251 Tina Owens - Only 1% of nutrition data is tracked on food labels and that means lots of opportunities for companies

A conversation with Tina Owens, regenerative agriculture consultant and part of the Nutrient Density Alliance (for Regenerative Agriculture), about the state of the nutrient density space, the research, why life cycle assessments are broken and a lot more.

We are at the telegraph stage of nutrition, and that means lots of opportunities for companies. What does it mean that only 1% of nutrition data is tracked on food labels. Does it mean we should wait until the science is completely clear? Or, is there a lot of space on which food companies, large and small, can already act and secure a leading role in a space that seems completely open at the moment.

The promise of molecular food mapping and its potential to illuminate the nutritional dark matter of our daily intake is also on our radar. The future is at our fingertips, with wearable technology and mass spectrometers in play to help us grasp our food's nutritional content better. 

It is necessary a more inclusive approach that respects organic, perennial, regenerative, and indigenous managed lands. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We are at a telegraph stage of nutrition and that means a lot of opportunities for companies. Join me in this wide-ranging conversation about the state of the nutrient density space, the research, but also all the companies who are working on it and in it. What does it mean that we're only tracking 1% of the nutrient data on food labels? Does it mean we should wait until the science is completely clear, or is there a lot of space for food companies, large and small? Yes, there's space also for large food companies that can already act and secure a leading role and position in a space that seems completely open at the moment. We also discuss why life cycle assessments LCA's are completely broken and what to do about it and, at the end, a fascinating insight about how the scientific community is acting non-scientific at all by demonizing indigenous, regenerative, perennial agriculture and regenerative agriculture. They're actually not acting scientific why? Because, if they would be honest, they're thesis that highly intensive, very heavily chemically fueled agriculture is working. That seems clearly not the case. They should be looking at alternatives and actually alternative thesis is clearly there and has been there for many decades and, in many cases, many millennia, and they just don't take it seriously. If they would be a true scientist, they would be all over alternative thesis on how to grow food and feed the planet, but they're not. So that raises a lot of interesting questions. Join me in this fascinating conversation and I hope you enjoy it. What are the connections between healthy farming practices, healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut and healthy people?

Speaker 1: 1:49

Welcome to a special series where we go deep into the relationship between regenerative agriculture practices that build soil, health and the nutritional quality of the food we end up eating. We unpack the current state of science, the role of investments, businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs and more. We're very happy with the support of the Grandham Foundation for the protection of the environment for this series. The Grandham Foundation is a private foundation with a mission to protect and conserve the natural environment. Find out more on grandhamfoundationorg or in the links below. Welcome to another episode today with regenerative agriculture. Consultant and head of the Neutron Density Alliance. Welcome, Tina Owens.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Hi Coon, it's so great to be here. I've been listening to this podcast for years. I feel like I've finally arrived to be speaking with you today.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Thank you so much for those nice words. I would definitely say friend of the show and, yeah, I can't believe we didn't make this happen before. But I think there's a really good reason to do it now and that's the Neutron Density series we're in the midst of and the work you have been doing, you are doing and then, of course, you will be doing in the future. So, welcome, first of all. But I want to take it a step back and start with a question that we always like to start at the beginning how did you end up focusing on soil? What was your path towards this very specific I mean, it feels like a growing niche, but still a very specific niche of a niche within a food system.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I would say my path to soil started in 2016. At a Green America network meeting in the group that's now known as the Soil and Climate Alliance, dr Tim LaSalle from Chico State was presenting on research related to carbon sequestration, soil health and started talking about the research into nutrient density and finding that these outcomes were provable when focus on soil health happened. And two things happened. One, my husband and I I'm from a multi-generational farming and dairy family we decided that we would try and figure out how we could integrate our own farm into this type of approach, and so we started our small farm here in Michigan where we focus on heritage pastured animals for nutrient dense outcomes.

Speaker 2: 4:16

But more than that, I started contemplating the business, the case and building the business case for bringing nutrient density to consumers, because this is a win-win in so many places for the marketplace, from scope three emissions to reduce risk and sourcing ingredients. My background is operations and supply chain risk mitigation for 15 years, all the way through to top line growth and consumer engagement, which some of my work at Kashi. Over the decade that I spent working on that brand, I learned the importance of engaging the consumer in this space, and it remains unfathomable to me that some of the largest food companies have yet to shift their thinking enough to just harness the demand that's already waiting across the entire consumer food system as it relates to soil, health and things like nutrient density. So I can talk a little bit more about what we've done in partnership with the Soil and Climate Alliance at Green America around the nutrient density alliance, but I'll get back to you for the next question.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Yeah, thank you so much. I was going to double click on that sort of latent demand or demand waiting to be served. What makes you say that? Because we all hope for that. Obviously, in the space, like, as long as we bring these products grown with ingredients that come from farms that really focus on their soil health, the demand will be there. What makes you say that there's this? Basically, the demand is there, but it's not being served.

Speaker 2: 5:37

Yeah, so several things, each of which folks can find on our nutrientdensityallianceorg website around the resources for the business case on this. Since 2020, the organic consumer in the US, 83% of households purchased one or more organic product a year. In 2020, according to Hartman research, they started showing that soil health, better ecology, better flavor, better nutrition was a purchase driver for those consumers. Now, why those consumers matter is because they're the tip of the spear on where the mainstream food system heads next. So I learned this firsthand when I was working on Kashi and would see Special K lift our most successful launches under their own banner and take it more into the mainstream consumer.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Yeah, Kashi's owned by Kellogg. What were you selling, making, producing? To have an idea of food.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Yeah, so cereal, snack bars, hot cereal, frozen meals, etc. In the natural and organic and non-gmail food space? Yeah, thanks for that context. And so it taught me the role of this specific consumer set in showing that there's demand in this space, that then the mainstream brands end up picking up and leads into their innovation calendars, etc. But beyond that, Spins, which is a US company owned by IRI, which is all about point of purchase data, Spins has asserted that 66% of American consumers are purchasing based on health in the grocery store, and this is based on actual purchase consumption.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Some of what people say, because it's often very different what people? Actually do. This is what we actually buy and put in there. They're a grocery basket.

Speaker 2: 7:17

The grocery cart, exactly.

