A collaboration with Nursh & Haystack Consulting on the one claim every plant protein startup has to defend: it actually tastes good.
Every plant protein startup makes the same promise. The taste problem is fixed. Few of them can prove it in a way a B2B customer will actually accept. Internal tasting doesn’t count. Pitch-deck adjectives don’t count. What counts is independent, attribute-level evidence on the actual ingredient, plus a finished application that performs in the customer’s category.
That gap is exactly where we ended up working with SentiaNova earlier this year, alongside our partner Haystack Consulting.
The brief: a Taste Event that had to land
SentiaNova is a Zürich-based protein startup with a patented preprocessing technology that removes off-flavours from pea, chickpea and faba bean at source, without masking agents, without novel-food filings and without rebuilding factories. This prevents the problem at the source, reducing the need for complex downstream formulations.
Their pitch is sharp: “We don’t mask. We remove.” But sharp pitches need backing. Actively fundraising and with a Taste Event scheduled to put their ingredient in front of prospective B2B buyers, Giacomo Cattaneo (interim CCO) reached out with a clear ask: turn the technology into proof points people can taste, taste-test and trust.
That meant two things in parallel:
- Three application MVPs, ready to be served and demoed at the event. Not theoretical, not lab-only prototypes, but real products people would actually buy.
- Independent sensory validation of the raw ingredient itself, at a level of statistical rigour that would survive an R&D buyer’s scrutiny.
We don’t pretend to be a sensory house. Haystack does that beautifully. So the project was set up as a partnership from day one: Nursh on formulation and application, Haystack on objective sensory measurement.
What Nursh built: three applications, three processing realities
The point of the MVP track was to stress-test the SentiaNova concentrate across very different conditions, while showing buyers that one ingredient can serve multiple categories without compromise.
We landed on three:
- Recovery protein ball / Cold processing, 18.8% inclusion, “source of protein” claim (16.5 g/100 g)
- Protein shake / Hot processing, 8.6% inclusion, “high protein” claim
- Protein pudding / Hot processing, 10.2% inclusion, “high protein” claim
Across all three: smooth, homogeneous, no clumping, no defects, light colour. Effective at both high and low inclusion. Suitable for cold and hot processing. That is the kind of versatility a B2B customer can actually do something with.
In application work, the SentiaNova concentrate consistently held its own on colour, taste, dispersibility and texture, while showing a cleaner profile than several deflavoured plant-protein references tested internally.
What Haystack measured: significant difference, attribute by attribute
Saying a protein “tastes neutral” is a claim. Showing it on a Degree of Difference test with a trained panel is evidence.
Karlien and her team @ Haystack ran a DOD discrimination test with 12 trained panellists on samples dispersed in water at 3%, comparing treated SentiaNova samples and benchmark samples individually against an untreated reference.
Five attributes were selected during training: cereal, green notes, bitter, astringent, cardboard.
Results at a glance
Compared to the untreated reference, the SentiaNova treated sample showed a significant reduction in key undesirable sensory attributes, including green notes, bitterness and astringency.
Compared to the untreated reference, the SentiaNova sample also demonstrated a stronger reduction in perceived astringency than the benchmark samples, alongside directional improvements in green notes and bitterness.
Haystack’s summary: “a cleaner and more balanced flavour profile.”
That is a sentence a B2B sales conversation can actually rest on.
Importantly, the data does not suggest complete flavour neutrality. What it demonstrates is a measurable and statistically supported reduction of key off-notes commonly associated with plant proteins.
Why two specialists, one project
The reason this project moved quickly is that nobody tried to do somebody else’s job.
Nursh focused on formulation and application development. Haystack focused on sensory validation.
That separation mattered.
A B2B taste claim is rarely just a formulation question. It is also a sensory science question and a commercial credibility question. Bringing specialised partners together around the same technical challenge created a stronger outcome than a generic one-stop-shop approach.
“The whole market keeps claiming they have fixed the taste challenge. We all know this has never been true to the degree we want it as consumers. The proof needs to be in the pudding, as they say – so we made the best plant-based vanilla pudding, ever. This is not empty marketing, this is proof built on application & sensory excellence”.
Giacomo Cattaneo/ Co-Founder @ SentiaNova