“We think the most important thing is choice, so we recognize certain people want to stay away from certain things,” said Kellogg Co. CEO Steve Cahillane, whose portfolio of brands includes Morningstar Farms, during a January interview. “Our job is not to try and convince you as a consumer, you're wrong, there's nothing wrong with soy, go ahead and eat it—that's not a winning strategy.”
Kellogg won’t reformulate existing products, but may look to create new ones for new niches that emerge, Cahillane says.
Pea protein could prove to have its own concerns, however. The Detox Project, a research organization that tests foods for the pesticide glyphosate, has been looking at it over the past year, and the results, like those for other products tested for the popular pesticide, aren’t pretty.
“We can hardly find a clean pea protein source anywhere,” says Henry Rowlands, the project’s director. In fact, products labeled as organic had much higher levels of the pesticide than conventional versions, he says. The group tested eight top-selling protein powders on Amazon, using a laboratory that's approved by the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
In spite of this, the shift toward a new plant protein—especially one that hasn’t been genetically engineered to withstand a barrage of herbicides—is still a win for the environment, says Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Any chance you have to break up these large commodity crop monocultures like corn and wheat and soy, it’s going to be such a benefit, even if it’s with a single other crop,” he says.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.