Re:planet

First time I'm hosting a duo on the Re:planet podcast, wish me luck! Jody Boyman and Todd Boyman are the co-founders of Hungry Planet Foods. Apart from all the exciting stories they share with us, they pose a powerful question, one which I have been reflecting about ever since talking to them: "What kind of ancestors are we actively choosing to be, every single day?". That at least got my brain firing!

Jody and Todd are siblings, on a mission to bend the curve on personal and planetary health. After having eaten plant-based foods for decades, they came to the understanding that in order to transform the food system, they had to create delectable plant-based meats to fit a modern lifestyle. So they set out on a mission to craft a wide range of proteins to feed our growing human family, regenerate our environment, enhance personal health, and increase animal well-being. Crucially, their products had to be a simple switch for conventional meat, while also delivering superior nutrition.

After a decade of culinary R&D, they developed the most authentic and complete range of plant-based meats available in the world across all types of proteins. Hungry Planet is now in thousands of venues across the U.S., Australia and New Zealand including fine dining, fast casual, university, hospital, retail, grocery, and deli.

In this episode we make a deep dive into their personal stories leading up to creating this highly purpose-driven brand, the rollercoaster journey of building a successful food tech company aiming at global reach, why soy as an ingredient might have the best shot at really bending the curve on personal and planetary health, the importance of easiness for people to change behaviour, advice for aspiring food tech founders, and on a personal level - how to positively raise our kids into the next generation of more responsible and mindful world citizens.

In this episode we sit down with Parendi Birdie, who's a highly purpose-driven and deeply knowledgeable woman.

Her life's work is all about finding out how we as humanity, in a more sustainable and healthy way, could be growing meat and animal fat without the animal itself. Along her journey she got herself a degree in biochemistry with the aim of building the industry of cultivated meat and she became one of the first scientists at one of the hottest food start-ups in Silicon Valley, called Hampton Creek (now Just). That journey has led her to where she is today, a company called Mission Barns.

With livestock as one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problem, Mission Barns is focused on cultivating animal fat—without the animal. Its technology platform enables starting from a handful of pork, poultry, or beef cells and feeding them a plant-based feedstock inside a cultivator. Why fat, you might ask yourself? Over a short period of time, the novel process creates real, pure animal fat that delivers the mouthfeel and flavour of meat without raising and slaughtering live animals, and uses a fraction of the carbon emissions, water, and land required by conventional animal agriculture. They do this without slaughter houses and occupying vast amounts of land, but instead in something that looks pretty much like a beer brewery.

It might sound like science fiction - but it's not anymore.

The Good Food Institute (GFI) is an international non-profit reimagining meat production, with a vision of a world where alternative proteins are no longer alternative. They are developing the roadmap for a sustainable, secure, and just protein supply, by identifying the most effective solutions, mobilize resources and talent, and empower partners across the food system to make alternative proteins accessible, affordable, and delicious.

Audrey Gyr serves as the start-up innovation specialist at GFI, helping new ventures to rethink how we produce meat to solve the big challenges we are facing in terms of planetary and human health. In this episode we discuss the many factors at play making food one of the most crucial puzzle bricks to solve the climate crisis, the crazy mismatch between amount of land use caused by the meat industry versus the calorie supply, the use of antibiotics in animal farming, and why we're at a critical point of time to do something about it.

We also cover the lack of scalable solutions within food and the fact that humanity so far have been relying on behavior change (which obviously isn't working fast enough), leading us into why alternative proteins might be the most promising supply solution with the ability to scale. Audrey gives us an explanation of what alternative proteins are, and the latest innovations within this space aiming to create products that behave the exact same way as conventional meat. Finally we touch upon the great potential ahead for new start-ups in this space, as well as collaboration between those, to drive demand and capture an ever growing share of the meat market.

And of course, as always, Audrey's personal story of change.

PS. In this episode you also get to enjoy Audrey's dogs barking in the background and her boyfriend trying to clean up the kitchen ;)

This is a tale of two friends, a top star chef and a previous software developer, who felt such a strong urge to tackle one of the world's most pressing challenge that they quit their jobs and set out on a visionary endeavor to disrupt the global dairy industry. They do this by replicating the micellular structures in dairy milk to obtain the same taste and functionality, instead of using ingredients such as coconut, almond or oat. The result? A plant-based product that is indistinguishable from conventional dairy. If that's true, that's some damn good news for the planet huuh?

