Side dish

What if we saw food wastage as food rediscovery? What if we start using ingredients that we usually overlook, in our diets instead? And what if a food producer was to rethink how it uses food, to help us make the change?

Swiss retailer Coop has launched its new sustainable brand, Nice to Save Food. With its commitment to zero waste by fighting food waste, this range aims to launch 50 new products that are usually discarded – despite being nutritional, valuable and good for the planet to consume.

Simone Jones, Head of Food Solutions at Betty Bossi, which is owned by Coop, tells us more about the process and ambition for Nice to Save Food. “In most food production processes, side streams occur,” she says. “They are still full of nutrients and are valuable food, so it’s a shame to not be consuming them.” Instead of wasting these worthwhile products, Coop is creating products from the sidestreams and introducing them to its stores across Switzerland, whetting our appetites.

Simone explains how the ‘sidestreams’ project started, after several years of planning, focusing on food that’s produced as a result of making other foods – that doesn’t make it onto the supermarket shelves. “People are interested in new products – especially if they have a sustainability aspect, or a health aspect. To really make a dent in all these side streams the products have to be fairly mainstream – and ultimately they just have to taste good. If products taste good, then people are more open to trying them and buying them,” she says.

Observing food trends, Simone notes, “one big topic is planetary health. And what’s healthy for humans is also healthy for the planet – there’s a symbiosis between the two.” As customers become more aware of food sources and actively look to be more sustainable, Coop is pioneering itself as a sustainable retailer, utilising as many side streams as possible.

Think of an exclusive chocolate cocktail bar, swirled with different types of chocolate and flavours. Coop is developing its own unique chocolate under the Nice to Save Food brand, where they are aiming to use every drop of chocolate. And it’s doing this by using all of the remnants of ingredients, instead of traditionally discarding them. The new bar will be a fusion of dark and milk chocolate, made by using by-products from chocolate production.

How does it do this? When producing milk and dark chocolate, factories don’t use water to clean the machines in between the processes. Instead, they flush out the system with the new chocolate, until the recipe that was produced previously has cleared. Simone explains further: “We’re used to buying milk chocolate – or dark chocolate. But now, every recipe in this range will be different because, in Coop’s chocolate factory, they make many different chocolate bars. So, each batch we are going to launch is going to be like a unique chocolate. One that you can never get again.” Simone also has a long-term goal, hoping to export chocolate with different flavours, like orange and mint, to the UK and American markets. “In those two markets mint chocolate is really popular, but it’s not popular in Switzerland at all.”

Other ingredients that Nice to Save Food is introducing are raw materials like okara and buttermilk, which can be used in a variety of meals. Okara is a byproduct of tofu production. “If you make tofu or soya milk, what you’re left with is soya bean pulp and that’s called okara,” explains Simone. “In Asian countries this is consumed widely, similar to dishes where you would use tofu.” By doing so, it reduces food waste at a large scale. “The tofu factory produces 800 tons of tofu, and you are left with 200 tonnes of okara. The aim is to find a way to use these 200 tonnes,” she adds.

Now, Swiss customers will be able to find okara on the aisle alongside ingredients such as tofu. Coop plans to integrate them into the store, with customers using them as a product like any other ingredient. “That’s the philosophy of Coop. You don’t put things separately,” says Simone. “You put it where similar products are.” Its philosophy is very much one of normalising these new ingredients, so that soon, customers won’t see them as any different.

In Switzerland, Simone tells us how Coop is working with a brewery called Brauerei Locher which works alongside the company UpGrain, dealing with brewers’ spent grain. “In the beer brewing process, once you get the spent grain, it’s really warm and has a big surface and it goes off very quickly.

“So UpGrain has invented a technology where they can dry it really quickly and make it into a type of flour substitute. Flours are useful because in every product category where you use flour, you can replace some, or all the flour, with UpGrain.” Betty Bossi’s role is vital here – originally inspired by Betty Crocker, the company is something of a national treasure, trusted with a cookbook in (almost) every Swiss kitchen. Sharing recipes to use its new ingredients range will be key to its adoption.