Speaker 2: 7:19

And so if 66% of consumers are purchasing based on health and the additional consumer data shows that the point of purchase decision making is around taste, health, quality, nutrition for consumers, well, guess what?

Speaker 2: 7:33

Regenerative Act offers Taste, health, quality and nutrition, and so all of the marketing signals are there. What's happening is that marketers are somehow believing that they have to convert people to a food religion that is, regenerative agriculture in order to engage them in purchase intent around this, and we need to get away from that. We need to stop expecting to enroll people in a values movement in order to engage them in purchasing behavior based on their own critical needs around their health, their longevity, their fertility, their kids, adhd, right. So there's a lot of research from both Nielsen, iri and from Hartman, which are two major research houses that the CPG world listens to, showing that the consumers not only here, but has been here for years waiting for additional solutions to come to market, and Regenerative Agriculture offers that sweet spot that covers all of those topics and more. So I'll leave it at that and see where you wanted to get next.

Speaker 1: 8:31

And do you see that with the companies you know well, you work with, that are part of the Alliance, that have seen that success translate like the demand actually translating into sales, without maybe having to completely explain the full story of soil and all the other benefits of regeneration in general, because that seems to be quite a task to do that on a package in three seconds or less in a supermarket? Have you seen that some of the, let's say, quote unquote success stories of this demand translating actually into sales compared to organic or non-organic? Because we've seen actually in Europe quite a bit of organic suffering lately in inflation and sort of consumers starting to choose on price, obviously in this kind of climate.

Speaker 2: 9:20

Right. Well, I would point to a couple of positive brands in the marketplace that have maybe not made Regenerative the number one thing they're messaging on, but have made Nutrient Density the number one thing they're messaging on. So, Good Culture, which is a cottage cheese and dairy brand in the US, when they raised their series C funding, they announced back in 2022, I think it was that, going forward, they were going to be focused on Nutrient Dense categories for their entire innovation and growth platform. They practice regenerative agriculture. They're working on how they weave those things together.

Speaker 2: 9:56

There's a lot of what we call insurgent brands, you know, small brands that are looking to stake out the leadership space in the marketplace, like Big Picture Foods, Snacktivist, Quinn Snacks, White Leaf Provisions, where if you go to their website, you'll see that they have a different sales strategy compared to that where they work, and also back up there wording around nutrition tied to regenerative agriculture, and so they're making that nutrient density piece of regenerative agriculture their point of differentiation within the marketplace in order to get buyers at retailers to show that they have something additional to offer consumers and actually get that shelf space.

Speaker 2: 10:37

And something consumers don't realize is retailers grocers are actually the gateway right we tend to think of eaters as who we have to talk to, but in many cases you actually have to talk to yeah, you have to talk to the retailer, the buyers at the retailers, or who's deciding what the consumer actually gets access to, and those folks are interested and incentivized to find new and novel things to bring to consumers, based on consumption behavior.

Speaker 2: 11:04

And so really that's the gate that you have to get through is your shelf positioning whether or not they include you in their advertisements, whether or not they allow you specials or end caps or all the things that capture consumers' attention when they're in the grocery space that lead to not just sales but growth in sales over time. And so it's important that those stakeholders actually understand what's possible around nutrient density in order to create that pathway for consumers to purchase. Because right now, if you and I were to walk into a mainstream grocery store in the US and find all the regenerative products, we'd find Tazot, which just went completely regenerative, organic certified it's owned by Unilever. We'd find the do-good dog from Applegate, owned by Hormel, and maybe some pasture bird owned by Purdue. Very little else in the grocery store at this moment is actually messaging on regenerative in the mainstream grocery space. So the entire market is almost addressable here in engaging consumers around regenerative agriculture and nutrient density. So those are just a few examples that come to mind.

Speaker 1: 12:10

How do we prevent that this is the next fancy new thing that the buyers are choosing and in a couple of years it will be something else. I have no idea what it could be. But how do we make sure like this is not just the next food hype that we had with superfoods or maybe still have in some places, where also it was quote unquote, focused on health but, of course, never really materialized? But how do we make sure this is a lasting thing in a landscape, in a supermarket and Victor's solution, which is ever changing, absolutely difficult to get in and to stay in, like, what is the key? I'm not saying there is a key, but what is the advice or the key there to you to make sure this is a lasting like, say, shelf battle we win with some of these products?

Speaker 2: 12:56

Yeah, and there's only one answer to that. It is the key and it's the consumer. So currently, the regenerative movement itself 58 of the top 100 food companies on the planet say they're doing something around regenerative. That's all the way from individual pilots up to, let's say, nestle's 14 million tons, 50% of their supply with by 2030, or the acreage targets of Cargill, general Mills, pepsi at all. They're thinking of those or they're activating those is a better way to say it around back office work like scope three, emissions reporting, stakeholder management, farmer onboarding and supply risk mitigation right Procurement practices. They have yet to translate how those back office costs can actually lead to top line growth. And this is actually the key work that we're doing at the nutrient density alliances, working within the quality and regulatory space and the marketing space, which are key barriers to actually getting things like this to consumers on pack, to show that they can use the existing ingredient process, specification process, procurement process and still pass through this meaningful difference for the consumer.

Speaker 2: 14:07

And so you kind of touched on the corporate flavor of the month program and, having spent over two decades working in some of the world's largest food companies, I can tell you the corporate flavor of the month program exists for a reason.

Speaker 2: 14:19

It's because once a program gets to be about three to five years old which, by the way, some of the first original regenerative commitments are now rounding that bend of potentially three to five years old you have management changes, you have budget changes, you have management consultants coming in trying to make their paycheck work, where they always have to have something new that they're offering right.

Speaker 2: 14:45

And so if we compare the regenerative movement to the organic and the non-GMO movement, both of which have been established enough that we can pretty much say that they're here to stay within the grocery store aisle because of intense consumer demand, that is, from a specific segment of consumers that's not ever going to go away, unless they literally have no money.

Speaker 2: 15:09

We don't see that same thing with regenerative, and so I get very worried when I think about the back office beam counting that has to happen on the overhead of having roles managing your regenerative agriculture program without that balance of the top line growth showing that there's a there there for the company to continue, and so without that consumer demand as a market signal, it makes it feel riskier for farmers to move into this because what they have is a sharp corporate elbow telling them to do it for greenhouse gas emissions and scope three reporting as opposed to this is where the market is headed.

