SentiaNova’s upstream bet: rewriting the rules of plant protein taste

For years, the plant protein industry has tried to mask bitterness and grassy off-notes after extraction. But SentiaNova's Daria Reisch and Roi Wurgaft believe the problem needs to be solved much earlier in the process – before those flavors become embedded in the protein itself

The plant protein sector has spent the better part of a decade chasing an elusive goal: making legumes taste like nothing at all.

It has not been for lack of effort. The industry has deployed a formidable toolkit to strip away bitterness, grassy notes, and astringency. Yet despite this technical sophistication, the results have often fallen short where it matters most. Consumers may try plant-based products once, but many do not come back.

SentiaNova, a Zürich-based food-tech company that emerged from stealth in April, is staking its future on a simple but disruptive premise: the industry has been solving the problem at the wrong point in the process. Rather than treating flavor as a downstream issue, its technology intervenes before fractionation, removing the molecular precursors of off-flavors altogether.

The company’s launch, briefly outlined in its recent announcement, centers on a neutral-tasting pea protein concentrate and claims of both improved sensory performance and reduced formulation costs. But it is in conversation with Daria Reisch, Co-founder & CEO, and Roi Wurgaft, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, that the broader implications come into focus.

Fixing flavor too late

Two structural missteps have defined the sector’s approach to taste, Reisch explains, one rooted in process engineering, the other in market assumptions.

“Two things, really – one technical, one strategic,” she says. “The technical side is really Roi’s domain.”

“Most existing approaches – thermal treatments, masking agents, enzymatic treatments, fermentation – are applied after extraction,” says Wurgaft. “By that stage, the off-flavor compounds are either tightly bound to the protein matrix or have been transformed into new compounds that are even harder to remove.”

By then, the chemistry becomes more stubborn rather than easier to manage. “Thermal treatments can strip out some volatiles, but they also denature the protein and introduce cooked or toasted notes of their own,” he says.

What follows is not resolution, but iteration. “Masking agents cover off-notes with competing flavors rather than removing them, while fermentation and enzymatic treatments can reduce certain off-flavor compounds but typically only work on isolates, add cost, and increase process complexity,” he says. “The result is a cycle of mitigation rather than resolution.”

Values get a consumer to try a product once. Taste is what brings them back. The category has under-invested in the second part

Even more advanced technologies have struggled to break the deadlock. “Other technologies that go beyond masking – such as supercritical CO₂ extraction – can remove a broader range of off-flavor compounds, but they have generally not been scalable or economically viable at food industry margins,” he says.

The consequence has been a persistent industry-wide compromise. “So the industry has been caught between solutions that scale but don’t deliver the taste required for mainstream adoption, and solutions that go further on flavor but don’t work commercially,” says Roi.

What has been missing, he argues, is intervention at the source. “What’s been missing is an upstream intervention – before fractionation – that removes or neutralizes the flavor precursors themselves, rather than trying to fix the outcome downstream.”

The myth of tolerant consumers

The second barrier is less technical, but no less consequential. “There has been a persistent assumption that consumers motivated by sustainability and nutrition would tolerate compromised taste,” Reisch says. “They won’t.”

Her example is disarmingly simple. “I’ll give you a personal example: I’m exactly the consumer the category is built for – I pay a premium for sustainable food, I read labels, I understand certifications. Last week I picked up a new plant-based cheese at my local discounter in Switzerland, opened it in the car because I was so curious, and couldn’t finish a single slice.”

The lesson is immediate. “I’m not coming back to repurchase, and that’s the problem in microcosm. Values get a consumer to try a product once. Taste is what brings them back. The category has under-invested in the second part.”

It is a blunt assessment, but one that echoes a growing recognition across the sector: without repeat purchase, sustainability narratives alone cannot sustain growth.

When validation rewrites expectations

If SentiaNova’s thesis rests on upstream processing, its credibility hinges on whether that approach translates into measurable gains. “Honestly, outperforming standard concentrates wasn’t the surprise,” says Roi. “When you taste our ingredient side by side with conventional options, the difference is so striking that you don’t need a trained panel to confirm it.”

What did catch the team off guard was the benchmark it surpassed. “What surprised us was outperforming the isolate of a leading market player,” he says.

