sprouts

Project: Innovative legume-based foods and drinks for enhanced resource use efficiency in food systems

The purpose of this transsektionell research project is to develop climate-smart and healthy foods and ingredients based on legumes (such as beans, lentils, peas) grown in Sweden.

Facts about the project

Project leader
Elin Röös, SLU
Project partners
Elin Röös SLU, Cornelia Witthöft LNU, Georg Carlsson, SLU Alnarp och Andreas Stephan, JIBS Jönköping
Financed by
Formas
Project Period
2017-2020
Topic
Food Science (Department of Chemistry and Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
Website/Blogg
http://blogg.slu.se/new-legume-foods/

More about the project

The aim of this project is to develop climate-smart and protein-rich food products containing domestic legumes (e.g. beans, lentils, peas), to increase the food system sustainability and stimulate a growing bio-economy based on novel, attractive and health-promoting foods. The project objectives are to:

  1. identify strategies for incorporating grain legumes suitable for cultivation in Nordic climate into the Nordic diet,
  2. develop new legume-based cropping systems that rely more on ecosystem services and less on fossil resources,
  3. investigate effects of processing techniques on the nutritional quality of novel legume-based foods,
  4. assess the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the production of foods based on domestic grain legumes compared to imported raw materials or meat, and develop decision support for handling trade-offs in the development of more climate-smart food systems. The project applies trans-sectorial collaboration among scientists, food industry, regional councils, farmers and consumers.

The project comprises five work packages (WPs):
LNU is WP-leader for the WP 4 entitled Characterisation of processing effects on the nutritional quality of grain legume foods and ingredients and the development of novel nutritious foods and participates in the WPs 1, 2, 4 and 6. In WP 4, legume-based foods and recipes will be developed using alternative processing, e.g. sprouting, fermentation, pickling etc. The hypotheses to be tested are that the application of novel techniques on legume raw material results in the development of tasty food products with increased content of health-beneficial nutrients. Quantification of key nutrients (relevant to health) in raw material, during industrial processing and in final products will be carried by a PhD student at LNU.

Figure 1. Project structure
Figure 1. Project structure

More information on the project: http://blogg.slu.se/new-legume-foods/

The project is part of the research of the research group Food Science

Coworkers