← Food Safety Matters
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello everyone and welcome to Food Safety Matters, the podcast for food safety professionals. I'm Stacy Acheson, publisher of Food Safety magazine and I want to thank you for joining us for this special bonus episode. Today, Food Safety magazine's editorial director and co host of the podcast, Adrienne Blum speaks with Jenny Dew, co founder of Apeal Sciences, about an innovative plant based approach to protecting fresh produce and extending shelf life. They'll explore how apeels technology works at the molecular level and how it's been evaluated for safety by regulatory bodies around the world and what it means for food safety professionals navigating post harvest treatments, transparency and consumer expectations. The conversation also takes a closer look at the often overlooked post harvest supply chain and how new solutions are challenging long standing industry practices. But first, let me share a little bit about our guest. Jenny Du is co founder of Apeel Sciences, a company focused on helping suppliers and retailers deliver higher quality fresh produce using plant based material science. She earned her PhD in chemistry from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada and completed her postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she co founded Appeal Sciences in 2013. Today Appeal operates globally and has received regulatory clearances across multiple markets supporting its mission to improve the quality and longevity of fresh foods. All right, let's hear their discussion.
- [01:52]
B
Well, hello everybody and welcome. And today I'm talking with Jenny Du of Appeal Sciences about an innovative plant based technology to protect fresh produce. Welcome to the podcast, Jenny. It's great to have you.
- [02:06]
C
Thanks Adrienne. Just super excited to chat with you and your audience today.
- [02:09]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And so Jenny, you're the co founder of Appeal Sciences, which is a company built around the idea of using plants to, to protect produce. And before we get into the science of that, I'm wondering if you can take us back to the very beginning. Like how did this problem find you?
- [02:28]
C
Yeah, well, it started off actually way back in 2012 with our primary founder, James Rogers. We were graduate students, postdocs at the University of California, Santa Barbara with no background in ag or food in any way, shape or form. And James had come across the UNFAO's report on food loss and waste. And with that learning that a third of the food that we produce worldwide is lost or wasted before it ever has a chance to be eaten. And then with really perishable categories like fresh fruits and vegetables, that number can be even higher. That was just a really staggering stat to come across and kind of changed our worldview. So that started with him and then he brought me and another team Member into the fold. And so they asked me out to dinner one day, and I thought we were just hanging out with some fellow lab mates or research mates. And, you know, turns out it's like, hey, I think there's something we can do about this here. And that's really where the early stages of appeal coming together, appeal sciences coming together started.
- [03:44]
B
That's exciting. And so you go from postdoctoral chemistry research to starting a company in a garage. And I'm wondering, what's the core insight that made you believe there was something real to build here?
- [03:57]
C
Yeah. So as I was saying before, not coming from within food or ag maybe gave us the advantage of a total beginner's mindset. And so we just started asking some really simple questions, like, wait, okay, how. How is fresh produce protected or taken care of after harvest today? Because obviously there's a whole, you know, industry here. We can go into the grocery store and buy a bunch of this. And so there's something that's already being used in the food supply system today. But then we started also then asking ourselves, well, how do plants protect themselves? And as you kind of dig in there, you learn that just like how we've evolved a skin produce or plants have the same thing. It's their skin or their peel as their interface with the rest of the world. And through that surface layer, it's how they retain moisture. They reduce the exposure to or modulate their exposure to oxygen to prevent oxidative stress. And so just seeing that there are these building blocks that make up the peels of fresh fruits and vegetables and plants, seeing that those were these fatty acid building blocks, it was like, hey, there's something here. Like, these are accessible, edible, ubiquitous. You know, can we build off of this idea then, of a second skin or reinforcing the existing natural peel of fresh fruits and vegetables using materials found in the peels themselves, for example?
- [05:34]
B
That's really interesting. And I guess, you know, so for our audience who are food safety professionals who think pretty carefully about what goes on and in food, can you break down exactly what a peel is and also what it isn't?
