26 Jan Startups jump on the Banting bandwagon

South Africa’s obsession with a high-fat, low-carb diet is creating a new niche food industry. LCHF items are now old hat on many restaurant menus countrywide, but now a flurry of entrepreneurs are hoping the diet trend will fatten their wallets.

One notable innovator is Otto Remke of Banting on the go, who has created Banting-friendly vending machines that have started appearing around Cape Town.

“I lost 25kg following the Banting dietary principles and am one of its biggest advocates,” he says. “The problem was that it was very inconvenient to slot the Banting lifestyle into my busy life, and that’s when I decided it must be the same for many people.”

“Because Banting food as a rule does not contain artificial preservatives, it cannot be left unchecked in a vending machine for more than 48 hours,” said Remke.

Products, which include bagels, sandwiches and wraps, vary depending on the location and target market.

Remke said he had received more than 200 inquiries about the machines, from as far afield as the UK and Australia.

“The only little niggle has been that South Africans are not a vending nation like Europe or the US, and many people are still scared to do a transaction on the machine,” said Remke.

Also out of Cape Town, baker Marlon Felker’s Banting loaves are already on the shelves at major retailers. At his French Connection bakery in Paarden Eiland, product development began with Leandri Strydom and Hein Kymdell, who call themselves inventors rather than bakers.

“You don’t want to know how many flops we had before we got it perfect but it’s worth it in the end,” said Strydom.

Ingredients in Felkers’s loaves include almonds from California and sunflower and flax seeds that are ground in a hammer mill. The bakery produces 500kg of dough a day – rye and Banting – which makes between 700 and 800 loaves.

While normal bread takes 45 minutes to bake, Banting loaves take up to two hours and have to be rested for 24 hours before being sliced.

Then there’s the story of Banting Blvd, a team that’s set up an online and Montague Gardens, CT, store-front business for Banting food products. It is the producer of the new HEBA Pap, of an affordable low-carb substitute to maize pap and bread, news of which has seen FOODStuff SA’s story on it attract a deluge of hits and interest.

Banting champion Professor Tim Noakes said the explosion of interest by small food manufacturers was “fantastic”.

“Once you go mainstream and get the big manufacturers it is even better,” he said.

Source: Sunday Times, Facebook

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