New Film: Organic Sunflower Lecithin
Pouring a bowl of One Degree’s Brown Rice Cacao Crisps is like setting out on a global tour at daybreak. The sprouted brown rice is grown in Latin America. The rich cacao is from Bali, Indonesia. And matching the two ingredients together is an organic additive made from pure European sunflowers.
The name for this natural emulsifier is lecithin, and its purpose is to keep dissimilar ingredients from separating. In the case of our popular Cacao Crisps, lecithin is the indispensable matchmaker that binds cacao with brown rice.
Our newest film explores our search for high-quality organic lecithin, which led us ultimately to Austrade Inc., an importer of European lecithin founded by Austrian Gary Bartl in 1997. “When I came to U.S. it was very difficult to find organic or non-GMO products,” he told us. His Florida-based company fills that need by purchasing sunflowers grown organically in France, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and Hungary and refining the harvests at a facility near Milan, Italy.
For One Degree, the choice of sunflowers rather than the more commonly used soy as a raw material was an easy one. In addition to its non-allergen quality, sunflowers ensure that the product will be GMO-free. No biotech conglomerate has yet invented a GMO sunflower, but genetically modified soybeans dominate the soy market. Some commercial varieties of lecithin can even be derived from corn, cottonseed, rapeseed, rice or eggs. “Our lecithin is certified vegan, vegetarian, kosher, gluten-free, non-GMO and allergen-free,” says Bartl.
Lecithin is the kind of inconspicuous ingredient that most consumers wouldn’t notice on a nutrition panel, a fine detail that many companies wouldn’t spend much time researching. Our need was for a natural, organic additive that would be worthy of our Latin American brown rice; with a quality that could match our cacao, grown in the Indonesian archipelago and refined at the famed chocolate palace of Big Tree Farms in Bali.
On rich organic fields in Spain, Hungary, Ukraine and across Europe, we found the perfect match, and the ideal matchmaker.
Begin your visit with our film premiere below. Or enjoy the video along with photos and an essay on our Web site: www.onedegreeorganics.com/austrade