Attendees heard that message during a panel of industry representatives in the plant-based ingredient space at the recent Agri Tech Venture Forum in Toronto.

“The problem is that there’s a lot of bad products in the market, you know, and I’m a chef by profession,” said Yves Potvin, founder of Konscious Foods, a plant-based protein company. “The first person that’s going to try a plant-based product, if they try (those ones), they’re going to be very disappointed and they might not go back in the marketplace.”

The discussion hit a more positive note looking to the future. There was significant optimism that the market will grow and that companies dishing out products meeting consumers desire will continue to succeed.

More plant-based protein consumption can create more markets or boost prices for farmers’ crops.

The panel was moderated by Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada (PIC), the $350-million federal government fund to increase plant protein production and processing in Canada.

Panellists offered their take on what went wrong when some of those early plant-protein options hit the market amid a wave of hype. Products looking to replace meat directly rather than dig new niches on the menu appealed to vegans and vegetarians, but often didn’t meet expectations on taste or eating fulfillment for the general grocery shopper, attendees heard.

It is expected, however, that plant proteins will grow significantly as an ingredient in food, an avenue that the panellists in attendance hope to cash in on.

PIC has identified a $25 billion opportunity in plant proteins in food ingredients. The ingredients sector is another way to add to additional processing in rural Western Canada, Greuel said in an interview.

The more processing on the Prairies, the less product must be moved to water for shipping, a cost estimated at about $75 per tonne. “More processing in Western Canada means we’re not beholden to the transportation sector for those dollars,” he argued.

He pointed to news of a new Louis Dreyfus pea protein plant in Yorkton, Sask., announced in February. “They see the growth potential at about six to seven per cent compound annual growth rate. That’s significant.”

Heidi Dutton, CEO of Lovingly Made Ingredients and Sunnydale Foods, flagged hybrid foods as the future of plant protein.

She sees people like her father, a Saskatchewan farmer who she described as a “meatetarian,” as part of that customer base. They may be suspicious about plant protein, but will eat products where a plant protein has been added in alongside traditional ingredients, such as in a bolognaise sauce for spaghetti.

The companies she runs provide ingredient consulting for other food companies when they want to simplify their products to be more consumer-friendly. That work covers both the meat and plant protein markets.

Price has been a challenge for plant protein products trying to replace meat, but there should be room to be price competitive. “You can buy peas for $440 Canadian a tonne,” said Dutton. “And you can sell ground beef for $15,000 a tonne. There’s money to be made in between.”

Lei Luc, CEO of Liven, a Canadian company turning plant protein into products like collagen, said the increase in plant-based products will take time. Their section in the supermarket continues to be small.

“What will help the sections expand is … by investing in the sector and enabling different diversity of ingredients to increase the portfolio,” she said.

Consumer evolution takes time, she added, citing the 30 years it took for the rennet used in the majority of cheese-making to shift from that sourced from animal stomachs to bio-based.

Potvin is a serial innovator in plant-protein products. He built and sold Yves’ Veggie Cuisine, Gardein and has now launched Konscious Foods.

He continues to make meat replacements, including a popular smoked salmon replacement, as well as products meant to taste like tuna and crab. Their California roll is also popular and has won awards at American food competitions. They now sell in 6,000 stores in the United States and they can make 4,000 California rolls per hour with their machinery. They’re looking to grow.

He’s not anti-meat or anti-fish, he said, but he is for giving people more food choices, and he feels plant-based food hasn’t had enough winners in the space. “We really need a product that will bring people to the category.”

Products like his smoked salmon replacement have to deliver on price, taste, availability, nutrition and it can make people who are concerned with salmon production feel good about what they’re buying, he said.

It’s a tall order. Companies that remain after the market upheaval for plant products will have to be more focused on markets that matter and products that people are excited to keep eating, Potvin said.

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“With our refreshed strategic Blueprint announced today, we are sharpening our execution focus… aligning the talents of our team to leverage the strength of our portfolio of leading brands, leadership in sustainability and world-class assets,” said Curtis Frank, president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., in a news release.

