A JUST Food System Starts with Breakfast
Humans love food. People grow up eating french fries, vending machine chips, and fast-food chicken sandwiches. With just a couple of dollars, we can buy tasty food in a matter of seconds. And more often than not, if it’s cheap and tasty, it‘s also accelerating chronic disease and climate change, the biggest issues of our lifetime.
That’s how unjust today’s food system is.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
- The tools utilized for our food system are limited. We’re talking core ingredients like soy, corn, sugar, and animal protein. These are used to make the food that we eat every day by some of the biggest food companies. Although these big corporations do care, it’s hard to actually do anything differently.
- It’s not just a limitation of tools, it’s a mindset issue. Currently, people don’t believe that having healthier, sustainable food — that is also delicious and affordable — is possible. If the world doesn’t think that it’s possible then that stops people from even trying to create those options.
And that’s why JUST is working to change this by rebuilding a more just food system that makes it easier for everyone to eat well.
How JUST is making this disruption happen
JUST is searching faster and further, collaborating with rural farmers, Michelin-starred chefs, and world-class product developers to discover more effective tools within the plant kingdom to make food tastier, healthier, and more sustainable.
But it all starts with the tools.
And there happens to be 400,000 of them. 400,000 known species of plants are present throughout the entire world. Collectively, these species possess 18 billion proteins, 108 million fats, and 4 million carbohydrates. Most of them have never even been explored for the potential to make our cookies, pasta, ice cream, butter, or scrambled eggs better.
These natural tools found in grains, legumes, and various other plants can be harnessed to eliminate the use of processed sugar, saturated fats, and sodium while offering sustainable protein and nutrient density to the current food system. Unlike traditional food alternatives — such as soybeans and corn — overlooked species can significantly improve the flavor and texture of the food found in refrigerators and on-street markets of developing nations.
Plants are the centerpiece of JUST’s operation.
If distributed efficiently, the discovery of one bean or plant can disrupt multiple billion-dollar food categories, and transform the way hundreds of millions eat in the next decade.
Using Artificial Intelligence to further explore the endless possibilities for food alternatives
As JUST collects plant data through their exploration of plant species, they store this data on a platform where they can compare the properties of different plants.
After testing for desired characteristics such as gelation or foaming, researchers from JUST built a platform to fully comprehend the plants, and more notably, to find potential uses for them. By examining these tools at a molecular level, scientists can evaluate each plant’s strength and potential.
JUST’s Artificial Intelligence system studies the different plant samples for properties and then sorts plants based on these properties and potential uses. Then, the AI system classifies and sorts the plants into unique categories based on their performance on various molecular tests. Essentially, JUST has created its own plant dictionary containing the protein structure of every plant.
With this dictionary, they have been able to implement plants replacements into popular foods. The company transforms the way we eat by swapping animal products in food for vegetable-based alternatives. For example, pea protein is the basis for Just Mayo, while Just Cookies and Just Dough are made with sorghum, a tall-growing cereal grain used widely in animal feed.
Exotic plants are already revolutionizing the way we eat foods like eggs.
Eggs are one of the most common versatile foods on the plant, spanning cultures and cuisines, distance, and language. However, across the globe we eat 1.4 trillion chicken eggs annually, using 93 million acres of land and 51 billion gallons of water in the process. So JUST Egg started with a simple question: Is it possible to make really delicious eggs from plants?
The answer is yes. And in the process, JUST is making eggs that are better for our planet too.
But to create a stand-alone egg product with a texture, flavor, and scrambling time similar to regular eggs, JUST’s team had to look beyond sorghum or peas. After searching through thousands of samples from hundreds of species of plants, their team ultimately found one that magically scrambles like an egg. But they found their answer in an unlikely place: A 4,400-year-old legume called the mung bean.
Vigna radiata, Moong dal, 绿豆 (lǜ dòu), Mung bean or JUST Egg’s secret ingredient. Cultures across the globe have been cooking with this mighty bean for quite some time. This legume is also very special to JUST as it contains a protein that magically scrambles like an egg. Through the discovery process at Eat Just, Inc., they were able to find a tool that has already sustainably impacted the food system for thousands of years and turn it into a meal that will impact thousands more.
