Hello, and thank you for joining.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET Inosh, and I am excited to welcome you to The Nombase Podcast, a podcast built to help CPG owners and operators navigate growth challenges and build more profitable businesses.
Be sure to check out nonbase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community, where you can find this episode and so much more. In a crowded food and beverage landscape, brands succeed or fail early based on how clearly they stand apart.
Many better for you brands rely on strict formulation standards and ingredient quality, but packaging constraints and limited shopper attention can make those choices difficult to communicate.
Today's conversation focuses on the non-ultra processed food verified standard, a new certification that evaluates both ingredient integrity and how food and beverages are made, creating a meaningful opportunity for brands to stand out with consumers
and retailers. My guests today are Bill Creelman, founder of Spindrift, and Megan Westgate, founder of the Non-UPF Verified Standard, as well as founder and CEO of the Non GMO Project and the Food Industry Collective.
We will talk about why Spindrift became the first beverage brand verified under the Non-UPF Verified Standard, how the certification works in practice, and how brands can use it to differentiate early, build credibility, and compete in increasingly
complex marketplace. Megan and Bill, so great to have you here, and I'm so excited to have you both on here to explain everything our audience needs to know about it. So thank you so much for joining us.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
Megan, why don't we start off with you in an introduction so that our audience can get to know you a little better.
1:48
Before we get into the mechanics of the standard itself, can you give us a brief overview of your background and what led you from building the Non GMO Project to launching Non-UPF Verified?
Sure.
So I was working at a food co-op in Tucson, Arizona just over 20 years ago when the idea for the Non GMO Project emerged, and it was really in response to shopper demand, people coming into the store asking questions about their food that weren't
readily answered by looking at the packages. In a lot of ways, what we're doing now with Non-UPF Verified is a really natural evolution of that, there is growing consumer interest in transparency and food integrity, and it's not always easy to tell
when you're in the grocery store. As we know, people are very busy, limited time, limited budget. They need to be able to make decisions quickly. In a lot of ways, how we see our work is that it provides a shortcut to trust.
We are a non-profit certification organization, and we go into all of the technical weeds and details to work with brands, to ensure that there is integrity, whether it's a non-GMO claim or a non-ultra-processed claim, so that shoppers and the
retailers who are stocking the shelves can feel confident in the integrity of things that they care about. When I started the Non-GMO Project, I was not yet a mom, but I was hoping to be one, and I just have always felt really strongly about the
importance of food integrity and this idea that food should nourish life. That's the point of eating, is to nourish our life.
But so much of what we eat now isn't even really food, and it has been adulterated in really problematic ways, and the health evidence is mounting. The data is really clear that the way we are eating is causing serious harm.
I think having my son's about to turn 12, my daughter is going to be nine in the spring.
Looking for good food options for them has definitely only deepened my interest in food integrity and really pointed out how much of what is on the shelves, even in the natural channel, is really highly processed and oftentimes full of sugar and is
Well, certainly this conversation around the non-ultra-processed food certification will help those folks who are running brands, but also for folks who are feeding themselves and feeding their families.
Certainly, this education has an array of opportunity to help our audience.
Bill, I don't think there's a single person in our audience who don't know you and Spindrift, but just to refresh our memories, could you give us the Spindrift story and share a quick overview of how the company was built around real ingredients from
the start, and then why this certification felt so aligned with that? the start, and then why this certification felt so aligned with that?
4:53
This is really exciting to be having this conversation.
We started Spindrift 15 years ago, very much based around offering real ingredients and sparkling beverages.
The last 15 years have been challenging as we built our supply chain, found the ingredients that we thought were by standard of real, and then came up with a process to manufacture them in a way that still tasted delicious and were healthy.
So coming into now this period where consumers are starting to really ask more questions about not just what's on the label, but then what's behind the brand.