Maple Leaf released its fourth quarter financial results on Feb. 22. Over 2023, its meat protein group’s sales increased about three per cent to $4.74 billion.

However, in Q4, sales didn’t meet expectations “as a result of global pork market dislocations that have persisted longer and deeper than we anticipated, and a challenging consumer demand environment,” Frank said in the news release.

“Plus we still have a short distance to go to bring home the full benefits from our London Poultry and Bacon Centre of Excellence projects,” he said.

At the end of 2023, the meat protein group had an adjusted EBITDA of $463 million, up 22.3 per cent from 2022.

The plant protein group saw sales of $147 million, down just over 13 per cent from 2022.

“The sales decline was driven by lower volumes in retail and foodservice products, partially offset by pricing action implemented in prior quarters to mitigate inflation,” Maple Leaf said in its 2023 annual report.

The plant division’s end-of-year EBITDA was a loss of $32.9 million compared with a $105.4 million loss in 2022. The company said this improvement came on reduction of startup expenses, higher pricing and “operational improvements.”

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Maple Leaf said the plant-based business had performed well in Q4, posting a positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.1 million ($100,000).

Meat processors struggled in 2023, with Olymel dialing back hog production in Alberta and Saskatchewan early in the year, and closing processing plants in Ontario and Quebec.

“Over the past two years it is well documented that Olymel has experienced significant losses in the processing of fresh pork as a result of limited market access globally,” Olymel CEO Yanick Gervais said May 2023.

“Now, coupled with stubbornly high feed costs, resulting in unprecedent losses in the hog sector, we have little choice but to retract and position ourselves for success in the future when conditions improve.”

Manitoba-based Hylife Foods shuttered its Windom, Minnesota plant at the beginning of June, and laid off a handful of mainly administrative workers in Manitoba, citing “current global condition.”

In the plant protein space, Nourish Marketing noted in its 2024 trend report that while consumer curiosity drove the first wave of plant-based meat analogues, most consumers “will not pay a price comparable to meat for a product they view as a disappointing alternative to the real thing” while vegans and vegetarians drive only a small portion of sales.

Nourish predicted a consolidation of products in that space and a turn toward more plant-forward options.

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By separating “the good stuff” (protein, starch and dietary fibre) from faba beans, a University of Alberta researcher has improved on a process that minimizes human flatulence from eating them. That issue has long been a deterrent to mass acceptance of the pulse.

But that’s just the start of the story. Brasathe Jeganathan’s work is also driving more efficient and sustainable improvements in the process of extracting protein from faba beans. The end result is a very pure protein with possible food applications.

And for the researcher, it’s a crucial drop in a very big ocean.

“One of the biggest challenges we are facing now, as food scientists, is feeding 9.7 billion people by 2050,” said Jeganathan, who earned a PhD in food science and technology for her research. 

“We can’t completely rely on animal-based proteins because it’s not sustainable in the long run. So we need to explore other alternative protein sources, because we definitely have to figure out something that could work.”

On a more micro level, there’s potential to create food products from the extracted bean protein.

Just using plain faba beans might not work to obtain certain traits, “like the ability to form a gel,” the researcher said. “

You need high pure protein fractions to produce high-protein food products,” with desired techno-functional properties, she added.

The research is good news for a crop that has been slowly increasing in acreage across the Prairies. Alberta produced 50 per cent of Canada’s total faba bean production in 2021, followed by Saskatchewan with 41 per cent and Manitoba at nine per cent.

“I would say faba bean could be an attractive crop, especially because they have many environmental benefits. They get involved in symbiotic nitrogen fixation similar to soy,” said Jeganathan.

The researcher used a common food industry process called fractionation. In the case of faba beans (also known as fava, broad and horse beans), fractionation is a process used to separate pure protein from the bean’s less desirable compounds – those that cause gas.

There are two types of fractionation: wet and dry. At its most fundamental, wet fractionation can be compared to the brewing process for coffee or tea, she said, in which grounds are brewed in hot water to extract desired compounds. But wet fractionation is a chemically- and energy-intensive process.

