Charlotte Reynolds
As our population grows*, so does the challenge to create nutritious food in the most sustainable way possible. BSc Food and Consumer Studies graduate Charlotte Reynolds responded by taking an underused crop and turning it into a new superfood snack.
As part of her dissertation, Charlotte discovered lupins — a pulse that’s been a source of food over 6,000 years, yet is grown virtually undocumented in the UK. By combining lupin flour with potato starch (a by-product of the potato crisp industry), she created Lupin Bites — a new snack that’s high in protein, low in fat and gluten free. Charlotte didn’t just create a new type of crisp for the growing heathy foods market. She created a product that can be made sustainably. Producing pulses like lupins requires just 50 litres of water per kilogram of crop, compared with beef which requires 13,000 litres. They require less fertilisers and can even be grown in drought-prone areas.
Lupin Bites have won awards from the Global Pulse Confederation and been showcased at the Institute of Food Technology in Chicago.
* Global population is estimated to rise to 9bn by 2050, according to a 2008