Author

Anay Mridul 3146 posts 0 comments

Anay is Green Queen's resident news reporter. Originally from India, he worked as a vegan food writer and editor in London, and is now travelling and reporting from across Asia. He's passionate about coffee, plant-based milk, cooking, eating, veganism, food tech, writing about all that, profiling people, and the Oxford comma.

Cell-Based News

As GOOD Meat & UPSIDE Foods End Restaurant Collabs, What’s Next for Cultivated Meat Tastings?

Anay Mridul Feb 6, 2024

The restaurants serving cultivated meat in Singapore and the US have stopped doing so – as the industry enters a crucial year for regulation and commercialisation, what's next for consumers hoping to taste cultured meat? July 2023…
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Green Business

The Cinnamon Kitchen: Celeb-Favourite Indian Vegan Bakery Lands Shark Tank Deal at $1.4M Valuation

Anay Mridul Feb 5, 2024

Indian vegan bakery The Cinnamon Kitchen secured a ₹60 lakh ($72,000) investment from Aman Gupta on Shark Tank India. Landing the deal at 5% equity, the brand was valued at ₹12 crores ($1.44M), and is among a handful of other plant-based…
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Food & Nutrition

Q&A with Churchill Fellow Jenny Chapman: ‘We Need to Stop Using the Term ‘Ultra-Processed’ in Nutrition’

Anay Mridul Feb 5, 2024

Ultra-processed foods aren't all bad – and we need to stop using that term when we're talking about nutrition, according to a new report into health and sustainability. Scientists should stop using the term 'ultra-processed' to describe…
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Cell-Based News

Singapore’s Islamic Council Rules Cultivated Meat as Halal Under the Right Conditions

Anay Mridul Feb 5, 2024

The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore has issued a fatwa declaring that cultivated meat is generally halal, and Muslims can eat these products as long as they adhere to halal standards. The Fatwa Committee of the Majlis Ugama Islam…
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Fermentation-Based Alt Protein

Fungi in My Cheese: Bolder Foods Unveils Mycelium Ingredient for Umami-Packed Cheese Alternatives

Anay Mridul Feb 5, 2024

Belgian food tech startup Bolder Foods has introduced MycoVeg, a functional mycelium ingredient that offers creamy and stretchy textures in non-dairy cheese. The biomass-fermented innovation is being trialled by dairy companies, and is set…
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Future Foods

Safeguarding the Future: How RESPECTfarms is Helping Farmers Transition to Cultivated Meat

Anay Mridul Feb 2, 2024

In the 1980s, Willem van Eelen began working on the technology that produces what we know today as cultivated meat – now, his daughter, via RESPECTfarms, is extending his vision to help farmers take the plunge, beginning with the world's…
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Health

The Ozempic Rush: 10 Things to Know About Semaglutide, Food Intake, Obesity & Weight Loss

Anay Mridul Feb 2, 2024

Ozempic is everywhere right now, from newspaper headlines to household shelves. But what do Americans really think about weight loss drugs? Here are 10 things you should know. In our food trends predictions for this year, we highlighted…
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Books

Generation Eco: 7 of the Best Climate Change Books for Kids

Anay Mridul Feb 2, 2024

With Gen Alpha deemed to be the eco-warrior demographic growing up in an increasingly volatile climate (literally), it's never a bad thing to teach children about the real world – here are seven of the best climate change books for kids. …
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Food & Nutrition

The Food System Costs Us $15T Every Year – Here’s How to Fix It

Anay Mridul Feb 2, 2024

The unaccounted costs of the global food system on human and planetary health amounts to $15T a year, according to a new report, which predicts contrasting futures based on current trends and transformation pathways, and suggests the best…
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Climate Change

With Investigations and Regulations Against the Market, Are Carbon Offsets in Trouble?