For traditional wet fraction, “You need lots of water energy, so it’s not sustainable in the long run,” said Jeganathan. “And when you use a lot of chemicals, people don’t like to consume them as much as consuming something that is chemical-free.”

Dry fractionation employs a process of grinding and sieving, similar to handling flour in the kitchen. However, wet fractionation is generally preferred in the industry because dry methods only produce protein concentrates, which are not pure versions of protein.

“You can only achieve modest enrichment in the protein content if you use (dry methods),” she said, but it’s also considered more sustainable due to lack of water or chemical use.

By experimenting with hybrid methods using both wet and dry fractionation, as well as a chemical-free extraction method using only water, Jeganathan was able to isolate and extract protein from the bean. The chemical-free methods resulted in higher quality protein (up to 94 per cent pure) compared with other methods.

“I would say with the hybrid method, where I used dry and wet methods together, the water consumption was much less compared to using just the water extraction method alone,” she said.

Through a process called pearling, the research also revealed that the protein in faba beans is more highly concentrated in the bean’s external layers. Fractionation is usually accomplished by grinding the entire bean, but Jeganathan took it down a notch by pearling.

“Instead of grinding the whole bean, by pearling we ground only 60 per cent of the outer layer of the bean, which is high in protein.”

Jeganathan’s research isn’t done. She is working as a postdoctoral research assistant at Washington State University, where she’s investigating how her proposed water-based extraction method carries over to a variety of beans as well as sea algae. “Definitely we are seeing a huge potential.”

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So why aren’t more acres planted?

Why it matters: Peas have seen a resurgence in Manitoba with the entry of new processors in recent years.

The biggest reason is risk of root rot, which can infect the soil for years.

But what if root rot wasn’t a problem? That’s what a group of Prairie researchers intend to find out. They want to build a pea that’s root rot resistant and drought tolerant. The big picture goal is to encourage more producers to give peas a chance.

“Nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilizers is a major greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat,” wrote Marcus Samuel, a professor with the University of Calgary, in a news release.

“Peas belong to the legume family and require little external nitrogen, making them exceptionally climate-efficient. They really are the perfect crop for this research.”

Genomic research on peas has been missing in recent years, wrote Sateesh Kagale with the National Research Council of Canada.

The project teams the University of Calgary with the NRC as leaders of the four-year research effort.

“With fewer genomics resources invested in pea breeding, farmers are struggling with low yields caused by root rot and drought,” wrote Kagale. “This project has immense potential to significantly enhance pea genetic and genomic resources, laying the foundation for transformative varietal development.”

From a marketing perspective, the high price of meat in recent years is causing peas and other legumes to carve a niche in consumers’ protein consumption, said Samuel.

“The demand is going up like crazy. The demand for pea protein in the U.S. went up 64 per cent in the last five or six years.

“In a world where meat is expensive, consumers from all over the world are looking at peas to help meet their protein demands.”

From a climate standpoint, peas’ nitrogen-fixing benefits are more than even the most optimistic scientist would guess. According to the Pulse Canada website, just under nine million acres of pulses eliminate 3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, the equivalent of 1.1 million passenger vehicles taken off the road annually.

“If we get double that equivalent under peas, it will be equal to the energy required to power every single household in Calgary,” said Samuel.

READ MORE: Can Manitoba support 300,000 acres of field peas?

In Manitoba, the popularity of peas has increased since the mid-2010s, bolstered by new markets created by processors such as Roquette.

In 2015, the Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. reported just under 64,000 acres put to the crop. By 2020, that number had grown to 146,500 acres. This year, the corporation estimates Manitoba farmers planted just under 154,700 acres of field peas.

Project details

The project will start with researchers and partners getting their hands on pea germplasm from all over the globe.

“India might be growing a root rot resistant pea that we haven’t had access to before, so we are collecting about 2,000 germplasm [lines] from across the world,” he said.

