Food science and tech: UC Davis examines sustainability of alt-proteins, cultured meat and upcycled food

04 Jun 2024 --- The F&B industry is expanding its offer of alternative proteins and upcycled foods to improve food security and reduce environmental impact. To estimate and support the long-term success of emerging technologies, such as cultured meat and mycoprotein, the University of California (UC) in Davis, US, evaluates their sustainability status and economic potential.

Edward Spang, an associate professor of Food Science and Technology at UC Davis, tells Food Ingredients First that the university focuses on novel technologies to de-risk them for the public good — aiming to support investments so they become successful and benefit society. 

“We’re trying to broadly understand emerging technologies, where there might not be a full company or a lot of activity yet. That’s why we’ve done mycoprotein and cultured meats.”  

UC Davis uses Techno-Economic Analyses (TEA) to assess the economic performance of these technologies and products and Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) to calculate their environmental impact throughout their life cycle. Moreover, Spang underscores that combining these assessments can increase their impact. 

Sustainable cultured meat? 
Spang illustrates that a TEA of cultured meat found the product very expensive. However, as he says, this was known to people, and reactions were muted. “Some of these products are being sold for a loss, in very small quantities and minimal places worldwide.” 

“But then we did a follow-up LCA. We said: this is not necessarily better for the environment. That’s where we got a lot of pushback because I felt that poked at people’s worldview about this. It felt much more personal than the economic piece.”

He notes that the environmental benefits had been “taken as a given” for a long time. “Many existing LCAs were presuming technological developments that haven’t happened yet. We were looking at what people are doing right now to make this mature.” 

Many existing LCAs on cultured meat are presuming technological developments that haven’t happened yet.“There was an assumption that if it’s meat in a lab, it’s, let’s say, 10% of the environmental impact of everything else. But it’s an intensive process.”  

“We have not advanced to the point where we’re using waste products to feed these cells,” he explains. Many of the inputs used are similar to high-quality pharmaceutical-grade food, and “that’s very expensive and requires a lot of upstream resources.” 

For example, the university found that compared to animal feed for cows or chickens, the media to develop cell-based meat have a much higher environmental footprint. 

“If we can figure out cheaper resources to blend into the media, then that would likely have economic and environmental benefits,” stresses Spang.

Mushroom mycoprotein 
UC Davis also conducted a TEA on mycoprotein, a protein derived from mushrooms. Spang notes that the product was cost-competitive with beef but that pork and chicken are much cheaper. 

“Mushrooms, in general, are interesting — if we’re talking about the circular economy of food and using byproducts, they are the natural recyclers of organic material. They’re also edible. There are so many interesting pieces that can be leveraged.” 

He highlights that some plant-based proteins are being criticized due to their level of processing and perceived health benefits. 

Mushrooms are natural recyclers of organic material and offer a great texture with minimal processing.“With the mycoprotein, it’s interesting that they’re getting a lot of the texture quality with minimal processing. We want the natural alignment and fibers giving it chew and this meat-like structure, as well as the natural umami components that can be hard to mimic with chemical additives.” 

Although the technology is yet to be perfected, Span believes it could be a grand slam “if we can put the pieces together of byproducts and leverage the best possible qualities of mushrooms and mycoprotein.” 

In addition, he values the health components people are interested in in mushrooms, even though scientific research still needs to fully validate these. Moreover, mushroom production helps recycle food byproducts. 

Upcycled food waste
Spang details that the team at UC Davis is currently looking at food byproducts and upcycled foods. “We’ve been working on that for a while, but we just don’t feel like there’s good information available about the landscape of those ingredients.”  

“We’re trying to start developing a database where that information becomes available, then companies have the information they need and help them along their way,” explains Spang. 

“They don’t have to do all this background research to find out if they have a good idea. They can go and find that data and do some of these calculations or consider their extraction technology in a much more robust context.” 

He underscores that a university is uniquely qualified to take this role and make the information available. 

UC Davis is investigating food byproducts and upcycled foods to expand information on the landscape of those ingredients.Identifying nutritional compounds 
Moreover, UC Davis has several campus activities linked to this research. For example, the AI Institute for Next Generation Food System is investigating foods’ biochemical compounds for FoodAtlas — a food composition database with nutritional components of various foods. 

This expanding knowledge graph aims to capture comprehensive relationships between foods and other entities, including chemicals and diseases.

If a company is interested in using a derivative of lycopene, a carotenoid found in tomatoes, it has to know how much is available in tomato skins and seeds, illustrates Spang. 

To help fill this research need, the university is examining how much of the compound can be found in different tomato parts and how many skins and seeds a typical canning plant produces —“to connect the who, what, where, when and why of getting this material and what’s in it.” 

“We’re starting with some of the top crops in California but also some of our major products,” he explains. “That’s breweries, wineries, the olive cake from olive oil production, tomatoes and then going down the line from there to almonds or pistachios; you name it. There’s a lot of material here in California that has value.”

By Jolanda van Hal