The Future of Food and Health iSelect Fund

We hope to cultivate a clearer understanding of the technologies, organizations and producers that are working together to create a “climate-smart” future for agriculture. Speakers include executives & sustainability leaders from the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) (Debbie Reed), EarthOptics (Lars Dyrud), Continuum Ag (Mitchell Hora), and Vence (Kevin Silverman).

Fermentation has been used in food production for centuries – you can thank it for beer, wine, kimchi, yogurt and much more. But precision fermentation technology is taking this metabolic process to new heights by applying precision biology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more to program microbes to make specific, customized molecules. The result? Alternative proteins and other products that look, taste and perform much more like the real thing than ever before possible. As the costs associated with precision fermentation continue to fall, these basic building blocks are finding new applications across the food system and a wide range of other consumer products.

In this Deep Dive, we will have a discussion about precision fermentation, what it’s capable of, where it’s going, and the companies leading the evolution of this powerful technology. We’ll be looking at the challenges and opportunities facing precision fermentation, how to make the process more efficient, and how to address the coming capacity constraints for food proteins produced by synthetic biology. We’ll be joined by Dr. Doug Cameron, a technology investor and advisor in food, agriculture and applied biology; and Mark Warner, a food industry consultant and founder of precision fermentation company Liberation Labs, and Dr. Alex Patist, COO of Geltor.

As the relationship between the food system and both environmental and human health continues to draw more and more attention from consumers, businesses and governments, the need for better fat products in our food has become more apparent as an opportunity for innovation. Fats play a crucial role in the food system, delivering taste, texture and in some cases crucial nutritional content. However, fat products that deliver on function, taste and nutrition, while minimizing their environmental footprint, have been elusive to date from both animal- and plant-based sources.

Guests:
Jen-Yu Huang, Co-Founder, Lypid
Yulin Lu, Co-Founder & CEO, Yali Bio

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s just how much can be accomplished from home. Remote work, online shopping and more have transformed the day-to day reality of modern life, and home healthcare is just the next step in that evolution, supported by new telehealth technologies, doctor-patient interaction platforms and more.

We will be joined by technologists and healthcare leaders from preeminent organizations including Aidar Health, Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and others to discuss the opportunities, challenges, and future outlook of delivering comprehensive healthcare at home.

Though the concept of plant-based or alternative cheese is not new, the number of high-quality non-dairy cheeses has exploded in the past decade. With both health and environmental pressures weighing on the dairy and cheese industries, numerous companies are working to inch dairy-free cheeses closer to the performance that dairy cheeses have traditionally held. At the same time, traditional dairy-based cheesemakers are working to meet the needs of today's consumers by building more sustainable and nutritious products and farming practices.

Richard Clothier, Managing Director of Wyke Farms, Irina Gerry, CMO of Change Foods, Kyleen Keenan, holistic nutritionist and founder of Happyist and Steve Snyder, President and CEO of NewFields Plant-based Cheese we explore the future of cheese-making and look to make sense of a rapidly changing landscape for cheese.

Metabolic health is total body health — the combination of ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications. These factors directly relate to a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. And it is far more uncommon than it should be. According to a 2019 study, only 12% of Americans qualify as metabolically healthy, a finding that researchers called “alarmingly low.”

We're joined by Dr. Casey Means, Chief Medical Officer of Levels Health, Dr. Sara Gottfried, a New York Times bestselling author and integrative physician, and Dr. Mark Cucuzzella a professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine and an expert on metabolic health.