Since the foundation of Blendhub, we are aspiring to lead a global change paving the way towards an inclusive and sustainable food industry. Today we offer people and companies a completely replicable business model from the search of ingredients to the formulation, production and delivery of sustainable recipes anywhere in the world. But we have never forgotten that the future of a sustainable food system always starts with development of recipes and selection of ingredients which consumers want to eat and drink.
What Are “Sustainable Recipes”?
Time and time again, we hear the buzz word “sustainability” thrown around. But what does sustainability mean? To its core, sustainability means “able to be maintained at a certain rate or level” or “conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources”.
In other words, sustainability is to make the most of the earth’s resources for longevity and for future generations.
How can we apply sustainability to our recipes and food systems?
The answer is complex, but at its heart, a sustainable model to formulate recipes promotes the physical health of the public, the economic health of farmers and producers and the fair treatment of the earth, animals and people.
The Key Components of Sustainable Recipes
Regardless of the industry, sector or location, any recipe can be made sustainable.
At Blendhub, we believe that the future of sustainable food is a combination of powder with locally grown fresh ingredients to create individualized recipes that are good for consumers, satisfy their tastes and are available at the right price, all while protecting the environment.
In this article, I’ll break down the key components that we believe sustainable recipes should include based on the steps we take to formulate recipes.
1. Sustainability is the Goal
The most sustainable recipes are created when sustainability is not only the goal but the highest priority. Take the time to decide how you want to make your recipe sustainable.
Is your goal to formulate a healthy recipe, one that promotes the physical health of the consumer? Is it to support the economic health of farmers and producers? Or is your goal to protect the fair treatment of the earth, animals and people.
Whatever it is, keep the goal at the forefront of your mind as you and your team formulate the recipe. Your goal will guide you when making decisions, like choosing the right ingredients and optimizing your production techniques.
2. Choose the Right Ingredients
Selected ingredients are the core of any recipe, choose ingredients with a focus on local, plant-based, and diversity to make your recipe sustainable.
Focus on Local and Plant-Based
Food is one of the leading drivers of climate change. What we grow, how we cultivate and produce it, and where we transport our food are all factors that have contributed significantly to today’s high carbon emissions around the world.
Whether our recipes use fresh or powder-based ingredients, using ingredients that are close to production and your final consumers is the core of any sustainable recipe. Local ingredients can reduce “food miles” and carbon dioxide emissions.
Oatly, an oat milk brand, excellently focuses on local and plant-based recipes.
However, local is only one part of the solution to produce sustainable recipes. Focusing on plant-based ingredients will also add sustainability to a recipe.
Food produced further away may be more sustainable if it’s grown more responsibly, if it carries a smaller ecological footprint, or if it is in season. For instance, it takes less energy to import tomatoes from Spain than to grow them in the UK.
The biggest reason for us to believe in powdered ingredients is that it combines the best of both worlds. Powdered ingredients give you the flexibility to use local and plant-based foods, easily fortify it with nutrients and without the need to use refrigerated transport or climate-controlled storage. It’s both a cost-effective and sustainable solution.
Rotate and Diversify
We depend on a fragile and limited foundation of food to feed ourselves. According to Food Forever, there are 30,000 existing edible plant species; however, we are only eating 150 of those. The consequences of overdependence are harmful to the environment and our health.
When farmers plant the same crops, again and again, they eventually suck the nutrients out of the soil, making it nearly useless and often necessitating chemical-laden fertilizers.
In addition to above we know that of the 150 crops we eat, only 12 of them provide 80% of the nutrition we need. Without a diversity of food at our tables, our communities are more likely to face stunting and malnutrition. According to the BBC, countries like Zambia are leading national campaigns to educate the nation to ditch maize for more nutritious alternatives like sorghum, or pearl millet.
As modern and responsible businesses, we need to push the radical change and offer a variety of ingredients in our recipes, making them sustainable to our welfare and ecosystem.
3. Optimize Production Techniques
If we sum up all the food which need to be produced from now until the year 2050, this sum would equal the same amount of food that has been consumed over the past 8,000 years.
While our consumption is at an all-time high, our production techniques either haven’t caught up or are not optimized to produce efficiently and sustainably.
In order to offset the impacts our consumption and production will have on the earth; businesses need to reassess their current production techniques.
We need to ask ourselves, “What changes can we make to produce sustainably?”
I want to challenge you to research, explore and consider alternative production methods when formulating your recipes. When we expose ourselves to all the production techniques and technologies available, we can make a better and well-informed decision to fit our needs and goals.
Work with Professionals That Care About Sustainability
The best way to accelerate your growth towards sustainable recipe formulations can only be done by partnering with individuals and organizations that have the expertise, experience, resources, passion and willingness to help you and all of us arriving at a truly sustainable agrifood value chain.
At Blendhub, we have created a wide range of services to provide you with a unique solution to ideate, test, validate and launch food products faster, safer and cheaper than ever before and localize the production where it makes most economic and sustainable sense.
But when you work with Blendhub, you actually work with a network of some of the best individuals, food producers, food designers, ingredients producers, machinery and technology providers among many others whom all subscribe to having sustainability integrated into their daily procedures and work.
The world of food production is changing fast – join the movement before it is too late.
