How flour holds promise for the future of food waste upcycling

WHILE bakers may be stunned by the soaring price of wheat flour, up 30 to 40%, this basic ingredient offers a new solution when it comes to recycling food waste.

You might already be familiar with flour made from brewer's spent grain, but now the industry is finding ways to make flour from carrot peel, tomato seeds and orange peel.

In Reggio Emilia, in Italy's Emilia Romagna, region, some 12 tonnes of waste in the form of orange peel and pineapple peel, as well as tomato seeds and skins, carrot peel and cereal residues, are delivered each month to a small company with just five employees that's committed to reducing food waste.

To achieve its goal, the Packtin company has filed a patent that protects its so-called "cold" drying process, set between 30° and 40°, to dehydrate all this waste. This process replaces the freeze-drying process used today by the food industry.

And, in a virtuous approach, the owners Riccardo De Leo and Andrea Quartieri only accept waste produced within 150 kilometres of their company. In the case of pineapple or oranges from Sicily, the fruit is processed on-site to limit the carbon footprint, before the peels are subjected to their exclusive extraction process.

For 24 hours, the peels are stripped of all water molecules, which are then recovered to supply the factory.

"Not only does this technique cost less than freeze-drying, but above all it makes it possible to maintain all the nutritional and taste properties of fruits and vegetables and even manages to keep the pectin," Andrea Pulvirenti, the scientific advisor who oversaw the two founders' research project before they decided to turn it into a start-up, told ETX Studio.

He adds: "We recently established a partnership with an artisanal bakery that wants to flavor its panettone with our orange peel flour."

Indeed, Packtin's flours can be used in various ways. Present at the last SIAL food show in Paris, the company demonstrated to food manufacturers that its products can naturally enhance the color of their foods, for example.

In fact, flours can be excellent natural colourants. They can also reinforce flavour at a lower cost, underlines Andrea Pulvirenti, who gives the example of tomato seeds and skins, which still contain much flavour.

In the case of pineapple, it's more a matter of extracting the fiber and using it as a natural preservative. "By adding pineapple flour to stuffed pasta, it can be kept for up to three months because there will be no loss of fat," reveals the scientist.

Packtin's team even imagines using its flours as ingredients to make edible coatings to further drive down waste.

Coffee flour

While the uses envisaged by the Italian start-up concern only food industry professionals, home cooks can also review their habits by using more flours produced from recycled waste.

In Canada, for example, a company called GroundUp Eco-Ventures makes flour from coffee! Entirely gluten-free, this flour is made from coffee grounds recovered from establishments in the province of Alberta, and contains twice as much protein as rice flour.

The Canadian company also offers a flour made from the barley residue left over from the brewing of beers by microbreweries in the area.

In France, in recent years, budding entrepreneurs who are committed to reducing waste have been recovering brewer's spent grain, or draff – the pulp obtained after brewing beer – in order to produce flours. The brand "Ramen tes drêches" uses it, for example, to make Japanese-style noodles. – ETX Daily Up, November 3, 2022