Archive For The “Israeli FoodTech” Category
PepsiCo, Danone, and Mondelez International, the parent company of Oreo, Cadbury, and Toblerone to name a few, were just some of the leading global food corporations to make their way to Israel this week for a taste of the latest local innovations in food, beverage, and agriculture technology.
The multinational companies took part in the annual FoodTechIL event, a conference on Tuesday at the Tel Aviv port that drew some 1,500 participants (according to organizers) including senior executives, investors, representatives from more than 50 startups as part of an exhibition on the latest technologies in the food sector. The event was hosted by the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s biggest food product companies, which also runs the food tech accelerator The Kitchen. A number of the startups in the exhibition are part of the accelerator, including several that have garnered international attention like Aleph Farms which unveiled the world’s first lab-grown, slaughter-free steak late last year, and the award-winning company Yofix which makes plant-based, soy-free yogurts.
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Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
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“Businesses today understand that we have a crucial role in using technology to make a positive impact on society, on people’s health and wellness and the environment,” said Ofra Strauss, Chairperson of the Strauss Group, in a statement. “Our responsibility is to make food in a sustainable way that goes beyond profits and revenue and focuses on people, society and the planet.”
“As someone who was born into the food industry, food is not just words for me, I know that food matters,” Strauss said in an address at the event. To meet global challenges in the food chain supply and to feed a growing world population, “we cannot continue to do things the way we used to do,” she said. “We must reimagine the whole food world, we must renew it, and we must reassure everyone around it that we know what we are going to do.”
The food and agriculture industry is one of the largest and most important industries in the world, worth an estimated $8.7 trillion in 2018.
In Israel, food-agri tech firms drew some $103 million in equity investment in 2018, “putting the Israeli sector on par with, and sometimes exceeding, much larger nations like Australia and India,” according to a newly published report by Start-Up Nation Central (SNC).
And 2019 is on track to be a record funding year for the sector with $135 million in investments so far (up to Q3), SNC said. This includes the $22 million raised by DouxMatok, a startup that developed a patented sugar reduction solution and which has drawn international attention. According to the newest data, Israel is home to 350 food-agri startups (as of mid-2019) founded in the past decade that focus on “deep tech” innovation primarily for the global agri-food industry. SNC also noted an increased rate of new company creation, with an annual average of 37 new startups since 2014. And since 2016, 124 startups have been established, more than the total founded in the previous six years.
This trend represents a “second wave” of food-agri tech innovation, SNC says, “driven by both the growing global demand for efficient and sustainable food production technologies and the strength of various technologies in Israel,” such as AI, robotics, data, sensing, and computation.
According to a report earlier this year by SNC and AgFunder, Israeli startups offering advanced imagery tech and complex systems such as farm management software, sensors and IoT, pest and disease detection and water efficiency tech for crops, drew the largest investments in 2018. These include companies like precision agriculture startup Taranis which raised $20 million, SeeTree, an agri-tech intelligence company that uses drones and sensor technology to provide farmers with actionable analytics on their crops and trees and which raised $15 million, and CropX which built machine-learning powered devices that go into the soil to boost agricultural output.
Startups focused on agri-biotechnology including AI identification of inputs, algorithm-powered seed breeding, root-based non-GMO breeding, and cures for dairy cows, drew the second-largest number of deals, the report said. This second wave of companies using advanced tech in the food-agri sector builds on the longstanding tradition of innovation and excellence in agriculture that Israel developed over the last 100 years (even before the establishment of the state) to address resource shortages and the existential need to achieve food and water security in a challenging climate, the SNC report reads, referring to this period as the “first wave.”
“As the world’s population rises and urbanizes, standard agricultural methods are not enough to supply it without depleting natural resources and causing severe environmental damage. Climate change makes weather more volatile and less predictable, making growing food even more difficult, according to the report.
Tamar Weiss, SNC’s Agri-Food Tech Sector Development Manager, said in a statement, “We see a transition from food security to nutritional security, and growing interest not only in increasing yield and profit, but also in health and sustainability. Data is transforming this industry.”