- [05:49]
C
Sure. It might almost be easier to start with what it isn't. So just like I said, these are found in. These are fatty acid molecules found in plants that we already eat. So these aren't a novel food ingredient. So kind of compared to maybe other food technologies that have emerged over the past decade, you know, a brand new FDA approval for something that, you know, hasn't really been seen before, this is taking existing food ingredients and really just going to the regulators to allow an expansion of their use. So these are these fatty acid, they're really specifically these monoglycerides. And so it's glycerol attached to fatty acid. These are ubiquitously found in nature, like I said, in the plants we already eat. It's also what our body knows how to digest. So when you consume any dietary fat, those are triglycerides, your body has to actually clip them down to diglycerides and monoglycerides in order to use that fat for energy or for building other cellular structures in your. So you're able to take this. These ingredients that our bodies already know how to work with, they also have a long history of safe use. So these same kinds of materials, because of their properties, have found in food science applications as for example, emulsifiers or maybe stabilizers of different kinds. So you'll actually see them on ingredients panels of a variety of really common everyday foods, including things as you would think of as benign as like infant formula, for example.
- [07:30]
B
Interesting. That's really interesting to hear about the science behind this and how it kind of evolved. And you know, the food safety community takes a pretty rigorous look at anything that's applied to the surface of fresh produce. So walk us through the regulatory journey for this. How has appeal been evaluated?
- [07:49]
C
Yeah, totally. So fortunately we have like a body of historical use and data to draw from as a starting point that would be very different if it's a totally new, a novel ingredient. And so by going to, for example, the U.S. fDA, going to the European Commission and EFSA, like, in order for us to be able to use these materials, even though they're existing ingredients, we do have to make a case for and provide the evidence that expanding that use to fruits and vegetables as a surface treatment, you know, would pose like no concern and that it's actually technologically merited. Like, you don't want to just sort of be randomly adding new ingredients to food for no justifiable purpose. And so that's a really important part that regulators look at as well. And so part of it is going to these markets worldwide where we've got, I would say, regulatory clearance in 40 plus countries around the world where we've submitted to them this body of evidence around the history of safe use. And also that the use of apeel product on fresh fruits and vegetables really is also superior to what is present in the market today to extend shelf life, reduce moisture loss, reduce oxidation. And so that you also have that justifiable technical purpose as well, and so,
- [09:25]
B
you know, in the application of this technology, your first real world test was on finger limes. What did you learn from that test?
- [09:33]
C
Yeah, well, first of all, finger limes, because not everyone's maybe familiar with finger limes. So I'll share a little bit more about them. They are about the size, their name is pretty justified. They're like kind of long and elongated. When you crack them open on the inside, they've the pulp is in these like little caviar like shaped bulbs actually. And they're not super common. You know, they might sort of be used here and there in sort of a specialty or maybe a restaurant kind of like an application. And part of that is they have a short usable or marketable shelf life. Shortly after they're picked, the skins can start to like thin out and degrade. You get this like kind of oil, like breakdown of the oil that's in naturally in that peel. And so they start to like discolor and start to dry out pretty quickly. And so a, one of our growers here, just locally was amazingly a grower of finger limes. And when we talked to them, they were like, hey, that's kind of cool. Do you think these could work on my finger limes? And we're like, what's a finger lime? So that's what brought us down that path. And it was really cool to see a variety of things come together. First of all, you could see from their own experience how hard their day to day logistics and shipping was to fulfill customer orders because of this highly perishable and short shelf life product. And so that meant like the timing of the harvest, the ability to manage the labor around that and actually get like air freighting stuff, you know, to their customers to try to get there in time. And then you'd still have this limited window, you know, where you felt like the customer could get a good experience using and like working with the fruit. And so now extend that from, call it seven days to 14 days. And it's like, wow, this fruit still looks really great. It's really juicy still. It's kept its flavor and its aroma and you've alleviated a lot of these operational burdens on this small grower trying to meet this demand, you know, day over day, week over week. So that was really our first insight that this idea that was just up until then on paper and maybe in a demonstration kind of environment in the lab, we felt like, wow, there's really potentially something to this because it was so visual and it was so fast to see the color of the limes either sort of change if it was untreated, versus really be able to be maintained fresh for longer with the appeal technology. And so that gave us the idea then to try it out on other kinds of fruits and vegetables to see how almost like universal. The idea could be that by adding a little bit of an extra peel, you could help reduce moisture, reduce oxidation and give fresh produce more life. And then you could really see that show up again and again. You go from then just like that, just the shelf life alone, to actually being able to see measurable differences in vitamin C content in blueberries, for example, or being able to pick tomatoes closer to ripeness so that they were more flavorful, they had more of their nutrient profile developed before being sent into the supply chain. So those were all these early proof of concepts that all immediately sprung from what we saw and learned and were encouraged by with the finger limes.
