🍬 Sugar & Fat
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Clean Food Group raised £4.5M to scale yeast-derived oils and fats from food waste
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- Clean Food Group, a UK startup producing oils and fats from food waste via yeast fermentation, raised £4.5M, with participation from Döhler, and received a £700K grant to support the scale-up of its industrial facility.
- It says its platform produces alternatives to palm, coconut, and mineral oils at price parity, with applications across cosmetics and food.
- The funding will also support commercialisation, with regulatory approval already secured for cosmetics.
Green Queen
Other news
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David Protein faces a lawsuit over calorie and fat labelling discrepancies
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- David Protein, a US startup, faces a class action lawsuit alleging its protein bars understate calories by up to 83% and fat by up to 400%, exceeding the FDA’s 20% tolerance levels, based on third-party testing.
- In response, the startup defends its labelling, arguing its plant-based fat alternative (EPG) is not fully bioavailable and should not be counted as digestible calories, in line with approved regulatory calculation methods.
Comment: This case is interesting to follow, as it highlights potential gaps and controversies in nutritional measurement for novel ingredients.
Nutritional Outlook
Quick news
Neoh, an Austrian startup originally known for its zero-added-sugar snack brand, secured a multi-million-euro investment, notably from REWE Group, to scale its B2B sugar substitute Zero+, a fibre-based ingredient already used in confectionery and expanding into broader applications.
👅 Other taste enhancers/modulators
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Reduced raised €4M to industrialise upcycled savoury flavour ingredients
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- Reduced, a Danish startup using solid-state fermentation to upcycle food waste into savoury flavours, raised €4M to scale production and expand its portfolio.
- Its technology combines rice koji fermentation and controlled reactions, said to produce flavours in just three days, targeting alternatives to hydrolysed proteins and meat or yeast extracts.
- It delivers additive-free flavour compounds (umami, kokumi, Maillard), with a range of mushroom, vegetable, shore crab and chicken concentrates.
Green Queen
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