Fy is a nutri­tion­al fun­gi pro­tein derived from a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring microbe (Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis) with ori­gins in Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park. Using our break­through fer­men­ta­tion process, we grow Fy, an ani­mal-free, com­plete pro­tein source with all 20 amino acids and min­i­mal envi­ron­men­tal impact. With Fy, we cre­ate a wide range of tru­ly deli­cious foods—all free from ani­mal products—that nour­ish your body and nur­ture our plan­et for future gen­er­a­tions. Find out more here.

When our founders dis­cov­ered this microbe in Yel­low­stone, they sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly dubbed it Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis (“yel­low stone” in Latin). This inspired us to name our pro­tein ​“Fy” to con­nect to its ori­gins as the Fusar­i­um of Yellowstone.

Fy is a nutri­tion­al pow­er­house. It’s a com­plete veg­an pro­tein source with all 20 amino acids, includ­ing the 9 essen­tial amino acids, which help build and main­tain muscle. 

The nov­el pro­tein con­tent con­tains good lev­els of vit­a­mins and min­er­als, with no cho­les­terol or trans fats. Fy is a good source of fiber, includ­ing beta-glu­cans and pre­bi­ot­ic fiber. Beta-glu­cans from fun­gi are known to sup­port a healthy immune sys­tem and sup­port healthy cho­les­terol lev­els and heart health, and pre­bi­ot­ic fiber is known to sup­port diges­tive health. Fy is high­ly digestible so our bod­ies can absorb its nutri­tious pro­tein con­tent eas­i­er than peas, peanuts, and many oth­er plant-based pro­teins. Talk about nutrient-dense!

As an ingre­di­ent, it only has 1/​10th of the fat of ground beef. On top of that, Fy has 50% more pro­tein than tofu and twice as much pro­tein as raw peas. 

What more could you ask for?

Well, research* sug­gests that eat­ing Fusar­i­um fun­gi help main­tain healthy blood cho­les­terol lev­els and blood glu­cose and insulin lev­els, pro­mote mus­cle syn­the­sis, and increas­es satiety.

No, Fy is not a plant-based pro­tein. And it’s not an ani­mal-based pro­tein either. It’s made from a microbe that’s actu­al­ly part of the third king­dom of life—fungi. Fun­gi are an omnipresent, almost invis­i­ble part of nature that is some­times for­got­ten but can be found all around us.

Learn more about what makes fun­gi-based pro­tein special.

Fy Pro­tein is fun­gi-based and, along with many species of mush­rooms, our pro­tein rep­re­sents one of that kingdom’s many edi­ble organ­isms. Fy Pro­tein is cer­ti­fied non-GMO and is veg­an, as well. As an ingre­di­ent, Fy has only a tenth of the fat of ground beef. On top of that, Fy has 50% more pro­tein than tofu and twice as much pro­tein as raw pea. Learn more about the dif­fer­ences between plant-based, fun­gi-based, and sev­er­al oth­er alter­na­tive pro­teins here.

No. Fy is cer­ti­fied non-GMO and is cre­at­ed from Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis, a wild, nat­u­ral­ly-occur­ring microbe with ori­gins in Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park. The mag­ic is in our unique, inspired-by-nature fer­men­ta­tion process, where we sim­ply give it the nutri­ents it needs and an envi­ron­ment where it can thrive and grow into Fy, a nutri­tion­al fun­gi pro­tein. We have not genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied it in any way. 

No, we don’t add any antibi­otics, hor­mones, insec­ti­cides, pes­ti­cides, or her­bi­cides to grow Fy.

All pro­tein sources can trig­ger aller­gies for cer­tain indi­vid­u­als with sen­si­tiv­i­ties. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Food Aller­gy Research and Resource Pro­gram (FAARP), one of the most well-known author­i­ties on aller­gens in the world, deemed Fy, our pro­tein, to be a low-risk allergen.

We do rec­om­mend that those with sen­si­tiv­i­ty to fun­gi species, includ­ing mush­rooms, avoid con­sum­ing our foods.

