Horse Coffee CEO Elana Rosenfeld on building a business that reflects her personal ethics

Premium beans and cheeky marketing have helped the business that Elana Rosenfeld started in her garage in 1996 find retail traction. Her parents were gourmet food retailers-turned-manufacturers, and she started in the food and beverage business operating a fruit stand and then a smoothie bar. But her area in British Columbia didn’t have a coffee roaster, so she gave it shot, bringing to market one of the first organic and fair trade whole bean coffee products. A testament to its success since then, Lavazza, an Italian coffee company, bought an 80 percent stake in Kicking Horse last year. Read more at The Globe and Mail…

 

P&G tries a growth supplement

Procter & Gamble has made a $4.2 billion bid for Merck’s consumer unit, which makes Seven Seas vitamins. The deal would fill in gaps in P&G’s health and wellbeing product set—which accounts for 12 percent of its annual sales—but would pay a small return on invested capital to start. Read more at Bloomberg Gadfly…

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