I
love stories about Food.
But
I’d have never expected the likes of Microsoft Chairman Bill Henry Gates, Third
of His Name, to be supporting a company, Hampton Creek Foods, that’s making a
substitute for Eggs and is thus shaking up the Egg Production Market as
reported in “Bill
Gates-Backed Food Startup Hampton Creek Begins To Come Out Of Shell, Make Money”,
published 5/13/2014 @ 8:45AM by Ryan Mac, Forbes.
I
smell the extinction of the Egg Industry coming….. and a tasty new replacement
for Eggs based on Plant Proteins!
This
story resonates with me on a Vegetarian Level, as I was once and still am a
recovering Vegetarian. Especially as the UNFAO (United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization) states that for Beef Production from Cattle is
unsustainable and we need to consider using Insects as meats instead as
reported in my blog
article entitled “United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says Insects is the Meat for the next
20 years - Soylent Green may be avoided via Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom”.
In
that article I’d featured the CEO of Beyond Meat Ethan Brown and their process
of making Meat from Plant material. I’d also mentioned the work Dr. Koert van
Mensvoort, Assistant professor at the Eindhoven's University of Technology and
their patent pending process of Growing Meat in the Laboratory from Scratch.
Hampton Creek Foods is headed by CEO Josh Tetrick and his story is very
interesting, unlike most Vegetable munchers I know!
Hampton
Creek Foods is sorta similar to these other companies, as like Beyond Meat,
they make a Protein based product via blending Plant Proteins in such a manner
as to mimic the texture and flavor of the real thing, in this case Eggs.
Yes,
Jamaicans, you read that right!
This
dude’s planning to mash up the Jamaican Egg Industry, or rather the Export
side, by making a replacement for Eggs. The same Eggs which are currently and
STILL experiencing a shortage in Jamaica
thanks to a Meat shortage created by a trend towards Ovo-Lacto Vegetarianism as
stated in my blog
article entitled “Egg
Shortage in Jamaica set to continue to March 2014 - Poor Agricultural Planning
to blame as Cheap Meat shortages forcing many to become Ovo-Lacto Vegetarians”.
But
before you grab your pitchfork and start light fires and piling wood high in
order to burn Hampton Creek Foods CEO Josh Tetrick, you might need to know that
this is inevitable given the source of Eggs and Meat. Both are unsustainable in
the long term, suggesting that these above companies may not be the only one on
this wild quest to replace Eggs and Meat.
It’s
for this reasons that I’ve decided to do an article on Hampton Creek Foods.
Hampton Creek Foods –
Company named after a Dog taking on Global Egg Industry
They’re
basically developing a replacement for Eggs based on using Plant Proteins
blended to taste like Eggs, a company that Bill Gates III began supporting back
in November 2013 as stated in “Bill
Gates' Food Fetish: Hampton Creek Foods Looks To Crack The Egg Industry”,
published 11/23/2013 @ 8:45AM by Ryan Mac, Forbes.
Currently
Hampton Creek Foods can count the following high profile VC (Venture Capital)
Backers:
1.
Bill Gates and his Gates Foundation
2.
Jerry Yang’s of AME Cloud Ventures
3.
Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong billionaire and
owner of Horizon Ventures
4.
Peter Thiel’s and his Founders Fund
5.
Tom Steyer, a tree-hugging Billionaire
6.
Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures
33
year old Hampton Creek Foods CEO Josh Tetrick, got radicalized into the War on
Meat even as he still chomped on Chicken
wings and buttered biscuits when he was baptized into Vegetarianism while doing
his Law Degree at University of Michigan in 2008. A stint at the now
hard-to-find-because-it-doesn’t-exist-anymore website 33needs whetted his
interest further in issues relating to Globalization and the lengths to which
Developing World countries go to produce food.
Either
that or his childhood friend Joshua Balk was REAL convincing, resulting in him
plunking down US$37,000 in 2011 to jumpstart his friend's company named after
Balk's Dog, i.e. Hampton Creek Foods. Very Strange Dog, I’ll admit, being as
the company named after the Dog makes a substitute for an ingredient that may
already be in Dog food and worse, is an animal that likes Meat.
The
62 strong San Francisco Company has plans to expand production facilities in
China and is Growing Strong, Game of Thrones Style, with 100 employees by year
end. The end of the 2014, the Year of the Horse, will see Hampton Creek Foods
making US$30 million, up from the same US$1 million when they’d launched
officially in November 2013, mostly on the sales of their Mayonnaise products,
which uses their Replacement Egg Protein made from Plant Proteins.
Hampton Creek Foods and
their Egg Replacement – Vegetable Proteins give Meat the Kibosh
Now
it's 2014 and Hampton Creek Foods has a team of Ronin Biochemists sans
Unilever and Otis Spunkmeyer taste-testing concoctions of Plant Proteins
blended from a variety of products, all these Plants of course great sources of
Natural Plant Protein:
1.
Castor Beans
2.
Corn
3.
Red Bean
4.
Sorghum
5.
Soya
In
short, the very same beans and peas that Chickens eat and convert to Protein
are being used by his Research Team to make Egg Protein. Dabbling with the
molecular structures of 1.500 Plants is a great deal of research that has
yielded such Binding agents such as Molasses and Canola Oil to improve the
texture of the Proteins.
