This “investment” story is even worse than I first thought:

First the founders say this about using all the money for their “launch”.

Currently available plant proteins don’t pull their weight when it comes to competing with animal-based products on taste…

Second, they say $27m is needed to create a complete plant-based protein with… wait for it…

…neutral taste, odor and color…

So they don’t like the taste of plants. And they obviously don’t know how to cook.

This giant infusion of cash is for eliminating taste from plants in order to “charge a premium for it versus some other plant protein sources”.

That reads to me as someone artificially controlling taste of plants as a business model.

You have to pay them to remove everything from food, so you can pay them to put food-like appearance back into food.

It’s basically rent seeking for food.

And it’s immoral. Why not just send that $27m towards feeding people who are hungry today, instead of taking plants and making them artificially more expensive?