In this recipe from The Vegan Asian Kitchen, WoonHeng Chia shares her tips for perfectly-coated noodles
WoonHeng Chia’s version of pad woon sen skips the meat, swaps in vegetarian oyster sauce, and is full of vegetables and tofu. It’s a dish from Chia’s new cookbook, The Vegan Asian Cookbook, that’s sure to be as satisfying as it is simple to make.
Read on for Chia’s recipe, plus her tips for getting the noodles perfectly coated in sauce, every single time.
Pad Woon Sen
(Stir-Fried Glass Noodles)
(Shein Loong Yap)
Thai-style pad woon sen—a soft tangle of glass noodles aromatic with garlic and onion and mixed with vegetables—was once a dish I was too nervous to try making at home. I used to watch the vendors making a similar glass noodle dish at char kuey teow stalls in Malaysia, stirring like their lives depended on it, making sure every noodle was coated in rich sauce, and I’d think, “How do they pull it off?”
When I finally decided to try making this in my own kitchen, I found a few tricks that made things way easier: Prep the sauce in advance and use a big pan so the noodles have plenty of surface area to absorb the sauce. Use both hands when you’re stirring, one with tongs to tease apart stubborn clumps, and one with a spatula to make sure the sauce reaches every corner. At the very end, increase to high heat for a slight sear. With these tips in your back pocket, this dish is fully achievable!
Ingredients
For the noodles
3½ ounces (100 g) dried mung bean vermicelli (bean thread)
For the sauce
2 tablespoons vegetarian oyster sauce
3 tablespoons (45 ml) Golden Mountain brand Thai seasoning sauce
½ teaspoon dark caramel soy sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
¼ teaspoon mushroom seasoning
Dash each of ground white pepper and ground black pepper
For the tofu and vegetables
2 tablespoons cooking oil
7 ounces (200 g) firm tofu, drained, pressed, and cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
3½ ounces (100 g) fresh oyster or king oyster mushrooms, torn into bite-sized pieces
1 small onion, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
¼ cup (30 g) carrot slices
½ cup (60 g) chopped cabbage
½ cup (50 g) chopped yu choy or gai lan
1 small (60 g) tomato, cut into wedges
1 scallion, white and green parts, cut into 2-inch (5 cm) sections and julienned
For serving
1 or 2 fresh red Thai chiles, thinly sliced, in Vegan Fish Sauce
Red pepper flakes
Preparation
1. Soften the noodles: Soak the mung bean vermicelli in warm water for 10 minutes, until tender, then drain. Snip the noodles into shorter lengths with scissors for easier handling and stir-frying.
2. Prepare the sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the vegetarian oyster sauce, Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, dark caramel soy sauce, sugar, mushroom seasoning, white pepper, black pepper, and 1/2 cup (120 ml) water.
3. Pan-fry the tofu and mushrooms: Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large wok or nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Pan-fry the tofu cubes in a single layer until golden brown on both sides, 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer the tofu to a bowl.
4. In the same pan, add the mushrooms and sauté until they are fragrant and starting to sear on the edges, about 2 minutes. Transfer them to the same bowl as the tofu.
5. Sauté the vegetables: Using the same pan or wok, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon oil over medium heat. Sauté the onion, garlic, and carrot for about 2 minutes, until the onion is slightly translucent. Add the cabbage, yu choy, and tomato, then add 2 tablespoons of the sauce mixture. Stir-fry the vegetables until they are softened, about 2 minutes. Return the tofu and mushrooms to the pan, pushing everything to one side.
6. Cook the noodles: Spread the noodles evenly in the pan in a single layer. Pour the remaining sauce over the noodles and increase the heat to medium-high. Using a pair of tongs, toss and stir the vermicelli to combine with the sauce and vegetables. The noodles will gradually expand and soften. If the pan becomes dry before the noodles are fully cooked, add more water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
7. When the sauce is completely absorbed and the noodles are fully cooked, 2 to 3 minutes, fold in the scallion. Increase the heat to high and toss for another minute to combine and lightly sear.