When launching their plant-based food company in 2018 with the intention to create “the Impossible Burger of dairy,” the two friends decided to use the symbolism of an eclipse providing a powerful storytelling of their big why: “An eclipse is a really, really rare moment in which something super tiny — relatively, like the moon — is able to block something that is massive, in this case, the sun. It’s the stars literally aligning to create something improbable that is just so spectacular that everyone stops what they’re doing and looks up — and it really moves them.”

Aylon Steinhart is the co-founder and CEO of Eclipse Foods. He is one of the top experts in the alternative protein industry and was previously at the Good Food Institute, speaking regularly on food innovation at conferences and universities such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, Berkeley and Stanford.

Aylon walks us through the great need to reimagine the global dairy industry, and the four areas of harm that made himself realise the epic need for new solutions: 1) Sustainability and industrial animal agriculture causing mass extinction of species, 2) industrial animal agriculture's impact on global poverty and starvation, 3) animal suffering, and lastly 4) human health and the link between the consumption of animal products to almost all major chronic diseases in the west, as well as the outbreak of pandemics like Covid-19.

We also cover how to achieve price parity with conventional dairy as one of Eclipse Food's competitive advantages and focusing on the product categories where the largest impact in terms of offsets would be achieved.

For all of you out there who fiddle around with the idea of making a leap of faith change in your life but feel that your current skillset and legacy is holding you back, this one's for you. Aylon provides some hands-on ideas for how to "kick in the door" to a new industry and get going for real. In my mind, he's really the perfect example of someone who dared to make a big change in order to chase the biggest dream of his.

With the industrial revolution, humans spilled billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, doubling the amount of CO₂ from the previous 700,000 years. For about 15 years, scientists agree in stating that 97% of global warming comes from the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, which is triggered by human activities. To limit warming to 1.5°C, global net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity must decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050.

This means that in order to "Re:planet", we have to Re:move Co2 from the atmosphere. For humanity to succeed within the short time frame we have, we might have to turn to both nature-based and technology-based solutions. Such a technological solution is exactly what Climeworks is working on. Climeworks develops, builds and operates direct air capture machines using a technology which captures carbon dioxide directly from the air; removing unavoidable and historic CO₂ emissions. They have 15 machines in operation, with the world’s first large-scale plant switched on in Iceland in September 2021. The raw material, pure CO₂ gas, is used by customers in industries such as commercial agriculture, energy, food and beverage and automotive, for uses such as carbonating drinks or for producing carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels and materials. By using Climeworks' CO₂, customers can reduce their overall emissions as well as lowering their dependence on fossil energy

Christoph Gebald is a visionary entrepreneur, a mechanical engineer (ETH Zürich and UC Berkeley and holds an MSc with distinction and a PhD from ETH Zürich. Together with Jan Wurzbacher, Christoph founded Climeworks in 2009. As an avid skier and mountain lover he has spent considerable amounts of time in the mountains, enabling him to witness first-hand the consequences of climate change.

Climeworks is not just about removing a specific amount of carbon from the air, but about creating a movement by inspiring 1 billion people to take action to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. Just like today it's totally natural for most people to take back with you the garbage that you bring into nature, in a close future it'll be natural to also take back the carbon that you are responsible for releasing. Important to notice is that their solution is not intended to justify the release of more emissions, but rather to remove unavoidable and historic emissions.

If you'd like to reduce your climate footprint, you can visit their website and become a Climate Pioneer.

Damien Mander is an Iraq war veteran who served as a naval clearance diver and special operations sniper for the Australian Defence Force. After travelling and learning about poaching in Southern Africa and the criminal networks that used military equipment and tactics to poach for profit, Mander was convinced that his specialised military skills, personal finances, and experience could contribute significantly to wildlife protection and conservation. Liquidating his life savings, the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF) was established to be the last line of defence for nature.

In 2017 Damien founded ‘Akashinga – Nature Protected by Women’, an IAPF program that has already grown to over 170 employees, becoming the only group of nature reserves in the world to be protected by women. In 2021 National Geographic released a film as a celebration of the courage, conservation and unorthodox thinking that’s leading to massive positive change.

Damien is the winner of the 2019 Winsome Constance Kindness Gold Medal, a prestigious international recognition for services to animals and humanity. Past recipients include Sir David Attenborough and Dr Jane Goodall.