These
Plants Proteins have the advantage of being safer than Protein derived from
Animal sources as they aren’t as susceptible to spoilage as regular Meat does.
Binding Agents make sure that their replacement Egg Protein mix not only
emulsify like a normal Egg White but also taste like one as well.
Interestingly
too, its taste is allegedly spot on with Eggs. The packaging will be much
different though; mostly vacuum-sealed Plastic Satchets with the artificially
produced Egg Yolk and Egg White separated to the convenience of Chefs to be
used in their Baking Process. Being as it’s NOT Eggs i.e. has no shell to
dispose of, it’s readily available in a Liquid form in a vacuum-sealed Plastic
Pouch, making it a possible replacement to Liquid Egg Processing in US of A.
This
is great for Chefs and Food Processors as that means that this Replacement Egg Protein
will not go bad and can be stored indefinitely once kept in its vacuum sealed
plastic pouches. However, for handicrafts like the Russian art of Easter Egg
Painting as described in my blog article
entitled “How
to make Glow-in-the-Dark Etched Easter Eggs - Russian Tradition with a Modern
Jamaican Twist makes Katy Perry Roar”, the blow cause by the extinction of Egg
Production may be a little severe if you have no Egg shells to paint on.
This
is the same Liquid Eggs that our Minister of Agriculture Roger Clarke wants to
use to replace Margarine and Butter in the making of Nutri-Buns for healthier
meal options for Primary and High School Children as stated in my blog article
entitled “Ministry
of Agriculture to approve Fruit and Liquified Eggs for School Feeding Program
even as Pork faces Glut - How Solar Farming will make Jamaica's Food Security
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2”.
Tumeric
or Annotto seeds may be masticated, emulsified and mixed into the Plant Protein
Suspension to produce the Bright Yellow Colours of the Egg Yolk, which they can
package along with the Egg White or sell separately to Food Processors to use
in their Food Production.
The
result is a blended Replacement for Egg Protein that’s more “Natural” than the
so-called Naturally produce Eggs made from force-fed GM (Genetically Modified) Chickens
as to quote Hampton Creek Foods CEO Josh Tetrick: “Putting a female bird in a
cage in a space so small that a female bird can’t flap her wings for two years,
I find that the antithesis of natural”.
It’s
also a big improvement on other companies that makes Replacement for Egg Protein,
such as ConAgra’s Egg Beaters, whose products use xanthan and guar gums to add
body and stability to the Egg but mainly make Eggs for the Food Processing
Industry.
Hampton
Creek Foods is the first company I’ve
come across that's making an Egg Protein Replacement that apparently is just
blending of Plant Proteins and adding Herbs, Spices, Sugars and Oils to make a
formula that can pass for Eggs sans
the Shells
US Egg Industry gets
defensive - Hampton Creek Foods to make Eggs obsolete by 2017
Ultimately
that's where the Big Money lies. Not in making Products from their Egg
replacement, but from selling Eggs to Large scale Food Manufacturers on the
same arguement as Beyond Meat: Eggs produced from Plant Protein is cheaper than
“Natural” Eggs.
I
say “Natural” as the ingredients used in Hampton Creek Foods are ironically,
more natural than the very Chicken produced Eggs, being as they are made
directly from Plant Proteins, the very same Plant Proteins that many Chickens
consume.
So
not only is it saving Chickens all over the World, it’s also cheaper to make Eggs
from Plant Proteins than via feeding animal under inhumane conditions to make
them lay Eggs. In the words of Hampton Creek Foods CEO Josh Tetrick, quote:
“Food to me is broken for a lot of reasons, but the best sort of manifestation
of that is the world of intensive animal agriculture”.
According
to Hampton Creek Foods, the ratio of Energy input to Food Energy Output used to
make Eggs from Chickens is 39-to-1, whereas Hampton Creek Foods Ratio comes in
a decent 2-to-1. What that means is a Natural Egg Substitute that half the cost
of Traditional Egg production, a factor that should have US Egg Producers
worried about Hampton Creek Foods dominating their $42.5 billion market.
When
blended in to their Mayonnaise demonstration product, Just Mayo, it costs Whole
Foods, a distributor of Non-GM (Genetically Modified) Foods, 10% less to
purchase and sell than Regular Mayonnaise made with Eggs. Mayonnaise is a US$11.3
billion and with Whole Foods staffing some 120 stores across the continental
United States of America.
Hampton
Creek Foods currently has distribution deals for its Just Mayo Mayonnaise and
other Replacement Egg Protein Based products with the following companies:
1.
Safeway
2.
Costco
3.
Kroger
4.
Hong Kong’s ParkNShop
5.
AmazonFresh
They
are also doing joint research with the following Food Processors General Mills,
owners of Brands such as Betty Crocker and Pillsbury to see if their cheaper Egg
Protein Replacement can be used in their Products and still maintain quality
and taste. If they can crack that Egg, Hampton Creek Foods along with Beyond
Meat can make the Egg and Meat Production Extinct by 2017!
No comments:
Post a Comment