Anay Mridul Feb 1, 2024

From one greenwashing scandal to the next, carbon offsets have developed a notorious reputation over the last few years. As more investigations call out their inflated claims and regulations clamp down on the sector, could the voluntary…
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Chocolate

Planet A Foods Raises $15.4M in Series A Funding, As It Nears UK Launch for Cocoa-Free Chocolate

Anay Mridul Feb 1, 2024

German fermentation tech startup Planet A Foods, the parent company of cocoa-free chocolate brand ChoViva, has secured $15.4M in a Series A funding round. On the heels of partnerships with industry giants, It plans to introduce its product…
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Pets

Wild Earth’s Ryan Bethencourt: ‘Our Mission is to Make Killer Food, Without the Killing’

Anay Mridul Feb 1, 2024

In an exclusive interview with Green Queen, Wild Earth co-founder and alt-protein investor Ryan Bethencourt talks the death threats he's received, his experience with Shark Tank and Mark Cuban, his investment criteria, learning from Tesla,…
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Alt Protein

Disassociating From the Beginning: US Senators Propose a Ban on Cultivated Meat in School Meals

Anay Mridul Feb 1, 2024

Amid a flurry of proposed bans on cultivated meat in the US and around the world, two senators have now introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of cultured meat in school meals. Just as American schoolchildren are having to fight…
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Vegan

Breaking the Jell-O Mould: Oddball’s Sophia Cheng Wants to Make Plant-Based Jelly a Superfood Snack

Anay Mridul Jan 31, 2024

Oddball is hoping to reinvent jelly from the "almost scientific product" to a vegan, clean-label, superfood snack that takes inspiration from her childhood growing up in Asia and hopes to take back control from the big corps. Will it take…
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Vegan

‘A Religious Obsession’: Eat Just Responds to Consumer Demand by Bringing Back Vegan Mayo & Ranch

Anay Mridul Jan 31, 2024

Eat Just has relaunched its vegan mayonnaise and ranch lines, citing years of requests from consumers to bring back the products. The return of the SKUs, which were discontinued after major controversy and to focus on the Just Egg rollout,…
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Future Foods

Future Food Quick Bites: Dupe Cheese, Squeezy Sour Cream & TikTok Butter

Anay Mridul Jan 31, 2024

In our weekly column, we round up the latest news and developments in the alternative protein and sustainable food industry. This week, Future Food Quick Bites covers a ton of alt-dairy developments, more discussions around banning…
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Cell-Based News

‘Immense Potential’: Indian Government Body to Develop Cultivated Fish in Partnership with Neat Meatt

Anay Mridul Jan 30, 2024

In a first-of-its-kind partnership, the Indian government is embarking on a project to create cell-cultured seafood with cultivated meat startup Neat Meatt Biotech. The ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) has…
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Vegan

Nearly 5% of Brits are Vegan, Following a Steep Rise in 2023 – But Climate Language Remains Unclear

Anay Mridul Jan 30, 2024

The number of vegans in the UK has grown by 78%, reaching 2.5 million, according to an annual survey by Finder. This means 4.7% of adult Brits follow a plant-based diet – but separate research shows little understanding of climate language…
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Coffee

Israeli Startup Pluri Launches Cell-Based Coffee Business with Industrial Production Capacity

Anay Mridul Jan 30, 2024

Israeli cellular agriculture firm Pluri has launched a cell-based coffee business, which will be spun out into a new subsidiary focused on industrial-scale production to combat the crop's climate challenges. As arable land shrinks by…
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Alt Protein

SciFi Foods Completes Commercial-Scale Production to Bring Hybrid Beef One Step Closer to Your Plate

Anay Mridul Jan 30, 2024

San Francisco-based SciFi Foods has announced the successful completion of its first 500-litre bioreactor run in its recently opened facility in San Leandro. The startup now aims to complete regulatory approval and enter US foodservice by…
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Chocolate

Voyage Foods Secures $22M in Funding, as LCA Claims It Makes the ‘Most Sustainable Chocolates Ever’

Anay Mridul Jan 29, 2024

Californian CPG startup Voyage Foods, which makes ethical and eco-friendly pantry staples, has raised $22M in funding, and released the results of a life-cycle assessment that shows its cocoa-free chocolate produces up to 88% fewer GHG…
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