The NYU Alt Protein Project

About

New York City is at the forefront of a lot of trends: fashion trends, economic trends, and even some food trends. However, our goal is not for alternative proteins to become a trend that fades away a year or two from now; our goal is for alternative proteins to become a food staple of the future. Unlike other metropolitan cities like LA, New Yorkers stick to traditional NYC food (ex. a bacon, egg, and cheese from the neighborhood bodega). We hope to help make alternative proteins a staple in New York as they have become in other major cities around the globe.

Our group’s main objective is to create change within the NYU community. The NYU community is not only our university, but the city that encapsulates and houses us. We are grateful to have an alternative protein class at NYU Stern already, but the next step for us is to create new educational pathways for alternative proteins at the university. In order to do this, we need to foster creativity and teamwork for entrepreneurial students to create accessible products and pathways that allow alt proteins to flow into the community. While we do not have many of the resources or facilities at NYU to do wet lab research for alt meats as many other schools do, our primary goal is to raise a community of students (including ourselves) that can think critically about alt proteins and pull knowledge from other sources to make new conclusions and bring new questions to the table. There is a huge opportunity for research within the New York City community to see how alt proteins are being used and where there may be a need gap that we can fill.