In particular, our brand, which I would say, has been frustrated by our lack of ability to tell what we think is a really deep and interesting story about the process, the kind of why, has made all of this really, really relevant for where we are
today. I would say that many years ago when we began making the product, we had a number of challenges and oftentimes you'd come to an intersection where you had to make a hard decision or an easy decision based on an ingredient choice or the process
and it's often very thankless to choose a harder way. There can be a cost associated with it, but we always felt like it was really the right way and I would always say that even though the consumer probably doesn't know, in the event that they ever
were to visit a plant or look at our ingredients, we would want them to be even more excited about the brand and so now with the certification and the process, I'd say it's still very early days in terms of building awareness. We feel like this is
really the first opportunity for Spindrift to really be recognized for what makes it distinct. To get a little bit granular for a minute with fruit, there's lots of different choices you can enter, starting with a piece of fresh fruit at the grocery
store, a single strength, the concentrate all the way to fruit, flavors, natural or artificial, and each of those choices then has a processing implication, how you actually work with it. And we chose to go with single strength, not from concentrate,
which is the most challenging, but also the most interesting, flavorful, nutritious in our opinion. And so this is really a celebration of that choice.
It's really the simplest way for us to think about is it's putting a name to something that we started doing a long time ago. And I think building a community with Megan around people that are like-minded in that way.
And Spindrift is the first beverage brand to carry this certification. Is it the first packaged goods brand to carry it as well?
We went through this kind of pilot program. We had worked with a number of brands that we thought were philosophically aligned over the years.
And I know that they've brought together a number of other interesting brands that kind of start with that same using ingredients in your cupboard or things that you would buy at a farm stand as their philosophy.
But as far as beverages, we were the first brand to kind of initiate thinking about what does this mean, where does the standard lie, and kind of work together.
We're hopeful that our standard that we set for ourselves many years ago met the Non-UPF Verified, and so now we're very happy to be on the other side of that.
I'm happy to add a little to that. So as Bill mentioned, we did create a pilot of brands going back last summer, so summer 2025.
We hadn't yet developed even the first draft of our standard, and so it was quite brave for the 15 brands who joined us to say like, sure, we'll help you figure it out.
The idea was that while we were at the same time engaging with researchers and health care practitioners, and looking on the technical side, that the brand's role was to help us pressure test the right balance of meaningfulness and achievability.
But yeah, there were no guarantees to any of the brands that they would actually be able to earn verification in the end.
When we curated that group of pilot brands, and by the way, by the time we finished the pilot, we had over 200 brands on our waiting list, and people continuing to ask the whole way through, can we be in the pilot?
But we chose a very small group on purpose, and like Bill said, it was brands that while we weren't, there were again, no guarantees that we felt a high level of confidence that the values alignment was there.
And we looked across category because we are really trying to drive change in the processed food category arena, where we know that people get more than 70% of their calories.
So it's easy to look at, you know, single ingredient, and maybe fresh produce, which is not eligible for our standard, by the way, because we believe it's pretty obvious that that's non-UPF. It doesn't add any value to certify that.
And we're trying to actually drive reformulation in packaged food. And there, it was difficult looking across category to find beverage. Like we want to have non-UPF options in every section of the store.
And the team kept saying like, maybe this beverage, maybe this.
And I just kept being like, I don't think, like we don't know what the standards are, but I just don't think we didn't want to invite people in that we weren't like having a sense of like, there's a reasonable likelihood that wherever we land,
they're going to be a match. And then the Spindrift team reached out and I was like, there it is. Yes.
I mean, honestly, we are daily Spindrift drinkers in my house and we're very picky, as you would imagine about added sugar and anything, you know, added flavors, non-nutritive sweeteners, like we're just not into any of those things.
And so Spindrift, we thought like, yeah, there's a pretty good chance that that's going to make it through. And it has been an absolute delight working with the team.
And it's been cool as a consumer to learn more about, I didn't realize that the juice in Spindrift wasn't from concentrate. I never really thought about it. I just appreciated that it wasn't flavors.
It was real juice. So I have come to deep in my appreciation of a product I already loved. So that's cool also.
We are also a Spindrift family.
We buy milk in Spindrift as far as beverages go. It makes perfect sense that Spindrift was your beverage partner. Can you name any of the other partners that you had across categories?
