3.2 Potential of Agri-Food Wastes Application
for Production of Food Substitutes Biomass
Application of agri-food waste can be foreseen as one of the key solutions to
improve the sustainability of current food production. The main options of dealing
with agri-food waste include prevention, creation of food banks (or storages),
valorization for animal feed and other purposes (e.g. recovery of nutrients or
extraction of highly valuable components, recycling of proteins for the new products), reuse (application for other purposes like generation of energy and heat),
compositing and landfilling [45–47]. Current study dealt with a combined approach
addressing prevention of food wasting and food waste valorization, when agri-food
wastes are assessed from the position of feeding substrate or media for insect and
single cell production, as well as for meat culturing and direct application as a
source of plant protein biomass (Table 1).
TRL plays an important role for the identification of opportunities for the agri-food
waste application. Low TRL do not allow for the effective modelling of food substitutes production based on agri-food waste. Nevertheless, it was identified that direct
application of agri-food waste for the plant based food substitutes is very challenging,
but possible. Most known examples of such application include the use of soybean
meal and okara as components of composite foods for direct human consumption.
Side streams of plants processing usually fall in this category and can be utilized as a
source for food. Main challenges were associated with assurance of food safety and
adequate biomass quality (as in case of waste from consumers). On the other hand,
application of processing side-streams (e.g. soybean meal, gluten), is well realized to
produce texturized vegetable protein foods (Fig. 1).
Cultured meat production could potentially rely on cultivation media generated
by bacteria fed on agri-food side and waste streams, however, such potential is only
highlighted as possible in literature [14, 27, 28, 49]. In this case, the environmental
impact could be reduced and reach the lower levels of impact indicated in Fig. 1.
Such results correspond well to the result of the study [14], where it was reported
that cultivation of meat on the cultured media from cyanobacteria could be environmentally beneficial. It is a previous conclusion and confirmation to the applicability in industrial scale is required.
The application of agri-food waste streams for single cell and insect production
is an upcoming development, taking into consideration current improvements in
TRL, performed and planned trials (projects CORNET “ENTOMOFOOD”, ERA
NET-LAC “EntoWaste”). The biggest challenge here is associated with proper
selection of suitable agri-food waste, which would assure the high efficiency of
production and therefore would have a beneficial nutritional composition. In many
cases agri-food waste corresponding to the identified properties, is represented by
side-stream of food processing, used for animal feeding. So, another challenge
relates to the application of multiple agri-food wastes as animal feed. The need to
replace such feed material could result in higher environmental impacts than benefits from alternative proteins productions. At the same time, multiple sources of
150
S. Smetana et al.
for Production of Food Substitutes Biomass
Application of agri-food waste can be foreseen as one of the key solutions to
improve the sustainability of current food production. The main options of dealing
with agri-food waste include prevention, creation of food banks (or storages),
valorization for animal feed and other purposes (e.g. recovery of nutrients or
extraction of highly valuable components, recycling of proteins for the new products), reuse (application for other purposes like generation of energy and heat),
compositing and landfilling [45–47]. Current study dealt with a combined approach
addressing prevention of food wasting and food waste valorization, when agri-food
wastes are assessed from the position of feeding substrate or media for insect and
single cell production, as well as for meat culturing and direct application as a
source of plant protein biomass (Table 1).
TRL plays an important role for the identification of opportunities for the agri-food
waste application. Low TRL do not allow for the effective modelling of food substitutes production based on agri-food waste. Nevertheless, it was identified that direct
application of agri-food waste for the plant based food substitutes is very challenging,
but possible. Most known examples of such application include the use of soybean
meal and okara as components of composite foods for direct human consumption.
Side streams of plants processing usually fall in this category and can be utilized as a
source for food. Main challenges were associated with assurance of food safety and
adequate biomass quality (as in case of waste from consumers). On the other hand,
application of processing side-streams (e.g. soybean meal, gluten), is well realized to
produce texturized vegetable protein foods (Fig. 1).
Cultured meat production could potentially rely on cultivation media generated
by bacteria fed on agri-food side and waste streams, however, such potential is only
highlighted as possible in literature [14, 27, 28, 49]. In this case, the environmental
impact could be reduced and reach the lower levels of impact indicated in Fig. 1.
Such results correspond well to the result of the study [14], where it was reported
that cultivation of meat on the cultured media from cyanobacteria could be environmentally beneficial. It is a previous conclusion and confirmation to the applicability in industrial scale is required.
The application of agri-food waste streams for single cell and insect production
is an upcoming development, taking into consideration current improvements in
TRL, performed and planned trials (projects CORNET “ENTOMOFOOD”, ERA
NET-LAC “EntoWaste”). The biggest challenge here is associated with proper
selection of suitable agri-food waste, which would assure the high efficiency of
production and therefore would have a beneficial nutritional composition. In many
cases agri-food waste corresponding to the identified properties, is represented by
side-stream of food processing, used for animal feeding. So, another challenge
relates to the application of multiple agri-food wastes as animal feed. The need to
replace such feed material could result in higher environmental impacts than benefits from alternative proteins productions. At the same time, multiple sources of
150
S. Smetana et al.