Impact of extracting and incorporating novel microbial functional food ingredients into current dietary patterns: is the hype real? (HYPer)

Microorganisms such as bacteria, yeast and microalgae are a rich source of functional food ingredients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids, proteins, antioxidants, carbohydrates, fibers and more. However, one major drawback is that the growth of these microorganisms as well as the recovery of these compounds are rather costly and have a dramatic impact on the functionality of their ingredients. Therefore, novel less expensive and mild extraction and purification technologies are required in order to make these alternative food ingredients competitive while maintaining their functionality and providing a clean label. Moreover, there is still no consensus on the real technoeconomic and lifecycle impact of these processing technologies and the large-scale use of these alternative ingredients. Novel, mild and multiproduct technologies could contribute to making these alternative and potentially more sustainable ingredients a reality. Targeted external fields such as acoustic, microwave, pressure and electric can provide a mild cell disruption and compound fractionation. Moreover, the addition of novel natural solvents such as essential oils generated as a side-stream from orange processing could further act as process intensification strategies. Thus, HYPer will investigate the impact of targeted external fields and natural extraction systems with regards to extraction yield and functionality of lipids, proteins carbohydrates, pigments and secondary metabolites. In order to place the relevance and applicability of these ingredients into a food system perspective the (techno)economic aspect, environmental impact, and implications for diet need to be considered. Therefore, a technoeconomic and life cycle assessment will be performed to determine the impact of incorporating these extraction technologies and products into current food systems. Then, the potential of these ingredients will be assessed using diet modelling and impact analysis.