Yes.
And the verification announcements are rolling out. And coming up at Expo West, there will be more. But on our website, nonultraprocessverified.org, you can see all the pilot brands.
But some that will be making a big splash coming up at Expo, besides Spindrift, Chomps, Amy's, Simple Mills. There is a whole mix of awesome brands.
And again, we tried to look at across the different aisles of the grocery store, and including products that, as you can see in some of those other cases, have complex ingredients.
In most cases, most of the competitors are not yet compliant with their standard, but we are hoping that that will change.
So for all of the folks out there who are hearing about Non-UPF for the first time, can you explain what this certification is designed to measure and what it captures that nutritional panels and ingredient lists just can't?
12:41
Yeah, well, that's exactly it, is that it looks beyond the label because there are things about processing that you really can't tell, like by looking at the nutrition facts panel or the ingredient list.
So we do have a multi-pronged approach. We do have a list of prohibited ingredients, so that saves people from having to scan the ingredient panel.
But we also look into how the ingredients were actually processed, and that's information that you can't tell by looking at a label.
So we know that 72% of US shoppers are trying to avoid UPFs, but for the most part, they're confused about how to do that.
So of the people who are really interested, which is 83% say they're interested in the topic, but only 37% rate themselves as knowledgeable. So it's difficult and for good reason, because there's lots of ways that you can slice it.
And again, important information that's not available on the panel. I'm happy to get into some of the details of what we look at if this is a good time for that.
Let's do it.
Okay, so as I said, we have a list of prohibited ingredients and that's kind of a more familiar, but also less in-depth approach to avoiding UPF.
So some of, there's been a lot of state legislation that has cropped up this year, particularly with regard to school lunch, like AB 1264 in California, has extensive definitions of UPFs and is now trying to keep them out of, I mean, there's
legislation now, it hasn't come into effect yet, but within some of the state rules, AB 1264 is more in-depth, but some of the states, like for example, in Arizona, their definition of UPF is literally just a list of 11 ingredients that it's like, if
it has any of these things in it, it's a UPF and otherwise it's not. So just to kind of paint the picture that there's a huge spectrum of how you could define and interpret UPF, and it's been confusing for brands. The term ultra-processing came out
of the University of São Paulo in Brazil in 2009, and researchers, they were doing epidemiological research to look at people's shopping habits and correlate that with health. For our purposes of, again, recognizing that 70 percent of people's
calories come from packaged food, we want to make that packaged food less processed, more nutritious, closer to real food, that requires a more nuanced approach. And so I just want to paint the picture that there's a wide spectrum and we've sought to
find a good middle balance. And I think that's important in case brands have, there's heated feelings about this and some people just hear the term ultra-processed and object to it and just think like, well, you're just demonizing all packaged food.
And so as an organization that's worked with the packaged food industry for 20 years, it was really important to us of like, we know that brands are highly motivated to meet consumer demand.
And right now, increasingly, consumers are demanding simpler, less processed food, but brands don't know necessarily how to meet that demand.
So our standard was developed with that in mind of like, how do we put clear guardrails so that a brand can understand what they need to do to earn trust around minimal processing.
So the standard, in addition to having prohibited ingredients, we also look at the degree of processing in each ingredient.
And we have a requirement that at least 70 percent of the ingredients in the product have to be what we deem minimally processed. So in our standard, we have an annex that classifies all different kinds of processing methods.
So we look at thermal processing, biological processing, and we have another category too. So that's things like nanotech and synbio.
And then for each of those areas, we classify which processes are permissible, which are prohibited, and which are conditional. And so the conditional things are like things that are a little more processed. So an example would be like a starch.
It's more processed. It's arguably not like a super nutritious thing.
But as long as 70% of the product is minimally processed, is in that permissible processing category, it's okay to have a little starch, or a little bit of protein powder, or other things.
So at a high level, how we break down the processing itself, and then we do have additional criteria around added sugar. We have limits by category for added sugar.
