Project
Plant Meat Matters
A next generation meat analogues based on plant proteins, that is the aim of the Public Private Partnership Plant Meat Matters coordinated by Wageningen Food & Biobased Research and Wageningen University.
The high and increasing consumption of products from animal origin is one of the key factors causing current routes for food production to be insufficiently efficient to feed the growing, and more affluent world population. Meat production is inefficient with respect to the use of land, water and raw materials. In addition, there is an increasing resistance against the meat industry in the Western World on for example animal welfare grounds.
Plant-based analogues for meat
Nutritionally, proteins from plants such as peas or soy would be excellent protein sources, but many consumers prefer meat. The fact that meat is a product that is fibrous on various length scales including the nanometre scale, is for a major part responsible for this: the flavour components are only gradually released upon chewing, giving a good taste experience during the complete duration of mastication. A route to reduce the consumption of those products is the development of plant-based analogues for meat or meat-like products. Consumer sciences indicated that products that resemble the original will most likely have the highest chance of success to be picked up by the broadest range of consumer groups. Before the start of the project, Wageningen University and the Technical University of Delft jointly developed a novel technology for the production of fibrous, plant-based materials on nano to meso scale, resembling the structure and bite of meat better than commercial products that are currently available to consumers. This fibrous material could therefore form the basis of a next generation meat analogues.
Next generation meat analogues
This project will build the required scientific basis to understand the structuring process while including flavour components, fat and other ingredients. Together with partners that span the entire vegetable protein chain, this basis will be used in this project to further developing shear cell technology for making the next generation consumer accepted meat analogues products with improved characteristics that can be produced more cost-effectively and will have reduced environmental impact compared to meat analogue products currently on the market.
Acknowledgement
The project is co-financed by the Top Consortium for Knowledge and Innovation ‘Agri & Food’ by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. The project is registered under contract number TKI-AF-16011.
Expertise
- New Protein Ingredients
Brochure
Publications
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Lab vlees
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Plant Meat Matters project
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Conference on Science and Technology for Meat Analogues
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Creation of fibrous plant protein foods
Wageningen University. Promotor(en): A.J. van der Goot, R.M. Boom - Wageningen: Wageningen University - ISBN: 9789463433198 -
Novel processing concepts for making fibrous food products
In: Intensification of Biobased Processes - Royal Society of Chemistry - ISBN: 9781782628552 - p. 462-477. -
Understanding fiber formation in a concentrated soy protein isolate - Pectin blend
Journal of Food Engineering (2018), Volume: 222 - ISSN 0260-8774 - p. 84-92. -
Structuring processes for meat analogues
Trends in Food Science and Technology (2018), Volume: 81 - ISSN 0924-2244 - p. 25-36. -
The phase properties of soy protein and wheat gluten in a blend for fibrous structure formation
Food Hydrocolloids (2018), Volume: 79 - ISSN 0268-005X - p. 273-281. -
Aqueous fractionation processes of soy protein for fibrous structure formation
Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies (2018), Volume: 45 - ISSN 1466-8564 - p. 313-319. -
Plant-Based Meat Analogues
In: Sustainable Meat Production and Processing - Academic Press - ISBN: 9780128148747 - p. 103-126.