Speaker 2: 15:45

The demand is here and this is here to stay. So the consumer is the missing element from the regenerative agriculture movement in creating a safe space for consumers to eat food that is more nutrient dense, which they need for their health, longevity and fertility, and farmers to feel safe moving into that space. Irregardless of the outcomes for climate change. I would say right that, even if you just looked at it strictly from a market force of supply and demand, there's enough reason here for companies to move into that space and start activating around consumer purchase intent.

Speaker 1: 16:20

And you see the health angle as the key to unlock, to unlock that consumer demand.

Speaker 2: 16:28

basically, yes, absolutely, because certain consumers will purchase based on the certification that keeps the little girl in Ghana in the classroom and not having to stay at home and essentially not have access to education certifications like fair trade, et cetera. However, when the consumer is looking to save $10 or $20 on their shopping cart today because of other market pressures, they may be willing to sacrifice that because it feels like a problem that is distant from them. We keep trying to sell them on the farmers, on the climate, on the soil, on these other food values, when they may be having trouble meeting their own basic needs. But if they know that buying that product means that their kid, who has diagnosed ADHD, will actually have a better day at school tomorrow because they can concentrate better than eating something that is more empty calorie or less nutrient dense, they will prioritize that purchase in a different way than if it's somebody else's child that they're impacting. And that's the part that we keep missing in having this conversation with consumers.

Speaker 1: 18:13

And so how does that, if it does it all like, clash with the whole idea of fresh, like where does processing come into and how do you see that turning Like? What happens to the nutrients basically in processing? I think is a question like until it hits the supermarket aisle. Apart from the fresh place and even there, the fresh aisle, a lot has happened in the meantime. Have you seen interesting work there to preserve basically or to make sure most of these nutrients actually make it to my kitchen shelf?

Speaker 2: 18:44

Well, here's where we got to get a little bit wonky, so I like that. So there's a bifurcated conversation here. One is what we actually track today on side panels, which is 1% of nutrition. The other is what happens post-processing. So let me tackle the 1% first. In short, the tools that we have used over the last 20 years to map our human genome and then the human microbiome are now being turned on the world around us, ie food, and so the molecular mapping of food is happening as we speak, and nutritional dark matter is a term that was coined by Albert Laszlo Beribassi, who's the head of the physics department at Northeastern and he's a lecturer at Harvard Medical right, so very credentialed in this area of health and the data, and so Nutritional dark matter.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Yeah, I think Nutritional dark matter. David Lusak mentioned it six months ago or somewhere, but it's been a very intriguing term, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:43

Yeah, so the USDA has for quite a long time tracked 150 bioactive compounds that they determined as being key for human health, and those are things like vitamins, proteins, amino acids, et cetera. But Beribassi's work, pure Reviewed, published about four years ago, shared that there were 26,000 biochemicals in food, which would make that 150 from the USDA 0.005 of the current compounds within food that are mapped. Well, since then, there's been additional molecular mapping happening and now there's Pure Reviewed research showing there's 200,000 to 300,000 biochemicals in food, and actually friends of mine who own labs would say well, tina, there are millions of compounds in food that have yet to be mapped. And so you have AI coming into this space as well. Whereas these bioactives are mapped, they can be put into an AI system, like what BrightSeed is doing, where you compare the bioactive compounds to all of the existing human health research to understand and hypothesize where compounds might be really useful for human health that need to be rewoven back into the food system, or BrightSeed is actually going down the supplementation route, but this opportunity stands for the industry.

Speaker 2: 20:56

Corteva has mapped the O-genome at a at a level that Pepsi and Quaker are using in order to understand how soil, health and nutrition are tied to that molecular mapping. And then the periodic table of food initiative is being funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with the American Heart Association and Biodiversity Seat their mapping human health outcomes tied to nutrient density for those bioactives that have yet to be found. Now let's go to processing. So molecular mapping of food we understand foods that are starting to understand food at a parts per billion level, will go beyond the 1% of nutrition you know, et cetera. Everybody asks this processing question, which I find quite interesting because in most foods that question does not get answered today. It gets answered only if you're making a claim around a specific antioxidant or a specific gut health benefit.

Speaker 2: 21:55

You have to demonstrate that that exists post-processing and that it exists for most of the shelf life, at a certain percentage of the shelf life of that product, either being on shelf in the store or in a consumer's pantry, and so immediately people jump to this. Well, what if there's more antioxidants in almonds but then they get turned into butter that's heated and those antioxidants disappear. Those things aren't necessarily looked at today. So where this calculation happens in nutrition is actually based on the raw specifications of each of the ingredients coming in the back door of the manufacturing facility and the quality and regulatory process within a company. It's a calculation that the USDA governs, and then, of course, the FDA and USDA govern on PAC claims, depending on where you fall within the food system.

Speaker 2: 22:45

But very, very little of that information is focused on post-processing for food. So since we will now understand foods at a part per billion level, it's not just nutrition but it's pathogens, pesticides, allergens and adulteration and within that, how we're actually negating some of the benefits we might have put in in the field. That when you put it through an extrusion process or a hydrogenation process or something that's actually detrimental in processing the food, that those benefits actually disappear. I would say that's an end of the decade thing that we might know. So we're in a crawl walk run phase. Crawl is the industry does not even understand that soil health equals nutrition and that soil health impacts side panels. And so at the Nutrient Density Alliance, we are very, very keen on that.

Speaker 1: 23:34

So what are side panels in this case?

Speaker 2: 23:36

Oh, the side panel nutrition on a food product that you would purchase, where you would turn the box over and you'd look for fat or sugar or whatever matters for your own diet. People would do a lot of it.

Speaker 1: 23:46

But how do you feed 3 million on those on the box? Yeah, that's going to be tricky.