His TEDx talk "The Modern Warrior" at the Sydney Oprah House has been seen over 7 million times through social media and translated into 27 languages. He has spoken at the United Nations and his work has been featured in National Geographic, Africa Geographic, 60 Minutes, The Guardian Newspaper, BBC, France 24, CBS News, Le Figaro, PBS News, Animal Planet, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, Forbes, Sunday Times, etc. Recently he was recognized by the Dutch Government as a Gender Champion.

Getting Damien on the show was a dream of mine, since he has had a massive influence on me personally. If a guy like Damien could transform his life in the way that he has, then I believed I could do it too. In this episode we talk about life after Iraq, protecting biodiversity under extreme risk of extinction, why women are such powerful weapons against poaching, how we’re all creatures of habits and how an individual choice has become the single most impactful decision Damien has ever made.

"Healthy food doesn't have to taste like shit". That's what you get in your face when entering Wicked Healthy Food's website. 

Chad Sarno is co-founder of Wicked Healthy, a thriving, mission-driven online community that focuses on culinary education, consulting, innovation, training, and product development for manufacturers, retailers, and food service outlets. Chad’s mission of health inspired plant-based eating and education has reached all corners of the globe.

Chad is also the co-founder and VP of Culinary for the plant-based seafood company, Good Catch Foods which offers a line of ‘seafood without sacrifice’.

Chad formally held the position of VP of Plant-Based Education at the world’s largest online culinary school. Internationally, Chad has launched a boutique plant-based restaurant brand throughout Europe in Istanbul, London, and Munich, and has consulted on restaurant launches globally. Chad joined the global team at Whole Foods Market as the company’s Global RnD Chef and culinary media spokesperson for the Whole Foods healthy eating program.

Chad’s celebrated recipes have also allowed him to publish, together with his brother Derek, The Wicked Healthy Cookbook. He has served as contributing author to more than 10 health-related books, including New York Times bestselling cookbook The Conscious Cook, and to co-author the bestseller Crazy Sexy Kitchen with Kris Carr. Chad has been featured and quoted in numerous media outlets ranging from CNN, NBC, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been a contributing author publications such as VegNews, Men’s Health, Self, Shape, and Prevention magazines.

In this episode Chad and I discuss the rapid rise of alternatives to animal-based foods and the massive amounts of investments going into developing these alternatives, the "aha moment" that makes people care so much more of just about everything - which is required for people to decide to change behaviour. Chad also hands out some advise for aspiring founders aiming to disrupt the food and ag industries. My personal favourite part of the episode is Chad sharing his view on kids and food; how we as parents should proactively prepare our kids to become ambassadors for the future of food, being mindful of which traditions and habits we pass on to them, and how we involve them to make it easy, fun and rewarding. Make sure to view the great series Healthy Kids Plant-Based Cooking Class on youtube!

“We need to keep pressure on world leaders so that they make the right decisions to protect us all – but particularly the most vulnerable people in the world, who have done the least to cause climate change but are suffering the most."

The French newspaper “Le Monde” recently defined Joanna Sullivan as a “pioneer of ethical lobbying in Brussels”. Joanna is founder and CEO of Conscience Consulting, the first sustainability agency in Brussels, where she advises institutions, business and civil society. She is also Professor of Climate Diplomacy at the European Institute in Nice, published author on sustainability engagement, moderator, facilitator and speaker. With degrees in Law, Politics and Psychology, Joanna builds bridges for inclusive sustainable societies, convenes coalitions and designs campaigns that drive positive change.

We had a fantastic super interesting talk about the power of climate activist movements, how a year of action until COP27 will have to unfold, helping indigenous minorities with no voice to get a seat at the table, and how to stay optimistic in these turbulent times filled with uncertainty. Joanna is an activist, an expert on how to make people & orgs take action to solve the climate crisis. In essence: a real power woman. The world would truly be better off with more people like her.

Tim Thonhauser-Röhrich is an entrepreneurial doer and global ecosystem builder serving as Executive Board Member of FightBack. FightBack is on a mission to accelerate the global transformation towards a healthy & sustainable planet. It's an international non-profit platform for executives, innovators, and thought leaders, coming together to engage in actionable inspiration, empowering personal development, and powerful impact alliances to jointly create a sustainable and healthy future by solving our global climate and health crisis.

During this episode we discuss Tim's awakening call to devote his life to a cause greater than himself, the importance of letting science guide humanity's prioritisation of efforts, and the need to move beyond corporate strategy and planning, to future-fit leaders by affecting their intrinsic motivation to do what's good for people and planet.