SusProFood: Optimising development of SUStainable functional fibre-rich FOODs fortified with plant PROteins.

到2027年，温室气体排放量相当低的植物性食品的全球市场预计将大幅增加至130亿英镑。这在很大程度上是由于公众对环境可持续性的认识不断提高，粮食生产对气候危机的贡献，与红肉消费有关的食品相关健康问题，动物福利考虑以及素食主义，弹性饮食和越来越多的“健康意识”消费者的兴起。因此，在食品工业中存在巨大的兴趣，将可持续的植物蛋白掺入其富含纤维的方便食品中，例如冰沙、早餐锅、汤、肉汁，以改善这些经常消费的可获得产品的健康。这包括为他们提供“更长时间更充分”的益处和健康功能，特别是在肠道健康和心脏代谢健康方面，以及实现到2050年实现净零目标的雄心。然而，植物蛋白的添加带来了不可接受的“干”，“非多汁”的饮料的严峻技术挑战，这些饮料未能满足消费者的期望，并且仍然是采用植物性食品的主要障碍。此外，添加的植物蛋白可能会与纤维相互作用并结合，这可能会降低纤维固有的有益肠道功能效果。SusProFood结合学术界和工业界的互补优势，旨在优化和验证一项突破性技术，涉及在不使用任何化学添加剂的情况下对植物蛋白进行工艺诱导的物理改性，赋予植物蛋白质优异的润滑性和水合性能。由于这种物理改性，这限制了植物蛋白与纤维的结合，从而协同地允许肠道细菌有效地对膳食纤维进行结肠发酵，支持食用富含高纤维食物的固有代谢益处并提供必要的健康益处。与工业合作伙伴（SPG Innovation，SME和Innocent Drinks，大型公司）一起，将优化和验证当前使用的过程变量的修改，而无需添加任何新的能源密集型资源。新的生态友好型配方和在开发厨房中开发的富含植物蛋白质的纤维食品的加工的性能将在多种食品形式中进行大规模试验，使用独特设计的工具包，人体感官试验和消费者研究来量化改善的风味和营养益处。我们的项目将产生新的配方和加工路线，以革命性地创造下一代令人愉快的植物蛋白强化纤维丰富的食物，这些食物对健康人群至关重要，并有助于实现可持续的健康地球，以实现净零的雄心。

The global market for plant-based foods with considerably low greenhouse gas emissions is expected to increase considerably to £13 billion by 2027\. This is largely fuelled by the growing public awareness for environmental sustainability and the contribution of food production to the climate crisis, food related health concerns associated with red meat consumption, animal welfare considerations and rise in veganism, flexitarian diets and an increasingly "health aware" consumer. There is thus an immense interest within food industries to incorporate sustainable plant proteins into their fibre-rich convenience foods such as smoothies, breakfast pots, soups, gravies in order to improve the wellness of these regularly consumed accessible products. This includes providing them with "fuller for longer" benefits and health functionality, especially in terms of gut health and cardio-metabolic health, as well as fulfilling the ambitions to reach Net Zero targets by 2050\. However, addition of plant proteins comes with severe technological challenges of unacceptable "dry", "non-juicy" mouthfeel that are failing to meet consumer expectations and remain a major obstacle for adoption of plant-based foods. In addition, the added plant proteins may interact and bind with fibres, which might reduce the inherent beneficial gut function effects of the fibre.This feasibility project SusProFood combining complementary strengths of academia and industry aims to optimise and validate a ground breaking technology involving process-induced physical modification of plant proteins without using any chemical additive, conferring outstanding lubricity and hydration properties to plant proteins. Due to such physical modification, this limits plant proteins binding to fibres thus synergistically allowing the colonic fermentation of dietary fibres by gut bacteria effectively, supporting the inherent metabolic benefits of consuming high fibre-rich foods and providing the necessary health benefits. Together with industrial partners (SPG Innovation, SME and Innocent Drinks, large company), will optimize and validate the modification of currently used in-process variables without adding any new energy-intensive resources. The performance of the new eco-friendly formulation and processing of plant protein-rich fibrous foods developed in developmental kitchens to large pilot scale across multiple food formats will be tested using uniquely designed instrumental toolkits, human sensory trials and consumer studies to quantify improved mouthfeel and nutritional benefits. Our project will generate new formulation and processing routes to revolutionize the creation of next generation of pleasurable, plant protein-fortified fibre rich foods that are vital for a healthy population and contribute to a sustainable one health planet to achieve the ambition of Net Zero.