Speaker 2: 23:50

Well, that's where tech comes in, so you'll have wearables tied to your metabolic response. There's mass spectrometers and the potential to embed that within cell phones. Samsung actually had a patent that they got back in I think it was 2019 for an embedded mass spectrometer within a cell phone, and I tied this to a fun article from the New York Times from a couple of years ago, where they asserted that cell phones have become refrigerators. Essentially, they're now appliances. But if, as a parent, you know if I'm managing my own auto immune disease, or I have a child who has allergies, or I'm managing some other health outcome, or I'm pregnant, I might line up around the block to buy a cell phone that actually helps me understand what's in my food from a nutrition perspective, because it meaningfully changes my quality of life. Today, I just upgraded my iPhone from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 13. And it did not meaningfully change anything in my life.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Right, it was the same and made recording this episode more difficult. You know I don't think.

Speaker 2: 24:52

Yes, I had a better battery life right, and so never underestimate the and a better camera yeah. Never underestimate the willingness of that industry to disrupt the food industry in order to get people lined up around the block again and drive their own sales. And, frankly, I think we do actually need this level of tech interaction to understand the complexity of food and what it means for human health.

Speaker 1: 25:14

And is it then safe to say basically, we're really at the beginning. You're saying crawling, but like to understand even the basics of nutrition we're discovering. It seems like every couple of years other peer reviewed papers come out. There's way more compounds than we actually counted before, but like a factor 10 or a factor 100. Like that's just not even. You cannot even imagine how little we know about all these interactions between them and how some of it ends up being more in food or less Looking at the practices. So we're really really at the beginning. So how can we then make claims when it comes? When you, let's say, you're running a food company as more one, or even a medium size one, and you're focusing on soil health and you're focusing procurement, like how do you feel comfortable making any kind of claims if it feels like nutrition research is basically at its absolute infancy?

Speaker 2: 26:04

I'm so glad you asked that.

Speaker 2: 26:06

Well, let's put this in really quick terms, like, if we know 1% of nutrition, we're not even at the rotary phone stage of nutrition. We're at the telegraph stage of nutrition, right, but there's still certain compounds that consumers and companies, marketers, researchers, have been trained to focus in on, like, let's say, protein and lead, or antioxidants and blueberries, or amino, amino sorry, omega 3, 6 fatty acid ratios within meat, dairy eggs, etc. Right, we already know that these things matter for human health and, in fact, antioxidants, polyphenols, omega 3, 6 they don't even make it on the on the side panel. They're usually front of pack or back of pack things, and yet we, as consumers, know to seek those things out for purchasing, right. And so the bare minimum and this is what we're after we're after this foundational step is, if I have a regenerative wheat program and so many growers in the in regenerative wheat have asserted something around the number of 40% higher protein in their wheat from regenerative practices and Annie's Mac and cheese owned by General Mills, actually, when they launched the soil Mac back in like 2017-2018.

Speaker 2: 27:16

They even have a moment they put like so important, unlike the packaging and on the marketing Remember yeah, and their farmer, nate Paul Palm or Paul Paul I always get it mixed up but Nate, their farmer he had a video on any site showing that, talking about the fact that you had 40% higher protein and wheat, and there's other farmers even today that would tell you that there's this outcome. Well, the companies that have these regenerative ag programs, even in wheat, are not going back and seeing if they can segregate that wheat to create a specification specific to that protein level? And if they did and they segregated it and had it go through into a single product like that Annie's Mac they could actually use the same specification and certificate of analysis process that all companies use today on all lots, on all required testing within their specification process, and that would impact their side panel calculation. If that protein was higher, then you could say something on the back of the package, like we practice regenerative agriculture practices and those lead to outcomes, meaningful outcomes and nutrient density.

Speaker 2: 28:21

Check out our website to learn more about why there's higher protein versus our competitors or what have you. What we actually recommend is that people compare their nutritional outcomes on this 1% to the USDA standard. So if the standard for the entire market is X and you're seeing a 19% increase over the standard. Talk about that. Talk about the delta right, because you shouldn't? We don't want you to demonize your competitors, we don't even necessarily do the average?

Speaker 2: 28:49

Right, yeah, just go against the average and or yourself Like, say, hey, we, how we source this last year versus how we source this this year, led to 20% higher antioxidants in our almonds, or something to that effect. Right, and in order to engage the consumer on the fact that soil health actually equals nutrient density, and it's not a religion, a food religion, that we're engaging them in, it's just solid science based on real outcomes that the UN FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, has been asserting since the year of the soils in 2015. And that, going back to the 1960s.

Speaker 2: 29:23

Ev Belfort, you know, was writing about soil and needing to do agro science, agro medical research, 60 years ago because these things were not being covered by siloed thinking in the scientific systems, because we weren't looking at the connection between agricultural practices and medicinal outcomes. And so now here it is, 60 years later. Are we going to listen to the lady or not? I think we have enough information that we know we need to act. It's just a matter of helping people understand how they can use the existing food system to bring these things through to consumers and activate purchase intent.

Speaker 1: 31:24

And you touched upon something and let me ask you to be sure I understood like how important is it to keep like sort of let's say, you're a big almond brand or an almond spread brand and you're sourcing some of it from farms that really pay attention to regenerative outcomes and practices etc. And some of it not like to keep it separate? How difficult is that for a brand and how essential is it? Because, of course, on the package you want to show the delta, maybe to yourself, but it means that the almonds that are in that specific package have to be the ones that come from the 17 or 19 percent or whatever the difference is in that specific thing you're measuring. Like how tricky is that?

Speaker 2: 32:02

Welcome to my job for 15 years at Kellogg's and Cashty. So you've got to have enough of the, let's say, an almond to make it through the minimum order quantity process. So it has to be enough to meet the shellers process, enough to meet the roasting process for the mandatois. So we're getting into the processing. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:18

And there's our quantities and if I'm not wrong, we just had a current spring on the pod which probably I think is the first time I ever said podcast sorry and which probably will be out around this as well Like minimum quantities for processing at least the flour, but I'm imagining many other things have become very, very concentrated big industries, so I guess that's not easy.

Speaker 2: 32:40

Yeah, that was. That was my whole role for several years was actually figuring that out so that we could make specific claims on products, and what I'll say here is there's another. There's a second route, though, and that is what's currently called mass balance, which is, maybe it's only 20 percent a year of supply web and that other 80 percent you're working to convert. Well, then, you enroll the consumer in the journey rather than waiting for the perfect. So you may not be able. Maybe there's enough in there that it meaningfully changes the antioxidant level of each lot If you mix it consciously and that happens all the time, by the way, in grains, especially mixed lots in order to meet specifications.

