Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has bagged the first price at Innovate4SDG contest organised by UNDP (United Nation Development Program) Accelerator Lab India for creating a plant-based mock egg. The innovator Prof Kavya Dashora, IIT Delhi was awarded a cash prize worth Rs 3.7 Lakhs and was conferred by Ms Christiane Hieronymus, Embassy of Federal Republic of Germany, New Delhi and Prof K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the government of India. UNDP has termed the mock egg as a perfect innovation that will help to accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals(SDG) including ‘zero hunger’ and ‘good health and well-being’. “The plant-based textured foods which resemble egg, fish and chicken have been developed with an aim to address the longstanding battle for malnutrition and clean protein food for people. The mock egg has been developed from very simple farm-based crop proteins, which not only looks and tastes like an egg but also very close in nutritional profile to a poultry egg,” said Prof Kavya Dashora.
The substance has the same taste, cooking procedure and protein level as chicken eggs, but with zero animal ingredients. The vegan egg was on display at Industry Day last month. The eggs have been created using protein isolation technology, while the mock meat will be developed using extrusion technology. According to Professor Dashora, the research aims to offer low-cost, locally grown product that tastes like a mock egg in texture, nutrient profile and texture but it is actually made using a non-soy raw material. Further, this initiative also aims to support the Make in India initiative, whereby the raw material will be purchased from the local farmer to provide his farm-based income.
This environment friendly research has been funded by Rahul Dewan from Four Pursuits Ventures. He expressed his views on how animal slaughter has turned out to be the biggest reasons for greenhouse emission. He further added that “These vegan alternatives would be a much healthier alternative to animal based meat and eggs. As the production of these meats are based on farm produce, the team will work closely with the farmers to get the best of produce. This will further support the Government’s initiative to increase the income of farmers.”