So for beverages, for example, the limit is no more than 5% of the product can be refined added sugar. And that's calculated after water is removed. So for beverages, that's a high bar.
And again, that's kind of confirms why I felt concerned at the beginning of like, I don't know which beverage companies, which products would be able to comply.
I'm trying to think of how many grams of sugar that would be in, say, a 12 ounce can.
There's a lot of beverage choices out there.
But when you think about, when you start with the idea that there are not a lot of real ingredients to begin with, you know, in many of these categories, and a lot of them are quite sweetened, five per, so, you know, if it's 95% water and the rest is
5%, to think that then a beverage is going to be able to hit that 5% level of that remaining 5% is just is really hard to imagine, particularly when sugar most often is being used to sort of mask other things that are less pleasant. So I think the
bigger, I mean, from, I'll just say from our standpoint, you know, Spindrift exists in part because we looked across many categories and saw that actually there were no real ingredients to begin with. So this 70% standard of minimally processed and
the 5% sugar, like that is very much like without even knowing that these existed when Non-UPF Verified was being set up, like that is our, that is the goal we are trying to go after. There are more real ingredients, less sweetness, but it's a big
challenge. I mean, across most of the big categories.
And am I right to think that it's added sugar, not any sugar that comes from, you know, for Spindrift juices, for example?
It's added refined sugar, so, which is important to note because I'll just add that we also have a complete ban on non-nutritive sweeteners. So that obviously has a big effect on this category.
So when we looked at added sugar and we're trying to find that right balance of meaningfulness and achievability, one of the things that we saw is that increasingly the most dedicated, like better for you whole food oriented brands are using
sweeteners, not necessarily in the beverage category, but I'm interested to see how this evolves. But for example, in cereal, you'll see coconut sugar being used, maple, honey.
So these are sweeteners that in addition to juice, these whole food sweeteners are exempt from our added refined sugar limits. Partly because we recognize that the American palette is attuned to a high level of sweetness.
As one of our marketing folks put it, we don't want this to be a label that when your kids see it, they're like, I don't want that it tastes like dirt.
It's like, how do we find the right balance of that it still is pleasurable to eat and delicious but also isn't a metabolic disaster, which the majority of US adults now have metabolic syndrome even if they don't know it.
The majority of US adults are either diabetic or pre-diabetic even though a bunch don't realize it yet. The sugar issue was really near and dear to our hearts as we were working on this.
Of course, there's a lot of data particularly in the beverage category that sugar sweetened beverages are a primary driver of diabetes, obesity, and all kinds of other things that are really wreaking havoc on not only our physical health but
cognitive health, emotional health as a society. From an integrity perspective, we spent a lot of time working through the sugar angle because it has such profound effects.
When you go around the rest of the world, this conversation has been going on a lot longer. It exists at the government level.
If you were to go in Europe, almost every country has some sugar standard, and if it doesn't meet this very low, low level of five grams or whatever it's at, then you bumped up into another category.
We just have never, it's somewhat new to the US vernacular, but it's not new around the world. It's been established for a long time.
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Megan, I thought your point about non-nutritive sweeteners being included.
22:38
Ingredient Standards Deep Dive
I think that's one we should certainly talk about. I would assume, of course, something like aspartame would be off limits. But what about non-nutritive sweeteners like Stevia or Monk Fruit or Allulose?
Are they all off limits?
They are all off limits for now, and really we're taking a pretty precautionary approach.
Part of our logic is because we took such a strong stance on refined added sugar, we did not want to inadvertently drive a bunch of reformulation toward non-nutritive sweeteners across the grocery store when in many cases, these are pretty new.
Particularly with Stevia, a lot of it is produced through genetic engineering. These are highly, highly refined.
Names like monk fruit sounds natural and good, but when you actually look at how these ingredients are made, they're absolutely ultra-processed ingredients.
Bill, I think one of my favorite things about Spindrift and why we drink so much of it is because it doesn't have any of those non-nutritive sweeteners. Oftentimes, they give a very particular flavor to the beverage, which you may not want a lot of.
