Food Truths

Today's guest is part 1 in a conversation with meat scientist, Brian Brozovic. Brian is a full-stack meat science, quality, and consumer expert at Empirical Foods that helps meat producers and processors turn exceptional animal genetics into high-quality meat. Brian's expertise is unique, as he straddles the line of innovation in the conventional agriculture sector while also being very on top of...

The Case for Cultivated Meat" (Part 1 of 2: Scaling, Capital, and the Path to Parity) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Maureen Ogle spent years tracing how Americans built one of the most productive and destructive food systems on earth. Her book, The Price of Plenty, is a history of meat in America: from colonial abundance to industrial consolidation to the present conundrum of cheap food and its costs. On this episode, Ogle unpacks the political economy of American meat: how the "paradox of plenty" shaped regula...

Dr. Andrew Stout trained in the lab that created the world's first cultured hamburger. Now, as the first full-time cellular agriculture faculty hire at Tufts University, he's building the next generation of food scientists and rescuing intellectual property from defunct startups to keep the field moving forward. In this episode, Stout and I dig into what it actually takes to design a new food from...

Summary In this episode of Food Truths, Eric interviews Bruce Friedrich, founder of the Good Food Institute and author of the brand new book, Meat. Eric and Bruce discuss the evolution of meat consumption, the inefficiencies of traditional meat production, and the rise of alternative proteins. They explore the challenges and criticisms faced by the alternative protein industry, the economic and en...

In this live onstage session, Food Truths host Eric Schulze discusses the rapidly changing food business and regulatory environment, including the just-announced (an hour before the panel!) new food pyramid, with a fantastic panel of food experts. Eric's guests in this session include Juliana Bernalostos-Boy, the Chief Innovation Officer for Ingredion; Dana McCauley, the CEO of the Canadian Food I...

Did you know the most abundant protein in the world is from plants, not animals? You eat it in ever green leafed plant, but now CEO Ross Milne and his team of New Zealand-based Leaft Foods are bringing this protein, Rubisco, to your plate. Rubisco is one of the most important proteins to ever exist - it ensures light and CO2 get converted into sugar and releasing that ever-so-important Oxygen for...

Today's guest is Meenal Lele, CEO and Founder of Hanimune Therapeutics. Meenal joins the show to discuss a complex and frustating issue for many parents and children: food allergies. Food allergies are becoming more frequently diagnosed as we learn how children's genetics, environment, and microbiomes develop in response to foods. Meenal's food brand, Lil Mixins, is solving this with thoughtful ad...

Today's guest is Naman Tekriwal, Co-Founder and COO of Breer, a Hong Kong-based company that makes beer from excess bread that would be otherwise wasted or thrown away. Naman and his team make the case that delicious food can be made from the stuff we may want to throw away. Naman walks me through how bread is turned into beer, why local specialities make very loyal customers, and how you start a...

Today's guest is CEO and Co-founder of Prefer, Jake Berber. Jake and his Singapore-based team are working to bring the cost of coffee down by producing authentic coffee that is bean-free. They do this by producing the flavors and aromas of coffee through a state of the art fermentation process, no coffee plant needed. Why go around the coffee plant altogether? Well, the cost of coffee has exploded...

Today's guest is Professor Charlotte Biltekoff, author, researcher, and lecturer at UC Davis. Dr. Biltekoff focuses on how good food became 'real' in the beginning of the 21st century and how the food industry has responded to increasingly negative public views of processed foods. She has turned her sights on ultra processed foods (UPFs) and the confusion on what they are and are not. Most importa...

The food industry is changing faster than ever. New regulations, shifting political climate, and generational shifts in consumer attitudes. What do food leaders do about it? We will discuss and answer your questions in this informative panel! Join food scientist and podcast host of Food Truths podcast Eric Schulze as he discusses the state of the food innovation landscape with Amy Taylor (Zevia),...

