We are excited to renew our media partnership with Red to Green for Season 3! 

Red to Green is a Podcast dedicated to providing content on sustainable food innovations, founded and hosted by Marina Schmidt. What sets Red to Green apart from other food tech podcasts is that instead of adopting the more common approach of each episode discussing different topics, they chose a storytelling approach. Indeed, Red to Green grouped their conversations by seasons of about 12 to 14 episodes, each season covering one theme at a time. Organizing the podcast this way allows for a deeper and better understanding of the designated topic and to build up the audience’s knowledge towards the following subjects.

Season 1 encompasses different aspects about cultured meat and cellular agriculture, from introducing it to what it is and why it is revolutionary to hearing the perspectives of investors and consumer adoption.

Season 2 moves towards a conversation surrounding plastic alternatives and sustainable food packaging. We hear from experts and innovators in the field differentiating between different types of sustainable packaging, greenwashing, recycling and much more.

Season 3 is all about understanding how to promote alternative proteins and consumer acceptance.

Episode 11

We are approaching the end of season 3 of Red to Green as we cover episode 11 with Charlotte Biltekoff. Charlotte Biltekoff is an associate professor at UC Davis in American studies and in food science and technology. For many years she has studied the relationship between food and culture. These include how values and beliefs shape people’s eating habits but also the connection between food and social order. She investigates how food becomes good or bad. Particularly looking into the agrifood tech sector in the Bay Area.

This conversation raised very interesting and contrarian perspectives on consumer acceptance, between other important topics.

Going against the mostly adopted view of consumer acceptance, which is creating the product/service to then market it in order to get the approval of the consumer, Charlotte believes that there is room for better ways to develop a relationship between the consumer and the alternative protein sector. They also question where in the timeline should consumer engagement start. Should it be early on in order to get their vision on the future of food? Or as per usual, the end of the timeline when the product is ready?

The guest speaker also expressed her shock by the lack of engagement with social scientists and food studies scholars. Indeed these experts like herself bring different perspectives and insights about the public.

Additionally, Marina and Charlotte discuss the extent of how scientific a company should get when explaining their technology to the audience. How much is too much, what do they actually want to know.

We won’t give it all away but this is definitely a great episode to listen to! You can find it here and in other channels here.

Find all our articles covering the Red to Green episodes from season 3 here.