8. Serve: Transfer to a plate and serve with Thai chiles in vegan fish sauce and red pepper flakes.
Three ingredients and a fermentation trick make this butter taste just like the real deal
For many home cooks, whether they’re dairy-free, plant-curious, or simply love experimenting in the kitchen, butter is one of the hardest staples to rethink. That’s exactly why Miyoko Schinner’s recent video is a must-watch. Known for changing how people think about dairy-free alternatives, Schinner shows that homemade vegan butter can be rich, tangy, and versatile enough for everything from toast to baking.
In her YouTube video, Schinner, who is widely regarded as a pioneer of modern vegan cheese and butter, walks viewers through the process to recreate her iconic cultured spread at home, using just three core ingredients. Schinner founded Miyoko’s Creamery and helped push plant-based dairy into the mainstream long before it became trendy.
Here’s how to make this healthy, additive-free homemade vegan butter in your own kitchen, using the techniques that Schinner is famous for.
This butter only needs three ingredients
Schinner uses annatto seeds to give her vegan butter the classic yellow colour of traditional butter - Media Credit: YouTube/The Vegan Good Life With Miyoko
“Over time, I’ve been evolving the recipe,” she explains, noting that earlier versions appeared in her cookbook The Homemade Vegan Pantrybefore being refined further inThe Vegan Creamery. The current method strips everything back.
The butter relies on two oils and one plant milk. “It’s made with only three ingredients plus salt,” Schinner says, adding that the salt is optional. There are no emulsifiers involved. “No emulsifier, no lecithin of any kind,” she explains.
One oil needs to be saturated, which is why she uses refined coconut oil. The second oil must be liquid and neutral in flavour, such as avocado or sunflower oil. And the third ingredient is plant milk. While soy, oat, or cashew milk can work, Schinner is clear that almond milk is not ideal. “Almond milk doesn’t really work so well. It’s too watery,” she says.
The role of cultured cashew milk
YouTube/The Vegan Good Life With MiyokoThe secret behind Schinner’s creamy vegan butter lies in fermenting the cashew milk with lactic acid bacteriaAccording to Schinner, the difference between an average vegan butter and a standout one is culturing. “The real key to making a superior butter, adding that cultured flavour, is to culture your milk,” she says.She focuses on cashew milk because of both flavour and functionality. Cashews add body, subtle sweetness, and enough starch to help the butter brown during cooking. “Cashews add this really wonderful flavour and the right amount of starch,” she explains.Before culturing, cleanliness matters. Schinner stresses sanitizing all equipment to avoid unwanted bacteria. “When you culture something, it means you’re adding a lactic acid bacteria to it,” she says. Everything from the blender jar to the fermentation container is sterilized with boiling water.The cashew milk itself is simple, but handled carefully. Raw cashews are blended with water, and if their pasteurization status is unclear, they are briefly boiled first. “Boil them just for a minute or two just to kill whatever surface bacteria might be on those cashews,” Schinner advises.Once blended, she adds a vegan culture. “I’m using a vegan culture from the cheesemaker.com,” she says, explaining that mesophilic cultures help create buttery notes. The milk is then kept warm for 12 to 20 hours to lower the pH. “It will get tangier in flavour,” she says, adding that tasting works just as well as using a pH meter. “You can just taste it and say that tastes like buttermilk.”Temperature is everything when making the butterOnce the cultured milk is ready, the butter comes together quickly, as long as temperatures are right. Schinner melts refined coconut oil gently, warning against overheating. “You don’t want it hot,” she says. “The temperature of the oils and the milk is very, very important.”Liquid oil, by contrast, should be cold. “The key is to have it chilled,” she explains, noting that this makes the butter come together more easily. First, the oils are blended together, with salt added if desired, before the cultured milk is slowly incorporated.If the temperatures are off, the butter may not emulsify right away. Schinner shows this happening in real time. “This is one of those butters that didn’t turn into a spreadable butter immediately,” she says, explaining that chilling and re-blending can fix it.When everything aligns, the transformation is obvious. “It looks like mayonnaise,” she