Prepared Foods chats with Fred Scarpulla, Chief Culinary Officer for Amy’s Kitchen, Inc., makers of healthful, organic prepared foods that include pastas in all shapes and formats.

The plant-based meat analog explosion started out as a disruptor in the prepared foods field and is currently going through some serious growing pains. But the idea of crafting meat, poultry, seafood, and dairy replacers derived from plants and other non-animal sources goes back centuries. Think: tofu. While there’s no argument that the main driver of the consumer love affair with meat-free options has been the technological boom that allowed for meat, poultry, and seafood mimics that have become increasingly close in flavor, texture, and other organoleptic aspects of their animal-based counterparts, the catalyst was also the demarcation between meat analogs and meat replacers.

Prepared Foods speaks with Susan Guerin, CEO of World Finer Foods, Inc. and Cutting Vedge, Inc., makers of burgers, meatballs, crumbles, and sausage replacers from artichokes.

Renewal Mill, Pbc., a California company at the forefront of the new circular economy of food upcycling, has done the front-end work to ensure that it is rescuing valuable resources that would otherwise go to waste or be used in ways that are less sustainable. The company’s success comes from a deep understanding of the confluence of all those aspects as individual building blocks of a working upcycling paradigm. Renewal Mill co-founder and COO Caroline Cotto describes how Renewal Mill converts the byproducts of grain, seed, and legume food and ingredient processing into a retail line of clean label, organic specialty flours and baking mixes.

Prepared Foods' second installment of our two-part interview with Yves Potvin, founder and CEO of Konscious Foods Canada, Inc. Yves discusses deviating from the most common source of plant protein—soy—opting instead to use protein predominantly from peas, with supporting protein from additional sources such as chickpeas and seaweed.