I'm just curious to hear what your stance is on those non-nutritive sweeteners from a nutritional standpoint and from the non-UPF standpoint.
Given the choices we've made, probably self-evident, but I always think about it just as how I grew up in Western Mass, ingredients to use, what was around, honey, things that you knew where they originated.
And I think what's happened, going back now 30 years, looking at how sugar and the problem of sugar has evolved. It has become a cottage industry.
And our perspective, similar to Megan's, is like if we can't point to a source and be able to sort of reasonably describe how it was derived, then it probably is not gonna be a good fit for our brand.
And when we think about, for instance, our soda products that's relaunched recently in the last year, kind of revisiting soda after 10 years, we used to have cane sugar and we said, okay, well, there must be a better alternative.
And the reality is that world has only gotten more complicated, as the science has improved.
It's an example that extends really across a lot of beverage, which is like we've gotten really good at making things in a way that is, you know, built for scale, but not necessarily built for nutrition.
And a lot of what I think we're seeing with our business and a lot of the inbounds we're getting, and I think similar to what Megan is seeing is like the consumer now just, it's almost like a non-starter if you can't answer a question about the
origin of an ingredient. And we first saw it with natural flavors and we're asking questions, what is it? How is it regulated? And we got very uncomfortable with that.
And I think this is the new kind of version of that, tell us how your product is made. And consumers are just incredibly smart now.
They just understand, they've read, you can jump on any podcast, this being a great example and ask, get really good information much easier than you used to be able to.
And so to me, it's only natural that the standard that the brands live by is going to have to move as a result.
And I would add to that something that I'm watching with a lot of interest is just the increased availability of all these biometric wearables that give people real time data on how something that they consume affects them.
So not only can they research things generally, but if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor or there's... And I think that we're going to see more and more ability to assess how did this affect my metabolic health when I ate this product.
And so I think the level of... Even though, I mean, back when we started the Non GMO Project 20 years ago, we were talking about what a trend there was toward more transparency and more informed consumers asking good questions.
I think we're at this precipice of that just like absolutely skyrocketing compared to anything we've ever seen where we're way beyond the era of like tell a pretty story on the package and people will believe it.
Like they, yeah, they just have access to so much information. And so the level of integrity that brands have to have to be able to earn trust is higher than it's ever been.
I think the ingredient standards are super fascinating when it comes to Non-UPF. I want to ask you about another one. That is the industrial or refined oils, also known as RBD Refined Bleach deodorized oils.
Those are also off-limits. I love to hear you talk about those. And also to talk about what the correlation is to seed oils and the seed oil debate.
You know, oftentimes it's not about seed oils or the fact that the oil came from a seed, but that it is highly refined. Can you talk about that ingredient standard a little bit?
Yes, so I will say that there are some conditional uses where refined bleached and deodorized oil would be allowed in these products. And many RBD oils are banned for other reasons related to processing. The seed oil question is such a good one.
We definitely grappled with that. And many times during the development of the standard, we had to rein ourselves in a little bit and be clear in our focus of like this is not a global like this is healthy standard, you know.
So for example, we don't even require that products that are verified to the standard be Non GMO. We have a different program for that. There's a different program for organic food.
There's so many valuable single issue certifications and we did not aim to include all of that.
But we did, you know, there's obviously such a close relationship between UPF consumption and health that it was this constant dance of like, the value that we are aiming to bring here is products that are healthier, that are actually real food, that
are more nutritious, that are metabolically nourishing. And so with that, one of the big concerns about oils is just how many, how many of people, like what a high percentage of people's calories are coming from refined bleached and deodorized oils,
and then the absence of the healthy omegas that balance that out. So some of that is beyond the scope of this standard, but in a Non-UPF Verified product, if there are processed oils, they would be at a small amount and there are many types of
I've been paying close attention as I'm sure so many of us have to the seed oil debate.
But the way that you pose this as Non-Refined oils makes a lot more sense than saying you're banning seed oils because it's really about the processing, not about where you're getting the oil from, right?
