Type Private Motto Rice is Life® Founders Ken Lee, Caryl Levine | Website lotusfoods.com Founded 1995 | |
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Genre Natural foods; Heirloom rice; SRI Rice Headquarters Richmond, California, United States Profiles | ||
Lotus foods rice ramen 3 ways
Lotus Foods is a Richmond, California, based company that focuses on importing handcrafted rice from small family farms to the United States. The company was founded in 1995 by Caryl Levine and Kenneth Lee. Their first and most popular product is Forbidden Rice.
Contents
Lotus foods forbidden rice www lotusfoods com
History
The company was founded in 1995 by Caryl Levine and Kenneth Lee, two years after they took a marketing research trip to China where they were served a bowl of black rice, something they never heard about before.
Products
Products include volcano rice, Madagascar pink rice, brown Mekong flower rice, forbidden rice, Bhutan red rice, organic carnaroli rice, organic jade pearl rice, organic forbidden rice, organic jasmine rice, and organic brown jasmine rice.
Forbidden Rice
Forbidden Rice is Lotus Foods' trademarked name for a strain of Chinese black rice (Chinese: 黑米; pinyin: hēi mǐ) which is considered to be both food and medicine in China. Forbidden Rice has a dark purple color because it is rich in anthocyanins and antioxidants.
Awards and recognition
Lotus Foods has won multiple awards for their products as well as for their involvement in SRI rice. In 2008 they were invited as panelists to discuss Food Security and Poverty at the Clinton Global Initiative alongside Madeleine Albright and representatives for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2009 they were awarded Nutrition Business Journal's Environment and Sustainability Award for their SRI related work done in conjunction with Cornell University's SRI Global Marketing Partnership. In their first year as a member of the National Association of the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT) in 1998, Forbidden Rice became a Silver Finalist in the Outstanding New Product category of the annual sofi™ Awards competition. To date, the company has won nine sofi awards.