We reluc­tant­ly did because most reg­u­la­tors in the world still man­date ani­mal test­ing to prove that an inno­v­a­tive, new-to-the-world food prod­uct like Fy, is safe to eat. So we com­plet­ed the required test­ing to assure the safe­ty of our products.

We take the health and well­be­ing of our cus­tomers seri­ous­ly and have thor­ough­ly reviewed the sci­ence sup­port­ing the safe­ty of Fy. Fy has been con­firmed to be Gen­er­al­ly Rec­og­nized as Safe (GRAS). In addi­tion, we have received a no-ques­tions let­ter from the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA), accept­ing the unan­i­mous con­clu­sion of a pan­el of inde­pen­dent food-safe­ty experts that Fy is safe to eat.

Our prod­ucts are now avail­able at both Berke­ley Bowl loca­tions in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. But stay tuned—we’re work­ing hard to grow the avail­abil­i­ty of our meat­less and dairy-free foods in oth­er regions.

We have some excit­ing retail part­ner­ships in the works and will be in more stores by the end of the year. To be one of the first to know about store avail­abil­i­ty please sign up for our newslet­ters. Eager for our foods to hit your local stores? You can take this form to your local retail­ers to kind­ly ask that they stock the shelves with Nature’s Fynd foods. 

If you are inter­est­ed in car­ry­ing Nature’s Fynd prod­ucts in your retail loca­tion or restau­rant, please reach out to us at sales@​naturesfynd.​com.

Due to Fy’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, we can cre­ate a wide range of both meat and dairy alter­na­tives, and many more of your favorite foods. To start, we’ve launched meat­less break­fast pat­ties and dairy-free cream cheese. Stay con­nect­ed to learn more about the new prod­ucts we’ll be intro­duc­ing in the com­ing months.

Yes, our prod­ucts are veg­an.

Our prod­ucts are pro­duced with­out any ani­mal ingre­di­ents, added ani­mal prod­ucts, addi­tives, or byprod­ucts. This includes ani­mal meat, poul­try, fish, and shell­fish as well as eggs, dairy, hon­ey, and gelatin.

Yes. We don’t use any genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms in our foods.

Yes, all of our prod­ucts are gluten-free.

Yes, all of our prod­ucts are nut-free; our prod­ucts do not con­tain tree nuts or peanuts. Our prod­ucts were man­u­fac­tured in peanut-free facilities.

Our Dairy-Free Cream Cheese is soy-free, but our Meat­less Break­fast Pat­ties do con­tain soy.

Cur­rent­ly, our prod­ucts are not cer­ti­fied as Halal or Kosher. We’re look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to be Halal and Kosher cer­ti­fied in the future.

Nature’s Fynd prod­ucts are not cur­rent­ly cer­ti­fied organ­ic. We con­tin­ue to explore organ­ic cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments and oppor­tu­ni­ties to use organ­ic cer­ti­fied ingredients. 

Curi­ous about the facts? The nutri­tion facts pan­els for our foods are avail­able on the indi­vid­ual prod­uct pages list­ed here.

Stove­top (rec­om­mend­ed method):

Pre-heat your non-stick skil­let over medi­um heat and gen­er­ous­ly coat the skil­let with oil (approx­i­mate­ly one table­spoon for every two pat­ties). Then, heat the pat­ties for 2–3 min­utes on each side, 4–6 min­utes total. Only heat pat­ties until very light­ly browned. Please don’t overcook.

Alter­na­tive microwave heat­ing instruc­tions (if you don’t have a stovetop):

Please cook the pat­ties on a stove­top for opti­mal expe­ri­ence. If you don’t have access to a stove­top, below are instruc­tions to cook the pat­ties in a microwave. All microwave appli­ances vary so please use these as guide­lines only. Remem­ber: please do not overcook—it’s not meat!

• Microwave cook instruc­tions (assum­ing 1100 watts)
  • Remove two (2) pat­ties from packaging.
  • Place on a microwave-safe plate and cov­er with a paper towel.
  • Microwave on high for 45 sec­onds or until hot.

