Transforming brewers spent yeast (BSY) into high-value vegan proteins for food applications

Title

Transforming brewers spent yeast (BSY) into high-value vegan proteins for food applications

Duration

1 July 2020 / 1 January 2021

VIDA Challenges

Alternative food production

Summary

An egg-white protein is the most used animal protein in food products. It’s currently used in meringues, muffins, meat replacers, surimi, marshmallows, bakery products amongst other food products. Unfortunately, there are a lot of drawbacks associated to egg-white production such as very large environmental footprint. FUMI Ingredients believes that microorganisms are an untapped source of high-value ingredients and that they could also serve as the egg-white replacers. We are developing a processing platform for the production of animal-free food ingredients from the micro-organisms. Our developed process has tendency to be robust, scalable and costs competitive with regards to the use of regular egg-whites. The specific solution we offer is to transform micro-organisms such as yeast and micro-algae into the chicken-free egg-whites. This vegan egg-white can be applied as the emulsifier, binding or foaming agent, in the bakery products or meat replacers. With its use, the expectation is to have a carbon footprint reduction of over 90% when compared to the use of regular egg-whites. With VIDA validation voucher, FUMI Ingredients is performing a validation study to better define the true potential of the high-value ingredients that are being made from a large residue stream of the Brewers’ spent yeast.