Plant Power! From traditional crops to ‘alt’ proteins

Atze Jan van der Goot

Food Protein Vision, Amsterdam, 8 March 2018

The problem: Making same food requires more recourses

Tilman, PNAS 20260 (2011)

2

Global boundaries: nitrogen cycle

Sustainability of food products

Sustainability is mostly relevant at diet level or even larger

● Role of overconsumption proteins

Product to product comparison are often quite subjective

● Value to by-product streams

● Chicken manure as raw material for mushrooms

Thinking in chemical components (e.g. proteins) is not very helpful to make diets more sustainable

3

The Vegetarian Steak

4

Which part of meat consumption to replace?

Partly replacement

Full replacement

Alternative for vegetarians

5

0 35 60 120

Positive health effects

well digestible and high quality protein

iron

Vitamin B12

Negative health effects

Red or processed meat

e.g. Colon cancer

BC AD

So the challenges of designing meat analogues

What is the target group:

● Meat lovers prefers large similarity in sensory properties

● Real vegetarians might prefer other “plant-protein products”

Nutritional value:

● Real meat eaters: a different ingredient composition is better

● Vegetarians/vegans: need micro-nutrients of meat

Sustainability in general for foods

● Limiting processing: composition plants

6

0 35 60 120

Meat production

7

Primary production crops

Feed production

Digestion

separation

hydrolysis

Muscle/Meat Production

Amino acid polymerisation

Production of final product

Slaughtering and sizing

Production process of soy protein isolate:

industrial digestion

Defatting

Milling

Suspending flourin pH 8

Soy beans

Oil dissolved in hexane

Sugars

Fibres

Proteinprecipitataion

pH 4.8

To neutal pH and spray drying

Protein isolate powder

Dilemma Purity and Yield

Protein yield

Pro

tein

pu

rity

60% 100%

40%

90%

Flour

Protein concentrate

Protein isolate

Yield “Chicken Protein”: 25%

‘Alt’ proteins: Proteins from Sugar Beet Leaves

10

Photosynthetic machinery

Abundant waste

streams

Protein source

Process available

Plant tissue

Sugar storage

11

Traditional approach

Raw material

Pure ingredients Products

Protein

Oil

Carbohydrates

Rest to non-food applications

Isolation Mixing with water, heating

First aiming at proteins

12

Soluble and white540 kDa, 2 subunits

Chromatographic methods!

Photosystem I (Dekker & Boekema, 2005)

100 proteins, protein complexesSubunits: between <5 and 60 kDaNo water soluble, green

Insoluble Soluble

Leaf proteins

Soluble

RubiscoMembrane

proteins

Processes focussed on rubisco isolation

Is everything extracted?

13

Leaf processing

Pressing

Fibers

JuiceSugar beet leaves

50°C

Heating Centrifuging

Supernatant

Pellet

Chromatographic purification

Purified rubisco fraction

Only 6% of total proteins

Protein distribution during processing

Tamayo Tenorio et al; Food Chem. (2016)

How to extract protein?

14Tamayo Tenorio et al; Food Chem. (2017)

• Learning from other disciplines – proteomics

• Solvents for different conditionsTCA- acetone AcetoneMethanol Phenol/SDS

0

20

40

60

80

0 20 40 60 80 100

Pro

tein

pu

rity

wt%

(d

b)

Protein yield %

Leaf

6

5

4

32

1

Photosystem I

Membrane proteins

• Heterogeneous

• No pool of proteins in large quantities

Dilemma purity yield

0

20

40

60

80

100

0 20 40 60 80 100

Pro

tein

pu

rity

(w

/w %

)

Yield (%)

SBL

Alfalfa

Coliflower leaves

Duckweed

Aquatic plants

Algae1

Series4

Series12

Seaweed 2

Soy

Series1

Rapeseed

Pulses

Yield “Chicken Protein”: 25%

Chloroplastic membranes: Value of structures

16

Juice filtration

Buffer Thylakoid

membranes

Aqueous extraction

Leaf Juice

Protein-lipid complexesInterfacial properties

Transmission Electron microscope (TEM)

Osmium staining

200nm

Tamayo Tenorio et al; Soft Matter (2017)

Membranes

proteins

Stroma

Chloroplast

Thylakoids

membranes

Extraction of chloroplastic membranesEmulsifying mechanism

17

wt% 0.03 0.05 0.08 0.1

• Characterisation

• Application on O/W emulsions

Oil

Membrane lipidsProtein complexes

• Antioxidant activity (Thomas et al., 2016)

• Satiation effect: composition and structure (Erlanson-Albertsson & Albertsson, 2015)

• Encapsulation of active compoundsPlant Power!

Cellulosic particles from leaf fibrous pulp

18

Washing

Freeze drying Milling

Fine powder

(20 – 100 µm)

Aqueous extraction

Fibres

Cell wall

Cell wall structural

proteins

Cellulose microfibrils

Hemicellulose

Pectin

Cytosol

Plasma membrane

Cytosol

Plasma membrane

Pressing JuiceSugar beet leaves

Cellulose-rich particles from leaf fibrous pulpEmulsifying properties

19

Oil

• Pickering emulsifiers

• Benefit from protein “impurities”

• Source of dietary fibres

• Bulk ingredient, low calorie

1.0 0.1 0.5 Fibre concentration % w/v

Protein domains

Sugar beet leaves

20

Pressing

Fibers

JuiceSugar beet

leaves

50°C

Heating Centrifuging

Supernatant

Pellet

Rubisco isolation

Fraction Existing components

Fibers Protein-carbohydrate complex

Supernatant Mainly Rubisco protein

Green-pellet Protein-lipid complex

Chloroplastic

membranesProtein-lipid complex

Chloroplasticmembranes

Towards functional ingredients

Raw materials Functional fraction Product

Fractionation Structuring /Product assembly

Concluding remarks

• Leaves (or other novel sources) as a food source

• use all fractions and explore the potential applications of less refined material

• Highly refined ingredients limits options towards sustainable diet

• Functional bulk properties leave proteins not investigated

• Protein over-consumption allows replacement of meat by products with lower protein content

• Sustainability relevant at diet level

• Product level subjective

22

Plant Power! From traditional crops to ‘alt’ proteins

Atze Jan van der Goot

Food Protein Vision, Amsterdam, 8 March 2018