In the case of the standard, yes, that is more the point.
Also, gums, so are we talking about, so gums are off limits, are we talking about xanthan, guar gum, that kind of thing?
Yes. So certain gums, like xanthan gum, are fully banned. And then the gums that are less refined, like agar-agar, for example, there are some, it's very minimal allowance.
Right now, it's for things like holding together a gluten-free product.
So if it's like actually has a functional effect, as opposed to what a lot of gums are used for and why they're so ubiquitous, is to create hyperpallitability, which is a hallmark of Non-UPF.
So basically, it creates a mouth feel that sends a signal to the body that the product you're eating has some nutritional benefit that it doesn't, namely, often more like fattiness or creaminess because it has that thicker texture.
When in fact, that signal is being created by a gum, which is likely wreaking havoc on your microbiome, and so that total mismatch between the sensory experience and what's actually in the product is something that we thought long and hard about
developing the standard as a core guiding light of, we really want consumers to have a clear match between like, I know what I'm eating, my body will recognize what it is, and I'll be able to metabolize it in a good way. That's why we have largely
banned gums and thickeners, but there are some use cases where especially around special diet considerations that we were still figuring out how we want to draw the lines there and we're going to need to work with more brands who create those
products to keep deciding and also as more research is done. So xanthan gum, there's really clear research that it's very disruptive to the gut microbiome. And so on that basis, we're like, yeah, people can use a different thickener if they really
need to, but we are not down with putting a gum into a plant-based milk or a salad dressing or something like that just to make it creamier or just to make it not settle out. Like my husband has joked that we should have a shake it campaign.
Like can't people just shake their salad dressing or their salad dressing? Like do we really need to have everything?
And I know I understand like the aesthetic expectations of shoppers, but it's like also now shoppers really want nourishing real food, so they might have to learn to shake their salad dressing again.
And I feel like we're going to be able to handle it.
Seems like a small adjustment to make.
Yeah.
The last topic I want to address in the ingredient category is natural flavors. Bill, how many consumers do you think are focused on natural flavors and trying to actively avoid them in their diets?
Well, the issue going back to our discussion with BevNET 10 or 11 years ago is not necessarily that all natural flavors are bad. It's more that there's no distinction in the word.
It's this catch-all for hundreds of ingredients that are otherwise unregulated by the FDA. We love the rind of our fruit. I mean, we are a whole fruit company.
We get a lot of value out of the skins and the pith and the rind. That is something we're quite proud of. But the distinction here again is like is it usable as a beverage ingredient, is it not?
I think our point of view remains the same as it was. I think what we're excited about as this conversation continues is really like, can we use that as a way to really pull separate brands for the consumer?
At the end of the day, this whole exercise is so that the consumer can go to the shelf, shop a product, and understand the difference between one or the other.
My point of view is eventually, there'll be a Non-UPF Verified product choice in every major food and beverage category. So it doesn't mean that the consumer has to buy it.
There may be a compromise on taste or flavor variety, whatever that is, but they should at least be aware. Even when we came into the space 15 years ago, there was no calories in sparkling water. It was a zero calorie category.
Everything was clear. We were talking about incorporating the fruit and pith on the, but we have tip and sip. We came up with language.
So my sense is there's going to have to be, with any big shift like this, there's going to have to be some amount of education that goes along with it.
Not just what is UPF Verified, what does that mean on UPF Verified, but also what they're for, what choices were made upstream, and potentially why is my salad dressing separated, let's say, or why does my beverage have color and other beverages
don't. So I think from a brand perspective, knowing some of the brands that were part of this pilot program, I think we embrace that. It can be lonely, it often is confusing, buyers get confused, consumers, if you're doing something quite different.
But in the long run, I think there's real benefit for the consumer, the brand manufacturer, even farmers who are making hopefully not more fruit and less synthetics. So it should eventually help the whole ecosystem.
Could you walk us through the verification process itself?
36:12
Is it a long process? Is it difficult? Were there any moments during the pilot where you came across stumbling blocks or had challenges?