Speaker 2: 33:17

So this is not anything new that I am mentioning or you could talk about. We source 20 percent of our almonds from this type of sourcing. We find that they have higher X, y and Z, and it may not be on pack, it might be on your website, and those are two different types of claims that are regulated in very different ways. So, as long as you were actually doing the work in the field to have the specification and lot certificate of analysis information to show that those things are true that you're asserting, that is the same way that those processes are run today. People do not need to reinvent the wheel on how they're passing through these things to consumers and, in fact, telling them that you're on this journey and why it's important, I would say, could actually increase purchase intent, because consumers would want to see more of that, especially if they're noticing an impact to taste, health, quality and nutrition, which are the purchase drivers that matter most for the industry.

Speaker 1: 34:10

And then of course you get to a certain moment where that taste and the nutrients actually are going to change. That might be the tipping point, we don't know. But it really depends of course on the ingredient, on the specific crop etc. So there are two routes basically or separate it out completely and put the meaningful claims on the package that you can actually be sure that it ends up in that specific box, or move the whole lot and communicate about it, but don't put it on the package necessarily, but put it on the website until you hit sort of the tipping point and flavor and it should density actually for the whole lot starts to change.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Yep, well, and I have an example from my past life that I can share that gets at the business opportunity here. So, in brief, when I was working with Kashi and we had the certified transitional program that was consumer facing, that helped convert conventional acres to organic by sourcing only from farmers in that process of conversion, we launched one product yes, three years, but really only two harvests, by the way, because the third harvest is usually organic certified.

Speaker 2: 35:14

So I had a moving supply chain that took a lot of management on my part to keep it rolling and a lot of wonderful suppliers that helped us make that work.

Speaker 2: 35:24

And what we saw was we saw a values reset with our key retailer that allowed us to have the rest of our even though we're only launching one skew based on wheat in the natural and organic channel.

Speaker 2: 35:38

We saw a massive leap forward in our relationships with key retailers, where the rest of our innovation got taken up at a bigger level. We got better shelf set, better ad positioning, more access to the buyers, etc. Etc. We saw low, or sorry, high, single digit growth on our entire portfolio that first year after off of the launch of one product and one segregated ingredient. So I don't want people to think that you know this is only a single play for a single product. If you do this well enough, where you engage the industry and the retailers in the transformational nature of what you're offering to consumers and give everybody that leadership edge to be able to tout with their own stakeholders, it can help transform demand for the rest of your portfolio, and there's plenty of innovation marketers out there who've seen this happen and know that this is true. They need to put this level of thinking into how they're talking about regenerative with consumers.

Speaker 1: 36:39

And then what would be your? Of course, we're not giving investment advice here, but I always like to ask this question in your listener of the show. So you know, let's say we're doing it in person. It could be at RFSI or a pension fund conference or somewhere where the room is full of financially minded people. What would be your main message you would like them to walk away with? Of course, there's a lot of info. We're talking, we're doing this live, so there's a lot of info, a lot of data, a lot of excitement. But if there's one thing they should remember, which hopefully they walk out of the door and think differently of how to put their own money to work or the money they're managing for other people what would that one thing be?

Speaker 2: 37:18

Yeah. So institutional investors, let's focus on them, because they have a lot of clout within food companies and there's a lot of foundational ownership of food shares of entities that are working philanthropically around the world to try and mitigate climate change, hunger or health, but aren't bringing that demand to the door of their CPG, of which they might own five or 10% share, or more. That the CPG has a regenerative ag program, but they're failing to follow through on this promise of nutrient density for consumers, and so I would say it's a left hand not talking to the right hand. So if I'm an institutional investor those 58 out of the top 100 food companies that say they're doing regenerative I would start demanding shareholder resolutions that ensure that they're actually carrying through those benefits to consumers for the top line growth and not just the back office costs that are happening.

Speaker 2: 38:11

The other side of this coin is that the entire market is currently addressable, so it's really about who wants to be first, because you can carve out space in food service, in medically tailored meals, in home food delivery, in sports and music venues, in school lunch offerings, and that's before we even get to the massive ingredient suppliers feeding into branded products at the grocery store.

Speaker 2: 38:33

And so it's really about which of the threads in the existing food system do you want to transform for this future food system state that helps maintain lower risk in your long-term investment because of the climate mitigation techniques in sourcing those materials in a climate-stressed world, so you actually have products on shelf to sell, right? Yes, it helps. And so you know, thinking through this lens of the fact that having consumer demand and all of these different channels to pull from and creating that demand, and or investment in innovation and or the launch of new companies that could be invested in by venture capital, the entire market is currently addressable. Which part do you want to carve out? Because right now, you can capture the leadership space fairly easily, from my perspective, if you have the right money and the right connections.

Speaker 1: 39:25

And I think smart investors always ask this question why now? I mean, you mentioned some of the research and some of the focus has been six years old, I think. If you look at some of the papers that David and Anne Montgomery Bickley in what's your Food Aid, in the Indeq basically in the literature list in the back on the website because it was too long I think it goes back a hundred years in some cases Like why what is different now in 2023? And we didn't know 10 years ago, 20 years ago or even five years ago. Why is that now actually addressable and not just wishful thinking?

Speaker 2: 40:01

Yeah, well, and it's because we do have the science to show that all of these outcomes are real, and we have the science growing on why soil health, the micro-risal fungal community and all of these other things, how they're interwoven with human health. And so we're at a point where the momentum is so vast that there's no denying that these things are true. The only way that you would deny it is if you've deliberately stuck your head in the sand from learning these things. And I actually want to point out something here that I get a lot which a few people are doing, but yeah, yes, they are, and they're trying to claw everything back to that space.

Speaker 2: 40:32

But you know, if you, nutrient density is tied to mental health, and so you know, if you want fertility, if you want mental health within our populace at a global level going forward, I would hope that you would find that to be something worth investing in because, by the way, those are your market basis. That's where your demand comes from. There's an argument within this that the.

Speaker 1: 40:53

It's very cynical but very real. Yeah, yeah, I'm a realist.