The samples will be tested under field conditions for root rot resistance and drought tolerance. The genomes of the top 50 or 60 most promising lines will then be sequenced to see if they have particular traits that resist root rot or mitigate the effects of drought.

“And then we’ll actually move that trait into elite Canadian varieties,” said Samuel.

Gene editing will be used to remove the genetic material that causes root rot.

“Part of the project is to ‘knock out’ certain genes that cause root rot,” he said.

Don’t go looking for these improved varieties at the local seed supplier any time soon. Samuel doesn’t promise that lines will be available at the end of the project.

“At the end of four years we are confident that we will add some lines that are ready for breeding purposes. And hopefully we can see something in the field in eight to 10 years.”

The $7 million PeaCE (Pea Climate-Efficient) project is funded by Genome Canada as part of its $30 million, nine-project initiative to drive genomics research and innovation and help reduce the carbon footprint of Canada’s food production systems.

Aside from U of C and NRC, project partners include a who’s who of research and ag institutions across Western Canada, including – among others – AAFC Lacombe and the Western Grains Research Foundation.

A version of this article first appeared in the Sept. 18, 2023 issue of Alberta Farmer.

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After announcing last month it would submit a bid for the next-to-new Merit assets, Vancouver-based plant protein firm Burcon NutraScience said Monday it’s now “participating in a bid” for Merit in co-operation with “an industry plant protein company.”

Burcon didn’t identify the other party in its release Monday. It did say that if their joint bid is successful, the two parties “intend to restart the facility and together, strive to reach profitability.”

Burcon CEO Kip Underwood said it “firmly believe(s) that Burcon’s technologies and process expertise are fundamental to the Merit facility’s future profitability.”

Having just opened for business in early 2021, with major shareholders also including U.S. agrifood firm Bunge and former executives of Hemp Oil Canada, Merit was placed into receivership March 1.

Court-appointed receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), in its first report filed March 31 with Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg, said it had set a deadline of last Friday (April 21) for formal bids on the Merit assets, and expects to “determine the accepted offer” by Friday this week.

PwC hasn’t yet said how many formal bids it got for the Merit assets by the deadline. In its March 31 report, it said it had already conducted 14 visits to Merit’s Winnipeg plant site with potential buyers and scheduled five more, “with several interested parties traveling from overseas and other parts of North America.”

Burcon, in its release Monday, reiterated it “expects there to be competing bids (and) there is no assurance that the bid will be accepted by the receiver.”

PwC had said in its report that it expects to have reached a “definitive agreement” with a bidder no later than May 12 and to formally close a deal by the end of May at the latest.

If the Merit plant does reopen, it would then need to reconnect its supply chains with farmers in its catchment area.

Daryl Domitruk, executive director with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, last week told the Manitoba Co-operator that, to his knowledge, growers who’d contracted with Merit for this year have been released from those agreements.

“Then the question is, do I continue to grow peas or do I switch to another crop,” he said. “That’s a decision that the growers have probably made by now.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Merit, whose major shareholders include Vancouver plant-based protein firm Burcon NutraScience, U.S. agrifood firm Bunge and former executives of Hemp Oil Canada, was placed into receivership March 1.

According to the first report from receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), filed last Friday with Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg, a “data room” has already been set up and an information brochure circulated to some prospective buyers. PwC said it also “may continue to identify and initiate contact with other such parties.”

PwC, in its report, said it will accept “qualified offers” for Merit’s assets until 4 p.m. CT on April 21, and expects to “determine the accepted offer” by April 28.

A “definitive agreement” would then be reached by no later than May 12, court approval granted by May 26, and a deal closed by “not later than May 31.”

Burcon, which has a 31.6 per cent stake in Merit, has already announced it will bid on the Merit assets.

In a separate release Thursday, Burcon said it’s since been in discussions with the receiver, “continues to conduct due diligence and is furthering its efforts to put forth a compelling bid” to PwC for the Merit assets.

However, Burcon added, it “expects there to be other competing bids” and “there is no assurance that Burcon’s bid will be accepted by the receiver.”

