Generally, vegetable steaks are made from a mixture of soybeans, chickpeas and all kinds of seeds. The production of future recipes for this meatless meat could be even less impactful for the planet if the waste of these foods were used.
We prepare a lot of broths based on carrot peelings and we fry potato or sweet potato peels well, why couldn’t we use food waste to make other foods? We reassure you, the subject is not to make a steak with what is in your trash. The question is rather to recycle the detritus resulting from the production of soybeans, chickpeas, peas or wheat – in short, all kinds of ingredients that usually make up vegetable alternatives to animal proteins.
In New Zealand, this is a line of thought for the Off-Piste Provisions brand, which has approached a scientific university in Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University, at the origin of a recipe made from waste food. It reproduces the texture, but also the taste and the proteins of vegetable meat. If the idea seems totally crazy, it nevertheless makes a lot of sense for the scientists who have used fermentation techniques to give life to an edible mushroom. The nutrient richness of food waste can indeed generate a root containing essential nutrients like amino acids, iron and proteins. For the boss of this New Zealand brand, this recipe would be even more nutritious than the one today used to make vegetable meat.
This process could also include fruit skins or brewery spent grain, the pulp obtained after the beer brewing stage. In this regard, flour is already produced with these cereal residues. By also recycling the skin of soybeans or the husk of wheat, we would have a material available that could be used for food products with a high protein content, the production of which would require less energy and less water. According to these Singapore scientists, the results of their research offer a real opportunity to find a second life for food waste. In addition to reducing food waste, this new process would also make it possible to put an end to CO2 emissions generated by residues from soybean crops or various cereals which increase the carbon footprint of these agricultural products when they decompose.
(ETX Daily Up)