Speaker 2: 40:57

But there's one argument I want to bring to the forefront that I get a lot and I've dubbed it the scurvy argument. And it's well, if we only know some of this and not all of it, why even bother bringing it to consumers? And I chewed on this a bit the first couple of times I got it. I tend to get it in various different forums and I tried to find a parallel in human health that I could bring to the forefront and I started wondering when did we know that citrus fruit actually impacted scurvy and it was research that was done in the 1700s on, you know, sailors and the lack of vitamin C and that citrus fruit actually could help meaningfully with scurvy and that's why oranges and citrus fruit started being shared on ships Coon. Do you know when we actually understood the metabolic pathways and all of the different ways that that actually works for human health and outcomes? It was the early 2000s.

Speaker 1: 41:48

Yeah, right about that. So it's like 300 years late.

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yes, and so the point is not why does it work? The point is that we know that it works. We may not know everything about why it works, but we've stripped these nutrients out of the food system bit by bit, from a focus on quantity and not quality. Why on earth would you withhold that information from consumers as you're adding it back in, that there's a benefit that they should be seeking out specifically in order to enroll them in helping with that food system transformation by shifting the forces of demand? That's where I'm at full stop. So I'm now at the point where that's the scurvy argument. Here's how silly this sounds when you say this out loud, and I don't want to make people feel silly, but I also want to nip this argument in the bud because it's not useful or helpful in this moment. It keeps us further removed from the truth of what's happened in our food system and it keeps consumers in the dark just a bit longer about what the fact is.

Speaker 1: 42:48

It feels like that. Actually, it feels like it's a deliberate strategy I'm not saying the exact people that asked the question, but to just spread a bit more doubt, to just delay a bit more, which is what we've seen before in cigarettes, what we've seen before in electric cars or fossil fuel in general. Let's just do a bit more research, because we're not 100% sure exactly how this greenhouse gas actually evolves, and that doesn't take away that we know enough to act. I think it was David Azaz and Mandy that wrote Human Health, nexus and Regenerative Agriculture for sure I'm butchering the title, but anyway, they clearly said this a couple of years ago, I think 2018, maybe and they said we know enough to act.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Yes, the Regenerative Agriculture, human Health Nexus. I actually was fortunate enough to help David in researching that paper, which is great. This is what we know.

Speaker 1: 43:37

This is what we're starting to know very soon and sounding. Listening to you, it seems like we know a lot more now, but that still doesn't mean that we shouldn't act now. Now because we know enough that diversity helps and that this helps and this, etc. We cannot wait for the perfect. Let the perfect be the enemy of the good, because we know enough to act and even if it doesn't have a miracle health outcome, it has a lot of other benefits and it does help with a lot of things. So I think it's an interesting argument, but I also always feel like okay, who's trying to slow this down? And I'm imagining quite a few people are. This is a win-win-win, but also lose-lose for quite a few industries, of course, on the other side that are very comfortable in certain positions and very comfortable with their cash flow on a very sick population.

Speaker 2: 44:24

Well, but even those that are very happy with their cash flow still have to innovate. And why not innovate in a way that actually benefits human health at this point? Because, if we follow the tobacco argument, eventually the finger pointing caught up with them in a way that they actually had to pay some really meaningful fines, in a way that diminished the tobacco industry within the last few years, I know, but they're still around, like it's still there.

Speaker 1: 44:49

Yeah, but look at how the power dynamic has changed right, of course, yeah, and so no more commercials, no more marketing from everyone and all of that. Yeah, yeah, but was he touched on there?

Speaker 2: 45:01

Yeah, no, what you touched on there is the scientific basis and even some allies within the regenerative movement. I've even gotten this from in weeks, recent weeks or months of oh that sounds right that there's more nutrition there, but where's the science? And so that's one of the very first things we did at the NutrientDensityAllianceorg. On our resources page it's full of sites.

Speaker 1: 45:21

It's amazing.

Speaker 2: 45:22

Yes, yes, well, and actually there's other sites that we linked to, including Understanding Ag, your Own Podcast, additional work happening. Thanks for that, yes, where the rest of the story is. So people can iterate in their learning, because the science, as you know, continues to be expounded upon in meaningful ways, and so what we're doing now is we're trying to, rather than people have to go through the scientific papers themselves to understand what it means, we're trying to do some white papers for them. If I'm in marketing and I need to convince my C-suite why this is real and I'm getting the science question, how do we package that in kind of an infographic and just a few paragraph ways that point to some really highly credible scientific, peer-reviewed work that shows that the scientific basis is there for the companies to jump into this process, and so that's one of the reasons we're focused on the quality and regulatory process within companies, because if your legal department is not pulling out a lot of money, if your legal department is not willing to sign off on the claim, it does not exist, it will never even make it in a social media post, and so we've got to make sure that people have the right framework and mindset to take to those various stakeholders within a company in order to make this assertion.

Speaker 2: 46:58

Because within any given company, there's six different departments that you need to bring along. If you're in procurement, you need marketing. If you're in operations, you need procurement marketing. If you're in regulatory and quality, you need the C-suite or sustainability. So basically, or R&D, all of these different departments in these large companies have to have at least one or two people that are on board, aligning to the project, aligning to getting something in market, aligning to the claim, or it does not become real. And so that's where we're specifically focusing. Our first initial work is how we get them over that mindset that they have to reinvent some sort of wheel to show the human health trial level of a higher antioxidant level, when all they really need to do is change their specifications. So that wishes like we're about to dive into the deep end of that work here in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1: 47:49

Super interesting. And then a question I always like to ask, definitely inspired by John Kemp I don't know if he asked it. Recently I listened to a fascinating one in the conversation he had with Charles Eisenstein. But anyway, I digress. Where do you think different among your peers? So what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't? Of course, nutrient density is important, that's one thing. But where do you really, among your peers, think different?

Speaker 2: 48:14

and what might be surprising, let's say to the audience yes, so I think we've already covered one of them, which is that the consumer is the missing element within the regenerative agriculture movement. That is not a standard topic of conversation across the regenerative agriculture leadership set.

Speaker 1: 48:29

It's usually about practices. It's usually about how you're going to measure soil carbon. It might be about measuring nutrient density, not really. It's not about water. It's about a lot of other things. You're right.

Speaker 2: 48:39

Yes, yes, back office stakeholder engagement Right.