Merit’s secured creditors include Export Development Canada (EDC), owed $58.6 million plus interest, fees and other costs; Farm Credit Canada (FCC), owed $36.4 million plus similar costs; and CIBC, owed $5 million plus costs. Unsecured debts owed to trades and other creditors as of March 1 were estimated at $2.4 million.

The Canadian Grain Commission is also running an audit to see if CGC-licensed Merit still has any “outstanding liabilities” owing to farmers who delivered crops to the plant, PwC said.

However, PwC added in its report, according to Merit’s records, no farmers are owed for any crops that Merit “has purchased and are in its possession.”

PwC last month laid off 77 Merit employees; kept on 23 “key” staff under agreements running mostly to the end of this month at the latest; and retained three former managers on an “independent contractor” basis.

Three of the “key” staff have since quit, while others continue to maintain the plant, handle product sales and accounts receivable and help in the sale process, PwC said.

PwC said last Friday that as of March 1, Merit had about $3.8 million worth of inventory — about $2.7 million of which has since been invoiced awaiting payment before delivery. About $231,000, or half of Merit’s other outstanding receivables, has also since been collected.

Built starting in 2019, Merit’s 94,000-square-foot plant opened in early 2021 and began accepting canola and yellow peas to process product lines such as Puratein canola proteins, Peazac pea proteins, and MeritPro protein blends using Burcon’s protein extraction technology.

In 2021 Merit had projected it would be able to eventually expand to take up to 100,000 tonnes of canola and peas per year.

EDC, FCC and CIBC were members of a consortium of lenders — also including Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada — who altogether had provided Merit with $95 million in debt financing starting in 2020. AAFC’s contribution came in the form of a 10-year, interest-free $10 million loan from the department’s AgriInnovate program.

Merit in 2020 had also picked up $9.5 million in support from the Protein Industries Canada supercluster to back product development.

EDC and FCC filed Feb. 24 for a receivership order, saying Merit was “suffering significant cash flow shortages” during the first three quarters of 2022.

The two Crown-owned lenders said in their filing that they expected Merit to run out of operating cash by around March 3 or 4 and it would then “no longer be able (to) operate its business as a going concern.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on Wednesday announced it’s the receiver for both Merit Functional Foods Corp. and the numbered company that owns Merit’s processing plant and property in Winnipeg’s CentrePort industrial park, following an order granted Wednesday in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg.

Federal lending agencies Export Development Canada (EDC) and Farm Credit Canada (FCC) filed Feb. 24 for the order, citing principal and interest owed to them at about $58.5 million and $36.5 million respectively.

The two lenders, in their filing, said they expect Merit to run out of operating cash by around Friday or Saturday this week, at which time it would “no longer be able (to) operate its business as a going concern.”

A joint-venture firm with major shareholders including Vancouver plant-based protein firm Burcon NutraScience, major U.S. agrifood firm Bunge and former executives of Hemp Oil Canada, Merit “began suffering significant cash flow shortages” between January and September last year, EDC and FCC said.

Since September, the two lenders said, Merit has been conducting an out-of-court sales process aiming to sell both its business and the Winnipeg plant — but that process “did not generate any formal offers” for the lenders’ consideration.

Burcon, which holds a 31.6 per cent stake in Merit, in a separate statement Tuesday had disclosed EDC and FCC’s plans to seek a receiver. Burcon also said it “intends to continue its discussions with Merit’s lenders… in order to seek a potential funding solution for Merit’s business.”

Burcon CEO Kip Underwood, in a Feb. 8 letter to that company’s shareholders, said Merit’s stakeholders in September had put up loans of $3 million to “address Merit’s anticipated liquidity requirements as it continued to ramp up its production and sales.”

Merit late last year sought “to identify a new strategic investor for its business,” he wrote, adding that “to date, no funding has been received from a new investor.”

Merit, for the past six months, “has made significant progress,” he wrote, improving daily production performance and increasing its year-over-year sales, while customers say Merit’s products are “best-in-class.”