Today's episode is bringing back friend of the pod, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Founder and Editor-in-chief at Food Fix, one the sharpest food policy sources to exist. We're also joined by her colleague and policy wonk, Theodore Ross, Editor-in-chief of The Food and Environment Reporting Network. Helena and Theodore together have been monitoring RFK's MAHA movement, and we come back to check in on w...

Today's guest marks the beginning of a limited series here on Food Truths where we will dive into the reality, frustrations, and misinformation surrounding ultra-processed foods. There's a lot of conflicting information, and we are going to speak to a variety of experts to understand what an UPF is and is not. The answers may really surprise you. Today, we kick things off with WISECode's Chief Sci...

Today's guest is Dr. Steven Lang, Vice President of Science and Technology for cultured chocolate company, California Cultured. Steve and his team are designing your favorite chocolate products and making them directly from cocoa cells rather than growing the entire tree. Yes, designing and making real cocoa powder directly from the plant cells of the cocoa tree, virtually no tree needed. Steve ha...

Climate journalist Mike Grunwald joins the pod today to walk us through his latest book, We Are Eating the Earth. Mike is an accomplished writer and and thinker about the world we feed today and what a fed world looks like tomorrow. Mike and I discuss the best and worst parts of our current food production system. There's a lot to love about how we make food (It's safe! It's abundant!), and what i...

Today's guest is Dr. Sydney Schreppler, Director of Product and R&D at Savor, a startup building edible fats directly from the molecule up. Sydney is a quantum physicist by training, a facet that makes for creative thinking and product design. We discuss the route she took from physics to foods, and how we can make a lasting impact on the world through our acts and deeds - not just our aspirations...

Today's guest is professor R. Alta Charo, JD, world expert in emerging biotechnologies (and most recently, bringing back extinct species like the Dire Wolf). Science is rapidly changing how we produce food and medicine. Alta is Warren P. Knowles Professor Emerita of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, former Senior FDA Policy Advisor, a member of the National Academy of Me...

Today's guest is Saam Shahrohki, Chief Technology Officer at cultivated fat producer, Mission Barns. Saam is one of the first people to make cultivated meat, and the first to release cultivated fat into the world. Recently celebrating their first-ever FDA approval for their cultivated fat, Saam reflects on what it took to bring a (not so) brand new food to market, how complex designing fat can be,...

We begin a multi-part series digging into the history, the cost and efficiency, the scientific consensus, and the open questions regarding organic food production here in the US. Far from a take-down or a glow-up, this discussion is meant to start a 'base reality' discussion for any body wanting a practical guide as to what is true and what is debatable about organics. Joined by previous Food Trut...

Today's guests: Drs. Dennis Keefe and Robert "Bob" Merker are former FDA Food regulators. Together, they have over half a century of experience keeping America's food safe. We sit down for a rare conversation with them together to learn how they spent their careers building a safe and robust food supply while at FDA as well as what it was like working on the most cutting edge food technology. Drs....

Today my guest is Dr. Pat Brown, current professor at Stanford University and most well-known as the founder and former CEO of Impossible Foods, maker of the Impossible burger. We take some time to talk about how he came to a career in food science because, as you'll soon learn, he was doing very different science before. Pat was already a rockstar in the scientific world when he founded Impossibl...

Sometimes you gotta go back to go forward. Guest Danny O'Malley, the President and Founder of Before the Butcher, thematically breaks down how we build new products by listening to us, the consumers. Seems straightforward. It's anything but, as Danny explains in this week's episode. We discuss what has NOT been working when it comes to plant-based burgers, why you gotta actually listen to your cus...

Today we're joined by Greg Jaffe, noted food policy expert and advocate for biotechnology-driven food production. Greg has spent a life working in food, first at the Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency, then at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and most recently at the US Department of Agriculture. He has since left government and launched his own agency to help...

Today we're joined by noted author and food journalist, Larissa Zimberoff. We dig into food trends, who's paying for all these new food innovations, and the hype and realities of bringing foods to the grocery store. You can reach her on Linked in here. And her book, Technically Food, can be found here. https://larissazimberoff.com/book Her substack (great read) can be found here https://www.linked...