Methylcellulose is an ingredient in plant-based product formulation that has attracted destructive consideration. Utilized by high-profile manufacturers like Inconceivable Meals and Past Meat, methylcellulose, or E461, offers engaging gelling and emulsifying properties that enhance juiciness and maintain plant-based burgers collectively as they prepare dinner. As plant-based proteins have low water retention capability and might’t bind, hydrocolloids like methylcellulose are a necessity to attain the specified finish product.
However as an artificial ingredient modified from cellulose, methylcellulose isn’t one thing that buyers have of their kitchen cabinets and is subsequently usually held up as proof of the ‘ultra-processed’ nature of plant-based meat analogues. Furthermore, inclusion in a formulation can truly add additional complexity to the ingredient checklist.
The race is subsequently on to handle this drawback and discover options. Scotland-based firm OCEANIUM has simply introduced the launch of its first product, a clean-label one-to-one substitute for methylcellulose referred to as OCEAN HEALTH Fiber.
The corporate shaped in 2018 looking for to make a number of merchandise from seaweed reminiscent of biodegradable packaging supplies dietary dietary supplements.
Its meals ingredient is produced from the fibre and proteins from sugar kelp sourced from farms all over the world. “It is a pure combination of alginates and cellulose and it is primarily the residue after we have refined the seaweed to take away high-value nutraceutical elements,” defined OCEANIUM Meals Scientist Iain Moore. “As a result of the refining course of makes use of solely inexperienced chemistry [the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances] it would not considerably affect the composition or the practical properties of this residual seaweed fibre.”
The ingredient’s greeny/brown color fits meat analogues, he added. “In a burger it appears like cooked meat. While you add this you get a darker, barely brown tinge to the burger and when cooked it provides a stronger color within the completed product.”
In accordance with the corporate, the ingredient delivers improved moisture retention and water binding means, in addition to texture, viscosity, and gelling capabilities to completed merchandise. It delivers equal practical properties and enhanced organoleptic traits that will scale back the necessity for added salt. It isn’t solely a methylcellulose substitute. It has a novel umami style which might present attention-grabbing flavour dimensions to a variety of completed merchandise. OCEANIUM’s in-house meals scientists and B2B collaborators have already examined and proved its versatility in plant-based meats in addition to a number of further functions, together with gluten-free breads and drinks.
“It’s a distinctive product with nice performance as a result of its pure mixture of insoluble and soluble polysaccharides,” added Moore. “This provides it a big thickening impact at each high and low temperatures, much like methylcellulose. Additionally it is a really efficient water binder which might enhance the moistness of breads, notably in gluten-free recipes.”
The corporate is focusing on meals producers in Europe, the UK and US and expects the product will probably be declared on the ingredient checklist as ‘seaweed fibre’. It’s but to realize regulatory approval globally, nevertheless. It anticipates its US GRAS standing will probably be full within the first quarter of 2023 and hopes for European approval by the top of subsequent 12 months, although this will probably be longer if it is categorized as a novel meals.
Containing 69% dietary fibre, made up of each soluble and insoluble fibres, and a mix of proteins and minerals, the corporate additional hopes the ingredient might assist tackle the shortage of dietary fibre in most trendy diets.
Seaweed can additional assist improved vitamin and diets as a supply of plant-based protein and vitamins reminiscent of zinc, magnesium, and Nutritional vitamins A, B12, and Ok.
The corporate additional envisages producers making claims in regards to the origins and the sustainability of the ingredient and its processing strategies.
‘Probably the most sustainable biomass on the planet’
OCEANIUM’s enterprise mannequin is predicated on proprietary biorefinery expertise which extracts most worth from sustainably farmed seaweed: a regenerative, resilient, and nutrient-rich marine plant and the last word sustainable biomass for plant-based meals, nutraceuticals and supplies markets.
“Total, what we’re attempting to attain is maximised utilisation of the seaweed biomass to minimise any waste,” defined Co-founder and CTO Charlie Bavington. “By changing the seaweed into a mix of excessive demand ingredient merchandise we’re in a position to pay the value that the farmers want for his or her farmed seaweed thereby enabling the entire seaweed worth chain, which is sort of nascent within the Western Hemisphere.”
An essential a part of OCEANIUM’s mission, he mentioned, is to facilitate seaweed farming at scale in locations the place it would not already occur. It is massive in Asia, for instance, however pretty non-existent in different components of the world.
“We see farmed seaweed as essentially the most sustainable biomass on the planet due to its environmental and societal advantages,” he mentioned.
Sustainably farmed seaweed, he advised us, offers jobs alongside rural coastal areas, mitigates eutrophication by absorbing nitrogen and phosphorous, will increase biodiversity by defending nursery grounds and seabeds. Seaweed farms don’t want cleared land, contemporary water, insecticide or fertilizer.
OCEANIUM will get its provides from the UK, Norway, Faroe Islands, France and the Netherlands. Small scale seaweed farms are additionally quickly bobbing up on each coasts of North America. “Seaweed goes to be a really massive a part of our future meals manufacturing and we’re proper initially of that journey.”
This rising trade is not with out its challenges, nevertheless. “Total, it is scale,” Bavington mentioned. And though OCEANIUM’s product will probably be priced ‘competitively’ in comparison with methylcellulose, seaweed farmers face a number of price and technological obstacles as they attempt to scale up manufacturing and a scarcity of processing capability doesn’t match the excessive demand for elements.
“We’re all conscious that buyers are demanding elements and meals merchandise with a clear label that ship well being advantages that additionally deliver an impactful and totally traceable and provenance and sourcing story,” added OCEANIUM Enterprise Improvement Director Marissa Nicolais. “Whereas seaweed remains to be a comparatively nascent ingredient in meals merchandise, extra customers are figuring out it as a possible resolution due to the varied advantages that it will possibly present.”