This is important because isolates have long occupied the high ground in both purity and perceived quality, albeit at a higher cost. “Concentrates are inherently cheaper to produce and offer a cleaner label than isolates,” Roi says. “Even after adding the cost of our deflavoring process, the price per gram of protein comes in substantially below top isolates on the market.”

The implication is not to replace isolates entirely. “We don’t position our deflavored concentrate as a challenger to isolates – there are plenty of applications that genuinely require high protein purity,” he says. “What we see instead is an enabler.”

That shift in positioning opens new terrain. “An ingredient that opens up a much broader range of applications where plant protein wasn’t viable before, allows higher inclusion rates without compromising taste, and makes the economics work for mainstream products rather than premium niches.”

The distinction is subtle but important. This is less about incremental improvement and more about expanding the design space for product developers.

The industry has been trying to fix flavor too late in the process

The economics of neutrality

Claims of better taste are common in the plant protein space. Claims of lower cost are rarer, and more closely scrutinized. “The honest answer is that it varies significantly by category and even by individual recipe,” Reisch says when asked about the company’s cited 15% reduction in formulation cost. “The 15% figure from the vanilla pudding application is illustrative rather than a universal benchmark.”

The underlying drivers, however, appear consistent. “The first is a reduction in flavor maskers, which are often expensive specialty ingredients. The second is a reduction in overall flavoring load,” she explains. “When the base protein doesn’t bring off-notes into the recipe, you simply need less flavor system to achieve the target profile.”

There are also secondary effects. “In some applications, the preserved functionality of our ingredient also allows formulators to reduce other additives such as emulsifiers, which adds another layer of saving.”

Taken together, these factors target a significant portion of formulation budgets. “Maskers, flavors, and functional additives can account for as much as 50% of total formulation cost in some products,” she says. “So even a partial reduction in that stack translates to meaningful economics.”

Rather than generalize, the company is encouraging empirical validation. “We encourage food companies to request samples and run the comparison in their own recipes. The numbers tend to speak for themselves once they do.”

Breaking a long-standing trade-off

The broader critique of existing technologies returns to a familiar tension. “There’s a long list of technologies that have been developed or applied to address plant protein off-flavors,” says Roi, citing steam stripping, thermal treatment, fermentation, enzymatic hydrolysis, and more.

“The reason none of them have unlocked mainstream adoption comes down to a persistent trade-off,” he continues. “Food is a price-sensitive industry. The technologies that are cost-efficient enough for industrial settings don’t achieve the neutral flavor profile that mainstream applications require.”

Conversely, “the technologies that can deliver superior taste typically don’t scale economically at food industry margins.”

His argument is that SentiaNova’s approach removes the need to choose. “We resolve this trade-off rather than improving one side of it,” he says. “We sit in a space the industry hasn’t had access to before: an upstream intervention that delivers neutral taste, scales at industrial volumes, and works at food industry unit economics.”

It is a bold claim, and one that hinges on execution at scale. But if accurate, it reframes the problem not as one of incremental optimization, but of structural constraint.

Built for existing infrastructure

One of the more pragmatic aspects of the company’s model lies in how it integrates into existing supply chains.

“Integration is deliberately straightforward, and that was a core design principle from the outset,” says Roi. “Our technology sits as a pre-processing step applied to the raw material before fractionation.”

That positioning avoids a common bottleneck in ingredient innovation. “That means no modifications to existing production lines, no new capital equipment for our partners, and no changes to downstream processing parameters,” he explains.

Validation across multiple sites suggests that this is not merely theoretical. “Partners can process our deflavored raw material on their existing equipment, with no impact on yield or operational settings.”

The commercial implications are significant. “It means the industry can adopt our technology without taking on integration risk, capex, or operational disruption,” Reisch says. “That removes most of the friction that typically slows ingredient innovation.”

Unlocking stranded capacity

The European plant protein sector has invested heavily in dry fractionation capacity, much of which remains underutilized. “The bottleneck isn’t on the supply side,” Reisch says. “It’s on demand – how quickly large food companies validate the ingredient and commit to volumes. The capacity is already there.”

