For those new to our Deep Dives, iSelect is an early stage venture capital firm in St. Louis focused on early stage companies in food, agriculture and health. iSelect invests at the forefront of innovation, seeing emerging problems, solutions, and technologies in their infancy. We use these Deep Dive presentations not only as a way for us to better engage with and understand new science and technology, but also to engage with the experts and entrepreneurs who are driving change and innovation in their respective fields.

One theme that we have been researching is Nutrient Density in the Food System. Contrary to what we see on the surface, food can vary widely in its nutrient density. Variables including how a food product is bred, how and where it's produced, how it's transported, how it's processed and how it is prepared can all have a significant impact on how nutritious a given product actually is. Historically, it has been extremely challenging and expensive to measure nutrient density effectively, making much of this information inaccessible. However, that is changing — emerging tools and technologies are making it easier to measure and understand what is actually in our food and what drives better nutrition from our food system. In today’s Deep Dive, we explore the drivers of nutrient density, the emerging technologies to help measure it and the business models that may emerge with this data in hand.

Primary care visits account for 50% of medical visits each year in the U.S. Receiving only $0.06 of every health care dollar, however, primary care is also the most under-resourced healthcare specialty in the country. Additionally, primary care physicians are increasingly burned out, with many responsible for 3-4k patients.

As the primary touchpoint for Americans' healthcare services (and the frontline on the battle against chronic disease), iSelect is motivated to invest in the most cutting edge solutions to ease the burden on primary care, maximize physicians' ability to treat patients, and improve the care experience for patients.

During this Deep Dive on Primary Care. iSelect Principal, Tom Bunn is joined in conversation with Brandi Harless, MPH, Co-founder/CEO of PreventScripts, Justin Schreiber, Chairman & CEO of LifeMD, and Dr. Stephen Sproul, MD of Oak Street Health.

We hope to cultivate a clearer understanding of the technologies, organizations and producers that are working together to create a “climate-smart” future for agriculture. Speakers include executives & sustainability leaders from the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium (ESMC) (Debbie Reed), EarthOptics (Lars Dyrud), Continuum Ag (Mitchell Hora), and Vence (Kevin Silverman).

Fermentation has been used in food production for centuries – you can thank it for beer, wine, kimchi, yogurt and much more. But precision fermentation technology is taking this metabolic process to new heights by applying precision biology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and more to program microbes to make specific, customized molecules. The result? Alternative proteins and other products that look, taste and perform much more like the real thing than ever before possible. As the costs associated with precision fermentation continue to fall, these basic building blocks are finding new applications across the food system and a wide range of other consumer products.

In this Deep Dive, we will have a discussion about precision fermentation, what it’s capable of, where it’s going, and the companies leading the evolution of this powerful technology. We’ll be looking at the challenges and opportunities facing precision fermentation, how to make the process more efficient, and how to address the coming capacity constraints for food proteins produced by synthetic biology. We’ll be joined by Dr. Doug Cameron, a technology investor and advisor in food, agriculture and applied biology; and Mark Warner, a food industry consultant and founder of precision fermentation company Liberation Labs, and Dr. Alex Patist, COO of Geltor.

As the relationship between the food system and both environmental and human health continues to draw more and more attention from consumers, businesses and governments, the need for better fat products in our food has become more apparent as an opportunity for innovation. Fats play a crucial role in the food system, delivering taste, texture and in some cases crucial nutritional content. However, fat products that deliver on function, taste and nutrition, while minimizing their environmental footprint, have been elusive to date from both animal- and plant-based sources.

Guests:
Jen-Yu Huang, Co-Founder, Lypid
Yulin Lu, Co-Founder & CEO, Yali Bio

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s just how much can be accomplished from home. Remote work, online shopping and more have transformed the day-to day reality of modern life, and home healthcare is just the next step in that evolution, supported by new telehealth technologies, doctor-patient interaction platforms and more.

We were joined by Sandra Van Trease; Sathya Elumalai, CEO of Aidar Health; Alicia Chong Rodriguez, CEO of Bloomer Tech, and Dr. Adam Wolfberg, Chief Medical Officer of Current Health to discuss the opportunities, challenges, and future outlook of delivering comprehensive healthcare at home.

Though the concept of plant-based or alternative cheese is not new, the number of high-quality non-dairy cheeses has exploded in the past decade. With both health and environmental pressures weighing on the dairy and cheese industries, numerous companies are working to inch dairy-free cheeses closer to the performance that dairy cheeses have traditionally held. At the same time, traditional dairy-based cheesemakers are working to meet the needs of today's consumers by building more sustainable and nutritious products and farming practices.

Richard Clothier, Managing Director of Wyke Farms, Irina Gerry, CMO of Change Foods, Kyleen Keenan, holistic nutritionist and founder of Happyist and Steve Snyder, President and CEO of NewFields Plant-based Cheese we explore the future of cheese-making and look to make sense of a rapidly changing landscape for cheese.

Metabolic health is total body health — the combination of ideal levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference, without using medications. These factors directly relate to a person’s risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke. And it is far more uncommon than it should be. According to a 2019 study, only 12% of Americans qualify as metabolically healthy, a finding that researchers called “alarmingly low.”

We'rej oined by Dr. Casey Means, Chief Medical Officer of Levels Health, Dr. Sara Gottfried, a New York Times bestselling author and integrative physician, and Dr. Mark Cucuzzella a professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine and an expert on metabolic health.

Research over the past few decades on aging and longevity has come to the surprising revelation that aging is a disease in and of itself, upstream of many of the most common causes of mortality. Breakthroughs in laboratories and clinics are being shown to stop and even reverse the aging process.

We are joined by Dr. Brianna Stubbs of Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Dr. Christopher Rhodes of Davis, California Startup, Innate Biology to discuss the emerging technologies and lifestyle changes that are at the forefront of this exciting topic.