Biocatalysts is a leader in the enzyme space, but what are enzymes exactly, and how can they be used? Commercial Director Daren Bryce explains how Biocatalysts’ enzymes exceed expectations with a variety of enzymes that improve taste and absorption in many products.
Joey Thurman: All right, welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm here with Daren Bryce of Biocatalysts. Daren, your accent is much better than mine, my man. Thanks for coming on.
Daren Bryce: No problem.
Joey Thurman: Biocatalysts, quick bite of what is Biocatalysts?
Daren Bryce: Yeah, so we're a enzyme company based here in Cardiff, in Wales. We're supplying enzymes into the food industry, the life science and farmer industry. Mostly fermenting those enzymes, but sometimes blending, making formulations that's easy for the food industry to use.
Joey Thurman: Okay. And what are enzymes specifically? If my three and a half year old kid was here, say "Frederick, here's what an enzyme is."
Daren Bryce: So, we think of enzymes as proteins with a function. In fact, some of the people say proteins with a job. So what they're doing is they're catalyzing a chemical reaction. So within food and within the protein space, that's specifically breaking bonds within proteins to make them so that your body can more easily digest the protein.
So, within the food space, there are lots of different enzymes that can be used, but mostly they're proteases to break up protein and lipases to break up oils and fats. Where they're different from things like probiotics is that they're destroyed before the food is consumed. So normally there's a pasteurization step or just a mild heating step, and that destroys the protein. But the effect, the protein that has been cut up and easily digested, is still there intact without the enzyme.
Joey Thurman: Okay. So by adding these to different foods and products and you have a hundred something products, correct? It's making it much more digestible for whatever products it's in?
Daren Bryce: In the protein space, yes. It's actually aiding the digestion, aiding the uptake.
Joey Thurman: Okay. So is that also the same thing as like nutrient bio-availability, right? So, you could have a protein powder or any other source of protein and we're not exactly digesting all of that, correct?
Daren Bryce: Yes. So it's the bio-availability, but also the time it takes the digest. So, when you take, if you're doing a protein shake, when you have that protein shake before the workout, during the workout, obviously there will be some are about recovery, which is a little bit different. But it's not just the workout shakes, it's infant formula, or things that are for elderly convalescence foods. So whenever your body needs to absorb the proteins quicker and have greater uptake, that's when proteases can be really useful.
Joey Thurman: Okay. That makes sense. I know a lot of people, they don't even chew their food, right. Mechanical digestion is the first thing that starts in the mouth, and then all these different processes that have to absorb the food. So, that makes a lot of sense from what your company is doing. But you touched on some of the products that you're in. What are some of the main products and specifically the plant-based products that your enzymes are in?
Daren Bryce: So the kinds of plant-based products that we are in will be where you have plant-based hydrolyzates that are added to beverages, that are added to infant formulas, where you are looking for quick uptake of the proteins. We work with plant-based proteins. We work a lot with whey as well. So all of the technology that's developed within whey will apply to the other plant-based products as well.
Joey Thurman: Okay. Yeah. You'll see a lot of times that if you're looking at a whey protein powder or a plant-based protein powder, for example, they say like, "Predigested", or there's a bunch of different things, or maybe there's no lactose in there. Is that similar what you guys are doing?
Daren Bryce: So lactose removal is maybe something a little different, but that's also an enzymatic process. What we look at is when you look at a protein and how we're going to hydrolyze it, which is breaking the bond using water, is what hydrolysis means.
When you look at an application with infant formula, you want to hydrolyze quite a lot of the proteins. You can't hydrolyze it a hundred percent because that will be making just pure amino acids. But for infant formula, it'll be maybe 20% hydrolysis. When it's 20% hydrolysis though, you'll be generating a bit of a bitter taste, but the baby will prefer, or we would prefer the baby had better uptake, better nutrition, faster uptake than maybe that slight bitter taste.
But when it comes round to products that are for adults, we would have more concerns around the taste. So when you look at sports nutrition, when you're looking at the bars, yogurts, all sorts of things, when you're looking at those and you're having hydrolyzed protein [inaudible 00:05:05], we would want a lower degree of hydrolysis. It will be lower uptake, but it would have a better flavor profile. [inaudible 00:05:15] across the products.
Joey Thurman: Mm. Okay. Yeah, adults are more picky than babies for their taste?
Daren Bryce: Yes. I wasn't trying to make that comparison, but probably yes.
Joey Thurman: Right? Yeah. Babies, they either have formula or the mother's breast milk and it's a little bit bitter, and adults are a little bit pickier than babies, I think. I think man, we just hit it right there.
All right. So you, you mentioned different sports products as well, and recovery. How does what Biocatalysts do actually go into that as well?
Daren Bryce: Recovery, I think is less what we are involved in, to be honest. I think we are really more about helping companies with the availability and uptake of the protein. Yeah, the recovery side is I'm not aware of so many enzymatic solutions for that.
Joey Thurman: So, if I was going to make my own plant-based protein bar, of course, what's the process going with Biocatalysts?
Daren Bryce: Okay. So probably the first question we need to look at is what's your regulatory requirements. So we need to understand for your product, are you going to label it as kosher halal? Are you going to label it as vegetarian? Are you to label it as gluten free? And that kind of tells us what our resources are available from our range of enzymes.
We can then understand what your technical requirements are. How much of the protein do you want to hydrolyze? What does that mean to how much of the protein your body will absorb? And then we can formulate different enzyme products that you'll then be able to test. We will formulate those samples, send them over to you and you'll test it in your lab to understand what kind of protein bar that makes, and does that give you the right result you're looking for?
Joey Thurman: Great. And what's the time process from me having the idea with you guys to your part being finished?
Daren Bryce: Yeah. So from our side, it will probably only take one to two months to create those formulations of the enzymes. Probably the longer time period is then for you to test them in your lab and understand what the impact on your product is.
Joey Thurman: Okay. That's actually pretty quick. I was expecting a lot longer, so you guys are very efficient.
Daren Bryce: Yes, yes. [inaudible 00:07:48] this. Yeah.
Joey Thurman: So what do you expect out of the plant-based industry and where do you see your company, four or five years from now?
Daren Bryce: So I think it's quite interesting looking at the plant-based industry and where it sits compared to the animal alternative. So when you look at protein, we can see the consumers, when we look at performance, I think are still tending to favor animal based products. Whey protein is still the protein of choice within a wide range of functional applications.
But over time, the plant-based industry should be able to introduce that same amount of functionality, really introduce finesse, how to get the right uptake, how to get the right flavor profiles. You can use enzymes to create the savory flavors that are sometimes there as well from animal products that don't always kind of come through, because you haven't got the same free fatty acids that you have with animal products. And then we'll look at how to slowly inch into the animal protein market.
At the end of the day, you have a driver from the environmental and the animal welfare aspect in the plant protein aspect, you obviously can't have with in animal proteins. I think you'll find that that will slowly transpire and come through. I actually think though within all protein industries, the transparency I think is still not there. The consumers don't necessarily understand what your protein uptake is. I think there's still a communication piece from the food brands on what it means to take, as you say, bio availability. When do I take this shake and why? Why do I need to take it earlier? But that's scientific communication. That's maybe a different challenge.
Joey Thurman: Well, maybe that's another branch of your office that you guys can work on. Knock that out. See, I just added more things to your plate. Pun intended, if you will. All right. Daren, Biocatalysts, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here on Talking Plant Protein.
Daren Bryce: Okay. Thank you for having us.