Author: KeepFoodSimple

Nuts are of great importance to a healthy diet. Moreover, there is an increasing interest in growing walnuts and hazelnuts locally, supported by the Dutch Association for Nuts. Focus is on both fresh nuts as well as on nuts processed into food products. Keep Food Simple provides technological assistance.

Local production
The main sources of walnuts and hazelnuts are the United States and Turkey. To increase local production in the Netherlands, the growing of nuts as a part of circular agriculture has become an important challenge. This includes questions about the choice of cultivars, production volumes and quality as well as the design of short supply chains.

Consumer preferences
In order to establish consumer preferences, an MSc student of Maastricht University has made a critical evaluation of this literature.

Together with its partners, Keep Food Simple will take the next steps to further support locally grown walnuts and hazelnuts. The focus is on technological opportunities, maximising consumer acceptance and nutritional value.

Chicory (witlof) denotes the blanched, tight heads produced by forcing or growing in darkness from chicory roots. These roots have previously been harvested from the open field and kept at ^oC.

Potential of the chicory root
In the Netherlands, around 50,000 tons of chicory are produced, with the tap roots remaining.
As early as the 1980s, experiments were carried out in search of possibilities for using those roots.
The process of breaking down the root cell walls using enzymes is well known. We also know what happens to carbohydrates and bitter substances during this liquefaction.
A consumer panel found the juice obtained after flavouring with sugar and acid acceptable.
But since then, as far as we know, nothing has been done with this approach. For example, there was no interest from the soft drinks industry.

KFS approach
KFS was recently approached by Leen-Jan and Leonard Reedijk, owners of Nieuw Bonaventura where they grow biodynamic chicory. They asked KFS to help with the value of the chicory roots.
Keep Food Simple then called in Ashley Price. She graduated from HAS University of Applied Sciences and sees this project as a wonderful opportunity for a learning trajectory when starting her own consultancy company.
The project starts with an update on new scientific literature on this topic. This is followed by a work plan for and implementation of the processing of chicory roots into a semi-finished product for bitter juices.
Naturally, circular agriculture and sustainability and the fullest possible processing of the root while preserving the naturally present nutrients are central to this.

Spent grains remain after the extraction of wort from malt in beer production. In The Netherlands 0.5 million tons of spent grains are produced annually.

The composition
Spent grains mainly contain seed husk, pericarp, and chaff of the sprouted barley. These are composed of cellulose, arabinoxylans, proteins, lignin, lipid, and minerals. The fibre fraction of spent grains consists mainly arabinoxylans.
The spent grains are also rich in polyphenols, with a high concentration of ferulic acid.
The amounts in spent grains are considerable and so it has potential as a source of dietary fibre and protein.

The application
Large quantities of spent grains are obtained in beer brewing and are predominantly used as animal feed.
However, spent grains could also be applied as a high-quality ingredient in food preparation. Consumers would then benefit from its healthy properties – fibre and protein.
Spent grains are already applied in the preparation of bread and baked products. As an ingredient they also have potential to replace animal proteins in existing food products.

Taking advantage of the potential
Keep Food Simple and MaGie Creations have started to co-operate to optimise the technological, nutritional and health properties of spent grains.
The aim is to use the spent grains as a “whole” ingredient, i.e., without fractionation.

The project
Fibres in spent grains are present in crystalline, amorphous, and soluble forms. To improve their technological functionality and nutritional value, our activities are focused on enzymatic modification of the fibre. This can be done by reducing the molecular weight via controlled enzymatic degradation. Keep Food Simple and MaGie Creations are also looking into the benefits of converting the fibre to (arabino)xylo-oligosaccharides.

In The Netherlands 100,000 tonnes of white cabbage are grown annually of which the largest part is processed into sauerkraut. After shredding, 15,000 tons remain as stalks and are fed to cattle.

Preservation of nutritional value
Both the shredded parts as well as the stalks are similar in nutritional value. The stalks are hard and fibrous due to the presence of lignocellulose in the cell wall. Therefore these stalks are unsuitable for the lactic acid fermentation process which is the core of the sauerkraut production.

In order to be able to use the stalks in regular sauerkraut production, KFS has suggested to treat these with cell wall modifying enzymes. Background knowledge and expertise is available through the co-operation between KFS and Prof Henk Schols, Chair of Food Chemistry at Wageningen University.

Next steps
The first tests were executed by the students of HAS Den Bosch, Netherlands as a part of their graduate research programme, and the results were most encouraging . The next step is the design of a process as well as a cost evaluation together with FoodTechBrainport, Helmond, Netherlands and a Dutch sauerkraut producer. This will largely determine the feasibility of this project in day-to-day sauerkraut production.