says, describing the moment the butter churns properly.Colour, texture, and how it performs in the kitchenFor those who want a classic buttery colour, Schinner suggests annatto. “If you want sort of that yellow buttery colour, you can use annatto seeds,” she says, cautioning against overdoing it.Once set, the butter firms up in the refrigerator but stays spreadable. Schinner emphasizes that it’s not just for toast. “This butter works in every culinary application,” she says. “You can bake with it…cook with it. You can brown it.”That browning ability comes from the cultured plant milk itself. “It has the sugars in the soy milk or the cashew milk for it to actually brown,” she explains.For more of Schinner’s healthy plant-based recipes, check out her YouTube channel.https://plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/food/miyoko-schinners-famous-vegan-butter-recipe/
Seed oils have come under fire, particularly on social media, with claims that they’re ‘toxic’ and increase inflammation in our bodies. But does the evidence support these statements?
If you have spent any time on health blogs or social media recently, you have likely seen seed oils branded as public enemy number one. But are these ubiquitous plant fats truly ruining our health, or is it just marketing hype?
One of the main arguments against seed oils is that their omega-6 fatty acids make them ‘pro-inflammatory’, allegedly increasing the risk of chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer.
It has been found that the omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic acid, converts to arachidonic acid in our bodies to help regulate inflammation, pain and blood clotting. However, this is just one of its many roles, and the conversion rate is only around 0.3 per cent. Our bodies also need some inflammatory molecules in order to respond appropriately to infections and injury.
There is currently no evidence to support the claim that higher intakes of linoleic acid lead to higher levels of inflammation. In fact, studies show that people with higher omega-6 intake have lower levels of inflammation and are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes.
Many people who take a stance against seed oils argue that we should be consuming animal fats such as butter instead, but evidence consistently shows that eating animal fats, which are high in saturated fatty acids, can increase cholesterol levels and cardiovascular disease risk.
To understand why plant-based alternatives are facing such heavy scrutiny, it helps to look at exactly what these oils are made of and how they function in our bodies.
Seed oils are composed of fats extracted from the seed portion of plants, such as sunflower, rapeseed, sesame, peanut and corn. As well as being bottled for sale, they are used as ingredients in a range of other food products.
Seed oils contain a variety of unsaturated fatty acids, including essential omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and linoleic acid.
Are seed oils toxic?
The word ‘toxic’ has become a health buzzword, and seed oils are one of the latest targets. One concern raised is the use of hexane for heat extraction of the oil. In reality, hexane is removed after the extraction process. While trace amounts may remain in the final product, these are present in very low levels and nowhere near the quantities that have been shown to cause toxic effects.
Another argument is that heating seed oils can produce other toxins, such as acrylamide. While this is technically possible, this only happens when oils are heated to temperatures above their smoke point for a prolonged period. As seed oils have smoke points above 250°C, it is not possible to achieve this when cooking at home.
Despite this, if you are still concerned, you can opt for cold-pressed oils which don’t use heat or hexane during production.
Are they UPF?
Seed oils have also received criticism for being processed. However, they are not classified as ultra-processed foods and sit in NOVA Group 2, also known as ‘processed culinary ingredients’ alongside foods such as sugar, salt, vinegar and other oils.
Either way, the level of processing a food undergoes is not reliably linked to its healthfulness, with the nutrient profile (fibre, saturated fat, sugar and salt content) considered more important.
What about Omega-3?
Omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are considered essential fatty acids because our bodies cannot produce them, and they are both important for our health. Whilst omega-3s have a stronger anti-inflammatory effect, omega-6s are still anti-inflammatory and play a positive role in metabolic health.
