Sustainable Food Production

Animal-derived foods can be very resource intensive. Fewer resources are needed to produce mimetics of meat, milk, and cheeses based on plants, insects, yeast, and fungi—but to gain popularity with Canadians and North Americans in general, these mimetics must offer similar appearance, flavour, and texture relative to their familiar animal-derived counterparts.

Prof. Alejandro Marangoni uses neutron beams to study the structures in food that are responsible for these qualities that comprise “mouth feel” in order to develop more sustainable foods. His research has used neutrons to gain basic understanding of cheese’s structure and physical properties, which is necessary for designing plant-based products to reduce reliance on cow milk. His current partnership with Daiya Foods, the top Canadian brand of plant-based cheese, has developed its first prototype, which hit markets in the fall of 2023, with further expansion into related products in 2024. Other companies licensing and evaluating the technology include Tnuva in Israel and New Roots in Switzerland. Rapid market adoption is expected. Marangoni’s other technology, which is based on prolamin-structured plant-based cheese, is currently licensed by Motif FoodWorks and will be hitting the market in early 2024.

Marangoni has also discovered a means to greatly simplify the tempering of chocolate—a complex, energy-intensive process with a large carbon footprint—and thereby make chocolate production more environmentally friendly. He already has chocolate production firms, such as Cargill, interested in his innovations, and he expects to commercialize a version of his tempering method for small producers.

Marangoni is also developing structured edible oils to replace or reduce the use of palm oil and hydrogenated fats. Demand for palm oil is leading to the destruction of rainforests in Brazil and Borneo, resulting in the devastation of native habitats for many plants and animals. Marangoni is developing palm oil alternatives (“oleogels”) based on oil extracts from canola plants, which are grown in Canada. An additional benefit of such oils is that they can be adapted to produce plant-based meats. Vegan products typically lack the animal fats responsible for the mouth feel of meats, but oleogels can be modified to produce similar structures in meat mimetics. A novel approach Marangoni has been developing more recently is to fill scaffolds derived from plant structures with oleogels or modified oils to create animal fat mimetics.

Marangoni has over 40 patents and has a strong relationship with companies around the world, particularly AAK in Denmark and the Swiss start-up Planted, the fastest-growing start-up in Europe, which are working to validate and test his oleogel technologies. He also has ongoing projects with Ontario-based companies, such as Coasun (offering baking substitutes for palm oil) and Whistler Performance Labs (offering environmentally friendly oil-based consumer products), as well as active collaborations on structured emulsions with AAK, which adopted Coasun technology into their portfolio.