Accelerate Estonia, in collaboration with ÄIO and Gelatex, held one of ‘Europe's first’ public novel food tastings last week during the region's start-up and tech event Latitude59.
Estonia’s ÄIO uses natural and precision fermentation processes to produce alternatives to fats and oils – its microbial oils are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, providing a source for healthy, sustainable, polyunsaturated fats.
Also based in Estonia, Gelatex produces high-performance nanofibrous 3D scaffolds and microcarriers for scalable cultured meat mass production.
Accelerate Estonia spent the last year working with ÄIO and Gelatex together with the relevant public sector entities to find ways for Estonia to pioneer the novel foods approval process by guiding deep-tech companies through the regulatory hurdles, possibly using AI to analyse the regulations and past applications to gather insight in how to prepare for the approval process.
This initiative is designed to enhance food security, foster innovation and grow Estonia’s position in the food-tech sector.
The tasting event explored the current novel food approval process and featured dishes prepared by chef Johannes Hõimoja using novel food ingredients from ÄIO and Gelatex.
The courses included tempura battered oyster mushrooms with a BBQ sauce made using ÄIO’s oils. The second course offered tastings of cupcakes with buttercream made with ÄIO’s oils. The tasting also offered chocolate chip cookies, in which the chocolate was made with ÄIO’s ingredients as a substitute for cocoa powder. The final course was eclairs filled with yeast cream, made with ÄIO’s oils.
Gelatex provided its potato fibrous scaffold for tasting, which isn’t designed for eating separately, but as a scaffold for cultured meat.
