Meat+Poultry - September 2023 - 18

MEAT ENTREPRENEURS
transportation, feed production - steps that
can be saved with the incorporation of bones
in the food itself.
" We can save up to 40% of the resources
environmentally wise, " he said, noting the
benefits of SuperGround technology. " We get
more food, and we get it more efficiently. "
With SuperGround's technology, 20% more
food is available.
Andreas Holmberg
(left) and Santtu Vekkeli
represented SuperGround
at the 2023 Tyson
Demo Day as one
of the 11 competing
sustainable startups.
paste to the test. The university conducted
a blind taste test with 101 people to see how
consumers reacted to different quantities of
the product in chicken nuggets and meatballs.
The study revealed that the nuggets
with the highest amount of bone paste were
preferred significantly more than the nuggets
without it. Those with the paste were thought
to be tastier, saltier and meatier.
" This is my favorite thing, " Vekkeli said,
referring to consumers' perception of meatier
nuggets, " because technically there was less
meat because you have less fillet and more
bone paste. But it was tasting meatier because
chicken breast fillet doesn't really have
any taste. "
SUSTAINABILITY FORWARD
& BACKWARD
On top of adding flavor, SuperGround's
technology offers meat processors a solution
to cutting down food waste and improving
their environmental footprint.
In calculating life cycle assessments,
SuperGround has found that it is more efficient
to eat the bones than to use them later in
the food chain in fertilizers or feed. Vekkeli
explained how nutrition is lost as the bones
move down the chain. Moreover, the process
requires a number of steps, such as rendering,
18 MEAT+POULTRY | 09.23 | www.meatpoultry.com
" If we just eat the bones of poultry, we get
basically 20% more food from exactly the same
amount of input, " Vekkeli noted. " So, we can
farm 20% less, or we can eat 20% more. "
Although SuperGround's innovative
technology has the potential to significantly
alter the meat and poultry industries, Vekkeli
said that it's not a new idea. In fact, cooking
bones down was not uncommon in Eastern
Europe a few decades ago when food shortages
were prevalent. In this way, Vekkeli describes
his concept as " a step back to the old times. "
" There was a time, not a long time ago,
when our parents were young, when we didn't
have an attitude that we only eat the actual
white muscle, " he said. " It was an attitude that
we eat everything we can because we didn't
have that much excess food. "
This historical, sustainable practice of
utilizing all parts of the animal, including
bones, is what inspired Vekkeli to create
SuperGround's technology.
While traditionally cooking bones takes
approximately five hours, SuperGround has
configured a way to break down the hard
tissues in a matter of minutes. By speeding up
the process and transferring it to a commercial
scale, Vekkeli hopes to normalize the eating of
bones again.
In describing his vision for the future of
SuperGround, he noted that his end goal is for
the concept to become boring.
" I see that after a few years - maybe
three to four years - the general opinion in
the industry changes that it's a good idea to
process the bones because it's cost efficient
and good for the environment and nutrition, "
he said. " And then, in like 20 years from now,
it's so obvious that it's boring. So really, my
target is to make this thing boring. "
Vekkeli believes that in the grand scheme
of time, the attitude of only eating muscles
from animals is just a phase - or at least he's
optimistic it is.
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Meat+Poultry - September 2023

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