Israeli startup VeganNation announced Friday that it leased some 15,000 acres (60.7 square kilometers or 23.4 square miles) in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for a ten-year period to protect the land from deforestation and wildlife poaching. The Amazon basin covers about 2.7 million square miles, 2.1 million square miles of which is rainforest; and much of it is in Brazil.
VeganNation, which built a global e-commerce platform and social network for vegans worldwide powered by its own digital currency, said it would hand the land over to preservation groups and activist organizations to protect it.
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Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
“The Amazon rainforest might be located in Brazil, but its destruction affects us all, as climate change is a direct result of human activity and it’s in our hands to fight it,” said Isaac Thomas, VeganNation CEO and co-founder.
The startup also announced partnerships with four local soccer teams (Remo, Paysandu, National, and Iranduba) from cities near the entrance to the rainforest to raise environmental awareness. Thomas tells NoCamels that VeganNation is already a main sponsor of the teams – three men’s teams and one women’s team – and revealed that an additional four top-tier national teams are set to sign on to the initiative.
Thomas says the plan has been in the works for months. “We thought how can we take things to the next level, raise awareness about the environment, about veganism, and team up with local soccer teams to raise awareness with fans.”
VeganNation’ initiative comes amid the devastating fires that have continued to burn in the rainforest since early August, releasing dangerous air pollutants into the atmosphere, severely damaging flora and fauna ecosystems, and endangering indigenous communities that live under the forest canopy. The fires can be seen from space.
Who would have thunk it. Israeli farmers lining up to grow pot. You are not living in some alternative universe. That’s what’s going on right now in Israel. And the government is supporting the initiative which it expects to generate $1billion in exports per year, and that’s even with a cannabis-hostile Trump administration.
The following text was originally reported in NoCamels.com.
According to Israeli government research, medical cannabis exports is set to bring in an estimated $1 billion in revenue per year. Since the government announced the reforms two years ago, some 400 Israeli farmers applied for permits to grow cannabis, the Israeli Health Ministry said last year, with another 242 receiving preliminary approval. The ministry also said it received some 200 applications for cannabis nurseries seeking to distribute cannabis plants, 95 requests to set up cannabis pharmacies, 60 applications for processing facilities, and 44 requests to set up stores selling cannabis products.
The medical cannabis exports law hit a snag last year when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, much to the dismay of the local industry, froze export plans amid political wrangling and opposition by the Ministry of Public Security headed by Gilad Erdan which said it was afraid plants grown for exports would spill over into the recreational market, and demanded some NIS 200 million to its budget to help secure facilities. A reported conversation with US President Donald Trump, whose administration is taking a hard line against cannabis including its medical use, was also said to be the cause of the sudden export freeze.
The revised law provides a budget for police to monitor, track and control the production and delivery of cannabis for export, and prevent said spill over. Recreational use of cannabis in Israel is still not legal but licensed medical cannabis consumption for vetted physical and mental health issues has been allowed for a decade.
The law also specifies that any foreign investment of more than five percent in an Israeli cannabis company will require regulatory approval.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
For decades, researchers relied on the Delboeuf illusion to explain how the size and shape of the serving object effects how much we actually eat. In a recent 2012 study, scientists asked their participants to serve themselves soup in bowls of different sizes. The people who used larger bowls poured themselves more soup than those with smaller bowls. This is the classic understanding of the Delboeuf illusion.
Since then, restaurants responded by adjusting the size of serving plates. It depending, however, on their clientele. For health-conscious venues, the plates got smaller. But for fast food restaurants, “supersizing” was all the rage. And ever since, the food industry has invested billions in finding what works best for their customers, what can be rightly stated as a manipulation they enjoyed.
But some Israeli researchers are questioning all of this, not that it’s wrong per se, but that it’s not necessarily the size that matters. What matters more is your level of hunger. Using the Delboeff illusion again, they did the standard object manipulation, only this time their participants hadn’t eaten for three hours whereas the other group ate just one hour before.
The findings were eye-opening. Those who were considerably hungry were to accurately size up the true quantity of food regardless of the plate size while the group who just ate experienced the classic Delboeff illusion; the size of the object cause them to misrepresent the service size.
