Food technology company, Epogee® LLC, which produces the category defining plant-based fat alternative, EPG, is part of the solution to address the nation’s largest food challenges like nutritional and food scarcity. Working as part of a collective effort to improve access and availability to healthy foods is a first step, according to David Rowe, Epogee Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Improving the overall composition of existing foods, especially those commonly found in packaged goods, is an attainable goal with the new technologies available. Rowe recently explored this and other topics on a panel titled The Nexus of Health and Food: Tackling Nutritional Insecurity at the Future Food Technology summit in San Francisco. As part of the discussion, he shared how it’s critical to provide better dietary options for people and fundamentally, you have to produce food that tastes good and is good for you.
“The challenge is to make the food people like to eat healthier and tasty while taking away excess calories and fats,” Rowe explained. “Excess calories represent the biggest driving force behind obesity and chronic disease, which also impacts quality of life and health outcomes and healthcare costs.”
To adequately address nutritional insecurity, the industry must improve access to healthier food. Rowe believes the industry should focus future priorities on working with food innovators to make healthier food; systematically address the pervasive problem of rural food deserts; and reduce the adverse health properties of popular foods.
“Saturated fats are also a concern when it comes to the nutritional value of food. Over the last half century, more than half the excess calories added to US diets came from extra fat often found in delicious, easily available and cheap food,” said Rowe.
EPG, a sustainable, plant-based option, is doing its part to address growing rates of obesity and diabetes which are often attributed to the fat content in diets high in ultra-processed foods. Foods made with EPG deliver up to 92% reduction in calories from fat and are proven to have no digestive side effects. EPG breaks down naturally in the environment in the same way as traditional fats and oils.
Using EPG as a fat alternative has removed over 3 billion calories from the US food chain in just four years by helping food manufacturers formulate better-for-you foods in well-loved foods such as chocolates, ice creams, and prepared baked goods without sacrificing taste or texture. Some of the latest products launched include:
- Elite Sweets protein donuts
- Own Your Hunger protein squares
- Legendary protein sweet rolls
- N!CK’s snack bars & ice cream cookies
- Moon Magic chocolate bars
Most recently, EPG was featured in an exciting new product “Foie without the Fowl” created through an exclusive collaboration with The Better Meat Co. The product is made with The Better Meat Co.’s Rhiza Mycoprotein with EPG plant-based fat alternative and offers a tasty, better-for-you and better-for-the-environment-and-animals version of foie gras. Learn more about EPG at https://www.epogee.com.
About Epogee®
Epogee envisions a world where we can all choose foods that are delicious and better for us. Its fat alternative, EPG, fulfills the greatest unmet need in food today: dramatically reduced calories without any compromise. Today’s food innovators are formulating with EPG in a variety of applications because of its groundbreaking capability to deliver the functional benefits of traditional fats while eliminating 92% of fat calories for each unit of fat replaced. Now manufacturers can make better-for-you foods with the great taste and texture consumers expect and love. Learn more about Epogee’s fat alternative, EPG, by visiting: https://www.epogee.com, https://www.linkedin.com/company/epogee-llc/ and @EPG4BetterFood