Nourish: Designer 'animal-free' fats promise superior performance in meat and dairy alternatives
When it comes to meat alternatives, fat remains the final frontier for formulators, says Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients, which is harnessing the power of microbes to produce next-generation ‘animal-free’ fats it claims can deliver a ‘meatier’ experience than plant-based oils. (Pic credit: Nourish Ingredients.)
“We can produce mimics [animal- or animal-like fats, without animals], but the more exciting frontier is building new fats, fats that have not yet been built or have not been cultivated in high enough quantities to be useful.”
It’s early days for the startup, which has just raised $11m in a funding round co-led by Horizons Ventures and Main Sequence Ventures. But the plan is to “produce both meat and dairy fats,” says co-founder Dr James Petrie, who worked as a research scientist at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO before co-founding Nourish with Ben Leita in early 2020.