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Researchers believe that this latest study show evolutionary tendencies in action. In other words, the more hungry we are, the more attuned we become toward objective reality, that is, the true situation. When we’re not so hungry, we are easily manipulated by the Delboeff illusion. Put slightly differently, the more hunger becomes an existential need, the more focused and accurate our assessment of our world becomes.
An interesting follow-up study would be to extend the length of food deprivation to see at what point (in time) the accuracy of assessment begins to veer off.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
If you ever tried to lose a few pounds — which is nearly everyone — a smaller meal with greater frequency strategy for dieting is a common way to combat conventional diets. In fact, some argue that it’s not about calories but metabolism and keeping your intake consistent and steady throughout the day.
But a study published in the medical journal Appetite by Dr. Tzvi Ganel of the Laboratory for Visual Perception and Action in BGU’s Department of Psychology and BGU PhD student Noa Zitron-Emanuel found that when people are hungry, or food-deprived, they’re more likely to identify a portion size accurately, no matter how it is served.
I am not one who is quick to question scientific research with a simple anecdotal evidence for obvious reasons. First, anecdotal evidence is the least reliable of all evidentiary candidates. We often misrepresent, intentionally or not, what we’re recalling. Then there’s the problem of just being wrong about our recall, actually depicting an event and its particulars which turn out to be flat wrong, or wildly inaccurate.
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Controlled studies, on the other hand, take out human bias, and thus provide more objective and reliable reporting. What this means is that there’s every reason to trust controlled studies over anecdotal evidence, which is why it is so odd about what I’m going to say. I simply do not, and never have been able to apportion my plate to my level of hunger. Never! So does this mean that I’m some sort of outlier like the Israeli researchers would strongly suggest? Could be.
Or maybe something else is going on which can explain my personal experience in a way that does comport with the research. And it’s pretty simple.
While I may not deviate by how much I load up my plate, I can control the amount I actually eat. Not because I have awesome discipline but rather because my biological indicators do it for me. And I’m no outlier here. The reason is simple. I tend to feast or famine with my daily caloric intake. If I’m really focused, I can go almost an entire day without eating. When I stop I then notice very quickly how hungry I am and will eat anything in site to address a totally out of whack metabolism. This explains why I will fill my plate regardless of how hungry I am. It’s because I’m almost always very hungry because I don’t eat frequent meals. I often (not recommended) eat one meal per day.
Yet there’s a real possibility that I am misreporting my plate filling habits. In the coming weeks, I’m going to pay closer attention to this and then report back. After all, anecdotal evidence is unreliable.
It should be interesting.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi is going out with a bang. Nooy, already credited with increasing Pepsi’s sales by 80 percent over her tenure, reorganizing the company into three divisions, and placing more emphasis on consumer demand for healthy alternatives, just completed a $3.2 billion acquisition of Israeli company Sodastream as part of the healthy alternative option.
Sodastream is a do-it-yourself (DIY) soda alternative that provides the sweet taste without the sugar found in conventional sodas, as well as on-demand flavors, makes a lot of sense for Pepsi, and its healthy alternative strategy. As a DIY device, it also extends Pepsi’s distribution to the growing DIY market for which Pepsi was on the sidelines. (Expect Coca Cola to follow for obvious reasons). Based on news of the deal, along with Sodastream’s repositioning as a sparkling water company, its stock surged more than 320%.
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The deal will be funded using Pepsi’s cash on hand and has been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies. It is expected to close by January, pending a SodaStream shareholder vote and certain regulatory approvals.
Nooyi, who will be replaced by Ramon Laguarta, Pepsi’s head of global operations, helped turn Pepsi into one of the most successful food and beverage companies in the world. Sales grew 80% during her 12-year tenure.
For this latest move, and likely her last, Nooyi’s legendary status as a food and beverage rainmaker is solidified.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Where do we draw the line between general chemistry and food innovation? It’s a difference without any meaningful distinction. Just ask the 750 or so Israeli Foodtech startups. That’s no typo. 750 Foodtech startups. If they have it their way, one day in the not-so-distant future, the 3D printer may be the new microwave of the 21st century! But are we ready to start printing our food? Don’t be so quick to react, especially if the ingredients taste better and are better for us.