Coop celebrated the launch of the new range by serving vegan bolognese made from brewer’s spent grain. By using its own sustainable products from food production sidestreams, it highlighted their potential and how these sidestreams can be turned into nutritious, tasty meals. Simone uses an example: Firstly, the brewers’ spent grain is saved from being discarded as food waste. Yet, the UpGrain factory found itself with an overstock of the sauce, giving Coop the opportunity to, effectively, save the food twice. “In the week of the launch we’re going to serve UpGrain’s bolognese in Coop restaurants. That’s about 160 restaurants and these unused jars will be eaten very quickly,” she says.

It’s too soon right now for statistics on how much food waste it’s reduced – but the potential impact is huge, when it comes to rethinking food and using as much food and ingredients as possible. “The statistics say there’s 2.8 million tonnes of food waste through production,” says Simone. “In Switzerland, food waste in the production process can be significantly reduced.”

And the new line intersects with some of those other projects too, bringing us not only new flavours, but added nutritional benefits. Simone tells us how there is a by-product of oats and oat flour. Just like okara it’s high in quality, flavour and nutrients. “Some of the grain is not used when you actually make oats or oat products.” This oat bran, which is part of the oat, can be used in granola and on other breakfast toppers. “That way you eat more fibre, which is good for your gut health,” adds Simone.

Coop is also in the process of designing more other innovative projects, such as its sustainable diet strategy. It’s working through recipes to reduce sugar in products, veganise meals that would have traditionally contained animal ingredients, and increase fibre in customers’ diets. With a forward-thinking approach to tackling high volumes of food waste, Coop is proving itself a pioneer in food sustainability.

Naturally, being the first to try something new isn’t without its challenges. “For the food industry, it’s a total system change,” admits Simone. “Because, if you’re going to use a byproduct as animal feed [a typical use of sidestreams currently], then you don’t have the same restrictions as food for humans. Throwing away these sidestreams – or using them as pig feed – has been cheaper than doing anything else with it. We now have a commitment in Switzerland where we say these sidestreams have to be put back into human nutrition. On a political level, there’s been a change.”

Coop owns some of its own factories, and works with suppliers in others – and it has challenged them to rise to the occasion. “Finding solutions to the problems we need to solve, or finding the money to change something in the factory” has taken time and goodwill.

And, with innovation, there are always technical challenges, like the food production processes themselves. “When you make tofu and you have this byproduct, everything is warm. It’s exposed, and the surface area is really big. So what does that mean for microorganisms? It’s easy for them to live there and the food safety is more easily impaired. So because that’s been going into animal feed, there was no problem. You just put it into the place where the animal feed was collected, but now you have to cool it down… You have to find a way of preserving it, through cooling or freezing or drying so you can use it.” These are the challenges the new range addresses.

The Coop team is also conscious of hesitation or confusion from customers – and is up for the challenge. Despite consumers striving for a more ethical and sustainable lifestyles, discussion around the term ‘food waste’ – and how it could deter customers from buying these ingredients – has been at the heart of the branding process. “Otherwise, there could be all sorts of questions like, ‘why haven’t you used this before?’, ‘Are we eating waste?’ and ‘why isn’t this being thrown away?’” admits Simone. “We have to explain these things to customers in a really transparent way.” Betty Bossi recipes no doubt help.

To build trust with customers, each product has an illustration – along with an explanation of the process – on the package. It explains how the primary product is produced, how the sidestream is left over and what are things that you can do with it.

Ultimately, these raw materials are foods and ingredients that Coop is reclaiming – and hopes its customers will do the same. Simone believes, “The way I like to think about it, is that it’s undiscovered or rediscovered ingredients. You know, we just didn’t know we could eat them, or we had forgotten.”