Concerns have been raised that the increased amount of omega-6 fatty acids in our modern diets could be cancelling out the protective effect of the omega-3 fatty acids we eat. While these fatty acids are similar in structure, which means they compete to bind to receptors in our bodies, the answer to this problem is not to avoid omega-6s but instead to focus on eating more omega-3-rich foods.
Seed oils often contain a mixture of both fatty acids; for example, flaxseed oil, which is a valuable source of omega-3, so seed oils can be a good way to increase your omega-3 intake as a vegan.
So, should you avoid seed oils?
The debate surrounding seed oils is an example of how an intense focus on individual nutrients is not always a helpful way to think about a balanced diet and can lack nuance. Working on incorporating a wide range of health-promoting foods in your diet is more beneficial and less confusing.
Seed oils contain a variety of beneficial unsaturated and essential fatty acids that can help to reduce the risk of developing metabolic diseases. Adding fats to our meals also helps with the absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K, so consider incorporating them in a salad dressing or use them for cooking up a tasty stir fry.
Nichole Dandrea-Russert explains how to get essential nutrients from plants alone
Nichole Dandrea-Russert is on a mission to get people to eat more plants.
As a registered dietitian who eats a strictly plant-based diet, she encourages people who want to eat a healthier diet to practice what she calls layering. Instead of eliminating entire food groups and overhauling your diet overnight, start by addinggrains, vegetables, beans, seeds, herbs and other colourful,vibrant plantsto the meals that you already enjoy. Eventually, those foods will start to crowd out the less nutritious foods from your diet.
Dandrea-Russert said that people who take her advice and add more plants to their meals usually tell her that they notice three things.
“One is that they have more energy,” she said. “Two is that they feel lighter, and that’s probably because they’re eating more fibre, which is filling them up and causing them to eat fewer calories. And the third thing they tell me is that they’resleeping better. And those are just from simple additions — not from taking any foods away.”
Dandrea-Russert has written several books on plant-based eating, including “The Fiber Effect,” which teaches people how to manage their weight, improve their health and lower their risk of chronic diseases by following weekly meal plans filled withfibre-rich whole foods.
Her latest book, “Powered by Plants,” which she co-authored with Ocean Robbins, shows people how they can get protein, omega-3 fats, calcium and other essential nutrients from plants. It includes dozens of tasty and convenient plant-based recipes, as well as detailed guides on how to cook things like grains, beans and lentils from scratch.
In addition to writing books and developing recipes, Dandrea-Russert runs a clinical nutrition practice where she helps clients build sustainable diet and lifestyle habits through plant-based nutrition, exercise and mindfulness. She also runs a wellness blog calledPurely Planted and teaches courses on plant-based eating.
(iStock)
We wanted to learn what a registered dietitian who follows a strictly plant-based diet eats in a typical day. So, we caught up with Dandrea-Russert to find out what her meals are like, why she avoids using the term “vegan” and why she recommends eating dark chocolateon a regular basis.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You prefer using the term plant-based over vegan. Why is that?
The most important thing for me personally and professionally is for people to add more plant foods to their plates for their health, for the planet and for animals. The term vegan can feel very polarizing to some, and my goal is to be inclusive. I have clients who are not even close to being vegan, and that’s fine. But I know that they need to add more fibre to their plate for health reasons — whether it’s high cholesterol or hormonal dysregulation or sleep disruptions.
When did you become a plant-based dietitian, and why?
For the first 15 years of my career, I worked in a clinical setting, mostly in a neonatal intensive care unit in a hospital. Then I started a chocolate company. I love dark chocolate and I wanted to make an even healthier version. So, I started making plant-based dark chocolate that had whole food ingredients such as blueberries, walnuts, flax, green tea, turmeric and other spices. Because the chocolates were all plant-based or vegan, I started partnering with animal welfare organizations and donating chocolate to their fundraising events. At one of those events, in 2013, they showed a video of a dairy factory farm. I was consuming a lot of dairy foods at the time and was devastated with what I had been supporting. And so, I proclaimed to my husband, “I’m going vegan, are you on board?”
