Dive Brief:
- Sir Kensington’s created a vegan mayonnaise made with aquafaba last month, the liquid left over from cooking chickpeas.
- The aquafaba acts as a natural egg substitute in the company’s product, called Fabanaise.
- Sir Kensington’s has teamed up with Ithaca Hummus, anticipating to save thousands of pounds of aquafaba, according to the Huffington Post.
Dive Insight:
The repurposing of ingredients, where food companies reduce waste streams by using byproducts and waste materials to create foods, is a niche sector with mainstream potential, according to the New Hope Network. Segments finding success include bananas, mushrooms, fruit-flavored bottled water, and fruit and vegetable juices.
According to the recent 27 Solutions to Food Waste roadmap developed by ReFED, value-added processing of foods has the potential to divert 102k tons of food waste destined for landfills. While ReFED makes efforts to highlight activities by nonprofits, the value-added section of its roadmap includes companies finding success with food waste.
One company, Barnana, upcycles organic bananas that are considered as not up to snuff for consumers, and which would otherwise rot on farms in South America. "In a region where over 70% of the food that is produced is exported, this leaves a massive amount of bananas left behind to rot," according to the company’s website.
Another company, Misfit Juicery, cold presses so-called ugly fruits and vegetables to create juice flavors such as pear, cucumber, spinach and lemon.
Yet another company finding success with repurposed ingredients is Kona Red, which offers a coffeeberry superfruit powder created from the unused part of the coffee fruit.