However, he added, “unfortunately, the overall financial performance of the business has fallen short of expectations and led to the current cash flow concerns.”

Burcon, he wrote Feb. 8, had been “exploring interim financing for Merit while working on a more specific, longer-term funding solution” and was “prepared to fund ongoing operating expenses and debottlenecking capital with support from our largest Burcon shareholder to back the overall project.”

Burcon on Feb. 14 released results for its third quarter ending Dec. 31, showing Merit’s total revenue for the quarter at $3 million, up 146 per cent from the year-earlier period. Burcon for the quarter booked impairment charges of $12.3 million related to its investment in, and loan to, Merit.

Underwood, in his letter Feb. 8, said Burcon has “real concerns about Merit’s financial situation and viability” and “recognize(s) the news of Merit Functional Foods’ situation may be a surprise.”

However, he stressed, if its funding plans for Merit are successful, “Burcon could have, for the first time in its history, a chance to own its destiny… While there is risk in our current path, we believe this also presents Burcon with a significant opportunity.”

Built starting in 2019, Merit’s 94,000-square-foot plant opened in early 2021 and began accepting canola and yellow peas to process product lines such as Puratein canola proteins, Peazac pea proteins, and MeritPro protein blends using Burcon’s protein extraction technology.

In 2021 Merit projected it would be able to eventually expand to take up to 100,000 tonnes of canola and peas per year.

Its more recent products have included Peazazz C, a pea protein with a “smooth, grit-free texture” for ready-to-drink beverages, launched last July, and Organic Peazazz C 850, a certified organic version, last December for use in beverages, protein powders and protein bars.

EDC and FCC were members of a consortium of lenders including Agricultural and Agri-Food Canada and CIBC providing Merit with $95 million in debt financing starting in 2020. AAFC’s contribution came in the form of a 10-year, interest-free $10 million loan from the department’s AgriInnovate program.

Merit that year also picked up $9.5 million in support from the Protein Industries Canada supercluster to back product development. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

CORRECTION, March 2, 2023: The notice of motion filed Feb. 24 by EDC and FCC states Merit was expected to run out of operating cash “on or around March 3-4, 2023.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to those dates as “Thursday or Friday.”

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The global market for plant-based meat-like food has been booming, attracting major investment from global agri-food groups that hope to capitalize on a trend toward eating less red meat. New technologies are making such products look more authentic and appetizing.

[RELATED] Opinion: Politicizing proteins

The products of Redefine Meat made their debut in a Parisian restaurant last week after the Israeli start-up firm struck a deal with importer Giraudi Meats to drive European distribution of its “New Meat” steak cuts produced on 3D printers.

However, the French government, backed by farmers and the meat industry, has been trying to ban the use of meat and fish names for plant-based protein food in an effort to avoid confusion over the meat alternatives.

France’s highest administrative court suspended a government ban due to take effect this month, saying it gave operators too little time to adapt. The agriculture ministry told Reuters it was working on a new text taking into account the court recommendations, without giving a time frame.

It remained unclear whether the ban would apply to imported products and to menus or be limited to French labels.

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The closure signals increasing troubles in the plant-based protein sector, where U.S. sales are flattening.

Colorado-based Planterra sold fake meat under the Ozo brand, but JBS will now focus on its plant-based operations in Brazil and Europe, said Nikki Richardson, spokesperson for JBS USA. European and Brazilian operations “continue to gain market share and expand their respective customer bases,” she said.

The sector has come under pressure because meat alternatives do not taste good enough and prices are too high, said Gary Stibel, chief executive of the New England Consulting Group, which works on consumer products. He said JBS made a good decision to shut Planterra.

“Everybody and her sister thinks they can make money in this business and they can’t,” Stibel said. “Eventually it will be a good business for a few players. Today, it is a sinkhole for many folks that are throwing good money after bad, chasing too little demand with way too much supply.”

This summer, Beyond Meat lowered its revenue forecast for the year and announced job cuts as rising inflation hurt efforts to make its pricier plant-based meat more affordable.