Was it difficult going fully plant-based?
When I was a student in the dietetics program, I didn’t have even an hour of instruction on how to eat vegan. I had questions about whether I could do this in a sustainable way for myself and could I promote this in a healthy way for my community and my clients.
My husband agreed to try it with me, and we were about five days into eating pasta every night when he said, “If you don’t figure out another way to do this, I don’t think I can last much longer.”
So, the first thing that I did was grab a highly rated plant-based cookbook that became my lifeline because it taught me the framework for how to create nourishing, delicious plant-based meals. It’s called “Isa Does It,” byIsa Chandra Moskowitz. It’s still one of my go-to cookbooks today.
Are there certain nutrients that are lacking in a plant-based diet that you have to be mindful about?
When people add more plant-based foods to their plate they’re getting so many things that they weren’t getting before if they were following the standard American diet or a more carnivorous way of eating. So, when people start adding more plants to their plate, they’re getting more fibre and phytochemicals and certain vitamins and minerals that are more abundant in plants.
Vitamin B12 is the one nutrient that is most difficult to get if you eat an exclusively plant-based diet. There are some foods that are fortified with B12, like nutritional yeast and some plant-based milks. But it’s not always enough, unless you’re getting several servings a day. So, I would suggest that someone who is exclusively plant-based start a B12 supplement to be safe. It’s easy, it’s affordable for most people, and it can prevent a deficiency from occurring later on.
(iStock)
What do you typically eat for breakfast?
For breakfast I usually eat a loaded avocado toast. When I say loaded, I mean you can’t see the bread or the avocado once it’s done. I use a slice of whole-grain sourdough and avocado. Then I pile on leafy greens, pickled red onions, and some radish. I add a couple tablespoons of hemp seeds forprotein, and a tablespoon of flax meal for the omega-3 fats.
(iStock)
What’s a typical lunch for you?
I usually have leftover grains and either lentils orchickpeasin the fridge. I always try to add at least three vegetables to my plate. It might be mushrooms, broccoli and peppers. I’ll heat the veggies up in a pan with a little oil, and I’ll add spices like cumin seeds, mustard seeds or fennel.
What’s your favourite treat or dessert?
I eat chocolate daily. I love it, that’s why I started a chocolate company. When I was taste-testing chocolate every day through my company for 10 years I thought I would get tired of it. But I didn’t. To this day, I like to end every meal with a little square of dark chocolate. I even have a square or two of dark chocolate after breakfast.
There are definitely nutritional benefits to a good quality dark chocolate. It’s high in antioxidants. It has prebiotic fibre, which is good for your gut microbiome. It’s high in magnesium, which is great for sleep and mood. I recommend eating good quality dark chocolate that’s 70 percent cocoa or more. And look for Fair Trade or ethical chocolate where the chocolate maker supports their farmers and their well-being and compensates them fairly.
What do you typically eat for dinner?
Dinner varies. My husband eats plant-based at home but he’s not exclusively plant-based, and our flavour and texture preferences are very different. So, when we eat at home, we try to do meals where we can each choose our own things. The common meals that we both like and agree upon are tacos, pasta and grain bowls. And we do stir-fries quite a bit. Stir-fries are easy because we both love tofu. We can throw it into a wok with veggies and then serve it on top of brown rice or Udon noodles with either a miso ginger sauce or a tamari-based sauce. I cook during the week. He cooks during the weekends.
The biggest thing I try to do with every meal for both of us is to make sure that it’s colourful,protein-richand fibre-rich.
What advice do you have for people who want to eat more of a plant-based diet?
Shift your mindset from one of restriction to one of abundance. Every time you eat, think to yourself: “What colourful plants can I add to this meal?”
