Ingredient

dish.

My question, though, was what's the best thing that he has hunted? Ingredient-wise.

Ingredient-wise? Oh, nice, yeah.

Oh, I

don't know.

Today, I'm interviewing my friend for over a decade, Tom King, who founded the company Icon Foods.

Icon Foods is a food science and ingredient innovation company helping emerging and established CPG brands create better-for-you products through clean label sugar reduction, functional sweetening systems, prebiotic fibers, and formulation expertise.

For a startup CPG's community, Icon Foods brings the ingredient access, tactical know-how, and hands-on formulation support that could help founders turn a great kitchen bench idea into a scalable, commercially viable

product.

Tom is a certified food scientist and one of the food and beverage industry's leaders on clean label sugar reduction and functional formulation.

Sugar is not just a sweetness, it's a structure, it has stability, and it is of course a sensory experience.

We're only scratching the surface of understanding how alternative sweeteners work, but I think Tom is on the forefront of it.

His work centers around rebuilding those functions intelligently using modern ingredient systems that align with today's health-conscious consumers.

嗯，包括冰块、酒啊，还有乱七八糟的。

就是 ingredients。

嗯。

那材料呢？

材料呢，我觉得在中文当中比较像 materials，但是你说的话呢，也可以，就不能算是错。

但是原料可能更像啊 ingredients。

嗯，对的。

好的。

His professional career spans more than five decades across pharmaceuticals, healthcare, dietary supplements, and natural medicine, including almost 30 years in the natural medicine following and 23 years working with the pharmaceutical sector.

His experience has included generic pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical distribution, regulatory compliance, managed care contracting, quality systems, dietary supplements, botanical ingredients,

and natural products.

Now, throughout his career, Michael has worked within an unusually diverse range of organizations, from startups and privately owned businesses to major corporations.

One particular important accomplishment was Michael's role in developing and implementing what his CV describes as the nation's first hospital-based dietary supplement formulatory committee.

He's also championed the use of nutritional interventions as a strategy for improving healthcare outcomes and potentially reducing healthcare costs.

Perhaps one of Michael's most important contributions to the natural product industry has been work addressing adulteration and defective ingredients within the dietary supplement chain.

Michael has led an award-winning international initiative associated with the Botanical Adulterant Prevention Program, designed to stop the resale of adulterated products.

No studies that I'm sharing No notes in front of me.

No deep dives into ingredients.

I just have two stories to tell you.

And I hope they will encourage you exactly where you are today.