UCC food students on cutting edge

A zero-waste coffee substitute that uses the left-over grinds to bake cookies, buffalo salami, and a vegan paté made from quinoa are just some of the food innovations UCC’s final year students on the Food Science and Food Marketing and Entrepreneurship degree programmes cooked up for their annual Food Innovation competition.

‘Alquiny beverages’ were offering a natural caffeine-free coffee substitute with a novel twist: Instead of used grinds made from superfoods quinoa and carob being binned, they can be worked into nutritious cookie recipes available via a QR code on the packaging.

“We’ve done focus groups and sensory panels and refined our recipe over and over again,” said Naomi Helen, one of the seven team members who worked on the product.

Eight teams of students pitted their wits against each other in a year-long project-based competition to devise a new food product to meet the approval of a Dragons’ Den- style panel of food experts, which culminated in a presentation and sampling event in the food sciences building.

UCC president Michael Murphy was on hand to sample all the offerings.

“I started sampling 23 minutes ago and I still feel fine; with my background in toxicology I can tell you that that already means they’re doing something right,” he joked.

High-protein super-grain quinoa featured heavily in the competition offerings. ‘Keenwa’ vegan paté was fermented to increase the product’s shelf-life and improve the flavour.

Leanne Dunne, a final year Food Science student from the team who developed the product, said that quinoa was a good base for the product because of its high protein content, and that focus group studies had revealed that colour was a surprisingly important factor in how the product was received.

“The majority of vegan spreads have a yellowish colour, but people really liked ours; it looks more like what people expect from a paté.”

‘Love the Buff’ buffalo salami was a favourite with samplers for its flavour, but Food Marketing student Claire Enright from the team said that the use of buffalo meat was not just a gimmick.

“Buffalo is very high in omega 3 and protein and very low in fat,” Ms Enright said.

“This is a premium product; we actually think that in a couple of years we would like to take this product further.”

Adrienne Rodgers, head of enterprise at Cork City Local Enterprise Office, who sponsored the event, was joined by fellow ‘Dragons’ Clare Nash of Nash 19 restaurant, John Hunter from Teagasc, and Ben Itty of Amber Consulting to taste and judge the individual submissions.

Although ‘Bare Bites’ superfood fruit snacks for kids were announced the overall winners, tickling taste buds and showing flair and creativity with its colourful panda-bear themed packaging, Ms Rodgers said the standard was very high and that several of the food products had the potential to be taken further with the right help.

“I would like a couple to take their project further and the local enterprise office have a range of supports for the food sector,” Ms Rodgers said.

“We run courses targeted at food businesses. They need to ask: ‘How am I going to get my product out to the customer?’

“And they need to make their business plans more practical.”