“The study centres upon the research of the efficiency and feasibility of the usage of excess tomatoes in Icelandic gardening to produce first rate processed foods such as ketchup,” says Darri Eyþórsson, who completed a BA Degree in Chemical Engineering last autumn. Last summer he received a grant from the Icelandic Student Innovation Fund to work on his project “Better usage of excess products in the cultivation of vegetables.”
Eyþórsson and Einar Margeir Kristinsson, chef, have often talked about produce waste in the food industry where they have worked for quite some time. Now they work independently in their own company, Úr sveitinni (From the farm): “We decided to go for it to fight the produce waste in the food industry,” says Eyþórsson, but the aim of the project was also to increase the selection of processed food made from Icelandic ingredients.
“In short, the results indicate that there is a considerable economic foundation for a domestic food industry that makes use of crops that would otherwise go to waste. This would also limit the pollution caused by disposal of produce; diminish the trade deficit by producing and selling food products that are in direct competition with imported products, and create jobs in the rural areas,” says Eyþórsson.
Even though Eyþórsson says there is little novelty in making ketchup from tomatoes, it has never been done for retail purposes in Iceland. “Market research show that demand for domestic foods made from Icelandic raw materials is increasing. It is, furthermore, economically advantageous and in fact necessary to use in full all the crops cultivated in Iceland,” concludes Eyþórsson; whose project was nominated for the President of Iceland’s Student Innovation Award.
Supervisor: Guðjón Þorkelsson, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition.