Separately, Canadian pork processor Maple Leaf Foods has reduced the size of its plant-based business, Greenleaf Foods, by 25 per cent.

The value of all meat alternatives sold in the U.S. — including fresh and fully cooked products and faux seafood — rose by 1.1 per cent in the year ending Aug. 27 to about $963 million, NielsenIQ said (all figures US$). That compared to growth of 8.1 per cent over the same period in 2021 and 44.8 per cent in that period in 2020.

For fresh meat alternatives, U.S. sales dropped by 6.8 per cent in the year ending Aug. 27 to about $254 million, compared to a year earlier, NielsenIQ said. Sales in the category climbed 28.9 per cent over that same period from 2020 to 2021.

— Tom Polansek reports on agriculture and ag commodities for Reuters from Chicago.

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Filiz Koskel was one recipient of the Terry G. Falconer Memorial Award from the Winnipeg Rh Institute, aimed at rewarding early-career researchers. She is a food science researcher at the Food and Human Nutritional Sciences Department at the University of Manitoba and her work tackles world hunger through sustainable plant-based foods. It also aims to develop new ways to monitor and improve the quality of Canadian crops from field to table.

Earlier in her career, Koskel focused on the processing of cereals and pulses for baked products. More recently, she’s been focusing on extruded foods. Extrusion processing has been used since the 1940s and ‘50s in the food industry, initially for making puff snacks like Cheetos or breakfast cereals such as Cheerios.

Koskel said there are two different methods used for the extraction process when working with plant proteins. When processed under lower moisture conditions, products are often added to burger patties or sausages as high-protein filler to reduce costs and improve the “mouth feel” of the food.

“For example, to make it a little bit more juicy or chewy, we would add some plant proteins into a beef burger,” Koskel said. “That’s very common in the food industry.”

Using the same extrusion process, but under high-moisture conditions, food scientists have created the vegan or vegetarian meat alternatives now seen on grocery store shelves.

“We use more concentrated plant proteins in these formulations and process them with layered and fibrous structures, so that when you bite into them, they will mimic animal protein, like chicken breasts,” Koskel said.

But for her, it’s about more than fillers and niche market food products.

“We have to make sure that we have a world where we are able to sustainably produce food and make sure that we have a secure food future,” she said.

She sees plant-based proteins playing a big role on that front in coming years. While Koskel embraces the sustainability factor of her work, that doesn’t mean she spends all her time advocating veganism. She understands the importance of animal agriculture.

Local connection

Koskel came by her interest in food science honestly.

She was born in Winnipeg while her father was studying for his master’s degree in the University of Manitoba agriculture faculty. She has no recollection of her time in Manitoba because her family moved back to Turkey when she was three years old. However, her father’s work as a cereal scientist sparked her interest in the field. An important childhood memory came during a ‘bring your kids to work’ day.

“I remember when I was a very young kid going to my father’s workplace,” she says. “He used to work in a cereal quality lab. I remember playing with bread dough from a very young age. And I think that’s when I thought working in an area related to food would be interesting.”

After completing her undergraduate degree in Turkey, Koskel came back to Winnipeg in 2009 to attend grad school at the University of Manitoba.

“I was interested in cereals and pulses, and Manitoba is one of the greatest places in the world to be if you have an interest in working with cereals,” she said.

Her PhD thesis was on how bubbles in bread dough affect the quality of the final loaf. Evidently, that early fascination with bread dough remained with her.

After finishing her PhD, Koskel did a post-doc at the University of Manitoba and another at the University of Saskatchewan before landing her current position as an assistant professor in the Food and Human Nutritional Sciences Department at the U of M.

Koskel’s voice is animated when she speaks about her work at the university and about food sciences in general.

“I just find that world fascinating,” she said. “Every day, there is another food product on supermarket shelves. Every day there’s another innovation in a high-fibre food or high-protein food. Being in this area and making sure that we are able to provide different healthy options to Canadians is a very exciting job to be doing.”

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