The waste food going to landfills is an invisible but important part of greenhouse gas emissions. Could discarded scraps be turned into new food instead?

In a two-storey building on the harbour at Refshaleøen, Copenhagen, there is chocolate being tempered in the kitchen; upstairs, plates of tacos and protein bars are being served. This isn’t the opening of the latest small plates restaurant, but the brainchild of Rasmus Munk – the two Michelin-starred chef on a mission to “upcycle” what we eat.  

Munk is one of a growing number of people who believe the future of food lies in what we’re already throwing away. With nearly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by lost or wasted food (more than three times that caused by the aviation industry), and almost 40% of all food grown in the US each year thrown away, they hope upcycling – using discarded scraps to help create new food – can tackle the world’s burgeoning edible waste mountain.

And so at Spora, the lab a few hundred metres from Munk’s restaurant, Alchemist, the chocolate is made from cocoa husks (approximately three-quarters of each cocoa pod is discarded when beans are harvested for chocolate). The tacos, meanwhile, are filled with rapeseed cakes, a high-protein byproduct left over when rapeseed oil is made. 

The lab was born out of experiments conducted at Alchemist, which prioritises using often-ignored animal products like jellyfish or chicken heads (deep-fried and entirely edible; they grace one of the 50 dishes he serves up to diners each night), and cow’s udders, which “taste a little bit like parmigiano”. “To turn some of these products that you normally just discard or throw out [into] something that’s delicious is for me very important, based on a perspective of making a more sustainable future,” says Mun

This is an excerpt from a BBC article, please read the entire article here…