Cashew Plant Based crab tasting protein highlighted by Dr. Celso Moretti, CEO EMBRAPA

22 Feb 2022 · 2 min

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2:10

In a conversational interview, the speakers discuss the growing plant‑based food movement and Brazil’s role in it. Although Brazil is the world’s top beef exporter, the national science and technology institute EMBRAPA is developing plant‑based alternatives to meet the demand of vegetarians, vegans, and flexitarians. They have created a burger made from cashew nut fiber, utilizing the country’s 700,000 hectares of cashew production and repurposing about 60,000 tons of cashew fiber that would otherwise be returned to the field. They also produce a nugget made from the same fiber that mimics crab flavor. The products were recently showcased at Whole Foods, leading to multiple supplier contracts worldwide, illustrating the scaling and commercialisation of Brazil’s plant‑based innovations.

Chapters

Personally, I'm not sure myself. I don't know why I would eat something that tastes like chicken rather than eat chicken. But some people like to taste something that does taste like chicken, even though it's not. I'd rather just not eat chicken. But tell me a little bit about that movement and the great work that's been done there.
Okay, yeah. I think that as we were saying, it's a matter of choice, right? You have to give people choice and they will choose it. So although Brazil is a country that is one of the largest producers of beef and number one beef exports in the world. As a science and technology and innovation institution, excuse me, we are, we are working also on plant-based foodstuff. We know that, you know, vegetarians and vegans and flexitarians demand new forms of assessing protein. So we have developed a new burger made out of cashew nut fiber. So in Brazil We have 700,000 hectares of cashew nut production. And after you remove the nut and you have the apple, what we call the false fruit, we squeeze it to produce the juice, and then you have the fiber. So until a couple years ago, we would send back to the field the fiber, but now we are using it to produce this burger. So it's plant-based, using— we use a significant of these 60,000 tons of cashew nut fiber that will go to the field. We also produce a nugget, cashew nut fiber nugget, that tastes like crab. And one of the companies that are doing this in Brazil was here 10 days ago— actually, one week ago— at Whole Foods, and they were showcasing their products, and they made a lot of contracts, agreements with suppliers in different parts of the world. So that's part of the story about