November 2020: Plant Power Issue

Issue Features & Takeaways:

• Awareness and popular literature around the power of plants to heal people and the planet have gone increasingly mainstream
• Fungi, indeed, are experiencing huge gains in the marketplace, and in the collective consciousness. The 2019 film, Fantastic Fungi, grossed $1.7 million.
• New technology and new labs can discover the mechanism of action for traditional herbs but still miss the whole plant effect
• The advance of foodtech into natural products continues to raise hackles, with traditional brands pointing to cell-based processing as the clearest call for alarm
• Foodtech can be a bridge between the unhealthy realities of the modern American diet and the idealized solutions often promulgated by natural products brands
• With climate change threatening future herb supplies, industry is upping its sustainability game like never before
• Plant-based burger growth (Nov 2019) - up 15% from 2018-2019
• The year of immunity tightened supply for elderberry and other herbs, but a new wave of immune health ingredients is waiting to be discovered
• Long before Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, vegetable protein pioneers were bringing alternatives to market; as the world catches up to their visions, we hear from brands young and old
• The promise of alternative medicine drew these industry pioneers into herbalism, and decades later, they still view the herbs and botanical industry through that lens