Filtration techniques for recovery of plant proteins for novel food products

In Swedish food consumption there is a growing trend that for sustainability and health reasons, con-sumers choose to eat less red meat in favor of plant based foods. Proteins of plant origin have a significantly lower carbon footprint primarily due to absence of the environmental costs of in-puts and generation of methane. Thus a protein shift i.e. where animal based pro-tein are partly replaced with proteins of plant origin, is essential for a more sustainable food system . For this transition, healthy and tasty foods based on plant proteins need to be produced in a sustainable and economically viable way. Sweden’s agro-food industry has a great opportunity to leverage the increasing demand for such products. In a recent Swedish survey 55% of consumers stat-ed that they will eat more plant-based food in the coming years compared to the amount they eat today. Consumers will thus require alternatives to the Sunday roast or Monday meatballs, but what are these alternatives? We believe that the Swedish food system has the potential to take the lead in a protein shift through three main approaches:
I. Direct alternative utilization of existing and emerging crops as food raw material.
II. The development of novel processes for creating new attractive plant-based protein products.
III. Recovery of protein from existing plant-based by-product streams for food and feed.
This project addresses all three approaches to various extents with a focus on protein re-covery from existing process streams.