Tying blue and green resources via 3D food printing for diverse and sustainable future foods

A shift toward production and consumption of foods with lower environmental impacts such as plant (green) and aquatic (blue) foods is necessary to promote sustainability of our food system.

This transition is hindered with low efficiency in their production, purified ingredients, unfavorable nutrients and taste of plant proteins, overpressure on aquatic resources, low diversity of plant alternatives and low consumer interest toward them. 3DMIX aims to benefit from the advantages of both green and blue resources to solve their respective drawbacks by integrating them into mixtures sharing advantages of each source.

In this new approach, protein-rich functional fractions, instead of purified proteins, from agricultural side streams and underutilized aquatic resources will be precisely mixed and then formulated to healthy and personalized foods via 3D food printing.

Within four work packages, 3DMIX will (i) develop mild technologies for extraction of functional fractions rich in protein and other healthy marine nutrients from fish/shellfish side streams and seaweeds, (ii) explore extraction of protein-rich fractions from agricultural side streams with the minimum content of antinutrients and off-flavors, (iii) develop a new generation of sustainable and healthy protein ingredients by mixing the green and blue fractions and engineer their properties and (iv) formulate the mixed protein alternatives to new convenient and personalized foods using 3D food printing and extrusion.