Previously, we’ve talked about Treasure8’s purpose of Deploying Nutrition for Humanity and our mission to help accelerate the Resource Revolution™. The world is rapidly changing and the need for major changes to our food system are being made daily, COVID-19, for better or for worse, has put a spotlight on the connection between poor nutrition (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) and susceptibility to getting infected by the virus — especially in disadvantaged communities.
Without a doubt, the time to ensure access to affordable, high-quality nutrition for all is now. “Nutrition security”, which prioritizes whole foods high in nutrition density, is harder to achieve than simply general food security, and is needed in order to help increase disease-fighting conditions for folks of all ages. Sourcing cost-efficient, high-quality inputs, including upcyled food waste streams, is an important step in ensuring this happens.
There are countless articles about the increase in food waste and environmental impact as a result of COVID-19. It has decimated the demand for fresh produce as businesses, restaurants, schools, theme parks and other operations have closed their doors. Many growers have little choice but to let crops rot in fields, which has been happening for years, but now at an even more massive scale. At the same time, food banks are seeing a 98% increase in demand across the US. Right here in our own backyard, US food bank lines have stretched for miles as millions of people stretch to feed their families at an alarming and unprecedented rate, due to the massive job losses (over 42M) incurred from the pandemic’s spread. Unfortunately, we believe this situation, both job loss and the need for food, is only going to get worse before it gets better.
There is a practical cost to better nutrition, but the bigger, downstream cost is, in fact, not providing higher-quality food to humanity. We predict the need, prominence, and importance of nutritional security will only increase in the upcoming months and years. Breaking the cycle of poor nutrition by making good nutrition affordable to all is requiring a massive and collaborative effort, but we’re optimistic that emerging innovation-driven efforts in the food business will help address this dynamic. A great example of this is the inspirational category leader Apeel which, like Treasure8, extends the lifespan of nutrition through technology. Can these types of innovation help accelerate the needed structural change to the food system? We think so.
Three out of four adults in the US are obese while 50% either suffer from diabetes or pre-diabetes, not to mention interactions with other diseases and viruses like COVID-19. And sadly, these figures are likely to grow as the economy attempts to reboot. High unemployment and decreased consumer purchasing power for quality food may perpetuate the negative cycle of diminished health and increased disease. What’s needed is an increase in the nutrient density of current foods while introducing new foods to help alleviate this downward spiral. We envision utilizing more nutrition through the use of more nutritious food waste as a way to reverse the spiral upwards.
Looking beyond food waste and into the global food system, we know that we certainly grow enough food to feed everyone on the planet 1.5x, yet millions of people still remain food and nutrition insecure. In fact, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports nearly 1B people suffer from chronic hunger while nearly 2B are under or over-nourished. This is just part of why there has been such a call by organizations including the Milken Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Jose Andres, and others, for entrepreneurs to develop innovations to meet this urgent need.
As we execute our mission to accelerate a Resource Revolution and help solve for nutrition security, a key part of our strategy is sourcing, or (re)sourcing. We source from both virgin food streams and food waste streams (mostly from growers’ imperfects and companies post-production sources where possible). The “(re)” is used when we are working with both virgin and food processing waste sources where the hardest part is developing and deploying waste stream stabilization methods that meet our quality and reliability requirements and that are scalable. Therefore, for us to create food products and ingredients requires developing strategic and mission-aligned partnerships. The more we can help our partners become more vertically integrated by producing ingredients from their waste streams, the lower the cost becomes, which in turn allows them and us to make quality nutrition available to more people.
To help clarify, here’s an example from the pet food world. One of our partnerships is with a brand called Shameless Pets who are making healthy dog treats from upcycled food sources. We provide some of their dehydrated vegetable ingredients that add healthy nutrients to their sustainable pet products. The source materials come from a complementary partnership with a juice company, from whom we obtain leftover pressings from veggie juices to create the ingredients for Shameless. The pressings would otherwise be tossed out, but because of our partnerships and technological capabilities, we’re able to give them a new life as ingredients and also improve the health of pets and the planet at the same time. This type of sourcing / partnership is how we can ensure we have steady and consistent food supplies, as well as find homes for a variety of types of waste streams that will make the positive, lasting, and systemic changes needed to help fix the food system.
Fortunately, there are many groups now working on these issues, from great leading organizations such as ReFED, to new industry up-and-comers, like the UPCYCLED Food Association, which makes us confident that we can accelerate a Resource Revolution even faster.
Looking to an example of (re)sourcing in a post-COVID-19 world, we are currently working with Northern California growers to convert some of their surplus produce, dehydrate it into shelf-stable ingredients and products, and then plan to deploy it via relief efforts mounted by restaurant kitchens, food banks, and others. This points to the need for more partnerships, transparency, and a better-connected, technology-enabled supply chain (both regionally and globally).
We at Treasure8 are committed to sourcing and (re)sourcing in a way that makes sense for the triple bottom line. And as a company, now is the time for us to not only establish more powerful partnerships for the sake of growing our business, but also, because of the objective urgency for folks globally to unite and work to improve the health of people, the planet, and to create a better food system—today. In these times of crises, let us embrace new ways to create systemic change and charge forward.
Written by Timothy Childs & Derk Hendriksen, co-CEOs of Treasure8