Mung beans give the liquid mixture the right consistency and nutritional makeup, along with a 60-day shelf-life. But, researchers at JUST spent nearly 4 years searching for a plant protein that would scramble like an egg. However, coming up with our first version of JUST Egg was just the beginning. JUST’s team of scientists and chefs are constantly working to make JUST Egg ever better — improving sustainability, lowering costs, and adding even more nutritional value. New versions are already on the shelves at your local grocery, proving better taste and functionality for your frittatas and French toast.
Measuring the Impact
Factory farms take an incredible toll on our planet, on animals, and our own health and wellbeing, but it doesn’t have to be this way anymore.
JUST Egg is fixing our planet by using…
- 98% less water. To produce one traditional chicken egg requires 53 gallons of water. And that’s not from thirsty chickens; that’s because of the water needed into growing feed for so many chickens. However, making eggs directly from plants uses 98 percent less water.
- 86% less land. More than three-quarters of the globe’s farmable land goes to animal agriculture, but only produces 18 percent of the calories we intake. However, making eggs directly from plants uses 86 percent less land.
- 93% fewer CO2 emissions. Per kilogram of egg, 4.8kg of greenhouse gases is emitted. Most of these emissions come from feed production, on-farm energy use, nitrous oxide gas from the poultry litter, and fuel combustion. For comparison, the average car today emits about 0.41 kilograms of CO2 per mile driven. However, making eggs directly from plants uses 93 percent fewer CO2 emissions.
Yes, JUST Egg is delicious, and, yes, they’re made from plants, and yes it helps the planet. But they’re also better for us, too.
It also contains 67 percent less saturated fat and more protein than a traditional chicken egg. These eggs are also free of cholesterol and full of good-for-you polyunsaturated fat.
And that’s not all.
As of December 2021, Eat Just Inc. has sold the equivalent of more than 200 million eggs — all made entirely from plants. In fact, if all their eggs were people, it would be the eighth-most populous country. Every one of those eggs scrambles, omelets, and quiches has a real impact. The plant-based JUST Egg has saved more than 29 million kgs of CO2e, 9,400 acres of land, and 7.2 billion gallons of water. That’s enough to fill 11,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, a larger area than some island nations, and the equivalent of taking more than 6,200 cars off the road.
It adds up to a real impact on our planet. But JUST believes they still have a long way to go.
Next Steps, More Efficient Meat
The escalating demand for conventional meat means the disappearance of our precious water and land as we struggle to feed livestock. That means burning down rainforests to grow more feed, which only worsens the climate crisis. But here’s the difficult truth: We can’t keep this up forever.
So, in addition to plant-based innovation, Eat Just is developing cultured meat — real meat grown from cells, without ever needing to confine or slaughter an animal. All of us share this one planet, so using one-third of it to grow corn and soy for livestock is absurd, but JUST found a way to fix this too: GOOD Meat.
Meat without deforestation.
Meat without slaughter.
Meat without limits.
JUST’s cultured meat technology acts as an important tool in addressing the rising demand for animal protein without tearing down a forest or slaughtering a single animal.
The process is pretty simple. First, GOOD Meat collects a cell sample, places it in a petri-dish with a medium, then grows the cells to eventually harvest into meat. However, current methods of growing lab-grown meat cells fast come from a medium called fetal bovine serum, which comes from baby cows. That completely defeats the whole point of making “clean” meat without meat. This fetal bovine serum is EXTREMELY expensive since it contains the perfect amount of nutrients needed for cell growth.
So how can clean meat disrupt this market and make a JUST food system worldwide if the required serum lacks affordability? And that’s why we need a plant-based alternative nutrient medium. But doesn’t JUST already have a plant library that details the characteristics and properties of thousands upon thousands of plants?
Oh right, JUST does have that!
Not only is GOOD Meat working on developing lab-grown meat, but they’re also harnessing plant protein knowledge gathered to discover a medium that can culture meat cells all from plants. Each day JUST has a team of scientists constantly studying and analyzing cell behaviors in search of sustainable and delicious alternatives. Although we still have a long way to go, companies like JUST are allowing us to respect animals, eat the food we love, and feed our growing planet.
Our health and our planet’s health are deeply connected. Now we are finally nurturing both. However, the health of our planet and our bodies starts with our most important choice: what we eat every day. More than anything else, this decision matters most.
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