As the co-founder and lead at the National Institute for Cellular Agriculture at Texas A&M Reza Ovissipour, explores how coffee, chocolate and grain byproducts could meet address the growing need for nutritious, palatable and clean label products.
Ovissipour’s program, which received a grant from the USDA in 2021, scales plant-based cells via fermentation, precision fermentation and cellular agriculture. Along with cell-based coffee and chocolate, Ovissipour also leads research on cell-based meat and caviar.
The lab sources spent barley from local breweries, which are typically used in animal feed. Ovissipour identified the high-value spent grain as “something that is valuable for human nutrition as well.”
Similarly, Ovissipour’s lab works with local coffee shops to source spent coffee which has “other nutrients” that can be used “more wisely” environmentally and nutritiously than as waste, he explained.
Addressing the growing need for sustainable cocoa and protein fortification
One possible benefit from spent coffee is chocolate flavor. By fermenting the spent coffee grains, Ovissipour’s lab converted the raw materials into a chocolate aroma – a potentially clean-label and environmentally efficient solution to the current global cocoa crisis, he said.
Protein is another benefit from both the spent coffee and grains, and can be combined with other protein sources, Ovissipour explained.
The lab developed a protein-rich chocolate brownie from spent grains and coffee, which exhibited “higher” digestibility and nutritional values “compared to many other protein bars,” Ovissipour said.
CPG companies from US to Asia expressed interest in the lab’s findings to develop protein bars and other food products, he added.
Ovissipour plans to share the lab’s findings at the upcoming Coffee Expo in Houston in April with a goal to garner more funding interest from the venture capitalists and companies.
Addressing market acceptance around insects
Ovissipour’s lab also explores the role of insects as a protein source.
While insects as food are more novel in the US than other countries, Ovissipour explains that using fermentation to scale insect protein vs the whole insect itself will have a “chance for market and consumer acceptance.”
“We are changing the insect protein to something that is not 100% insect anymore. It is a fermentation. It is a microbial protein as well. It is a fungi material as well. We feed the fungi with insects and they turn them to something that is more valuable” for flavor, nutrition and digestion, he added.