Caroline Cotto is hitting climate change head on through food. As inaugural president of the Upcycled Food Association and Chief Operating Officer of Renewal Foods, she is seeking to fix a broken food system by eliminating waste. Renewal Foods is a leading upcycling company currently with a handful of offerings including a brownie mix, chocolate chip cookies, and all purpose flour - all centered on okara, a byproduct consisting of insoluble parts of the soybean that remain from the production of soy milk and tofu.

In this episode, Caroline explains the difficulties of releasing a product that requires educating the market in a time when in-person educational opportunities are essentially outlawed. She also touches on how the product development cycle of large companies seeking to use her ingredients has been postponed 12-24 months, and how this is all compounded by the difficulties in raising venture capital funds during COVID.