Enriching the Moon Festival with Solein®: Tradition meets sustainability

The Moon Festival, also called the Mid-Autumn Festival, is one of the most significant celebrations in East and South East Asian culture. This year, on September 17th, the full moon will light up the sky, symbolizing family reunions and the bounty of the harvest season. One of the key traditions is sharing mooncakes—pastries filled with sweet or savoury ingredients like lotus seed or red bean paste —representing unity and wishes for prosperity. But this year, a new ingredient is enriching this ancient tradition: Solein®.

Japanese food company Ajinomoto’s new brand Atlr.72™ uses Solar Foods’ revolutionary protein, Solein®, in its limited-edition Flowering Mooncakes and Ice Cream Sandwiches launched in Singapore. These innovative products honour the tradition of mooncakes and bring a forward-looking vision to the table, merging the beloved festival with the future of sustainable food production.

Why Solein and the Moon Festival?

Solein, produced via fermentation using air and electricity, is described as the world’s most sustainable protein. It frees land from industrial agriculture allowing nature to regain its health. This makes it an ideal addition to the Moon Festival, a celebration that venerates the harvest and living in harmony with nature. Ajinomoto’s decision to incorporate Solein into traditional mooncakes reflects the alignment of sustainability with celebration. The result is a series of delectable mooncakes and ice cream sandwiches that blend timeless flavours with the latest food innovation.

In Singapore, a melting pot of culinary traditions, the Moon Festival is widely celebrated. As noted in our previous article, Singapore’s vibrant and resilient food culture makes it a perfect launching pad for Solein. The city-state has a long history of embracing diverse foods, making it open to innovations like Solein, which fits into Singapore’s 30 by 30 food resilience strategy aiming for 30% of its food to be produced locally by 2030.

The Atlr.72™ Flowering Mooncakes feature Solein as a dairy substitute, offering the traditional texture while reducing the environmental impact. The recipe was supervised by a well-known Japanese pâtissier. Filled with guimauve, a French marshmallow-style sweet made from fruit purée, and come in four autumnal flavours: Japanese yuzu, Kyoto Uji matcha, raspberry, and blackcurrant. Styled as cookie sandwiches, the mooncakes feature a plethora of flavours with Solein bringing richness to the consistency of the guimauve, beet sugar giving delicate sweetness and the tastes are enhanced by ingredients like agar-agar instead of gelatin and Okinawan sea salt. It is a testament to how Solein seamlessly integrates into familiar foods. 

The Ice Cream Sandwiches are filled with vanilla ice cream infused with Solein, which provides a rich, creamy consistency. The Peranakan-pattern cookie decorations and the inclusion of mochi add a local flair to these delightful desserts, bridging cultural tradition with the sustainability goals of the future.

“With the new brand, Ajinomoto proposes a new food lifestyle that fosters a respect for nature in today’s consumers. Solar Foods is proud to be supporting this ambition, and we share the vision for what the future of food will be,” said Solar Foods co-founder and CEO Pasi Vainikka.

A tradition of innovation in Singapore’s food culture

Singapore, with its diverse and resilient food landscape, is no stranger to innovation. It was the first country to approve Solein for sale, reflecting its forward-thinking approach to food security and sustainability. In the past, Singapore has welcomed other cutting-edge products, such as lab-grown meat, and now Solein has joined the lineup, proving once again that the city-state is a living laboratory for the future of food.

Ajinomoto’s brand Atlr.72™, with its focus on sustainable food systems, launched these products during the Moon Festival, which perfectly symbolizes how new, environmentally ingredients can be incorporated into cherished traditions.  Solein can bridge the gap between past and future, proving that the celebration of tradition and innovation can coexist.