Zero Egg, run by Liron Nimrodi, offers a vegan egg alternative. One of the challenges with vegan baking is finding egg substitutes. Keeping pastries together is a challenge, and most vegan omelets are more like pancakes made with legume flours. Zero Egg is an egg substitute made from plant protein, which aims to mimic the flavor and texture of eggs while being both cruelty free and a healthier option.Zero Egg has only 15 calories, as opposed to a chicken egg’s approximately 70 calories, with 40% of the protein of a regular egg and no cholesterol. The Zero Egg team brought some baked goods to the conference, and the vegan muffins were indistinguishable from the regular baked goods served at breakfast.Though Zero Egg may not be in stores any time soon, they are sold wholesale to factories and restaurants. Currently it is being served in the restaurant chain “Café Gan Sipur,” which serves coffee shop food in parks around the country and offers a story hour to children during the summer.“We decided to use Zero Egg after tasting it,” explains Oren Feldman from G-Group, which handles Café Gan Sipur’s PR. “It perfectly mimics egg fluid. We worked with Zero Egg’s chef to make vegan omelets, shakshuka, frittata and a vegan kid’s breakfast.” The chain loved Zero Egg so much so that they decided to incorporate it even in some non-vegan dishes, using it to coat baked goods, and in batter for the fried dishes.Einat Gal, who’s been vegan for five years, ordered the vegan breakfast at the Herzliya branch. “Eggs are the only thing I really miss,” she says, but that the new omelet “tastes really good. It’s not an exact replica, but it did fool me for a moment. I had to confirm with a waiter that it’s really vegan, that they didn’t make a mistake.”Eatsane, which recently rebranded from A1C, makes low carb foods. They take normally carb-heavy foods like bread and chocolate and use traditional ingredients to reduce the number of carbs in the recipe. As the name A1C indicates, the original purpose of the company was to help diabetics (like co-founder Ran’s daughter Hadar), so even more important than the number of carbs is the foods glycemic index, which measures a food’s effect on blood sugar.Mariella, an expert endocrinologist specializing in obesity and diabetes, and Ran, a foodie, founded Eatsane out of a firm belief that the healthiest diet is low-carb, that artificial sweeteners don’t taste good, and that avoiding indulgences is unsustainable.
Currently they only sell pralines, which taste like nut rich dark chocolate that have 15 grams of sugar per 100 grams, as opposed to the standard 56 grams or so. But they are also working on a low-carb bread, with just two grams of carbohydrates (not including fiber) that tastes just like the nut and seed bread you can buy in any decent bakery.Though low-carb, it’s important to note their recipes are far from low in calories, as the pralines have 596 calories per 100 grams rather than the standard roughly 485 calories. You won’t find any unrecognizable ingredients in Eatsane’s recipes, since they believe in using only traditional ingredients.Some other notable companies are Ronen Lavee’s Yofix, the Israel Innovation Authorities’ first food technology project, which makes vegan yogurt using oats and probiotics. FFW is working on a new mock meat based on yeast that has whole protein (all the essential amino acids) and is extremely sustainable, with very little waste and byproducts. Clarifruit uses a portable machine to assess the quality of a batch of fruit, including parameters like size, sugar content and ripeness. Clarifruit is used by Tali Grapes to insure that they only purchase high-quality grapes from farmers.No matter what are your food goals for 2020, it seems food technology has your back. Here’s to a delicious, sustainable, healthy and innovative future!