So the industry has been caught between solutions that scale but don’t deliver the taste required for mainstream adoption, and solutions that go further on flavor but don’t work commercially

Several factors could accelerate uptake. “There are no regulatory barriers to navigate. We’re not introducing a novel ingredient that requires new approvals,” she notes. “What we’re offering is a substantially better version of an ingredient they’re already using.”

The partnership model reinforces this dynamic. “We’re equipping established pulse protein manufacturers to produce our ingredient on their existing dry fractionation lines,” she says.

The timeline, while not immediate, is relatively compressed for the sector. “From project approval to commissioning a production unit, partners should plan on around 12 months.”

In practical terms, the pace of reactivation will be dictated by customer demand rather than technical constraints.

Beyond protein: the overlooked fraction

While the headline focus remains on protein, Roi points to an underappreciated opportunity elsewhere in the process.

“After dry fractionation, roughly 70% of the output is the starch-rich fraction,” he says. “Traditionally, this stream is sold into pet food or animal feed at very low value, primarily because of its poor taste.”

Attempts to upgrade this fraction have had limited success. “Heat-based or steam stripping technologies can improve performance in food systems, but they primarily gelatinize the starch rather than truly remove the flavor compounds,” he explains.

The result is a material that functions, but does not fully shed its sensory limitations. “In our case, that fraction comes out clean in taste and with some genuinely interesting functional properties,” he says. “That changes its commercial potential significantly.”

The implications extend beyond incremental value capture. “It could move from a low-value byproduct into a valuable ingredient in its own right, with applications in areas like gluten-free bakery and other functional starch use cases.”

The company is actively seeking partners to explore this avenue, suggesting that the economics of upstream deflavoring may extend well beyond protein itself.

From skepticism to application

For prospective customers, the first interaction with the ingredient tends to follow a predictable arc. “The first reaction is rarely skepticism – it’s surprise, sometimes mild confusion,” Reisch says. “The most common response we get when someone tastes our ingredient is some version of ‘this isn’t how pea is supposed to taste.’”

That reaction quickly gives way to a more familiar concern. “The skepticism kicks in immediately afterward, and it’s almost always about price,” she says. “Is this a premium ingredient that only works in high-margin applications, or can it go into mainstream, price-sensitive products?”

The industry’s history explains the hesitation. “The default assumption when someone tastes a meaningfully better plant protein is that there must be a catch on price.”

Her response is unequivocal. “We’ve built the technology around a CapEx- and OpEx-light production model from the start, which means we can bring the ingredient to market at prices comparable to existing solutions,” she says.

Once that constraint is removed, the conversation shifts. “From ‘is this real?’ to ‘where can we use it?’”

The question shifts from ‘how much can we get away with before taste suffers?’ to ‘how much do we want to use to optimize nutrition, texture, and cost?’

Raising the ceiling

If taste has been the limiting factor, removing it alters more than just flavor profiles. “Today’s inclusion rates in many applications aren’t limited by nutrition or functionality – they’re limited by taste,” Reisch says. “Formulators are constantly balancing how much plant protein they can include before off-notes start to dominate.”

A neutral base changes that equation entirely. “The question shifts from ‘how much can we get away with before taste suffers?’ to ‘how much do we want to use to optimize nutrition, texture, and cost?’”

The downstream effects cascade through product design. “Higher inclusion rates without taste compromise mean simpler formulations, less reliance on masking agents and additives, and cleaner labels,” she says.

The impact is not incremental. “So the ceiling doesn’t just move incrementally. It shifts fundamentally, because the primary constraint that has held it in place is removed.”

A category at an inflection point

The broader context for SentiaNova’s launch is a sector under pressure to deliver on its early promise.

Processing infrastructure exists. Agricultural incentives for legumes are strengthening. Demand for protein continues to rise, driven by demographic trends and shifting dietary patterns. Yet without products that meet consumer expectations on taste, these structural advantages risk remaining underutilized.

Reisch’s argument is that the missing piece has been sensory, not supply.

“The transition to plant-based diets has so far leaned heavily on sustainability advocacy,” she says. “What’s been missing is products that simply taste great at an accessible price.”

If that gap can be closed, the implications extend beyond any single ingredient or company. “Values get a consumer to try a product once,” she says. “Taste is what brings them back.”