Thousands of paleo, gluten-free, vegan, earth-friendly and sustainably sourced snacks, supplements, energy drinks, juices, tea, coffee, no animal-testing beauty products, essential oils, everything chia, coconut and açai – separating the wheat from the chaff in a sea of products at the Natural Products Show Expo West (and Expo East) is an exhausting exercise.
The show has always been huge and overwhelming in the sheer number of products, but this year it was even more gargantuan. The 35th annual Natural Products Expo West, is the world’s largest natural, organic and healthy products event. Produced by New Hope Natural Media, the event grew 7.2 percent bringing together an inspired community of over 71,000 industry members, more than 2,700 exhibiting companies and 634 first-time exhibitors.
What I seek out at these shows are not packaged products, I rarely use them for cooking or consumption, but whole foods or companies who “walk the walk” and are genuinely driven by a mission of sustainability, improving human health, and feeding the world population. And, that’s why Beyond Meat and Safe Catch are my biggest takeaways from Expo West.
Beyond Meat believes there is a better way to feed the planet: “our mission is to create mass-market solutions that perfectly replace animal protein with plant protein. We are dedicated to improving human health, positively impacting climate change, conserving natural resources and respecting animal welfare. At Beyond Meat, we want to make the world a better place and we’re starting one delicious meal at a time.”
They had a show-stopping booth, boldly attracting crowds (with a tongue-in-cheek reference to McDonalds) to try their Beast Burger™. Made with non-GMO soy and pea protein, the Beast Burger™ contains more protein and iron than beef and more omegas than salmon.
Beyond Meat says their vision is 25/20 – 25% reduced global meat consumption by 2020. In that regard, I’m more excited about the prospects for Beyond Chicken™ Strips and Beyond Beef™ Crumbles – one cannot live by burgers alone. Once other cultures accept Beyond Meat in a traditional dish: empanadas, kefte, falafel, roti, pierogies, pupusa, pastie, pig in a blanket, taco, wonton, gyoza – Beyond Meat will be on their way to realizing their mission of feeding the world with healthy plant proteins while positively impacting climate change, resource constraints, and animal welfare.
The future of meat is plant-based, Rowan Jacobsen writes in Outside: Alton Brown was impressed and Mark Bittman fooled. So was Twitter cofounder (and vegan) Biz Stone, so he invested in the company. So did Bill Gates, whose Gates Foundation backs potentially world-saving innovations. “I tasted Beyond Meat’s chicken alternative,” he wrote online, “and honestly couldn’t tell it from real chicken.” Gates quickly realized the blockbuster potential. “Our approach to food hasn’t changed much over the last 100 years. It’s ripe for reinvention. We’re just at the beginning of enormous innovation.”
Safe Catch founders Bryan Boches and Sean Wittenberg.
A slow decline in sales of canned tuna became a free fall in 2004, the same year the FDA and EPA issued a joint recommendation that children and pregnant women limit tuna consumption because of concerns over mercury levels. Per capita intake of the fish has fallen by a third since then, prompting Bay Area father-son duo Malcolm and Sean Wittenberg and their partners developed a proprietary technology in 2005 that, for the first time, allowed fishermen, processors, and grocery stores to quickly and cheaply test every fish onsite for the toxic heavy metal. They launched Micro Analytical Systems Inc. (MASI) to market the testing services. {Source: Inc.}
Unfortunately, making tuna safe for the consumer is a hard sell. Seafood processors balked at the added cost. Tuna brands weren’t interested. And enforcement of FDA mercury limits is minimal. So “everyone does just enough testing to satisfy the [FDA] rules,” says Sean. He and Bryan Boches, saw a confluence of health and social trends transforming the supermarket. If consumers would pay more for gluten-free bread or Greek yogurt, why not low-mercury tuna?
Sean and Boches, who wrote the original business plan for MASI, bought and reformulated it as Safe Catch and, in February, began selling online the only commercially available canned skipjack tuna to guarantee a mercury content of less than 0.1 part per million, 1/10th the FDA limit.
National grocery chains have already come calling and Wittenberg and Boches were excited at the reception Safe Catch received at the show. Their knowledge and passion extends beyond marketing a product, they believe purity is a key link to health and biodiversity and are working to protect purity in our oceans, lakes, and rivers for the next generation. Currently, Safe Catch can be preordered online and national retail distribution is in the works.
I look forward to seeing increased consumer awareness for both these products and their visions for protecting our resources and feeding the world realized globally.
Natural Products Expo East 2015 will return to the Baltimore Convention Center, September 16- 19, 2015 in Baltimore, MD. Natural Products Expo West 2016 is scheduled to take place March 11-13, 2016 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA.
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