Meat Less: The Next Food Revolution by David Julian McClements

Author:David Julian McClements
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031239618
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

The Food Artists Palette: Plant-Based Ingredients

Like artists using different colored paints to create a picture, food scientists use different ingredients to create plant-based meat analogs that mimic the unique look, feel, and taste of real meat. These ingredients are usually obtained by disassembling plant materials (such as roots, leaves, stems, fruits, or seeds) into their basic constituents (proteins, carbohydrates, fats, colors, and flavors). The ingredients obtained can then be reassembled into meat analogs using a combination of art, craft, and science. Just as artists’ paints come in different forms, such as pastes, oils, solutions, solids, and powders, so do food ingredients. The majority of plant-derived ingredients are sold in a powdered form that must be mixed with water and other ingredients before they are used. However, some of them also come as pastes, oils, solutions, or solids. For instance, fats may be bought as liquids (like canola oil) or solids (like cocoa butter) depending on their melting behavior. Ingredient companies play a critical role in the modern food industry. Some of these companies specialize in specific kinds of ingredients, such as proteins, fibers, colors, or flavors, whereas others sell a broad spectrum of different ingredients. These companies scour the Earth to find plants that contain the constituents needed to create food ingredients with the required properties, but that are also economic, reliable, abundant, and sustainable. After identifying a suitable botanical source, they must develop economic manufacturing processes to break down the plant materials into their constituents, without damaging them. They must then purify the ingredients to remove undesirable substances that could cause quality defects or health problems, such as off-flavors or toxins.

A plant-based meat analog may be assembled from ingredients extracted from numerous kinds of plants found in different regions of the world. As an example, a popular plant-based burger contains ingredients from peas, canola, coconuts, rice, cocoa beans, potatoes, sunflowers, beets, lemons, and apples (Fig. 6.5). These ingredients must all be transported to the factory where the meat analog is produced. In some cases, the ingredients must be shipped long distances around the globe before they are assembled into the final product. Coconut oil typically comes from Asian countries like the Philippines, Indonesian, and India, whereas cocoa butter comes from West African countries like the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The biggest producers of sunflower are European countries like Russia, Ukraine, and Romania. Potatoes mainly come from China, India, Russian, and Ukraine. Transporting ingredients around the world requires fossil fuels to power boats, trucks, trains, and refrigerators, which impact greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Moreover, global supply chains are often fragile, as seen by the disruptions caused by COVID-19, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and extreme weather events linked to global warming.

Fig. 6.5Plant-based burgers may be assembled from many different ingredients. For instance, the Beyond Meat burger is made from peas, canola, coconuts, rice, cocoa beans, potatoes, sunflowers, beets, lemons, apples, and other ingredients. (Images: Creative Commons – see Figure Permissions)

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