Appetite for alternatives: Future Food-Tech to spotlight cell-based, fermented and plant-based proteins start-ups
21 Jun 2021 --- From adjusting nutritional value to tweaking salt and fat content, tackling allergies and the road to regulatory approvals, the protein alternatives space is ripe with innovation.
Key start-ups like JellaTech, Harmony, P&M Foods, Eagle Genomics and Wiley speak to NutritionInsight ahead of Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins about the mounting demand for sustainable proteins, leading to their rapid expansion.
JellaTech’s cell-based gelatin
The race to functional alternative collagen continues with major companies looking into this promising market. However most players are basing their efforts on fermentation technology, which only produces collagen peptides.
Stephanie Michelsen, JellaTech co-founder and CEO.US-based JellaTech is able to produce native collagen using animal cells in a sustainable way, which allows its collagen to have its full functionality, notes Stephanie Michelsen, co-founder and CEO.
“Nutritionally, our collagen will therefore function the same way as the conventionally-sourced, or animal-based collagen,” she explains.
“Whether it is plant-based, cell-based/cultured, fungal-based or other, it is simply not made from animals or animal agriculture. This way you can make alternative proteins that are bioidentical to those that are harvested from animals.”
“The nice thing about alternative proteins is that you can design them from scratch, whereas with conventional animal sources you are stuck with it as-is.”
She details that one can design, produce, process and formulate pea protein or cultivate cells in customized ways to yield a final product that they want to make, tweaking the salt and fat content.
“You can even potentially redesign, optimize or tweak proteins to increase benefits and nutritional value by using biotechnology and alternative protein techniques.”
Cell-based formula by Harmony
US-based Harmony is joining well-known players such as Biomilq and TurtleTree Labs in the cell-based baby formula race. The start-up has a particular focus on tackling baby allergies.
“We are using biotechnology to mimic the composition of human breast milk and create infant formulas. Nowadays we have over 22 millions of formula allergic babies per year worldwide. Harmony produces breast milk protein-based formulas, which are animal-free, allergy-free and environmentally friendly,” notes Wendel Del Afonso, founder and CEO of Harmony.
P&M Foods, co-founder Manuel Palma.There are about 130 million newborns per year worldwide, and 88 percent of these babies will use formula by six months of age, according to Del Afonso.
A massive number of babies will face a hard time with cow's milk allergies (up to 17 percent of the newborns), and are unable to consume any dairy product.
“This is primarily because the majority of formulas on the market are based on cow’s milk powder as the main ingredient, which is rebalanced with vitamins, minerals and minor ingredients.”
“Harmony is updating the current standards of cow’s milk based baby nutrition by creating a baby formula that mirrors human breast milk. Harmony is the first breast milk protein-based formula and the only animal-free, allergy-free and environmentally friendly baby nutrition,” Del Afonso supports.
P&M Foods’ alternative proteins
P&M Foods is a technology-based company from Santiago, Chile, with the purpose of “improving the life quality of people through food.”
Co-founder Manuel Palma has extensive experience creating functional food ingredients, microencapsulation technology and developing new food products with alternative proteins.
“When we talk about nutritional performance between proteins, we must pay attention to the biological value of proteins. Proteins of animal origin contain all the essential amino acids that our body requires, while those of plant origin are usually deficient in one or more essential amino acids.”
“In addition, when we consume plant proteins in their original matrix, the high content of dietary fiber can affect digestibility in a negative way. However, the above should not be a problem, since by consuming proteins from different vegetable sources during the day, we can achieve the same nutritional quality compared to those of animal origin protein,” he explains.
Anthony Finbow, CEO of Eagle Genomics. Moreover, he asserts that industry should be working with technological processes that do not increase sodium content in obtaining and concentrating proteins.
“Related to fat content, vegetable proteins have a lower fat content in relation to animal origin protein. It contains mainly polyunsaturated fat that has a beneficial effect on human health.”
The result is foods with the same nutritional and technological quality as those made with animal origin proteins. However, Palma adds: “Alternative proteins are deficient in some essential amino acids that are present in those of animal origin.”
Eagle Genomics: Improving proteins
The UK-headquartered company Eagle Genomics is applying network science to biology linked to the microbiome. The platform harnesses the latest graph database technology and AI, and Microsoft’s advanced machine learning and cognitive services.
Anthony Finbow, CEO of Eagle Genomics supports that the alternative proteins space will further rise in popularity once “cost parity is reached with the animal protein market. Then adoption will tip and accelerate exponentially.”
This will roughly occur within the 2021-2023 timeframe, he says. Alternative proteins will be more affordable for consumers, profitable for the food industry and will contribute to the green revolution and move towards better environmental protection.
“But this can only happen via rapid improvements in underlying biological and information technologies including advanced data techniques. That’s because alternative protein and the disruption in food and agricultural production they herald rely on precision fermentation, a process that enables the programming of microbial organisms to produce almost any complex organic molecule.”
Ann Begley, a partner for Wiley.To add the variety of important food features such as taste, texture, nutrition and stability, computational tools are used to program the microbial strains for the production of the correct ingredients. Multi-omic tools are also used to monitor food production and safety.
Wiley for regulatory support
Ann Begley, a partner for Wiley, which supports companies in achieving regulatory and consumer acceptance of novel healthy sustainable food products, says that consumer acceptance of alternative proteins is enhanced by the perceived health benefits.
“Regulatory authorities specify necessary requirements to make healthy claims as well as other important nutrient content claims, and lack of access to such claims can reduce consumer demand.”
“Lack of access to favorable marketing claims can significantly reduce consumer acceptance,” she says. “Wiley works with clients to fully understand their short and long-term objectives, and helps them to create a regulatory and legal strategy to support them in achieving these objectives.”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently considering how to best update the “healthy” claim under its ongoing Nutrition Innovation Strategy, Begley adds.
FDA notes that updating the “healthy” claim is part of an overall plan to provide consumers with information and tools to enable them to easily and quickly make food choices consistent with public health recommendations and to encourage the development of healthier foods by the industry.
“Thus, access to the ‘healthy’ claim in particular, including any relevant symbol created by FDA to describe ‘healthy’ may impact consumer decisions on picking one product over another,” she concludes.
Spotlighting rising players active in fermentation-based meat and dairy alternatives to cell-based formula and animal-free collagen, Future Food-Tech Alternative Proteins is taking place June 22-23.
By Kristiana Lalou
