The future of Christmas dinner is upon us with recipes for alternative proteins and meats, including mycelium sausages, crawfish burgers and vegan desserts.
Ahead of the festival, Media Line and four food tech startups recently gathered in Jerusalem Venture Partners' Margalit Startup City to showcase the soon-to-be-new dishes to dinner tables near you for future parties.
The menu includes mushroom barbecue sausages and assorted mushrooms as well as salty grasshopper burgers, red curry pancakes and an array of vegan desserts.
JVP or Jerusalem Venture Partners is an international venture capital firm that invests in startups. One of the main directions of the company is food technology and protein alternative products.
"In the next 10 years, food as we understand it will change forever," Eriel Margalit, founder and president of JVP and Margalit Startup City, told the media. Food technology companies come here from the Galilee, Jerusalem and all over Israel. [They] come up with new ideas for alternative proteins. But for people to accept it, they need something that tastes like it.
Alternative proteins are growing in popularity in the food industry, in part due to environmental, ethical, and health concerns about animal husbandry. According to the World Economic Forum, according to the World Economic Forum, global food production accounts for 35% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. .
"We can't continue to feed the planet, especially using cows as our protein," said Margalit. “We are slaughtering 50 billion cows and the planet does not have enough pasture to feed them. Agriculture does not serve people, it serves cows.”
One startup that is part of the plant-based nutrition revolution is InnovoPro, which has developed a range of onion-based products, both sweet and savory. Feast of Jerusalem includes eggless meringue, vegan mayonnaise, chocolate mousse and hazelnut pudding.
"Innovopro produces the protein from peas," Daniela Rabinowitz, the company's vice president of marketing, told The Media Line. “We have a special extraction technology. We extract chickpeas and their high protein content is very versatile. It can be used as a substitute for milk, eggs and meat.”
Also on the table are a number of mycelium-based dishes produced by Kinoko Tech, including pork in a blanket, caramelized samud and samud dough infused with mycelium, and buns with red curry and coconut cream sauce.
“We developed products from nuts and seeds so you can see them here,” said Hadar Shohat, Co-Founder and CEO of Kinoco Tech. Perfectly balanced.
Another startup trying to change the food scene is Blue Huna, which turns agricultural waste into environmentally friendly disposables. For example, the company's pipettes are biodegradable.
"Currently, we only use 30 percent of the world's agricultural [yield]. The rest is burned or thrown away," Einon Sher, founder of Blue Hua, told the media.
But the unusual food-technology startup Hargol Foodtech discovered at dinner was the first company in the world to produce a locust protein alternative on a commercial scale.
Today's burger is a mix of ground chicken and ground grasshopper, probably a very tasty combination.
"It's clear that sorghum is a very effective source of protein," Dror Tamir, founder and CEO of Hargol Foodtech, told The Media Line. "Naturally contains 72% complete protein and is rich in essential nutrients."
Locusts are a nutrient-dense source of sustainable protein and are rapidly gaining attention in food technology, especially because they are easy to harvest and require minimal inputs.
While eating insects may be a psychological deterrent, this writer can at least confirm that grasshoppers taste incredibly meaty when mixed with chicken.
"The food is excellent," Margalit says of the Christmas dinner. “A bacon-like mushroom, a hamburger-flavored grasshopper, or a pea protein changes yogurt and ice cream forever; all these and other ideas are forward-looking.” We all eat this way and meals change forever.
Courtesy, written and copyrighted by Maya Margate / Media Line