Project description
Plant-based food production for sustainability and health
Plant-based foods developed as alternatives to dairy and meat products are often expensive due to costly, energy and water intensive production processes. The production of plant-based protein isolates, a key ingredient in many of these alternatives, generates substantial side-streams and strips away nutrients, leading to products that may not meet consumer needs for nutrition and affordability. High processing levels further reduce beneficial nutrients. The EU-funded Sustain-a-bite project aims to develop minimally processed, affordable plant-based foods that retain nutritional value, cutting energy use by over 30 % and water consumption by over 50 %. The project's prototypes promise high nutritional quality with protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals at a reduced cost, making plant-based foods accessible to all.
Objective
"Sustain-a-bite has the ambition to develop innovative, affordable, energy and water efficient minimal processing solutions for plant-based ingredient and food production. The produced food prototypes will ensure maximal nutritional quality and health benefits, taking into account consumer perspectives. Our approach is to combine bioprocesses and non-thermal treatments that enable reduction of >30% energy and >50% water consumption, compared to highly processed plant-protein isolates. The technology concepts developed will reduce the consumer prices of plant-based foods by 25% compared to the commodity meat and dairy products making them more affordable. This novel co-(bio)processing concept will make a paradigm shift by disrupting the traditional plant ingredient processes, which generate substantial side-streams during production of highly refined isolates or concentrates. Sustain-a-bite food prototypes aim to diversify the use of plant ingredients in various forms, including liquids, semi-solids, and solids. This goes beyond addressing just the ""protein challenge,"" as it utilizes the entire plant matrix to provide not only protein but also dietary fibre, essential minerals, antioxidants, and vitamins. This approach maximizes nutritional quality and offers associated health benefits. The minimal processing solutions developed in Sustain-a-bite will aim at tailoring the structural architecture of the raw materials towards reduced anti-nutritional factors, enhanced satiety, nutrient bio-accessibility, and sensory quality. We will evaluate the effect of processing on macro- and micronutrient bioavailability, protein, and starch digestibility as well as gut microbiome by developing improved realistic predictive in vitro models. Sustainability, health and economic impacts of minimal processing will be assessed both at the product and system scales."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedairy
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
02150 Espoo
Finland