Incumbents' Capabilities for Sustainability-Oriented Innovation in the Norwegian Food Sector-an Integrated Framework.

The urgency of sustainability transition requires large incumbents in the food industry to implement sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI). However, the high concentration of the food sector and the complexity of the sustainability concept make its understanding and overall transition challenging and slow. Incumbents would need to drive the transition by redesigning business models and practices and acquiring new competencies to integrate sustainability into their innovation strategy. This paper has a twofold aim: (I) analyzing the evolution of sustainability understanding over time and (II) evaluating the extent of dynamic capabilities of food incumbents to foster SOI. We developed an integrated theoretical framework combining the theory of dynamic capabilities with aspects of SOI and applied it to the case of the Norwegian food industry. We interviewed eight food incumbents and one food industry association, and we reviewed their annual and sustainability reports from 2016 till 2020. Key findings show a high strategic activity in SOI, as well as a notable and industry-wide ambiguity about what sustainability means in the food sector. Most companies reveal both an adaptive and expanding behavior implementing conscious sustainability-integrated product and process innovations. Most innovations are incremental without a radical modification of business models. Some exceptions have been detected resembling transformative changes. Clear initiatives of moving away from a linear supply chain to a more systematic approach are currently happening through food system collaborations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43615-022-00234-1.

Meat replacer? No thanks! The clash between naturalness and processing: An explorative study of the perception of plant-based foods.

A shift towards a plant-based diet is desired to promote sustainability, improve health, and minimize animal suffering. However, many consumers are not willing to make such a transition, because of attachment to meat and unwillingness to change habits. The present work explored the perception of Norwegian and French consumers' attitudes, barriers and opportunities to increase the likelihood of a shift in diet. Three creative focus groups (CFGs), using interactive tasks such as photo-collage, projective mapping, story completion and third person technique, were run with omnivorous adult consumers in each country. CFGs gathers undirected feedback, providing less biased responses than other exploration methods, related to e.g. social norms. In both countries, results were in general lines comparable. Nutritional knowledge was low regarding vegetable proteins; familiar sources of protein were mostly animal. There is a strong gap between respondents' desired behaviour (balancing nutrition, eating less meat) and their actual behaviour: meat is very important, and the menu is often organized around it. Consumers are curious about vegetable sources of protein, but major constraints were hedonics in France, and convenience in Norway. The main barrier to a shift in diet is the lack of knowledge on how to prepare plant-based meals. Many participants find a conflict between health & sustainability in industrial products, perceiving them as highly processed and suggesting that meat replacers might not be a straightforward way to drive omnivorous consumers to shift to a more plant-based diet.

Biocompatible surface preparation using amino-functionalized amylose.

Aminopropyl amyloses with various degrees of substitution (DS) were prepared and investigated with respect to their surface modification properties. Poly(acrylic acid) was grafted to plasma-activated PVDF films, and the functional amylose was bound via amide linkage formation. Layer formation was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Contact angle measurements and surface MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry indicated a hydrophilic surface and minimization of protein adsorption.

Preparation and structural characterisation of O-aminopropyl starch and amylose.

O-aminopropyl starch was prepared by Michael addition of acrylonitrile and subsequent reduction with freshly prepared cobalt boride and sodium borohydride. In a second approach, the aminopropyl group was introduced via Williamson etherification with N-phthalyl-protected 3-bromo-1-propylamine. The protecting group was removed by borohydride reduction and subsequent hydrolysis in acetic acid. The DS of all samples and the degree of reduction of the cyanoethyl groups were estimated from the 1H NMR spectra. Total monomer composition was determined after methanolysis or hydrolysis and trimethylsilylation by GLC and GCMS. While the regioselectivity in the thermodynamically controlled reaction was O-6 > O-2 > O-3 (50:37:13), the kinetically controlled process showed strongly preferred O-2-etherification (up to 94%) followed by O-6- and O-3-substitution. It could be influenced by choice of solvent (water, Me(2)SO) and base (NaOH, Li-dimsyl).