- [13:10]
B
That's such an interesting story and certainly you guys learned a lot with that finger lime test. And I think it's interesting, you know, that you describe how by applying this peel technology, you know, you managed to extend the shelf life of the finger limes by I think was about twice. Right. And then. But not only that, the quality also is better of the, of the product in long term. So super interesting. Now you've described appeal as disrupting an 11 billion post harvest industry and most consumers have no idea that that industry exists. So can you pull back the curtain a little on what's actually happening to produce between the field and the store shelf?
- [13:55]
C
Yeah, for sure. And it was something that we didn't realize until we just started working in the field ourselves. And we just took for granted, like you go to the grocery store like I need my apples today and didn't even give maybe a first thought to like, hey, it's April. Why, why would I still have US apples to pull off the shelf? Apples are only kind of harvested. You can think of like late summer, early fall. And so suddenly it was like, you know, it started to open up a bunch of other questions. First of all, it's amazing that with post harvest technology today, we do all have access to fresh produce with this year round selection and variety. But it is absolutely kind of, I think part of the what, what we're all kind of wired to believe is like as though this has just sort of come off the tree. But that produce could be several months old by the time it actually is consumed by you from the time that it was picked. If it's maybe had to even trav a long distance on a shipping container, you know, from another hemisphere to us then maybe those, that fruit or vegetable could be already like three or four weeks old from the time it was harvested as well. So it's a, it's a tremendous feat if you're, if you've ever grown food for yourself in your own garden, you'd be pretty hard pressed to figure out like how can I keep this thing for four weeks, for example. And so this has been, been the evolution of those post harvest practices, inputs, et cetera, of course with the lens for food safety that whole time so that we actually can all have access to fresh produce all year round. But that is a $11 billion estimated global, that's like the global value of that, that industry.
- [16:01]
B
That's interesting. You talk about the difference between how, you know, how long the produce might take to travel to the store shelf and you know, like you mentioned, it could be several months old even by the time a consumer picks it up and puts it in their shopping cart. So you know, when a consumer sees fresh on the label, that doesn't necessarily mean what they think it means, right?
- [16:24]
C
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's, it's very tricky. It's like there's also, when you, you kind of pick up this single piece of produce off of the shelf, there's no real estate really on it to put a bunch of labels and disclosures on it either. So I think there is the, the image of fresh produce as being basically wholly untouched or unprocessed and that's just very far from the actual truth. And you know, a lot of that has been to serve the, I would say like the demand or the expectation for year round selection and availability. And I would say like, you know, the supply chain has actually really done remarkably to like meet that. But we've also had some trade offs. Then you know, are we getting things then have to be picked, for example, unripe or before it's had a chance for more flavor and nutrients developed because it simply needs to survive the transportation, not be too soft so it's not getting totally crushed along the way. All these kinds of, like I said, the trade offs again. So I think the other part of it is there can be a misconception that organic then means definitely that there's nothing also used on the produce, so even less processed or any inputs used from a pre or post harvest perspective. And that's also not entirely true either. You know, so these are highly perishable products, seasonal products and in order for them to look as good as they do by the time it's time for us to buy them and bring them home. There is a whole background industry that exists in order to do that.
- [18:19]
B
And so kind of keeping in mind that, you know, the definition of fresh that we just talked about, you know, what a consumer might think it means, and then all the things that are done to produce to keep it safe and of quality by the time they pick it up and put it in their shopping carts in the grocery store. But this is really where appeal comes in, right? Not just as a product, but as a category challenger.
