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Smart protein can be a solution for hundreds of millions of undernourished Indians: Bali
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Tuesday, 16 November, 2021, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, Mumbai
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The Good Food Institute India (GFI India), the central expert organisation and convening body in the 'alternative protein' or 'smart protein' sector, continued its annual flagship event, The Smart Protein Summit 2021, on day 3 with focus on public and planetary health.
The summit witnessed four exciting sessions focused on sustainable development of food and farming for the benefit of the planet and the public. It was supported by title sponsors AAK, ADM, IFF, and Laurus Bio, and Key Sponsors Buhler, Connell, Griffith Foods, Reliance Industries, Sun Nutrafoods, Symega, VKL – a testament to the growing industry momentum in the sector.
Varun Deshpande, managing director, The Good Food Institute India, began the session with his views and opinion on the Smart Protein Summit, said, “It's a particularly opportune time to have conversations around the impact of smart protein on nutrition, climate, and environment. We have a massive problem of undernutrition – but we cannot address it with foods that continue to exacerbate crises of climate and public health. Given that we are emerging from one of the most significant public health emergencies in a century - we don't have time to wait. We need to go mission-mode on this across science, business, and policy, contextualise smart protein for the developing world, and show our ambition to be the supply hub for the rest of the world.”
Vinita Bali, former managing director and CEO Britannia Industries, as a keynote speaker on day 3 of Smart Protein Summit, said, "The simplest way I can define innovation is to do something that is adding value on a sustainable and ongoing basis. When we talk about innovation - we need to ask, 'how will the product I develop be better than the products already available to consumers?' I can be highly unique and differentiated, but I am irrelevant - nobody will buy me. We have to be very mindful of when we talk about innovation. Until Tesla came and disrupted that industry with EVs, large global companies knew how to make EVs. However, it took an outsider like Tesla to come in - it is actually giving consumers a very compelling and relevant reason.”
“They're charging a price that consumers are willing to pay. Relevance, differentiation, and value to the consumer are critical tenets of innovation. What works for the US or western Europe may not work for India - yes, there are companies like Beyond Meat and several others that have created a disruption, but we cannot forget that the per capita consumption of meat in the US vs India - we're a minuscule proportion of that. When you think about food from a planet perspective - we grow food for 3 reasons: for people, livestock, and fuel. And what does it cost to produce this food? In the context of the Indian palate - we need to understand why plant-based protein is substituting animal protein contextually - why is that relevant for India? What is the best way of addressing this market? We need to ensure this is not going to be yet another product for the elite few. If we do, then it can be a solution for hundreds of millions of undernourished Indians,” she added.
"India as a country has been undernourished for a very long time. The data from NFHS studies or nutrition studies that look at food consumption in India shows that hundreds of millions don't get enough calories to eat every day. Nearly 200 million people in India don't get enough calories and go to sleep hungry, which leads to the issue of sheer hunger. The second issue is that because this population lacks calories, they also lack micronutrients - vitamins and minerals,” said Bali.
“The third issue is that people who aren't calorie deficient but are nutrient deficient are eating too many calories but too many of the wrong calories. Suppose you juxtapose the price of nutritious foods with this. In that case, that is also an important factor - many people eat foods that fill their stomachs and are cheaper but aren't necessarily nutritious. Understanding the context here becomes very important. Because of our 1.4 billion population - even if everyone consumes a little, it will add up a lot. We can't have macro solutions through - the solution needs to be segmented. Yes, some people can pay more for things like plant-based, but masses cannot access them unless these new food supplements become more affordable in terms of price and availability. We've started talking about millets a lot more - and many things are part of the Indian diet - and we need to take inspiration from what our grandmothers' diets used to be and what they ate. The smart protein agenda involves several stakeholders - we in the nutrition community have always said that we need to enhance people's access to nutritious foods," she added.
Uma Valeti, founder and CEO, Upside Foods, as a keynote speaker at the Smart Protein Summit 2021, said, "As a cardiologist, I would be able to save a few thousand lives, but with cultivated meat, I can save billions of human lives and trillions of animal lives. Working as a cardiologist did not come close to my impact by working on the food system. Doing the work that we're doing now at Upside Foods is something that is once in a lifetime opportunity for any human on the planet. While we were working on stem cells and regrowing them in the heart muscle, it acquainted in my practice which I, later on, started injecting them into patients' hearts to regrow heart muscle when they had a heart attack. So that's where the question came. If we can do that, can we grow food from animal cells? And once that thought came into my head 15 years ago, it was tough to get it out, but that was the origin of the idea.”
“Where one can grow food from animal cells, real meat from animals and trees and seafood led me to establish a research lab at the University of Minnesota, quickly realising that it should not be in academia. However, it should be in the real world. This whole field was in the realm of science fiction, even five and a half years ago, and Upside Foods was the first company that came out and started showing how we could grow meat from animal cells, and the rest of it is what we're watching in front of us unfold for the last five years,” added Valeti.
“I see it is the ability to accelerate an industry that creates enormous amounts of food safety, food security, jobs, new levels of education and opportunities for their population and being able to withstand crises like we just ran through with COVID, where supply chains were affected in a way that no one would have been able to predict. Our food system was resilient, but there were gaps. And I think those are the gaps that we wish to start closing with being able to produce locally or regionally in any area across the world, and I'd say that's the next 10-year journey and looking back in 10 years from now, my wish for this field. I suppose there will be 50 to 250 of these large-scale production facilities across the world that are producing hundreds of millions or even billions of billion-plus of pounds of meat, which approximately is still a tiny per cent of single-digit per cent of the meat in total in the world in 10 years,” said Valeti.
“So, my 2030 vision would be, somewhere in the range of 1 to 5% of global meat production will come from cultivated meat but between 2030 and 2040 is the most exciting time for a hyper-scale. That sort of I'd like to get from one to 5% of the global meat production to 30 to 40%, and that's where I think Government is getting involved. Now they will set themselves up to take the ample opportunity to be the protein producers of the world, and I think India is well-positioned for that,” added Valeti.
Day 3 of Smart Protein Summit also witnessed four exciting sessions focusing on sustainable food solutions, which included Secure Sustainable and Just: Nourishing the future with smart protein, Secure Sustainable and just: Stewarding Farmers Welfare with Smart Protein, Advancing the Farmers Discourse: Smart Protein Seat at Client's Table and The Elephant in Room: Building a post-pandemic food system. These sessions were accompanied by eminent speakers like Kabir Nanda, Dr Santanu Dasgupta, Dr Albert T. Lieberg, Satvika Mahajan, Srivalli Krishnan, Ashu Sikri, Dharani Kanth Koganti, Varun Deshpande, Claire Everhart, Maya Chandrasekharan, Stephanie von Stein, Aarti Ramachandran, Gyanendra Gongal.
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