The waste food upcycled into new products

The waste food going to landfills is an invisible but important part of greenhouse gas emissions. Could discarded scraps be turned into new food instead?

In a two-storey building on the harbour at Refshaleøen, Copenhagen, there is chocolate being tempered in the kitchen; upstairs, plates of tacos and protein bars are being served. This isn’t the opening of the latest small plates restaurant, but the brainchild of Rasmus Munk – the two Michelin-starred chef on a mission to “upcycle” what we eat.  

Munk is one of a growing number of people who believe the future of food lies in what we’re already throwing away. With nearly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by lost or wasted food (more than three times that caused by the aviation industry), and almost 40% of all food grown in the US each year thrown away, they hope upcycling – using discarded scraps to help create new food – can tackle the world’s burgeoning edible waste mountain.

And so at Spora, the lab a few hundred metres from Munk’s restaurant, Alchemist, the chocolate is made from cocoa husks (approximately three-quarters of each cocoa pod is discarded when beans are harvested for chocolate). The tacos, meanwhile, are filled with rapeseed cakes, a high-protein byproduct left over when rapeseed oil is made. 

The lab was born out of experiments conducted at Alchemist, which prioritises using often-ignored animal products like jellyfish or chicken heads (deep-fried and entirely edible; they grace one of the 50 dishes he serves up to diners each night), and cow’s udders, which “taste a little bit like parmigiano”. “To turn some of these products that you normally just discard or throw out [into] something that’s delicious is for me very important, based on a perspective of making a more sustainable future,” says Mun