description
- The 20th century food system was built of readily accessible carbohydrates (refined sucrose & starch, 4kcal/g). It provided abundant calories but led to localised nutrient excess and health issues such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The 21st-century's food system must redress this nutritional imbalance. Despite well-documented negative impacts of sugar and flour, they are cheap and highly functional ingredients, making their replacement challenging. To date, the food industry's attempts at "healthier" product reformulation have achieved only partial success. Despite being more agriculturally abundant than refined carbohydrates, fibre (0-2kcal/g), the macronutrient most lacking in Western diets, has been largely ignored. This collaboration between Cambridge Glycoscience Ltd and the University of Cambridge looks to redress this imbalance by expediting the commercialisation of CamGlyco's platform of "From Fibre" ingredients by turning agriculture's most abundant renewable resources (by-products like corn cobs, oat hulls and wheat straw) into replacements for sugar and flour / starch in food. The project outputs will provide farmers with additional income streams from underutilised plant residues, produce more food per unit of land, without concomitant increase in greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss, and give access to healthier ingredients to companies and consumers across mainstream food products; providing better food for all.