Within days of each other, the city and student organizers hosted sustainable food innovation events in Cambridge. The city’s was a global food industry gathering at the Cambridge Innovation Center. Three days later, on April 11, more than 450 students from 61 universities in 13 countries celebrated plant-based food innovations on Harvard’s campus. The student-organized conference Food4Thought, in its second year, spotlighted the many pathways into research and jobs open to young adults who crave a kinder and more sustainable future through plant-based foods. The co-occurrence of events, done well ahead of Tuesday’s celebration of Earth Day – the annual rallying of consciousness around climate change, protecting biodiversity and preserving our ecosystems – made Cambridge briefly center stage for trends in sustainable food innovation.
Food startups get their day in the sun
The April 8 event “Experience the Future of Food Tech at GOe On the Road” featured hosts from the Basque Culinary Center, the founding hub of the Gastronomy Open Ecosystem. Launching in October in San Sebastián, Spain, the organization explores the possibilities in culinary education, gastronomic science and research in the social sciences, design and “feeling” as they relate to food. The evening at the Venture Cafe of the Cambridge Innovation Center attracted entrepreneurs, chefs, scientists and interested others for discussions and a live pitch competition.
A round of introductions and briefly remarks included Boston area academics and industry experts hailing from Human Centered Solutions, Branchfood, Samband Consulting and Boston University’s Gastronomy and Food Studies programs. The panelists gave high marks to the availability of opportunities, talent and capital in the sector here, with some noting that Cambridge and its surroundings surpass New York City in connections with Europe and benefits from a constantly rotating student population.
The pitch competition contenders were Carbon Tag, a “one-stop shop” for product carbon accounting; FooQai, artificial intelligence to help restaurant kitchens enforce plating standards and analyze ingredients and costs; Harmony, a hypoallergenic baby formula made with precision fermentation; High Time Foods, shelf-stable plant-based meat alternatives; Nanolyx, eco-friendly plant-based antimicrobials; and the winner, Mycsology Foods, which uses fermented, dried and ground chickpeas in a “superblend” for use in snack foods. Mycsology founder Kat Tarasova and team will compete during a final contest in Spain on May 16 against Danish, Dutch, English and Japanese winners of other “On the Road” events held during the past few months.
Students cross-pollinate at Harvard
Student organizers outlined their goal of “zero emissions, zero hunger and zero cruelty” at the Food4Thought Festival after the CIC event. They also added a healthy pinch of joy in their celebration of food, science and community April 11-13.
Some sobering data by The Good Food Institute’s Bruce Friedrich kicked things off, including a reminder that more than 20 percent of climate change is attributable to animal agriculture. As president of a global network of nonprofit science think tanks, science and corporate engagement, Friedrich said he’s learned that people can more easily wrap their heads around lab-grown cultivated meat than they can plant-based meats.
“On the plant-based side, it’s clear that for some reason people think science isn’t up to the challenge of making something that is absolutely identical from the point of view of the consumers,” he said. “But the science of plant-based meat might even be quicker and easier than the science of cultivated meat.” Friedrich used the increase in electric-vehicle sales as an analogy for people’s potential switch to plant-based food.
The weekend included field trips, including one to the Kaplan Lab at Tufts University (home to the U.S. Department of Agriculture-backed National Institute for Cellular Agriculture), a career fair and a range of workshops and panel discussions. A team of researchers flew in from the University of Campinas in Brazil to discuss their country’s cutting-edge food technologies, medical experts discussed children’s nutrition and public health, students from Denmark’s Protein Diversification Academy led a workshop on cultivated meat acceptance by consumers and venture capitalists shared insight on effective pitches for social impact businesses. There were also panels on upgrading university dining, food sovereignty in Latin America and a presentation by the University of Nigeria Alt Protein Project.
Amid the international flavor, some local faces popped up. Former Plant Pub co-owner Pat McAuley stood at The Good Food Institute’s table during the career fair in his role as startup innovation lead for the institute.
The fair of 20-plus employers included the High Time Foods team, staff from the nonprofit Food for Free and Insa Mohr from Offbeast, the meat-alternative company formerly known as Mooji.
Plant-based restaurant chain Clover’s Kiernan Schmitt also visited, sharing interesting tidbits at the panel “The Future is Plant-Based: Bridging Research, Industry and Impact,” including that 90 percent of Clover customers are meat eaters who are choosing vegetarian and that the chain has had great success adding Somerville-based Tender Foods’ patented plant-based chicken to sandwiches and bowls.
Tender’s products, available only on the menus of a few local restaurants, were absent from the festival and not even represented during the Next Gen Food Expo. That lunchtime event featured locals Ramen O’ Bowl, Teahouse Ten One and Veggie Galaxy handing out treats. It also brought in regional producers.
The festival also included several competitions. Aspiring cultivated meat scientists pitched plans involving “exogenus and endogenous scaffolds,” students presented research and teams formed to solve a real world food-system challenge, the last of which was judged by representatives from Bain & Co., McKinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group.
A primer on legislation affecting foods and a session on protein sourcing from algae, seaweed and kelp were some of the final talks before the jam-packed festival conference reached its close.
Choosing among the many discussions, often happening concurrently, in tandem with the dashes between buildings to get to them took more than a little stamina. But through all the information and urgency remained a joyful and palpable sense of possibilities, that we are in a new world of food with room for everyone.
A stronger
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