The New Company that makes the vegetables and fruits fresh for longer period of time
Who is this company and who is founder that surprised the farms of America and also in countries outside the states? Maybe the next avocados or cucumbers you buy from your grocery will come from Apeel. How will you know that it is from Apeel? Of course there is a label on all fruits and vegetables with the name of this company.
About Apeel Sciences Company
James Rogers is the founder and CEO of Apeel Sciences, a Southern California-based food technology startup that is trying to battle food waste. It’s a problem that the United Nations estimates costs the world roughly $2.6 trillion each year, much of which stems from fruits, vegetables and other perishable foods going bad before they’re consumed.
Rogers’ Apeel, recently named to the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 List, thinks it can combat the problem of food waste with its primary product, a tasteless, odorless, edible coating made from plant materials. Apeel can keep produce like avocados or oranges from going bad for weeks longer than usual — it can double the shelf life in some cases — even without refrigeration.
The trick to keeping produce from spoiling, Rogers tells CNBC Make It, is relatively simple. “The two leading causes of produce spoilage are water loss and oxidation — that’s water evaporating out of the produce and oxygen getting in,” Rogers says.
The point of the Edipeel coating is, simply, to act as a physical barrier that slows down the evaporation process and regulates how much oxygen gets into produce. And because Apeel makes its invisible coating out of the fatty acids and other organic compounds taken from the peels, seeds and pulp of other fruits and vegetables, the FDA has deemed it safe to eat. Avocados sprayed with Edipeel are already being sold at grocery stores like Kroger, Costco and Harps Food Stores across the U.S.
Rogers founded Apeel in 2012 and the company has raised a total of $110 million in funding from investors who include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as investment firms Viking Global Investors and Andreessen Horowitz.
Rogers, 33, got the idea for Apeel when he was working on his Ph.D. in materials science at UC Santa Barbara, where he was trying to develop a solar paint that could harvest the sun’s energy much like solar panels. One day in 2012, he was driving between Santa Barbara and the university’s Berkeley Lab and he was listening to a podcast about world hunger while looking out at acre after acre of abundant farmland. He wondered why so many people in the world were going hungry (roughly one in 10 people) when the world actually produces more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet.
“The problem came down to distribution,” Rogers says he came to learn. “We couldn’t get the food that was being grown to where the people were who need to eat it. And so I was curious what precludes us from distributing food and it all comes down to this notion of perishability.”
Six years later, Rogers has legitimate hope that Apeel can make a real difference in fighting the global hunger epidemic. Apeel’s business is starting to take off thanks to selling the coating to major fruit and vegetable producers like Del Rey Avocado, Horton Fruit and Eco Farmsand, and partnering with US retailers (who currently lose more than $18 billion a year due to wasted food). But, Apeel is also working with farmers in Kenya and Nigeria, where Edipeel is awaiting regulatory approval, in order to help them keep their produce fresh long enough to be transported from rural areas to larger markets where they can feed the local population.
At the moment, Apeel’s coating is only being sold on avocados, but the company is also working on selling it to produce growers to use on asparagus and various citrus fruits, among other produce. (The Apeel formula differs for each variety of fruit or vegetables.
What are the ingredients in Apeel?
“Every plant on Earth has a peel that protects it. The top layer of the peel is called the cuticle layer, which keeps moisture in while allowing the plant to breathe without drying out. Apeel protects fresh produce by forming a thin edible “peel” on the fruit’s surface, similar to the plant’s cuticle layer.
Made from food to protect your food.
Apeel is composed entirely of purified monoglycerides and diglycerides, edible compounds that can be found in a variety of foods. They are safe to eat as verified by regulatory authorities around the world, including Health Canada, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the World Health Organization (WHO). In fact, they are so safe they can be found in products designed for the most sensitive populations, including infant formula and nutrition shakes for the elderly.
The product, Edipeel, is a thin, edible postharvest coating made from plant-derived materials, designed to be consumed, that meets the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements for qualification as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) in the United States.
Apeel’s Edipeel is allowed for use on fruits and vegetables in the United States, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Peru, and South Africa, without restriction. Additionally, Edipeel is allowed for use on the following fruits in the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: avocados, citrus fruit, mangoes, papayas, melons, bananas, pineapples, and pomegranates. Edipeel is allowed for use in additional countries beyond those listed here. For specific questions on where Apeel is approved, please email info@apeelsciences.com.
To identify and mitigate social and environmental risk, product ingredients are evaluated in accordance with Apeel’s risk mitigation process. Please see our SCS Global Assurance Statement below regarding our Supplier Responsibility Program for more details.
We are proud to share our product safety information below. For any related questions on the safety profile of our plant-based protection for fresh fruits and vegetables, please review our FAQ’s, for information on our health profile, regulatory approvals and certifications.
Invisible
Apeel is colorless, odorless, and tasteless on produce. Just like the cuticle “peel” on the outside of plants, Apeel’s peel is tiny. And even though the ingredient is safe to eat in much higher quantities, the amount of Apeel on the surface of produce is exceptionally low. Even if all of the produce you consumed was treated with Apeel, the contribution of monoglycerides and diglycerides to your daily dietary fat intake would equal less than 1%.
Non-GMO
Apeel products are non-GMO, include no animal-derived inputs and do not contain wheat, soybean, corn, peanuts, tree nuts (almond nuts, brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecan nuts, pine nuts, pistachio nuts or walnuts) sesame seeds, mustard, sulfites, or inputs from milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, or crustacea. We are committed to ensuring the highest standards of purity for our products in accordance with food regulations in your country.
Food gone good.
Apeel-Protected Produce stays at peak freshness for longer. More time can help you waste less of what you buy.”
from: https://www.apeel.com/blog/whats-in-apeel , https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/31/bill-gates-backed-apeel-sciences-makes-fruit-avocados-last-longer.html
But all of that for you maybe is good, but other people not.. Some of the citizens of America like bloggers on the internet do not agree with all this marketing established by this company. Specifically one of the bloggers say:
” Apeel brags about its purified mono-and diglycerides, a food ingredient that is found in a variety of foods. According to Dr. Josh Axe, mono-and diglycerides are “the go-to replacement for deadly trans fats and a food industry staple that helps keep oil and fat from separating. (Vani) Hari (The Food Babe) explains that this additive is a byproduct of oil processing, including partially hydrogenated canola and soybean oils. This additive is a byproduct of oil processing which contains artificial trans fat – a danger food ingredient known to cause coronary heart disease and linked to 50,000 fatal heart attacks a year.” (Side note: The FDA finally determined that trans fats are no longer generally recognized as safe for food use in 2016 and yet mono-and diglycerides are the “the go-to replacement.” But they change the label from trans fats to mono-and diglycerides and then the FDA changes their tune. Interesting or predictable?). When asked if Apeel is a chemical, Jenny Du, the co-founder states, “Well, everything is in fact a chemical”… way to skirt the question there, Jenny! She goes on to say, “We’re all part of ‘star-stuff’… which are elements that surround us to form chemicals…” blah blah blah skirt skirt skirt. But also, speaking of chemicals, if this mono-and diglycerides is plant derived, I’d like to know what plant it’s derived from AND what that plant was treated with. What chemicals, pesticides and more were used on that plant? They wont tell us because, remember, Jenny Du says that, “everything is a chemical.” (I wish you could see how many times I’ve rolled my eyes already while writing and researching this!) ”
Also some other people on Facebook say :
What do you think about all this? Do you think it would do humanity any good if almost all products lasted longer? Is all this good for our health? What do you say? Comments below! 🙂