Heat to a min­i­mum tem­per­a­ture of 165°F.

Our prod­ucts should be stored in the fridge and con­sumed by the ​“Best By” date on the pack­ag­ing. After open­ing the cream cheese or break­fast pat­ties, please con­sume with­in 7 days. Please do not freeze either our Dairy-Free Cream Cheese or Meat­less Break­fast Patties.

Please con­sume our break­fast pat­ties and cream cheese by the ​“Best By” date or with­in 7 days of open­ing (whichev­er comes first). The ​“Best By” date is locat­ed on the left-side pan­el of our break­fast pat­ties and on the lid of our cream cheese tub.

We rec­om­mend that our Dairy-Free Cream Cheese not be used in bak­ing, but rather enjoyed with a bagel.

Grow­ing Fy is incred­i­bly resource-effi­cient. Work­ing with Life Cycle Analy­sis experts, we deter­mined that Fy emits rough­ly 94% few­er green­house gas­es, and uses 99% less land, and 99% less water than grow­ing beef, with no methane emis­sions, and min­i­mal waste.

Fy is also more effi­cient because we are able to pro­duce 5.4x more pro­tein per acre of crop­land than ani­mal pro­teins and 1.3x more than plant proteins.

No. We retrieved a small sam­ple of Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis and thanks to its remark­able capac­i­ty for growth and self-suf­fi­cien­cy, the orig­i­nal sam­ple col­lect­ed from Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park is all we need to grow unlim­it­ed amounts of Fy using our break­through fer­men­ta­tion method.

Nature’s Fynd is a com­pa­ny of opti­mists, explor­ers, and sci­en­tists who are ded­i­cat­ed to solv­ing the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing human­i­ty. We believe human inge­nu­ity along with sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty will reveal Nature’s solu­tions to our planet’s chal­lenges. We’re deeply com­mit­ted to our mis­sion of cre­at­ing amaz­ing foods that are nutri­tious, taste great, and help renew our plan­et for future gen­er­a­tions. Learn more about us.

Our food land­scape, what we eat, where it’s made, and the choic­es we have will be rad­i­cal­ly altered in the com­ing decades. 

Cli­mate change and the chal­lenges fac­ing the food sup­ply sys­tem aren’t a prob­lem fac­ing one com­pa­ny or industry—it’s a cul­tur­al, glob­al chal­lenge, with solu­tions requir­ing inno­va­tion, curios­i­ty, and most of all—optimism.

Solv­ing the chal­lenges that face our food sup­ply sys­tem is the moon­shot of our time. Pro­vid­ing a method to feed the world in a way that’s good for humans and the health of the plan­et is an auda­cious goal, but it’s one Nature’s Fynd has the tech­nolo­gies and capa­bil­i­ties to meet.

We began com­mer­cial man­u­fac­tur­ing in ear­ly 2020 at our new 35,000-square-foot man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty on the site of the Union Stock­yards on Chicago’s South Side. But we’ve been work­ing with Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis for much longer than that. Dis­cov­er our ori­gin sto­ry.

Our sto­ry starts with an extra­or­di­nary microbe named Fusar­i­um strain flavolapis, with ori­gins in Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park. Our food ingre­di­ent name, Fy, is inspired by this extra­or­di­nary microbe and our unique origins.

As we con­sid­ered our company’s objec­tive of unlock­ing the unmatched nour­ish­ing pow­er of our plan­et for future gen­er­a­tions, it became evi­dent that we want­ed to cap­ture this ori­gin sto­ry and a core part of our iden­ti­ty and pur­pose, right in our brand name.

Hence, Nature’s Fynd was born as a way to tell the sto­ry of who we are, and inspire the pos­si­bil­i­ty of what we will do. The new spelling of the word ​“Fynd” is a nod to our remark­able pro­tein and pays homage to the pow­er of nature’s tech­nol­o­gy. We were just the ones who found it.