Students awarded on creative plant-based cuisine

University students from China and Singapore were awarded as frontline winners of an annual food innovation competition held on the sidelines of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

While students from two Chinese universities won second-place prizes, a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) won the top prize of $3,000 at the annual APAC Food Innovation Challenge 2023 for coming up with a plant-based seafood product called "Keepin' it Shrimple".

The competition was hosted by global food awareness organization ProVeg International at its Food4Climate Pavilion at the United Nations climate summit on Dec 11. The winners were announced on Jan 3.

The NUS team sought to address impending seafood shortages brought about by overfishing and also offered an allergen-free option "still not offered on the existing $1.2 billion global plant-based shrimp market", according to ProVeg International's awards press release.

The product, developed for plant-based meat products company The Vegetarian Butcher, also sought to address the challenges of the world's fisheries and the prospect of a seafood shortage.

Two second-place prizes of $1,500 each went to students from China's Jinan University for their "Light Chewing Plant-Based Meat" and to the South China University of Technology for their sustainable, plant-based caviar.

The team from Jinan University worked with Beyond Meat to produce an innovative food that responds to the changing demographics in several Asian countries where there is a growing need to provide the older generation with tasty but nutritious sustainable alternatives.

The team also showed how their product could be adapted for infants.

Four student teams took third place and won $1,000 each.

Universiti Teknologi Brunei won for a Protein-Packed Power Bowl, developed for Charoen Pokphand Food's 7-Eleven stores in Thailand, while a joint Swedish and Vietnamese team from Lund University and Hanoi University of Science and Technology won for its Sushi Dog, developed for Thai Union.

A joint team from Seoul National University and Hanyang University in South Korea also won for a dumpling made for Beyond Meat, alongside a team from China's Shanghai Ocean University that won for a plant-based salad dressing, developed for Zuming Bean Products Company.

ProVeg Asia Managing Director Shirley Lu said they were delighted with the winning entries, which they hope "will inspire both students and companies alike to keep bringing innovative, climate-friendly products onto the market".

She said it was so important to invigorate the plant-based market with new products because "a plant-based diet offers a multi-problem solution to several key global problems", including climate change, food security, animal welfare, health, and pandemics.

Apart from the winning teams, 17 finalists also took home $200 each in prize money, bringing the total prize money given away to $13,400.

A total of 384 teams made up of 1,093 students from 23 countries and 260 colleges participated in the fourth year of the competition, according to ProVeg.

Food giants Nestle and Unilever, along with Asian startups Green Rebel from Indonesia, Haofood from China, and Unlimeat from South Korea, supported the contest.

China's first soybean firm listed on the stock market, Zuming Bean Products Company, and Shuangta, one of the world's largest plant-based protein manufacturers, also backed the event.