Speaker 2: 48:41

First secret is yeah, yes, not that forward facing topling growth. The other one is and I'm going to veer left here on this when I was doing work last year with a climate scientist that helped draft the original soil carbon protocols that Vera used for all of the global carbon offsets, I was doing work with him on a project that he was personally passionate about, which was reintroducing native perennial grains, grasses and legumes back into the food system that were historically eaten as food but have essentially fallen off in our commoditized central processing work. As part of that, I was leading the life cycle assessment on a perennial grain and on an organic cookie that it would have been used in, and I uncovered something that I still find just gobsmackingly shocking. In a way that I'm the one that's asking the questions about this for the industry and has since blown it up to some of the world's largest philanthropic organizations to help engage them in the global conversation. But here's what the sits. Here's where the gap is.

Speaker 2: 49:45

The existing life cycle assessment methodology that the entire world, and especially the food world, is using as the baseline for their climate commitments and their understanding of what they need to do as companies, as chief sustainability officers, etc. Is does not include full stop does not include organic, perennial, regenerative or indigenous managed lands, which, by the way, you add all of those together, you're at over 50% of the food and agricultural and land management systems on the planet, and they are the ones we actually need to sustain human life. Let me explain very briefly how we got here. The life cycle assessment methodologies that are used today were originally created by the chemical industry in the 1960s. For obvious reasons, they were then bolted on to the commoditized food system as a means of understanding the chemical and diesel fuel footprint and refrigerants and all the things of the commodity never meant for food.

Speaker 2: 50:50

They were never meant for life giving food systems. They were essentially created for like Chicago Board of Trade level of food systems, which is animal feed, biofuels and derivatives like high fructose corn syrup. And so what life cycle assessment methodologies? Capture is field passes, diesel use, sprays, transportation, manufacturing, refrigerants, storage, end of life recycling, etc. What they do not cover is the difference between a GMO beet sugar and high annual tillage versus a date palm, which is a perennial planted once every two to three decades that requires almost no inputs and also gives you sugar. The system is not set up to understand the inherent value of one versus the other. It treats them both as though they are the same.

Speaker 1: 51:44

Basically gives your date sugar the footprint of the other one, because it doesn't even exist.

Speaker 2: 51:50

Well, because it doesn't even compare itself to anything outside of a hyper commoditized food system, because it's only whittled the criteria down to those that are in a hyper commoditized food system. And so continuous living cover, soil, organic matter, climate change mitigation above and below ground biodiversity these metrics impact a human life, downstream effects these metrics that are actually critical for climate change mitigation and human health mitigation are not included full stop in the baseline systems that the food system globally is using on decision making around mitigating climate change. And I've started to get into the right hallways with the right folks to have those conversations from a global leadership level. But originally I called up my friend who's the head of the organic center and was like is this right? How is this possible?

Speaker 2: 52:47

And, by the way, there is no central cash of organic LCA's. So currently the life cycle assessments for organic products used as the conventional LCA and removes a couple data points and calls it good. Now here's the other risk. The organic sector in the US, writ large, has a noose around its neck on food miles, because more than 70% of the organic sector in the US is imported. And so when you just look at the numbers, not the values or the downstream effects or the human health or land it looks very bad.

Speaker 2: 53:22

in a way, that's actually setting up disinvestment in the organic sector through the lens of scope three emissions reporting, unless we act very, very quickly to change how the baseline measures things that actually matter for human health and not for sustaining highly efficient, commoditized food systems that are actually how we got here in part in the first place. So that's my soapbox, inspired by the question from John Kemp, who I absolutely adore, and so I'm glad to be able to share that here with you, because it's something that needs a lot more of a spotlight on it.

Speaker 1: 53:55

Yeah, I remember going deep into the LCA space with Mariko Torbeca.

Speaker 1: 54:01

I will put her interview below as well, on the show notes.

Speaker 1: 54:05

I keep pointing below when nobody sees that obviously, as we really, because she was one of the writers and researchers on the White Dog Pastor LCA and basically said yeah, the positive potential of ag and soil etc is just not part of it at all.

Speaker 1: 54:22

Yeah, and basically you leave one side of the coin and now we see that the other side of the coin is mostly based on models and mostly based on very, let's say, chemical intensive numbers, which of course doesn't really help if you're running, if you're not running, that system. So LCA is never designed and now we're learning it's even from the chemical industry never designed for food space and never designed and designed for very specific questions and answers, and now we use it to do run whole procurement departments, which is probably not a good use of a tool that was never designed for that. So that's quite shocking and I'm going to shift gears a bit because this is not a perfect bridge, but definitely a relevant one. As I know you thought about this question what would you do if you had a billion dollars to invest?

Speaker 2: 55:09

I have three immediate answers to this. And because I listened to the podcast, this is something I'd actually been dreaming about after I took an airplane ride, which is where I listened to most of my podcasts. What would I do if I had that magic wand? And so there's three things with broad impacts that would reverberate for generations into the future, for both land and human health.

Speaker 1: 55:30

So you combine your two questions. That's new in the podcast as well, but like the magic wand gave you a billion dollars.

Speaker 2: 55:38

Yeah, you're right, I am combining two questions the magic wand with the one billion. So let's stick with the one billion for a moment, because I actually would wave a magic wand over something different. The first would be nationwide nutrient density testing for all CPG ingredients that are already enrolled in a regenerative ag program, so create a net of instant information and kick off the competitive landscape, and also the indication of which practices are providing actual benefits that consumers can see, taste and which they urgently need. The second I would heavily invest in pilots for school lunches, the Veterans Affairs and Military Food Service to move to regional regenerative food systems to buffer against climate change. And I want to mention something very specific here, which I know you've heard me bring up one time before.

Speaker 2: 56:19

I come from a heavy military experience family, so this weighs heavily on my mind that in 2019, so the last US presidential administration the Pentagon issued a report detailing the risks of the US military collapsing by 2040 due to unmitigated effects of global climate change. And that's because of regional and global fights over water resources, etc. And this weighs heavily on my mind, and so I tend to start with a dose of reality by thinking of if that's even 10% possible as part of my future. What would I do differently today in order to ensure I've done everything I can between now and 2040 to make sure that that is actually not the future that we're headed towards? The third one has been a dream for a while and, by the way, I'd take my billion dollars and look for philanthropic matches from across the globe so I could actually accomplish all of these things.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Leverage. I like it yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:11

VR headsets.

