Researching the fermentation of plants, new raw materials, and surplus vegetables could help create more climate-friendly and circular food systems including more plant-based options.
According to the Fermentation State of the Industry Report from the Good Food Institute, in 2020 fermentation became the “third technological pillar of the alternative protein revolution,” besides plant-based and cultivated proteins.
The benefits of fermentation aren’t just limited to the environment. This ancient food preservation practice has multiple potential such as improving health and preventing growth of pathogenic bacteria.
Fermented food waste
Intense farming practices makes food production lucrative only when producing large quantities, yet enormous amounts of produce are wasted in the food sector. Currently, a third of the food produced globally goes to waste, but fermentation of surplus food could help increase shelf life of some produce currently wasted.
The Danish startup Resauce wants to fight food waste by using fermentation to save fruit and vegetables: “Fermentation already plays a big role in many of our foods: beer, milk, meat, so what if we could use the fermentation process as a solution for the huge food waste?” said founder Philip Bindesbøll.
The company’s simple business concept is based on fermenting surplus food, transforming it into sauces, syrups and jams that have a long shelf life. Resauce currently makes fermented tomato sauce, bean paste, and chill sauce.
More taste, more alternative
The business could get even more juicy as fermentation has the ability to enhance sensory characteristics. “It is sometimes a challenge to give plants a more complex taste as well as to create structures in the food that appeal to consumers, which fermentation can contribute to,” explains Lene Jespersen, professor in Microbial Ecology and Food Fermentation the Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen. The rainbow of flavors that fermentation can add to the usual palate can lead to design new products, based on fermented plant-based alternatives. “Fermentation can help, as you can create many different tastes and structures and thus introduce completely new product types,” she said.
The Department of Food Science at the University of Copenhagen has received $9 million from the Danish Novo Nordisk Foundation to develop the knowledge required to invent a completely new category of sustainable, plant-based foods as an alternative to animal protein sources.
Research and innovation will allow a more in-depth understanding of the ability of microorganisms to reproduce in plant-based raw materials, and their power to transform raw materials into edible, tasty and healthy products: “It is conceivable that in the future we could use fermentation as a green processing technology to minimize energy consumption, by, for example industrially fermenting raw materials and thus skipping some energy-intensive steps,” Jespersen said.
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August 01, 2021 at 04:10AM
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How Fermentation Can Avoid Food Waste And Create Tasty Plant-Based Products - Forbes
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