Delicious spirulina -food of the future
Carmit Oron
?? Climate-Tech CEO | Women in Agritech Advocate | Transforming Global Food Systems
Microalgae-based proteins could significantly contribute to meet the population's need for protein, with several advantages over other currently used protein sources. Microalgae-based proteins have low land requirements compared to animal-based proteins: <2.5 m2 per kg of protein 42–52 m2 for chicken, and 144–258 m2 for beef production. Land requirements are also lower than for some other plant-based proteins used for food and feed such as soybean meal, pea protein meal, and others.
Key to successful market uptake of microalgae is finding ways to integrate it into attractive food products. Spirulina contains more beta carotene than carrots, more chlorophyll than wheatgrass, and 50 times more iron than spinach. It’s packed with large amounts of calcium, niacin, potassium, B vitamins and all essential amino acids. It even contains much more protein than any other source of food — including meat.
I had the pleasure to spend my Friday morning with Baruch Dach the founder and CTO at AlgaeMor, to visit the farm and to taste their new food products from spirulina micro-algae. The company's technology utilizes a combination of agriculture, biology, food engineering, process engineering, and algorithms.
In this light, AlgaeMor invited an Israeli chef Ohad Kori to explore imaginative ways to make spirulina taste delicious. Ohad developed delicious spirulina dishes like Hummus, pesto, Gazpacho, dips, muesli, falafel, pancakes, and another sweet dessert.
As it grows, algae create byproducts such as oils, food and animal feed. Growing one kg of algae requires about 1.8kg of carbon dioxide, which is converted into biomass and oxygen. Now imagine if we could scale up this process and use algae at an industrial plant. Not only would it sequester carbon dioxide and produce oxygen it would also generate biomass that could be used in, say, animal feed or the pharmaceutical industry.
Sr. Research Associate @ Wildtype | Food Design
5 å¹´Minqi Wang
Perpetual learner
5 å¹´Spirulina has been around for more than 50 years, but is very far from reaching it's full potential and creating significant impact. The comments above talking about shrimp farmers and 80s trends fail to pinpoint the problem - current global production capacity (or incapacity) is less than 50k MT per year vs 13 million MT of peas (not even the most common pulse crop). We have to scale massively, working on creating a demand through innovative and palatable products as well as a reliable, consistent and safe supply chain that can support an industry. This is our challenge - and it makes more sense than most of the other alternative protein and micronutrient sources out there. This will require multidisciplinary expertise and collaboration far wider than one company or one nation. Thank you for the spotlight Carmit!
?? Climate-Tech CEO | Women in Agritech Advocate | Transforming Global Food Systems
5 å¹´Baruch Dach?you are the super Algae! you probably have some of the answers :)
National Algae Association - a 501(c)6 non-profit
5 å¹´Congrats to the algaepreneurs!? We invite you to join the Algae Biomass Exchange a meeting place for qualified algae producers.
Vannamei shrimp aquaculture industry pioneer. Subject matter expert. Global consultant - vertical integrations, semi-intensive to super-intensive (RAS), value chain, processing, markets, futures. Innovation & technology.
5 å¹´"Now imagine if we could scale up this process and use algae at an industrial plant". No need to imagine.....the shrimp farming industry have been harnessing this process extensively for decades....