Food Companies Team Up To Make Plant-Based Foods With Fermented Fats

A Swedish start-up and a major Finnish food company are partnering up to create plant-based foods containing fermented fats.

Melt&Marble makes animal-free fats using precision fermentation. Valio is Finland’s largest milk processor, and makes other dairy products including cheese, yogurt, and butter. It also has a plant-based brand called Oddly Good with ranges of plant-based milk, cheese, and yogurt.

The partnership between the companies will be a long-term collaboration to study the yeast-based fats produced by Melt&Marble. The fats are made to have different properties according to their required function. This means the products that will result from the collaboration should improve on the texture, juiciness, and structure of other plant-based alternatives.

Read more: What Is Precision Fermentation, And Could It Replace Animal Farming?

“By integrating our precision fermentation-based designer fats with Valio’s extensive expertise in food formulation, we’re working to set a new standard in the plant-based food industry, offering consumers tasty options that rival traditional animal-based products,” Melt&Marble wrote on LinkedIn.

Engineering yeast cells

Melt&Marble creates its fats by engineering the metabolism of yeast cells so they can turn natural sugars into fats. Specialized enzymes then determine the properties of the fats such as saturation and chain length. Fats can be customized to replicate the function of plant and animal fats, or turned into something new. The company describes its methods as using fermentation to produce fats instead of alcohol from engineered yeast cells.

The fats can be used as personal care products as well as in food, as many plant and animal fats already are. They are intended to solve the sustainability issues of most fats used commercially. The fats can also be made healthier and more functional.

Marble&Melt also recently joined the EU-funded Delicious project. The project involves 17 organizations working on microbial fermentation and bioinformatics to develop improved plant-based dairy products.

Marble&Melt is not the only start-up focusing on making fats in novel ways. Savor, a Californian food tech company backed by Bill Gates, makes fat molecules by heating up carbon dioxide and hydrogen and mixing them with oxygen. It has made butter for the fat that is chemically identical to butter made from dairy.

Read more: Company Makes ‘Ultra-Realistic’ Vegan Meat Using Tech Inspired By Textile Manufacturing