- [18:41]
C
Yeah. Thank you for just. For highlighting that. That's what we've really intended to be. And in a way, it's also made our introduction into the market quite challenging. There is, we've led with transparency, I would say, from the get go. So it was very different. It was like appeal protected produce. And we wanted there to be a label or a logo that actually called appeal out and made the consumer aware that there was something there. And why we did that was for a few reasons. One was we believe that when you can look and understand what the ingredients of the appeal products are, that you would feel comfortable and good knowing you were making that selection. And then what you would actually sort of get from that was also this not just improved time and shelf life that leads to really an improved, like cost savings and just like fresh produce availability and accessibility. Because we are able to give produce more time even to get to places it has a hard time reaching, not just in the U.S. but in other markets around the world as well. And then you have more time in your home to use it. But then going back to this really like a flavor peak ripeness experience as well, from the quality side of things, to be able to deliver on that. We haven't also even touched on even just the sustainability aspect. Being able to offset food waste, for example, just that piece alone means that if you chose an appeal protected avocado over an untreated avocado, just that alone, you're saving three liters of water, for example, you know, accumulative, over different things in the supply chain. So that's why we led with telling consumers that we were there. But it's quite challenging because consumers are generally just unaware that there's anything and they don't expect that there's anything on their produce. So it's been an interesting conversation to have to start with a fair bit of education and awareness building to say appeal just didn't sort of show up out of nowhere. And suddenly there's something on your produce. But in fact, here's this underlying industry that we've sort of talked about. And this is why Appeal is trying to do things differently. And so it's in the why, the what and the how. And even in how we communicate and lead in that communication with consumers. It's been very different from, I would say, how the historical players in the industry have typically operated.
- [21:16]
B
Yeah, I think, you know, with anything that you know is new in or on people's food, you know, they are naturally curious about it. And so that communication piece is not only important, but, you know, can be a challenge when it comes to fresh produce. Because I think the perception, like you said, is that it's relatively untouched from the field to, you know, the store, which is not the case. But you know, aside from the quality and the impressive sustainability aspects that you just talked about, from a food safety standpoint, how does Apeel interact with or change the standard protocols around post harvest treatment and microbial control?
- [21:52]
C
Super important question, especially given your audience. So where isn't like a major change. You can think of it as a complement or a substitution for. So if today, for example, there might be a workflow where there's a fresh piece of produce that's getting a wax coating, then what you're doing is substituting the wax coating with the Appeal application. And so a lot of the kind of hazards and risk assessments and management from a food safety perspective and food hygiene perspective, those really stay in place.
- [22:32]
B
That's fantastic. And now you talked a little bit before about resistance within the industry and Appeal being the target of what you've called coordinated disinformation. So how do you navigate leading a business in this kind of environment?
- [22:48]
C
Yeah, yeah, it's been super hard. Obviously this is like a totally new frontier, I think, for a lot of businesses to deal with. But we've just led with transparency. I mean, it's like what they've tried to, they kind of the, I would call it the instigators, the organizers of this have tried to paint Appeal as again, this like new scary product because again of this, the lack of information or the lack of awareness from like a baseline context of what else is otherwise used on produce. And so we've just kind of really tried to meet that head on with the transparency side of things to double down on again, sharing our product safety, the ingredients list, the, I would call it like validation from regulatory agencies around the world, you know, to say that these, this family of ingredients, there is no safety concern with them. And in fact they are found so commonly and ubiquitously in so many other foods that we already eat today, including like I talked about earlier, just every time you're eating dietary fat and digesting dietary fat like it's being synthesized in your gut. So that has been an opportunity, I guess, for us to do more of what we were doing before, but in a way with a bigger audience and a bigger reach. I think us just telling that story previously was only sort of reaching so far. But in a way this has been made a bigger topic of conversation and it's allowed us to sort of pull in and I would say like the topic of appeal and make it relevant in light of consumers current concerns about what does eating fresh and eating clean and having choice in their in the food aisle and being able to make an informed selection, like what does that all that really mean?