The students, aboard some three hundred attendees, participated in FoodTech Nation 2018 conference last month, an occurrence control to celebrate the institution’s seventy fifth day of remembrance. whereas showcasing future food product, the event additionally hosted food school researchers, professors, investors, entrepreneurs, and lecturers together with Dr. Oded Shoseyov, a Hebrew University academician of supermolecule engineering and nano-biotechnology acknowledged for his 3D printing school, and Dr. Alon Samish of the Davidson Institute of Science Education at the Chaim Azriel Weizmann Institute and also the founder and chief operating officer of Amai supermolecule, a procedure supermolecule style and biotech company.
An avocado energy bar, a “clean ingredient” food product coconut pudding, a Stevia-flavored natural paste cup, cocktails with natural pear sweetening, and frozen dessert created with supermolecule powder from dipteron larvae rounded out the innovative food school mixtures created and given by teams of scholars from a food development course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Henry M. Robert H. Smith college of Agriculture, Food and setting in Rehovot.
Israel is one amongst the highest countries within the world for innovation in food school, each Shoseyov and also the event’s organizer Oren Froy, head of the Institute of organic chemistry, Food Science, and Nutrition at Hebrew University stressed to NoCamels at the confab.
“First of all, there’s tons of startups in Israel in food technology,” Froy says, inform to Israeli company Tivall, that he says was among the primary to introduce meat substitutes into the market. Tivall is in hand by Osem, one amongst the most important food makers and distributors in Israel. 10 years past, Tivall signed associate agreement to buy the US company FoodTech for $20 million. FoodTech developed and marketed frozen meat substitutes sold-out within the US and North American country underneath the name, VeggiePatch.
Froy adds that Israel additionally makes property a high priority. “When we have a tendency to create new product we expect inexperienced, we expect regarding the way to create a product that’s higher for the setting, that wouldn’t damage or injury the setting and minimize refuse,” he says.
Froy suggests that food school leadership may additionally stem from the challenges expose by growing crops in Israel’s dry climate.
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“I assume it will play a task, the very fact that it’s associate arid place here, however, we have a tendency to try and get {the higher|the higher} of it and use it to induce better product and fashionable product,” he says.
Israel is home to some 750 active startups and corporations within the food school and agriculture school industries, consistent with a could report by the Israeli non-profit Start-Up Nation Central.
Ahead of the event, yank international International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) company noninheritable Israeli company Frutarom, one amongst the ten largest corporations within the field of flavors and fine ingredients, for $7.1 billion. A month before the acquisition, Frutarom {and the|and therefore the|and additionally the} Israel Innovation Authority also proclaimed the gap of FoodNxt, the fully-equipped innovation science laboratory for food-tech startups in Israel’s north.
“Israel being a ‘startup nation’ isn’t simply a commonplace,” says Yoni Glickman, President of Frutarom Natural Solutions same at the time. “Startups became the expansion engine of the food trade, and Frutarom, through FoodNxt, is functioning to accelerate this innovation – by providing power, processes, technologies, and experience to assist overcome challenges, nurture development, and launch new product into the world market.”
As a startup nation, the young entrepreneurs in Israel aren’t intimidated by issues and problems, Shoseyov same at the Gregorian calendar month event. The Israeli mentality teaches youngsters, together with young entrepreneurs within the food school trade, that failure could be a reality of life and simple to induce over, he explains. “They square measure able to jump in, therefore i feel this can be the correct place.”
Shoseyov, for his half, is creating his own “imprint” Israel’s food school innovation trade – virtually – with technology that may change the 3D printing of food to be used private homes, restaurants, schools, and establishments, consistent with the consumer’s predefined criteria. This groundbreaking school, developed last year aboard Ido Braslavsky, head of the Bachelors of Science program in organic chemistry and Food Science, is about to alter the approach we have a tendency to eat, what we have a tendency to eat, and the way we have a tendency to create our food.
