A review of research on plant‐based meat alternatives: Driving forces, history, manufacturing, and consumer attitudes

Abstract

The topic of plant‐based meat alternatives (PBMAs) has been discussed for several decades, but it has only recently become one of the hottest topics in the food and research communities. With the purpose of investigating the current situation of scientific research on PBMA and determining future research opportunities, the driving forces for PBMA development, a brief history of its progression, key technologies required for production, and the resulting consumer attitudes are summarized. Environmental, human health, and animal welfare concerns are the main factors that have driven the development of PBMA. Although its history can trace back to ancient Asian civilizations, the first generation of PBMA originated in 1960s and a new generation of PBMA designed for carnivore was developed in recently years. Structuring methods such as extrusion and shear cell techniques have been widely studied, but improvements toward the overall appearance and flavor, biological and chemical safety control, as well as the selection of protein sources are also very important for PBMA production. The consumer acceptance of PBMA remains unsatisfactory but is continually improving. Based on those knowledge, future research opportunities include developing more effective strategies for consumer education, providing more scientific evidence for the health properties of PBMA, finding more suitable protein sources to improve the quality of the final products, improving the appearance and flavor, further examining and securing the chemical safety, exploring the structure formation mechanism during the extraction or shearing processes, and developing methods and standards for a quality evaluation of PBMA.

Plant-Based Seafood Analogs

“…Fish-meat is characterized by its fibrous gel structure and texture, where the techniques used to achieve this typical structure, in restructured fish products, have been previously divided into two strategies: bottom-up and top-down [6,34,35]. In the bottom-up strategy, the structural organization of a muscle-like structure is created gradually.…”

“…Second, unhealthy lifestyle, which involves unbalanced nutrition and insufficient physical activity, has led to an increase in chronic diseases, metabolic syndrome, obesity and cancer [1,4,5]. In particular, high consumption of red meat has raised great concerns, due to its correlation with elevated morbidity and mortality rates [6]. Third, animal welfare is in the interests of many, with the hope of replacing traditional meat and fish production with plant-based alternatives [6].…”

“…In particular, high consumption of red meat has raised great concerns, due to its correlation with elevated morbidity and mortality rates [6]. Third, animal welfare is in the interests of many, with the hope of replacing traditional meat and fish production with plant-based alternatives [6]. It is noteworthy that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and The World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended an increased consumption of fish-meat and seafood, thanks to their high nutritional value and positive health effects [7].…”

Edible Mushrooms as Functional Ingredients for Development of Healthier and More Sustainable Muscle Foods: A Flexitarian Approach

“…There is, therefore, growing interest in incorporating mushrooms into muscle foods, thereby reducing the proportion of meat present [ 19 , 20 ]. One of the advantages of using mushrooms for this purpose is that they have good compatibility with meat products because of their umami flavour and fibrous meat-like texture [ 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”

Loss of immobilized water and intense protein aggregation responsible for quality deterioration of ready to eat firm tofu

“…There is a trend of using vegetable proteins as an alternative for animal-protein to produce plant-based meat analogs, due to the consideration of animal welfare, the unbalance between the increasing world population and the limited natural resources, as well as the rising awareness of public health (He, Evans, Liu, & Shao, 2020;Handral, Hua Tay, Wan Chan, & Choudhury, 2020;Kumar et al, 2017). Among vegetable proteins, soybean protein is considered to be one of the excellent sources for the substitute, because it is rich in essential and nonessential amino acids, and its amino acid composition is similar to that of milk protein (Zhang et al, 2018).…”