Alongside the industry heavyweights famed for pioneering the plant-based category, smaller businesses with big ambitions are also championing the future of sustainable, animal-free food. In this month’s Start-up Spotlight, we speak to Elo Life Systems, a US-based company that aims to meet growing consumer demand for healthier natural ingredients through providing a natural, zero-calorie sweetener created through molecular farming methods. Todd Rands, the company’s CEO, tells us more.
What is Elo Life Systems’ long-term mission?
Elo’s mission is to unlock nature’s abilities to make consumers’ favorite foods more delicious, healthy and planet friendly. From unique plant-based sweeteners to saving crops like the banana from extinction, we focus on ingredients that empower consumers to feel good about the food they eat every day.
How can your molecular farming approach provide benefits for our global food system?
Molecular farming allows us to completely reimagine our food system, from what we grow, to how and where we grow it. It enables more local, planet-friendly sourcing of ingredients, while expanding our access to the diversity in nature, effectively reducing the environmental impact of food production.
Via molecular farming, Elo produces sought-after ingredients that are difficult to harvest from natural sources and cannot be synthesized through artificial or other techniques. This provides better quality nutrition that is affordable and accessible to everyone. We use easy-to-grow crops as biofactories for these ingredients, enabling local, commercial-scale production while reducing their cost and environmental footprint.
How is Elo Life Systems innovating in this space?
Elo’s innovation starts with a deep understanding of the natural pathways that produce the most desirable ingredients for our food system. Utilizing advanced data analytics…
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