Shoseyov incorporates nanocellulose, a tasteless plant-produced, zero-calorie, probiotic fiber into Chefit, his digital cook supported 3D printing technology. Chefit is what permits the user to customize a meal employing a 3D printer, equipped with cartridges of nanocellulose, protein, fat, and different ingredients, besides a “very targeted infrared head that you simply will bake, fry or grill,” he says.
While he’s already called one amongst the leading food 3D printing innovators in Israel, he’s additionally fast to imply that it’s additionally as a result of Israel as a rustic is kind of technologically savvy during this specific field.
“On the aspect of the technology that comes from 3D printers, Israel is certainly the leader,” he tells NoCamels, “We have several 3D printing corporations and a few of the most important in addition, therefore it’s very a hub. the fundamental power is here.”
Student displays
In the food development course at the Henry M. Robert H. Smith college of Agriculture, Food and setting, students specialize in topics adore raw materials and ingredients, why new product square measure developed, and new trends within the food trade. once they produce their food product, they face limitations, as they’d within the planet.
“The purpose of the category is scaling for production,” same Tammy Meiron, the Hebrew University academician teaching the course, “We offer students the tools to search out future product.”
This year, during a course 1st, students were asked to share their food school mixtures and creations at the conference. the scholars were split into 5 groups, assigned a food topic that required to be developed into a physical product, and collaborated with native food corporations and startups to return up with their formulations.
Students from the Terrabites cluster (l to r. Peleg Vareli, Hadas Wennstein, Esti Mirel, and Mor Maayan) cause with Jerusalem Venture Partners chairman and founder Erel Margalit. Courtesy
The Terrabites team was tasked with mistreatment the scraps of avocados, that square measure sometimes disposed of within the food trade.
The team’s goal was to isolate the fiber, therefore, it may well be extra into different product to extend the fiber content while not adding calories or unhealthy ingredients. Their 1st try resulted in massive fibrous items however when some tries, they terminated up with a refined powder that was straightforward to combine into different ingredients. Their final product was a gluten-free, all-natural energy bar, that was property. Avocado fiber augmented the bars fiber content from eight p.c to twenty p.c.
FOMO
This group’s challenge was to form a “clean label” delicacy. operating with Tnuva, the most important producer in Israel, that makes a specialty of milk and dairy farm product, they determined to form a coconut pudding with pineapple.
“Tapioca coconut are some things we have a tendency to don’t see within the food market,” student Li Ganor same. “We had coconut, cream, milk, tapioca, and vanilla sugar. we have a tendency to had to search out the simplest way to heat it and blend it in.”
The team learned there have been 2 ways that to solidify food product – by mixture and heating it – and that they had to experiment to induce the best magnitude relation of each while not having the food product pearls sink or split up. the scholars made a recent vegetarian course with natural ingredients. the toughest a part of the method, they said, was scaling it up for production, while not sacrificing the standard of the food product or the thickness of the bottom.
Moscatina
Insect larvae isn’t the perfect ingredient for frozen dessert, however a student cluster known as Moscatina managed to include it into a delicious frozen treat, with facilitate from Israeli startup Flying Spark, an organization that developed property and edible supermolecule powder from the larvae of Mediterranean fruit flies.
The cluster extra it to paste frozen dessert and berry sherbet, increasingthe supermolecule content from three.5 p.c to ten p.c for frozen dessert and from zero five|to five} p.c for sherbet.
You might be fooled by the palatability of this frozen dessert treat. It’s truly made up of the supermolecule powder of dipteron larvae! Courtesy
The students during this cluster were assigned to figure with a neighborhood Israeli spice plant. rather than going the plain route by creating spice kits for cookery, they selected to form cocktail mixtures which will be sold-out in packs. The cubes of cocktail mixtures square measure unbroken within the deep-freeze associated born into an alcoholic or non-alcoholic base liquid to remodel them directly into a replacement drink. The blends created by the cluster square measure all sugared with natural pear sweetening, not processed sugar.
Now here’s a Reese’s paste cup you won’t feel guilty regarding feeding. The Reesless team worked with Unavoo Food Technologies, an organization that created its own sweetener made up of all-natural ingredients with a glycemic worth of zero, no artificial or chemical ingredients, no sugar parts, and virtually no calories.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com