- [24:55]
B
And you know, looking at consumer concerns and also what you said about leading with transparency. So you know, we know there's a pretty broad consumer movement right now toward demanding greater transparency about what's in and on their food. So I'm wondering how do you see appeal positioned in that conversation?
- [25:13]
C
Yeah, I mean, I feel like the time is like right for us right now in a way. We had started that endeavor almost over a decade ago before, but now we're ready to meet the moment, I guess. And so hopefully by leading by example, I guess with our own practices and how we are showing up differently as a brand and a technology that it can almost like activate more of that demand from consumers for more transparency, for better in the fresh aisle. Because I think everyone else in the food industry right now, they're super busy. They've got lots of food safety things they gotta deal with. They've got labor, they've got all this other stuff and it can be easy to remember or I should say it's easy to lose track of maybe what do consumers really care about? So hopefully having consumers sort of activated to ask for change and starting to ask these questions really elevates these topics in the priority in the eyes of all of us in the food supply chain that are working to serve the consumers.
- [26:29]
B
And so kind of circling back to the food safety community, what do you want food safety professionals specifically to take away from appeal's story?
- [26:38]
C
Yeah, food safety professionals are a really important like body of expertise and professionals within their organizations. And I would say almost like an underappreciated and under, sometimes like underheard. And so first of all, I would say thank you to those of you who, you know, when sort of faced with that campaign of appeal, mis and disinformation, really kind of dug in, did your research, reached out to us and were like, oh, I get what this is, there's nothing of concern here. And helped relay a lot of that back within your organizations. First of all, I just want to say a huge thank you. And then second of all, I mean, you all understand the gap between or not even the gap, you all understand what it takes to bring safe food to consumers, the rigor that goes in the, you know, the detail that we're kind of. And an accountability that we're trying to hold across the organization. I would just say that you all continue to play a super important role in being the experts and also advocating for these new technologies that could be emerging in order to continue to sort of transform the food system and move it forward, rather than do what we need to do to just simply maintain or upkeep status quo. So see yourselves, I guess as like change agents as part of that conversation because you are like very credible voices within your organizations and you know where you can. And it was that an engagement with the quality department, with your commercial departments to just continue. Yeah, just driving that like transformation.
- [28:26]
B
I think those are some very inspiring words for our food safety professionals audience. So thank you, Jenny. Now, where can people learn more about appeal and what is the best next step for someone who wants to get involved?
- [28:39]
C
Sure. Our website's probably the best place to go. It's a repository for everything, whether it's a little bit about us and the founding story, all the way to some detailed FAQs about the product, for example. And then as far as getting involved, reach out to us either through that platform, you can find us also on social media like Instagram, you know, it's appeal sciences. And if you want to have a conversation, and I think the biggest thing that we think folks can do is maybe start to have a conversation with your produce department, you know, yourself not just as a professional, but as a consumer. And you start to ask them, hey, what's on your produce from a pre or post harvest perspective. And I think you'd be surprised maybe how again, just like little awareness there is even in the stores themselves sometimes because there's so much other stuff going on. And then, you know, if this is something you'd be excited about and excited to try, then tell your produce department that appeal protected produce is something you'd love the opportunity to have a chance to explore.
- [29:52]
B
Great. Well, thanks, Jenny, and, and thanks for being on the podcast today to discuss, you know, this safe, clean alternative to protect fresh produce and improve not only the shelf life but the quality of the products as well. So it's been a fascinating discussion. I know our listeners are going to be very excited to hear about all this, so thanks so much for being with us today.
- [30:12]
C
Jenny yeah, thanks Adrienne. Really appreciate it and just love the really relevant content that your podcast is putting out for this audience.
- [30:20]
B
Thanks so much.
- [30:21]
A
Thanks again to Jenny Du for this informative conversation and Apeel Sciences for sponsoring this episode. You can find more information about Appeal's plant based technology for fresh produce by visiting their website@apeel.com that's a P E E L dot com. You can also access links in the show notes of your podcast player or on the episode page of our website website. Food safety.com all right, we hope you enjoyed this special episode of Food Safety Matters and we'll talk to you soon.