Description du projet
Un colorant alimentaire fabriqué à partir de déchets alimentaires
L’industrie alimentaire utilise des couleurs artificielles pour améliorer l’attrait de ses produits. Or, l’innocuité d’un pigment appelé E120, qui donne une couleur rouge vif et qui est utilisé par de grandes multinationales, est contestable. Les groupes de défense des droits des consommateurs affirment que le E120 est responsable du trouble de déficit de l’attention et de l’hyperactivité chez les enfants et de certaines formes de cancer chez les animaux. Qui plus est, la coloration artificielle entraîne des problèmes de comportement en général. Le projet LycoSOL, financé par l’UE, propose une solution respectueuse de l’environnement à base d’ingrédients naturels. La méthode mise au point dans le cadre du projet consiste à extraire et transformer des ingrédients sains à partir des déchets issus de la transformation alimentaire. Le projet entend mettre au point un processus d’extraction et d’encapsulation à partir de déchets végétaux, et cible spécifiquement une production réalisée à partir de pelures de tomates.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- 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)
Régime de financement
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinateur
34906 PENDIK ISTANBUL
Turquie
L’entreprise s’est définie comme une PME (petite et moyenne entreprise) au moment de la signature de la convention de subvention.