What We Do

The problem

The global food waste challenge:

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that around 1.3 billion tonnes of food potentially available for consumption is discarded annually during the various stages of the food chain. In Europe, 88 million tonnes of fruit and vegetable residues are wasted, resulting in an economic loss of approximately EUR 143 billion. Plant processing and transformation processes result in the production of large quantities of by-products (up to 30-50% of the initial raw material), which still contain considerable amounts of nutrients that can be recovered.

One way to tackle food loss is the valorisation of waste from the food chain to produce new products with high added value. This is widely emphasised in the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC on the management, valorisation and sustainability of waste and by-products in the agro-food chain. This is especially crucial as global food waste generates 4.4 GtCO2 eq annually, which is about 8% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This means that the contribution of food waste emissions to global warming is almost equivalent to emissions from global road transport.

The protein transition:

Food waste is one of the major challenge to tackle in the transition to sustainable food systems, but not all emissions from wasted food are born equal. Although meat accounts for a relatively small share of global food waste in volume terms (less than 5% of the total), it has a significant impact on climate change, contributing over 20% of the carbon footprint of total food waste.

As reducing wasted food is crucial, especially wasted meat produce, reducing meat consumption is another important step in the path to sustainable food systems. Today, 80% of global agricultural land is used for livestock farming, contributing to 14,5% of global CO2 emissions, but meat consumption represent only 18% of the global population’s caloric intake.

For these reasons, the EU is promoting a strategy called the protein transition, based on the substitution of meat protein sources with alternative proteins. There are three main types of alternative protein sources, produced from plants, fermentation and animal cells.

our solution

SUPREME aims at tackling the food waste and loss problem by developing new food products from byproducts of the food industry. Thanks to the fungal strains collected in the Mycotheca Universitatis Taurinensis, one of the biggest collection in Europe, we found a way to use food byproducts as fermentation substrates.

Throughout the submerged fermentation process, the nutrients in the substrate turn into mushroom mycelium, rich in protein and vitamins. We harvest the mycelium and purify it into mycoprotein powder which we use to create our delicious products.

With our process we allow food businesses to limit their waste, disposal costs and GHG emissions by creating a delicious, healthy and sustainable alternative protein product.