That’s No. 1 because it’s easy for people to identify which plant foods they already know and love. So, start there. And then once you start feeling better from eating more plant-based foods, you’ll naturally start to choose more and more.
US non-profit Food System Innovations has launched an AI-led Food Intelligence Lab to create better-tasting alternative proteins with an open-source model, in an effort backed by the Bezos Earth Fund
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in food tech is ramping up faster than you can grill a burger.
US startup Shiru is using the tech to discover new sustainable proteins and ingredients. Israeli firm Celleste Bio is pairing biotech with computational AI to make cell-based chocolate bars, in partnership with Mondelēz International, and Chile’s NotCo has pivoted from being a CPG company to an AI startup that helps food companies accelerate product development.
Others are leveraging the tech to improve the taste, texture and nutritional credentials of alternative proteins like plant-based meat and dairy. This was one of the focuses of the Bezos Earth Fund‘s $2M grant to Food System Innovations (FSI), a philanthropic impact platform investing in the transition to a sustainable agrifood system, last year.
Large-scale taste tests by Nectar, FSI’s sensory analysis arm, show that Americans are not happy with how most vegan products taste. Only around a third of these consumers like the average alternative, compared to over three in five who find the taste of conventional meat and dairy appealing.
Companies know this. Analysis suggests that among the world’s largest food producers – think Nestlé, Walmart and Kraft Heinz – 90% continue to launch and promote new plant-based products even as 77% believe concerns over taste, cost and nutrition are hindering consumer uptake.
To solve this bottleneck, FSI has launched a new Food Intelligence Lab to develop open-source infrastructure to accelerate AI-driven alternative protein development, enhance their sensory profiles, and shorten commercialisation timelines.
“The Food Intelligence Lab combines multiple data streams, including sensory panel data from NECTAR, instrumental measurements like texture and pH, molecular composition data, and prior experiment history, to design algorithms that can guide that optimisation process,” Anna Thomas, a computer scientist at Stanford University and director of machine learning at the lab, tells Green Queen.
“We treat food formulation as an optimisation problem: how do you maximise consumer satisfaction – taste, texture, overall liking – while meeting constraints like cost, nutrition, and manufacturability.”
How FSI’s Food Intelligence Lab will improve alternative proteins
Courtesy: Proxy Foods AI
FSI argues that more R&D is needed to improve the taste of animal-free proteins, but companies are constrained by limited budgets, fragmented datasets, and long development cycles. And though AI can accelerate product development, the sector has lacked the integrated data infrastructure needed to reliably predict consumer outcomes, such as taste and texture.
The Food Intelligence Lab will generate and curate large-scale datasets, including sensory data from Nectar and instrumental measurements of alternative proteins (like texture profile analysis, pH, and shear tests) to establish public benchmarks for sensory prediction and formulation design.
It will develop open-source models to improve product design and prediction tasks, while working with companies, non-profits, and researchers to translate these into practical applications.
The lab has collaborated with Washington, DC-based Proxy Foods AI to co-develop an Expert-Guided Bayesian Optimisation (EGBO) system using the latter’s AI food scientist agent. This is an algorithm for black-box function optimisation, where a domain expert (like a human or large-language model) selects a small subset of variables for Bayesian optimisation and may expand it over time.
This EGBO improves the sensory performance of a dairy-free Greek yoghurt by 29% in just 10 formulation iterations over five days, matching the animal-based benchmark on three of four sensory attributes: consistency, creaminess, and tanginess.
“Our model is designed to work alongside food scientists, allowing domain experts to guide which variables matter most while the algorithm efficiently searches for better formulations. The system recommends the ‘next best experiment’, helping teams iterate far more quickly than traditional trial-and-error approaches,” explains Thomas.
“We’re also building a broader ecosystem beyond a single model. The lab is developing open-source benchmarks like TasteBench, evaluating foundation models for sensory prediction, and working with a range of partners across start-ups, academia, and industry to translate these tools into real-world R&D workflows.”
