Silvia Naishtat
10/31/2020 21:42
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 10/31/2020 9:42 PM
Flexitarians are
revolutionizing the food industry.
Mostly under 40s are basically vegetarians who consume meat, fish and dairy from time to time and in small doses.
They were born as a movement in 1992 in England and are now all over the world.
Of course, the main line of argument of the movement
is related to the care of the environment in the conviction that livestock emits greenhouse
gases.
And they
are very jealous of animal welfare.
In Europe, this change in eating habits is felt in the dairy industry, which has seen
volumes drop by around 10%.
And it is feared that something similar will happen with the consumption of red meat, as well as chickens and pigs.
In the last decade
, more than $ 16 billion has been invested
in companies that produce vegetarian versions of meat, dairy and eggs.
Nestlé is leading the way.
In Argentina, the first to take notice was La Serenísima, who has just made
vegetable milks based on almonds and rice
.
Danone made it with almond yogurts and also a
dairy SME like Yatasto,
from Luciano Di Tella, located in Navarro, launched itself into vegan cheeses.
These are just a few examples.
Another of its expressions is
Notco, a firm that defines itself
as a food
technology company
, of Chilean origin and that has been with us for two years.
Notco is dedicated to making food based on an algorithm that they named Giuseppe, in honor of the famous painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who in the Middle Ages portrayed human faces with vegetables.
This algorithm uses artificial intelligence to create foods made
from plants that replace animal origin.
The algorithm mixes the molecular components of food with the human perception of taste, texture and aroma.
Giuseppe has loaded the components of more than 400,000 species of plants in the world.
The startup NotCo uses artificial intelligence and machine learning for its products.
NotCo
The most popular product is NotMayo, a mayonnaise created from chickpeas (instead of eggs), burgers of vegetable origin but flavored with meat, milk, with a taste of cow's milk, and dulce de leche and banana ice cream Split, but
with vegetable components.
New summer milks and drinks from La Serenísima
The firm was founded by Matías Muchnik, Karim Pichara and Pablo Zamora, and has raised several million to expand with investors such as Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the richest in the world.
In the middle of the pandemic, it reaped
US $ 85 million
and its investors include the Kaszek Venture fund of the Argentines Hernán Kazah and Nicolás Szekasy.
Also the Catterton fund that in Argentina
is a partner of Francisco de Narváez in Caro Cuore and Rapsodia in the textile sector and owns part of the Luigi Bosca winery.
It all started when Muchnik, with a birth certificate in Chile, studied at the University of California at Berkeley and excelled in the Department of Biochemistry.
At Harvard, he met Karim Pichara, PhD in Computer Science and together they combined their knowledge.
Pichara worked with astrophysics, developing artificial intelligence algorithms.
Then they added Pablo Zamora, a doctor in biotechnology and an expert in plant genomics.
In Argentina, it has manufacturing and presence agreements in all supermarket chains.
And it is carving strong in Brazil, Colombia, the United States and Mexico.
Mauricio Alonso is the CEO of Notco of the southern cone.
Born in Argentina, he says that it is becoming easier for him to expand in the country of asado and dulce de leche from diet stores to supermarket chains.
And they are landing despite the pandemic in Córdoba and Rosario.
"It is the growing weight of flexitarians," he
concludes.
