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GOURMET NEWS FEBRUARY 2020 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 7 "meat" made with air-based protein is pro- duced without the traditional land, water and weather requirements, according to the company. This marks the first time in history air-based meat has been created. "By transforming elements of the air we breathe into protein, this will revolution- ize how we approach food production in the future," the company said in a Novem- ber statement to the press. The process to create this new form of protein uses ele- ments found in the air and is combined with water and mineral nutrients. It uses renewable energy and a probiotic produc- tion process to convert the elements into a nutrient-rich protein with the same amino acid profile as an animal protein and packed with crucial B vitamins, which are often deficient in a vegan diet. "The statistics are clear. Our current resources are under extreme strain, as evidenced by the burning Amazon due to deforestation and steadily increasing droughts. We need to produce more food with a reduced de- pendency on land and water resources. Air-based meat addresses these resource issues and more," said Air Protein Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Lisa Dyson. "The world is embracing plant-based meat, and we believe air-based meat is the next evo- lution of the sustainably-produced food movement that will serve as one of the so- lutions to feeding a growing population without putting a strain on natural re- sources." "Somebody's now going to make food from electricity," Wisner added. "The sci- ence is kind of intriguing. All of these might be very viable technologies going down the road. We don't know which ones will hold." Many of these companies are courting re- tailers as the "market-takers" for this prod- uct category. Kroger was out very fast with its plant-based lines, Safeway has private- label meat alternatives, and Wegman's has introduced its house brands, Don't Have a Cow, Don't Be Chicken and Don't Be A Piggy, Wisner noted. Other markets also have their own lines. "We have retailers going to market, not after the market is es- tablished, but while it's coming," Wisner said. However, while the market as a whole is moving towards clean-label, these products are highly processed, with long ingredient lists. "It has to be highly processed to work," Wisner said. "You get into this con- struct that meets a lot of lifestyle kinds of trends that are going on, but at the same time, it walks away from some." Wisner noted that these products may or may not be nutritionally better for con- sumers, although there are certainly some perceived environmental benefits. "At the end of the day, with one glaring difference," he said. "They're pretty much like ground beef – other than for sodium.... That's a challenge going forward." GN Meat Alternatives Continued from PAGE 1 has been projected to be worth about $3 billion by 2024, with some projections sub- stantially larger than that, according to Wisner. Impossible and Beyond Meat have been the market-makers in this category. "They're creating this phenomenon," Wis- ner said. "Every large CPG [consumer packaged goods] company is pursuing products here." A few companies are even pursuing strategies for creating "meat" out of air and water. "They can create protein pow- ders that you can make meat analogs out of," Wisner said. San Francisco Bay-area start-up Air Protein uses a proprietary pro- biotic process to make protein that can be used to make meatless burgers and more out of the basic elements found in air. This Clean, Creative Play for Restless Eaters Starters line of placemats, printed on one side with designs for children to color and blank on the other side for children who prefer to start with ideas of their own. De- sign themes for the placemats range from fun and fantasy to animals and nature. A newly launched series offers winter holiday designs. Others have strong learning themes, with an alphabet placemat, a map of the U.S., a world map and cursive writ- ing. "They're focused on non-digital cre- ative play that gets kids away from their screens and using their creativity and fine motor skills," Cork says. "We want to do it in a way that doesn't make parents cringe because they're so messy.... All of them wipe off with water. They're all double- sided, so if kids get bored or finish coloring one picture, they can flip it over." Top sellers are individual placemats in 30 different designs – Annabelle Noel launches a dozen new designs a year. Those measure 12 inches by 17 inches and retail for $8 each. The company also offers sets of four 9-inch by 12-inch placemats de- signed for parents to take with them into restaurants. The set of four retails for $15.99. While the placemats were originally de- signed to be used with Crayola brand wash- able crayons, the company now produces its own brand of crayons in a four-pack and an eight-pack box, which gives stores the option of not having to carry a big-box brand. "All of our roots are in independ- ents, and that's who we sell to," she says. "We're all born out of independent kitchen, gourmet and gift shops. Our brick-and- mortar shops are our bread and butter." For more information, visit www.imagi- nationstarters.com, which offers a link for wholesale information and pricing. GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN Anne Cork's Imagination Starters line of placemats encourages creative kids to stay quietly at the dinner table a lit- tle longer by giving them something to do with their hands that doesn't create a mess. She came up with the ideas for her whimsically de- signed washable placemats nine years ago when she had young, active children of her own. "I'm a mom," Cork says. "When you talk about inspira- tion, that's usually from my real life." It took three years of thought and experiment for her to come up with her Imagination Avocado and Cauliflower that Crunch drying, but they kept running into barri- ers created by the natural oiliness of avo- cados, their tendency to turn brown when the tissue is exposed to air, the fruit's tendency to turn bitter when it's dried, and when those approaches didn't pan out, the team turned its attention to cauliflower a year or two before cauli- flower found itself trending in the mar- ket. "We had kind of given up on avo- cado," Walker said. "We tend to take food that has a long tail [rather than leap- ing on trends]. Cauliflower took off this year, but it just happened. We just thought it was a great way to create a cracker without flour." As the team was coming up with a way to do that by blending the cauliflower into a base with some starch in it to hold the crisp together, they started wondering if they could maybe lick their avocado prob- lem with the same approach, and they made it work. The re- sulting Avocado Crisps have avocado as their first ingredi- ent, just as the ingredients label for the Cauliflower Crisps starts out with cauliflower. That's important to Hippie Snacks, Walker said. "Some snack-makers, they want to latch onto a popular trend, kind of fairy-dust their prod- ucts with whatever the trendy ingredient is," he said. "We're not going to call something an Avocado Crisp if avocado isn't the first ingredient. No to- kenism here." Both the Avocado Crisps and Cauliflower Crisps are plant- based, non-GMO and gluten free. "All of our products go through Non-GMO Project verification," Walker said. They're offered in 2.5-ounce bags that retail for $4.99 in the U.S. For more information, visit www.hippie-snacks.com. GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN Making snacks from real food is in the DNA at Hippie Snacks, says Founder Ian Walker, who started the busi- ness in the late 2000s with Co- conut Chips. "We brought that out before any of the players in the States brought out a co- conut chip," he said. "Right from the get-go, we liked the idea of making products that were as close to their natural state as possible but were a lit- tle more convenient." Hippie Snacks' latest innova- tions are a family of crispy cracker-type snacks: Cauli- flower Crisps in Original and Classic Ranch flavors and Avo- cado Crisps in Guacamole and Sea Salt flavors. "For eight years, we've been trying to come up with an avocado snack," Walker said. "Nutrient-dense, tasty — people get it." In that quest for a tasty avocado snack, Hippie Snacks' research and development team tried a lot of different approaches, from baking slices of avocado to freeze-

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