Seven Sundays approaches food differently. Owners Hannah and Brady launched Seven Sundays starting with their signature muesli at a Minneapolis farmers market in 2011, and have since expanded nationwide with several new products. As a Certified B Corporation, Seven Sundays is committed to using business as a force for good. To them, that means building a better food system from the ground up: from the farmers who grow it, to the people who eat it, and everyone in between. When it comes to sustainability, Seven Sundays leads the cereal aisle with the creation of their upcycled oat and sunflower cereals (find these, and more upcycled products at the Wedge!). Read more below from our conversation with Seven Sundays about why upcycled ingredients are important, what inspired them to make their upcycled cereals, and what it means to be Upcycled Certified.

Why is upcycling important?

Here’s the deal: preventing food waste is the single most effective solution to reduce global warming (Source: Project Drawdown). That leaves us with a lot of hope. We can do something to make the planet a cooler place to live. And one thing we can do specifically: use the whole ingredient to its fullest nutritional potential.

What inspired you to create your Upcycled Oat Protein cereals?

The short story: Oat Milk. The growing Oat Milk industry is known to produce quite a bit of waste. Oats are combined with water and pressed for milk. Afterwards, the oaty leftovers are tossed as waste. (Unlike Willa’s Oat Milk, which uses the whole oat.) You wanna hear the crazy part? This oat pulp is jam packed with protein and fiber! Why in the world would anyone toss this delicious nutrient-rich ingredient? We don’t. This super hero ingredient has a new life in our Oat Protein Cereals and Protein Oats.

The long story: Our inspiration for our Upcycled Oat Protein Cereal actually started with our Upcycled Sunflower Cereal. At Seven Sundays, product innovation doesn’t happen in a lab with white coats, safety goggles, and engineered flavor droplets. It happens in a field where real food grows. (In this case, a sunflower field.) This is where we found ourselves in the summer of 2020, with a farmer and a food processor who make cold-pressed oil from sunflower seeds. Similar to oat milk production, cold-pressed sunflower oil leaves behind nutrient-rich sunflower meal. With a little grit, a big idea, and additional milling, our upcycled sunflower flour was born and puffed back into Sunflower Cereal. A sustainable, delicious second chance.

What does it mean to become Upcycled Certified?

We work with the Upcycled Food Association to certify our Sunflower Cereals and Protein Oats as upcycled. Our recipes must contain at least 10% upcycled ingredients in order to be certified. Since 2024, we’ve saved over 900,000 pounds of nutrient-rich ingredients from the waste stream. And we’re just getting started!