Project description
Food colouring made of food waste
The food industry uses artificial colours to make its products look more attractive. For instance, the safety of a pigment known as E120, which gives a bright red colour and is used by big multinationals, is questionable. Consumer advocacy groups claim E120 is responsible for causing attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity in children and some forms of cancer in animals. In addition, artificial colouring is associated with behavioural problems in general. The EU-funded LycoSOL project proposes an environmentally friendly solution based on natural ingredients. The method involves extracting and processing healthy ingredients from the waste of food processing. The project aims to develop the process of extraction and encapsulation from plant waste, targeting production from tomato peels in particular.
Objective
Artificial food colouring makes the foods more appealing and desirable, a tactic the food industry has been capitalising on for decades. One of the most used artificial food colouring is Carmine or E120 (Used in Nestle Nesquik, Rainbow Mentos, etc.) a pigment of a bright-red colour obtained from the aluminium salt of carminic acid, which is produced by some scale insects, such as the cochineal scale and the Polish cochineal, and is used as a general term for a particularly deep-red colour of the same name. While the safety of these dyes has been called into question, consumer advocacy groups and recent scientific research have linked these food dyes to a number of potential health problems, most notably, certain types of cancer in animals and attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity in children. The link between artificial colours and behavioral problems is a concern, especially for parents of children diagnosed with ADHD.
LycoSOL extracts and formulate natural ingredients (nutraceuticals and phytochemicals) from the waste products of food processing, by using (i) biological, (ii) sustainable and (iii) environmentally friendly, novel processes to stop the use of synthetic food colouring, known to adversely affect the public health and replacing them by ingredients with major health benefits. BioCapSOL aims to provide an improved process for extracting and encapsulating biological content from plants and vegetables using benign chemistries that can be applied at an industrial scale. The LycoSOL extracts the carotenoids from waste by-products of tomato paste production through a 100% natural and low-cost production method.
LycoSOL is currently at TRL6 stage. The global market size for lycopene amounts to €113M in 2018 and the market is expected to grow annually by 3.5% (CAGR 2018-2023) is estimated to be more than €117M. BioCapSOL aims to achieve between the 5 to 10% of market share in the first five year from the commercialization launch.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcolors
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrypost-transition metals
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulturevegetable growing
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
34906 PENDIK ISTANBUL
Türkiye
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.