IFFA 2025: M Food Group taps starter cultures and mycoprotein to bolster clean label nutrition trends
14 May 2025 | M Food Group
Dominik Scheffer, chief sales officer at M Food Group, highlights the company’s new starter cultures for fermented products, technologies for nitrite-free formulations, and mycoprotein range. He tells us that there is immense potential in what the development of biotechnology, including processes like fermentation, can unlock for clean label products with additional nutritional and health values.
This is Anvisha Manjal reporting from IFA.
I'm with Dominique Scheffer, who's partner and chief sales officer at M Food Group.
Welcome, Dominique.
What is the M Food Group bringing to IFA this year and which innovations are drawing the most interest?
Hi everyone, so I said my name is Dominic, CEO of the M Food Group.
We are running on new products from our portfolio Divided in Cultures, Taste Technology.
So we're presenting new starter cultures for fermented products.
We're presenting technology products for nitrate-free applications, and the highlight of our exhibition is definitely microprotein.
We work with a partner called Planetary from Switzerland, presenting a completely brand new range of microprotein products from convenience to cold cuts and sausages.
Great, you're showcasing a range of vegan products made from microprotein, like you said.
What sets this ingredient apart?
So those products are made of microprotein and it's a combination of stabilizers, flavorings, and the microprotein, and we focused on clean label applications to make it as clean as possible so that we got rid of museose, for example, that we get a proper taste and very, very close to the meat product itself.
Great, thanks for sharing.
Your plant-based range scores high on nutri score.
How do you achieve that without compromising taste?
It's been long development times and checking with consumers and always relating to the actual meat product to find a proper solution, and it's a combination of different flavors and different texture giving additives that we get as close to the actual product itself.
So we've started that product development like 1.5 years ago to present that at this time in Frankfurt.
From bad trusts to nuggets, how are you reimagining familiar formats for flexitarian consumers?
We think having a microprotein based on a, on a, on a mushroom.
Not giving some completely new new areas for flexitarians.
You have a sustainable product with a high nutritional value, and that's completely different to the plant-based products we always already know, and that's the biggest impact and the biggest advantage for those products, having a very good nutritional flavor, and nutritional values and flavor to get as close to the actual products itself.
You're also presenting meat products without nitrite curing salt.
What's driving interest in this clean label shift?
The whole trend is driven by nitrate-free, clean label products, but the technology behind that is very, very special and unique.
We've been working on that one with a partner called Prosure from Spain, and we are able to use those polyphenols to get a clean label product.
So we actually get rid of nitrate and nitrate, and we're completely free of that.
So no hidden source of nitrate or nitrate.
So completely brand new technology and completely brand new products from all over the world for cooked ham from Italy, frankfurter from Germany, or Mediterranean salami from Spain, for example, we are able to produce without maltreat, and that's what we realized the consumer wants to have a clean label but with no lack of taste or technology, and that's what we achieved and what we did.
What is M culture and how does it help improve meat quality or shelf life?
Our M culture range are starter cultures, and starter cultures are divided into starter cultures which control the fermentation process, which control the pH for meat products, but also we have protective cultures, and there are different ways how to protect a product like with bacteric scenes during the fermentation.
Or competitive exclusion where a big range of starter cultures push everything else away, and that's the mechanism how those starter cultures work in the final product.
So by adding them to the surface or to the product to build up a flora in the product itself and compete on that one.
How are you seeing biotech like fermentation reshape the future of food production?
I think by now we don't even know how much influence biotechnology has on food itself.
So I think the development times of biotechnology for the future, for clean label, for fermentation processes, and for nutritional and health values, we haven't uncovered that one yet.
So we see there's a huge potential, and by now we are able to produce those data cultures by ourselves and our bioreactors and add them specifically to final products to improve the taste, the texture, and also the shelf life of the products.
Thank you so much for your time.
