Brightseed and Olam Food Ingredients have partnered to identify novel health benefits of black pepper and garlic

Image courtesy of Brightseed

Brightseed (San Francisco, CA) and Olam Food Ingredients (OFI; Chicago, IL) have announced a partnership to explore the health benefits of black pepper and garlic. While research has shown that the bioactives in these popular spices, not all the active compounds have been uncovered. Through the partnership, Brightseed and OFI hope to determine what varieties of garlic and black pepper deliver the highest levels of bioactives. OFI’s innovation team working at its ingredient excellence centers in Fresno, CA and Vietnam also hope to discover what health benefits exist in its U.S. garlic and global black pepper varieties.

Brightseed will use its Forager artificial intelligence platform to identify complex molecular structures and novel compounds in the spice categories, then pinpoint the specific mechanisms of plant bioactives that likely correlate to a direct health benefit. Forager will also analyze and identify how different regions, culivars, growing conditions, and processing methods impact the phytochemical expression and bioactive potency across multiple areas of human health for OFI’s black pepper and U.S.-based garlic sources. Forager’s discoveries will then undergo in vitro validation to enable a de-risked clinical trial process for innovation.

"Throughout OFI’s history, we’ve invested in plant science, identifying and developing quality varieties of black pepper and garlic for our customers,” said Greg Estep, managing director and CEO of OFI’s spices business, in a press release. “Spices are largely valued for flavor but should also be explored for health applications. These data insights will help us unlock the health potential and differentiation in our spice supply and fuel future innovation. OFI continues to invest in its broad product portfolio through our customer solutions and ingredient excellence centers.”

“We are thrilled to be working with OFI to drive consumer health conversations back to nature,” said Sofia Elizondo, co-founder and chief operating officer of Brightseed. “OFI has a strong black pepper footprint which provides Forager with access to a range of cultivars with a view to developing a robust comparative model of bioactive potency and density. Brightseed is seeking to build the data and validation that food and health industries need to establish a foundation on the true value of plants for human health optimization.”