At Expo West 2019, FoodBev’s Harriet Jachec spoke with Tyler Lorenzen, president of food company Puris, to discover how they utilise every part of the pea in order to create great-tasting, plant-based food products.
“One of the products we launched at Expo West is a pea crisp. This is a 60% protein crisp, so we take a pea and we extrude it so it makes a nice crunchy texture. Then you can add it to protein bars, or cereals, or even as a yogurt topper to add protein inclusion but not through a powder source.
“In a different market segment is plant-based meat. It is changing so fast and it’s very cool, so what we did is invent a texturised pea protein that takes pea protein and other starches and flours and ultimately makes a meat-like texture once it’s rehydrated. Then you can make nuggets or burgers to make new meat that’s non-animal. That market is growing really fast on a great basis – there’s a lot of great companies leading the way there.”
Puris markets its products as being ‘non-GMO’, and Lorenzen said he was disappointed with recent FDA guidance, despite the new rules forcing brands to declare whether they use any bioengineered ingredients.
“It’s good that the government is taking a stance,” he said. “I think it fell short of what our expectations were. When you think of the ‘why?’ behind it, consumers want to know where their food comes from and what’s in it, and they have the right to know. The third-party organisations over the past 15 years or so have done a good job at really setting a standard to live by, where consumers trust that if a product is verified by the Non-GMO Project, that you can trust it.
“With the new bioengineering act, I think it brings more confusion than it does clarity – and the goal was to bring more clarity for the consumer. There’s confusion on the name, confusion on the disclosure and it doesn’t bring clarity, which was the ultimate purpose.”
Presented by: Harriet Jachec Edited by: Alex Clere
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