TasteBench is a benchmark designed by FSI researchers, with both food- and molecular-level prediction tasks publicly available. They evaluated existing foundation models and other baseline methods for predicting sensory similarity to the target animal product, finding that the best AI model is competitive with the median individual Nectar panellist.
Reckoning with AI’s climate impact
Courtesy: OpenAI
The lab is tackling one of the leading causes of climate change. Animal agriculture accounts for up to a fifth of global emissions, uses up 30% of the planet’s freshwater, and occupies 77% of all farmland. But it only supplies 17% of the world’s calories and 38% of its protein intake.
The system is inefficient and unsustainable, and AI can help streamline the transition towards more sustainable proteins. However, the tech itself has climate questions looming over it.
Research suggests the technology is likely to increase energy use and fuel climate disinformation. A UN report this month argues that AI’s actual climate impact doesn’t account for inference, or the use of models to answer everyday prompts.
For instance, the energy required to generate a single AI image is enough to power a 10-watt LED bulb for 17 minutes and to use 2 tablespoons of water. Not to mention, data centres for AI are regularly accused of leeching resources from public infrastructure.
In Querétaro, Mexico, expanding computing infrastructure is taking up water supplies amid prolonged droughts. And in Uruguay, plans for a water-intensive data centre clashed with a 2023 drought depleting Montevideo’s freshwater reserves and making tap water unsafe for consumption.
“It’s a valid and important concern, and one we take seriously. Our view is that AI in this context needs to be evaluated on net impact,” says Thomas.
“Food systems account for roughly 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock alone responsible for a significant share. If AI can materially accelerate the shift toward better-performing, more affordable sustainable proteins, the downstream emissions reductions can be substantial,” she adds.
“That said, efficiency matters. Our work is focused on targeted, domain-specific models rather than extremely large, general-purpose systems. Techniques like Bayesian optimisation are extremely lightweight compared to frontier AI approaches, and they are designed to reduce the number of physical experiments required, which carry a material resource and emissions footprint.
“We also see open infrastructure as part of the solution: by sharing datasets and models, the field can avoid duplicative training and move toward more efficient, standardised approaches.”
Bezos Earth Fund grant ‘catalytic’ to AI lab
Courtesy: Nectar
That open-source model can serve as a catalyst for advancing the alternative protein category. In addition to the FSI grant, Bezos Earth Fund has backed projects by the Australian national research agency CSIRO, the UK’s University of Leeds to develop open-access AI platforms for sustainable proteins.
Later this year, Tufts University is set to launch a food innovation hub featuring an open-source cell bank for cultivated meat research.
“A core barrier in food is the lack of shared data infrastructure. Unlike fields like drug and materials discovery, food R&D is highly fragmented, with limited public datasets and benchmarks. That slows progress across the entire sector,” says Thomas.
“Open-sourcing models, datasets, and benchmarks is a deliberate choice to address that gap. It allows start-ups, researchers, and established companies to build on a common foundation, improving comparability, reducing duplicated effort, and accelerating collective learning.”
She calls the grant from Jeff Bezos’s fund “catalytic” to the FSI lab: “It enables us to stand up the lab, develop initial datasets and models, and demonstrate early proof points. But this is intended to be a long-term, collaborative effort. We expect continued partnerships across industry, philanthropy, and academia to expand and sustain the ecosystem over time.”
The Food Intelligence Lab is building an engine that recommends the next best experiment to try when developing sustainable protein products. Over time, it aims to establish a more open, collaborative foundation for sustainable food innovation, enabling the industry to develop better innovations.
“In year one, key goals include demonstrating measurable gains in formulation efficiency and sensory outcomes across multiple product categories, and improving model performance on benchmarks like TasteBench,” says Thomas, nodding to the early validation results from the yoghurt.