Our process was to kind of submit everything.
And so I think it was total 40 hours or something of going through not just what the ingredients are, but how are they made, what's happening upstream. So getting full transparency from our suppliers.
And then once they got to the plan, like how are they treated? What is that process like? And I know some of this was being thought through in the moment.
So, you know, first time a question is asked, I know there's probably more back and forth with Megan and team. But I know at least from our perspective, we felt like it was a really good process. We didn't know the outcome.
I mean, even as we got towards the end, we weren't totally sure where some of these questions were going to land.
And I guess, you know, I think this conversation and now the printed standards, which didn't necessarily exist when we started, like I think that will help get to the kind of two or three big questions that brands are going to have, you know,
probably around, you know, what is that flavor system, probably around sweetener, you know, to some degree around process. Like, what are you doing upstream to get to the outcome? They're all related.
I mean, the process is going to be dictated by the ingredients. I hope it brings around change, like, our real intention here is, has always been to bring more brands and products into the category.
I've heard statistics that 90% of carbonated beverages are ultra processed. I mean, we really have a long way to go. And, you know, I hope that this is a change, at least a conversation starter.
We've already heard from multiple other beverage brands who specifically cite what an inspiration Spindrift has been to them in their design and formulations.
So even just by your existence and the way you do things, like you've proven that it's possible to have a really viable product that doesn't have all these ultra processed ingredients. So thank you for doing that.
And I also am really hopeful that we can drive more and more reformulations so that all of us have more choices when we shop for things that are actually, you know, based on real food and nourishing to our bodies.
Megan, for those folks out there who may have slightly more complex products, especially in the food category, what do they understand upfront about where the certification process might get challenging?
And, you know, for those folks who are still in the formulation process or maybe they're reformulating, are there any things that they can keep in mind in order to head towards a Non-UPF Verified certification?
Yeah, well, first of all, just a little bit about our structure. So, as I said, we're a Non-profit organization. We work with four different technical administrators who actually are the, they're similar to certification bodies in Organic.
They're the entities who actually oversee the paperwork. And so, yes, Bill, it's true, especially in the pilot, there's a lot of back and forth between our technical administrators and our team on clarification and interpretation of the standard.
But brands who are interested in doing this would be working with a tech, directly with a technical administrator, and we're kind of behind the scenes on that.
And what they would provide is documentation about their ingredients and formulation, specification sheets, and then the technical administrators ask more questions as needed depending on the ingredient.
Sometimes they need to get information and declarations directly from suppliers. Sometimes it's easy to tell just by looking at the ingredient that's enough information.
We certainly are mindful of trying to make the process as efficient and elegant as possible, but without compromising integrity because at the end of the day, it's only worthwhile to brands to the extent that it's trustworthy.
So it is robust, but I would say compared to Non GMO Verification, where we require ongoing testing of all the risk ingredients, there's a whole other dimension of complexity and data required for some certifications, that in this case, it's really
looking deeply at the ingredients and the information about how it was made. Then as I've already touched on with talking about sugar and some of the things around guns, there are pathways.
We have tried to strike a balance between meaningfulness and achievability where it's not such a far reach that a brand would look at this and just think there's no way I could ever do it.
What we've heard from some more established brands is that the way that they're established brands whose products don't meet our standards and the sugar is often the biggest barrier, that a common approach for them is to look at, and these are brands
outside of our pilot that we've been in conversation with. They're looking at launching new products to test this out and see how viable it is.
I would say for newer brands that are designing products, save yourself the headache and just design around whole food real ingredients from the beginning because it's very clear looking at the consumer data that that's the way things are headed.
If folks are interested, we actually did custom market research over the summer with linkage market research, and that's all the full report is available for free on our website.
If people want to take a look at all of that, and you can also download our standard and an executive brief about the standard if you're not the type to read through every page.
We tried to make it an accessible standard, but it's technical and detailed as it needs to be.
But there's an executive brief that gives you a high level too, and that could be good for marketing teams and other folks who are not required to get into all the technical details.
