By Lorrie Baumann

If you had to pick one food that transcends culture and geography, you’d probably have to think about it for a while, but you might very well land on the noodle. Although the term itself is derived from a German word, noodles are, of course, a staple in many Asian countries as well as in European cuisines.

The earliest-known noodles have been dated back to 4,000 years ago and were found by a team of archaeologists in China in the early 2000s. They were made of two kinds of millet that had been ground into flour to make a dough that was then shaped into the noodles. Although they’re much tougher than modern wheat noodles, the same kind of millet noodles are consumed in China today.

Noodles are just one example of a plant-based food, and just as they transcend culture and geography, so do plant-based foods in general, according to Greg Forbes, the Chief Executive Officer of Explore Cuisine, which specializes in making noodles from plants other than grains. “The people embracing plant-based are driven by beliefs important to them other than geography,” he said. “I was brought up in traditional marketing, where everything was segmented. The set of beliefs around plant-based transcends geography.”

The company is driven by the questions of how to deliver plant-based protein as cleanly as possible and by the question of how to deliver variety within the pasta category, Forbes said. Explore Cuisine started down that path because the company’s Founder had a daughter who would eat only pasta with ketchup, and her father was concerned that she wasn’t getting enough protein in her diet. He found tofu noodles in the market, offered them to her in a meal. She noticed right away that these noodles weren’t the wheat flour-based pasta she was used to, but declared that she quite liked them anyway. Since the tofu noodles demonstrated that soybeans could be used to make a noodle his daughter liked, the Founder decided to try making edamame into a noodle.

Explore Cuisine has now been making edamame noodles for more than a decade – the first was made in 2010. Americans had already started becoming concerned about gluten and carbohydrates, so when Explore Cuisine introduced its noodles made from edamame and then chickpeas and pulses like green lentils, the market was ready for them. “It was a trend that was growing, and we provided an answer to that problem – gluten free, lower in carbs and, you know what, a pasta for people who were looking for more protein,” Forbes said. “We responded to a consumer need in the market, but in a relatively unique way.”

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He was excited by the natural foods consumers who were passionate about their nutrition and about plant-based protein as an alternative to meat. “Actually, you know what, it’s more about variety, even among meat-eaters,” he said. “We wanted to become something that someone could use to get some variety. Pasta’s a nice ingredient, but if I want something that’s quick and easy to prepare and want something with some protein – we can do a lot with that to make it interesting and different.”

By using edamame, chickpeas or green lentils rather than wheat flour to make its noodles, Explore Cuisine eliminates the gluten but also enhances the protein content of the pasta. “And you add a sauce to it, and it offers you the flexibility to do what you want with it,” Forbes said.

Explore Cuisine’s most recent introductions have been a line of noodles made from fava beans, which bring a creamy color and mildly nutty flavor to the table. “With a sauce on it, people cannot tell the difference between a fava penne and a wheat penne,” Forbes said.

Through the company’s Food to Thrive Foundation, these products like noodles made from mung beans are being developed in an innovation facility built by Explore Cuisine in Thailand. Since opening the new facility last year, the foundation is working with the local rice farmers to train them in organic farming methods and to introduce them to the idea of using mung and fava beans as rotation crops for rice in areas where they needed a new crop to generate cash flow during seasons when they were unable to grow rice as well as to produce nitrogen for their soil so they didn’t have to get the nitrogen from chemical fertilizers. “We take the economic risk away from them to encourage them to try something new,” Forbes said. “Fava and mung beans grow well in the dry season. They require a relatively low quantity of water, so it works as a second crop.”

“We feel very good as a company about the work we’ve done in Thailand,” he added. “We’re very excited about the future.”