Speaker 2: 57:12

So currently virtual reality kids are exposed to through gaming, and it risks further removing the connection between the natural world, the physical world and the mental world for generations who may now live somewhat virtually in some manner.

Speaker 2: 57:30

For going forward or augmented reality, I would want the Smithsonian or the Natural Health Museum to take the leadership role here of creating a immersive five minute video and put VR headsets in every single school across America, where the very first exposure that most kids have to that technology is actually immersing them in soil science, what the micro-isle fungal community does, what it means for soil life, what it means for human health, what it means for everything going forward in the world.

Speaker 2: 58:08

And the reason why I think that would be so impactful is because I'm married to a wonderful human and several friends in our orbit still take their six pack rings and cut them up so that they don't get stretched across turtles necks, because they saw something as a child when they were in school and that campaign stuck with them forever. And I think we have a very small window of time here to engage the imagination of the next generations as it relates to the natural world and that if we miss that and they just see it as someone off learning it thing later for a test. It will not have the same impact as if it's the very first exposure they ever have to virtual reality. We have one shot at this and I would really like to see us stick it.

Speaker 1: 58:54

Are you excited about the new Apple Vision Pro?

Speaker 2: 58:58

Oh, I actually haven't gotten into that part of the tech within our own household yet it's not coming out yet.

Speaker 1: 59:05

It's coming but it's the next level of augmented reality at the end. But it seems very immersive, very expensive. Obviously Interesting potential. I'm more thinking on the immersive side in terms of for children, imagination fascinating, but also for farmers to see what's possible on their land or for us to imagine, to imagine.

Speaker 1: 59:27

Look at a valley. I'm looking at a valley, now very green, but still imagine what could, even. Because I think we lack a huge amount of imagination because we're so used to the great landscapes and probably also to the great food in terms of taste and flavor. That's why some people then travel to certain places and then eat like a farm to table restaurant or something that actually is relatively fresh, and get completely amazed about the quality and the flavor and wine and all of those. But it's that kind of moments I think it was Victor Friedberg, one of the first episodes mentioned that what changed his life was a peach he tasted at a market in Valencia and since then in Spain, and since that moment he's like there must be something in food because this is amazing. I have a life changing moment with a peach.

Speaker 1: 1:00:13

I'm thinking about that. How do we show potential and show how things could look like or used to, or probably we shouldn't go back to the past, but let's say back to the future. These kind of technologies could be very helpful for that. But that's a different point. It's not the imagination point, but to go down into the micro isofarangai to see how the networks work and reconnect after their cut, like Toby Kears was sharing on the podcast a while ago, must be absolutely fascinating, especially if you're 10, 12, 15, also if you're 30, something like me In general, just to trigger that soil potential, that could be very, very interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:00:49

Well, and it puts those learning institutions back in the driver's seat and capturing the imagination of what's possible within the natural world, which I think we've somehow lost, those visceral connections that I experienced as a child through those channels. I would just love to see us kind of repair a few of those things going forward, because science matters, facts matter. Let's show people what they're missing.

Speaker 1: 1:01:13

I don't know if we answered the one period or the magic wand, whatever we did do.

Speaker 2: 1:01:18

yet Can I do the magic wand? Yes, I still have a magic wand. If I had a magic wand, I honestly think this might be the only way of dealing with this issue. I would remove the mindset that the organic, perennial, regenerative biodiversity and indigenous food systems are solely values-based when compared to the commoditized food system, which is called science-based. And actually the opposite is true, because in science, you don't demonize the control portion of your global experiment and you don't claim that the control system is anti-science. And the long-term science of what the current commoditized food system promised to deliver has not actually panned out in what the original thesis was. And yet they demonize the control portion, which is the regenerative, biodiverse, indigenous food systems, perennials, organic, etc. I would love for this mindset to disappear. I think it's very detrimental to human health and it is very anti-science for them to demonize the control portion of the planet.

Speaker 1: 1:02:23

That's a fascinating. You promised some fascinating insights when I should have the questions, but that's a fascinating angle of thinking about it. Get real your hypothesis is that your thesis is clearly not working, and so why not pay more attention to the control group that you've been demonizing, which is not really to, let's say, the ethics or code of conduct of how you claim to operate?

Speaker 2: 1:02:47

It's not science-based?

Speaker 1: 1:02:48

It's not science-based at all.

Speaker 2: 1:02:50

Yeah, and I think we need to start calling that out a lot more where it's actually profit-based, not science-based, because that's the fallacy that we've been entering all of this into yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:03:03

I'm just saying, I'm hearing the mic drop, basically now.

Speaker 2: 1:03:06

Oh dear, can you still hear me?

Speaker 1: 1:03:08

No, no, in general, it was a figure to really say.

Speaker 2: 1:03:12

It was a figure, to have done a literal, you had me worried. I had a tech issue all of a sudden. I know.

Speaker 1: 1:03:16

I know we had some tech listeners. We had some tech issues at the beginning. We didn't have them now. So this was a figure like. I'm still seeing Obama dropping his mic at the correspondent dinner. I don't think there's a better way to end this conversation. We could do hours and hours, and we're going to do another time for sure, but I think we had a fascinating roller coaster through science, anti-science thesis, nutritional dark matter, which I won't forget anymore, and also how big, how food companies actually work and that a lot more is possible with limited shelf space, with limited package space, et cetera, but a lot so much more as possible than we now think it is. So I want to thank you, Tina, so much for the time to, first of all, the work you do, your excitement and coming on here to share about it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:04

Yeah, thank you, kun. There's so much more I could say about our partnership within the Nutrient Density Alliance, and I look forward to sharing with you more of the outcomes as they unfold, because there certainly is a lot more to be said. Thank you for the time today. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:04:16

Yeah, you mentioned you have a lot of exciting things coming up over the next weeks and months, et cetera. So I'm looking forward to checking in on that, because it definitely feels like something is fermentating, bubbling, et cetera, around this specific angle and it seems like there's an iPhone moment. To stay in the technology sphere.

Speaker 2: 1:04:34

Indeed well said.

Speaker 1: 1:04:39

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investing in RegenderWagerculturecom. Forward slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend? Or give us a rating on Apple Podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.