But there's a lot of information available, and I'm just saying that because to your point, there's so many different considerations depending on the type of product and how many ingredients and what are those ingredients.
But yes, our technical advisors and our team are also really happy to support with making those decisions and figuring out what could I substitute. As I said, we have some brands actively right now.
We have brands who are looking at reformulating existing products around sugar and using a different sweetener. And we also have brands that are looking at changing out their gum. So it's happening already, which is really exciting.
And yeah, we tried to make sure there's viable pathways to meet consumer expectations for flavor and the enjoyment of food, but also make sure it's actually real food.
And I assume for brands out there who are interested in applying, that they can go to that same website and apply there?
Yes, you can submit interest there, and then we would direct you to choose from one of our four technical administrators, and that's where you would actually start the process.
So NSF, Food Chain Global Advisors, SCS Global, and Where Food Comes From are all technical administrators. So people may already be working with one of those organizations for other certifications.
My last question centers around retailer buy-in.
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That has so much to do with how, of course, brands are placed on shelf and the preferences that buyers are showing affect their decisions, which of course affect what consumers can buy.
How do you align with retailers in order to help them understand the certification and start to prioritize it?
That's a great question and is kind of the exciting moment that we're in, now that we have the standard done and the first verified products, and we just opened this program more widely to the industry on January 21st.
So we're very new in this, and we're shifting our focus now to engage more directly with retailers, working with NCG and Infra and looking at the retailer groups that have a lot of reach.
We found great success in the early days of, I mean, the Non-GMO Project was actually started by retailers, and so that was a huge part of the success, is collaborating with retailers on getting the word out, because of course, there is a pretty big
gap. I mean, Spindrift is hustling on this, but there's often a long gap between the verification and when the mark actually shows up on a retail store shelf.
And so retailers can play a really important role in putting up shelf tags and shelf talkers and having knowledgeable floor staff that can help direct their shoppers.
So we're really excited to be getting into the fun of that phase and we'll have more to share soon in the coming months about that.
But yeah, we're, you know, I think it's going to be likely the fall before we start releasing a critical mass of the labels on pack.
So over the course of the spring and summer, there's a huge opportunity for retailers to differentiate by helping their shoppers find these Non-UPF products that are verified.
Well, I certainly look forward to seeing a sea of those certifications in my grocery store soon.
Bill, looking ahead, how do you think this standard will change how beverages formulate products, not just how they market them, but how they actually formulate them?
It's necessary to meet the changing needs of the consumer. I mean, in so many ways, this has been something that people have felt for a long time. Megan told her story, I told mine, this is not a new idea to use real ingredients.
It feels to me like we got a little bit off track. If you go back and look at the history of how certain ingredients came to be, it usually is because of cost or efficiency.
I feel like this is the great correction that we're about to enter, and it will take time.
There'll be a lot of education that will have to go on, but it's my perspective that this really cuts across so many different important areas, health and wellness, what things taste like, the supply chain side of it, that farmers are really having a
hard time out there, understanding what their role is going to be as the world continues to change. This is a really big idea, and I've never seen an idea get momentum this quickly, or say it's an idea, a movement really gain this momentum, this is
gained, while still being really new. I mean, the common, you ask an average person, if they know what Non-UPF is, they probably are going to fumble through an answer, but not really know.
So I think it's a really big and important time in food, and in beverage, and I think there's a reason for the retailer, for the manufacturer and the consumer to move forward in lockstep on this, in a way that hasn't existed before.
So I think Megan and her team, and the other brands that are responding to this are really kind of lighting a runway for planes on where, like where the future of these categories are going to go.
Well, exciting stuff. I think this is really exciting and interesting, not only for CPG brands and operators, but for consumers as well. So thank you so much for joining the Nombase Podcast.
Bill Creelman, founder of Spindrift, and Megan Westgate, founder of the Non-UPF Verified program. Thank you so much for joining and explaining the certification.
And for everybody else out there, thank you for listening to the Nombase Podcast, and we will see you next time. That concludes another episode of the Nombase Podcast.
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