An interview with Maija Itkonen, Reetta Kivelä and Zhongqing Jiang, founders of Gold&Green Foods, one of Forward Fooding’s top 500 Food Tech startups.

Maija Itkonen and Reetta Kivelä, founders of Gold&Green Foods

It’s time to put a face to the name…

We asked our FoodTech 500 top-runners to give us a bit of insight into how they started out as a company and their thoughts on the role of technology in Food innovation. Meet Maija, Reetta and Zhongqing, the power-trio behind Gold&Green Foods, a sustainable food tech company developing new kinds of plant-based meat alternatives made from oats and beans. Let’s see what the founders had to say.

So tell us a little bit more about you! Where did the idea for your FoodTech company come from?

Maija: I was sitting on a plane, reading an article about “fake meats finally tasting like chicken”. I came to think of Nordic oats, and started to envision a new kind of clean label plant protein food that wouldn’t mimic meat, but would just stand on its own.

How is tech central to your business?

Maija, Reetta and Zhongqing: We are a research driven, design centric tech company. For us science is commonplace!

Why do you think it’s important to see the food industry embrace tech?

Maija, Reetta and Zhongqing: The plant based category is not yet ready. We need more variation for different use cases, and simply better products. To make that possible, lots of new technological thinking and creativity is needed.

Want to know more? Check out Gold&Green Foods’ full profile here.

Congratulations again to Gold&Green Foods for ranking 2nd in the “Next-Gen Food & Drinks” category of the Foodtech 500 list.

To find out who else made it into the FoodTech 500; the top Food Tech companies in the world, click here.

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