The issue of food waste is an important concern for many people today, and one that needs to be kept to a minimum in the interests of sustainability. Nevertheless, both in private households and in the food industry, residual materials accumulate, e.g. in the form of peelings, which are not processed further and thus make it difficult to fully utilize the food.
According to a 2015 study by the Thünen Institute, 12 million tons of food waste were generated throughout Germany, 2.2 million tons of which came from food processing. In food processing, the term food waste includes residual materials - also known as side streams - that cannot be returned to the processes of the main streams for food companies despite being microbiologically and hygienically safe. An example of a side stream is vegetable or fruit peels from vegetable and fruit packing. Most side streams are used for energy production or as animal feed. In doing so, they still contain ingredients that can serve as such for human nutrition. With this background the INTERREG funded SUN project(SUstainableand NaturalSidestreams) was initiated, which focuses on the reintroduction of sidestreams as a product or part of the human diet.
