Waste-to-Taste: Transforming Wet Byproducts of the Food Industry into New Nutritious Foods

Abstract

Food and beverage production generates enormous amounts of spent residues in the form of pomaces, pulps, grains, skins, seeds, etc. Although these sidestreams remain nutritious, their conversion to foods can be complicated by issues of digestibility and processing, particularly when the residues are wet and therefore highly susceptible to microbial degradation. Ideally, these sidestreams could be stabilized and then re-circulated into food, instead of being diverted to waste, animal feed, or biofuels. Indeed, the end-of-life of our food crops is increasingly important to consider in the context of circularity, ensuring that land, water, and chemical inputs to agriculture are sustainable. In the context of wet byproducts from the food industry, we discuss two separate case studies that look at how to valorize and extend the longevity of nutritionally-rich but underutilized sidestreams. The first study examines the fermentation of okara into an edible tempeh-like cake, while the second investigates ProSeed’s approach to drying and valorizing brewer’s spent grain. We conclude with some words on the nuance and challenges involved in saving from waste the highly perishable but nutritious side products of current food and beverage production.