American Egg Board announces winners of 2024 product innovation competition, discusses supply-chain resiliency at IFT FIRST

Each year, the American Egg Board, as part of its Eggcelerator Lab, invites US university students to develop innovative snacks and beverages that use eggs as a main ingredient. Each product submission must have the majority of its protein to be derived from eggs.

This year, seven teams made it to the final round of the competition, and three winners were announced at IFT FIRST, including:

• First prize​: Sanket Prakash Vanare and Mackenzie Bui of the University of Georgia, Athens won the $8,000 grand prize for their Eggspresso, an iced coffee beverage concept with powdered eggs.
• Second prize​: Sonis Su and Viral Shukla of Cornell University won second place and $5,000 for their crispy egg cookie with sabayon filling.
• Third prize​: Josue Angel Cervantes and Alexis Kroslak of Johnson & Wales University, Providence won third and $3,000 for an ancient grains tetelas de huevo y mofongo – a tortilla pocket filled with egg and plantains.

American Egg Board has opened submissions for next year's New Product Development Competition, with the theme of using use egg yolks in innovative and unique ways. Student teams of two are encouraged to submit their ideas by January 21, 2025​, with the winner to be announced at next year's IFT FIRST.

“We love the fact that not only they were blending cultures but also flavor profiles as well as making eggs pretty portable,” Nelson Serrano-Bahri, director of innovation at American Egg Board told FoodNaivgator-USA at IFT FIRST. “We also had others that really pushed the boundaries on technology, and it was fantastic how they included and incorporated eggs into the project.”

‘The egg is irreplaceable from a nutrition and functional standpoint’ ​

With egg prices remaining volatile due to the avian flu, ingredient suppliers have released a variety of egg replacers, many of which were shown at IFT FIRST​.  

Despite this market volatility, eggs are a versatile ingredient — serving as a source of protein, a binder, an emulsifier and more — which is often hard to replicate with a single ingredient, Serrano-Bahri noted.

“The egg is irreplaceable from a nutrition and functional standpoint. Eggs are truly a very valuable ingredient not only in the kitchen but also for manufacturing purposes. We see that many times for you to replace [an egg, you need] ... more than two or three ingredients to make sure that you are getting that functionality or the execution that you want or the experience that you want for your consumer out of that product,” he added.   

Responding to avian flu: The ‘egg supply is very robust and very strong’

Additionally, the “egg supply is very robust and very strong right now” and farmers working in concert with government agencies have incorporated lessons learned from other avian flu outbreaks, Marc Desner, director of integrated communications for American Egg Board, told FoodNavigator-USA.

“We have also learned a lot in terms of our partnerships with USDA and with state authorities and making sure that when a detection does hit that we are very swift and efficient at moving through the protocol that needs to be accomplished in order to get that firm back up and running. The time from detection to recovery has decreased significantly over the years and that is vigilance, it is lessons learned [and] ... it is an ongoing thing [farmers] do everything they can to protect those birds,” Desner added.