Tag: meat substitutes

World Food Day (16/10) Highlights SU Study on Meat Alternatives for Africa

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It’s estimated that the majority of the expected 73% increase in the global demand for meat by 2050 will come from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Since human and environmental health concerns are likely to become more prominent with this increased consumption, plant-based meat alternatives have been touted as a possible alternative. But it may take some time before consumers in the region substitute their juicy steak of chicken wings for a vegan burger.

A review on plant-based meat alternatives in SSA published recently in Scientific African shows that before there can be any large-scale adoption of plant-based meat products in the region, we will first have to determine the social implications of eating less meat, the barriers to eating plant-based meat analogues, consumers’ acceptance of these products, and strategies that could get people to supplement their meat intake with plant-based alternatives. Plant-based meat analogues are foods designed to mimic the appearance, flavour, and texture of meat products. These can include, among others, burgers, sausages, nuggets, mince and meatballs.

The review was conducted by Omamuyovwi Gbejewoh and Dr Jeannine Marais from the Department of Food Science at Stellenbosch University and Dr Sara Erasmus from the Food Quality & Design Group at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands. They examined the available literature on the production and consumption of plant-based meat alternatives by searching the Web of Science and Scopus databases for academic papers and Google for news or popular articles.

Ahead of World Food Day on 16 October, the researchers say their review has shown that there are certain barriers to consumers’ acceptance of plant-based meat analogues even though worldwide, plant-based meat product sales accounted for $12.1 billion in 2019 and are likely to increase by 15% to reach $27.9 billion by 2025 and $149 billion by 2029. They do point out, however, that different versions of plant-based meat products have been available in South Africa and the rest of SSA over the past 25 years.

Barriers

“Consumers’ preference for meat is the most significant barrier to eating plant-based meat products or following a plant-based diet. In addition, meat has important socio-cultural connotations such as status, power, hierarchy, and subjugation of others.

“For example, studies in Zambia revealed that eating and sharing of meat, and even the type of meat that is served connote economic prosperity, power and respect. Chicken was more popular for regular consumption and entertaining guests because it is more readily accessible and relatively cheaper. On the other hand, beef is reserved for important visitors and landmark celebrations as it usually implies wealth because it is more expensive and usually eaten by well-to-do households.

“Other studies found that different ethnic groups in South Africa have various meat cuisines made from different types of domesticated and free-roaming wild animals.”

The researchers add that price is another significant barrier to the adoption of plant-based meat.

“In South Africa, for example, plant-based meat alternatives are considered expensive niche products associated with status and class.”

When it comes to the environmental and health risks associated with eating meat from domesticated animals regularly, the researchers point out that while consumers will acknowledge these risks, they are still unlikely to eat less meat. This phenomenon is known as the “meat paradox”.

‘Halo effect’

“Our review has shown that the ‘halo effect’ (consumers’ perception that plant products are more environmentally friendly) afforded to plant-based meat is not completely warranted because researchers are (un)knowingly discounting the processed nature of meat alternatives in any environmental or health risk assessment.”

“While the reduced environmental impacts of meat alternatives are apparent, a ‘cradle to grave’ environmental assessment needs to be carried out to ensure that the environmental burden is not shifted to other stages of the production cycle.”

The researchers say the review also found that plant-based meat products are similar in nutrient composition to meat, although differences in essential nutrients warrants caution.

“In terms of nutritional composition between traditional meat and meat alternatives, there is inconclusive evidence on which is healthier.”

According to them, the available literature is replete with strategies to reduce traditional meat consumption and to try plant-based meat alternatives. These include, among others, meatless days, partially substituting traditional meat with plant-based ingredients (e.g., “hybrid burgers”), cultural and lifestyle changes, food labelling, consumer education, and taxes on traditional meat or subsidies on plant-based meat.

“However, some of these strategies are not without drawbacks. For instance, food labels on the health and environmental benefits of plant-based meat may contain too much information that could confuse the consumer.

“If consumers in SSA are to be convinced to eat less meat and/or substitute it for plant-based alternatives, the latter should not be marketed as a replacement for traditional meat products but as a complement. Marketing strategies should be tailored to different sections of consumers because such a contextual approach is bound to provide more favourable and long-term results than a ‘one- size-fit-all strategy.”

The researchers emphasise the need for a comprehensive environmental and health impact assessment of meat alternatives in the region.

The True Value of Plant Burger Protein

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Plant-based burgers often promise an amount of protein comparable to their animal-based counterparts, but not all sources of proteins are equal. Rather the body depends on essential amino acids, the concentration and digestibility of which differ among protein sources.

To account for these differences, a new standard for protein quality, the digestible indispensable amino acid score (DIAAS), was developed by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which specifically focusses on the digestibility of essential amino acids.

A new study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, used the DIAAS system to compare protein quality in meat-based and plant-based burgers.

The researchers fed the pigs (the recommended test animal) with patties alone for pork burgers, 80% and 93% lean beef burgers, the soy-based Impossible Burger, and pea-based Beyond Burger. They then measured digestibility of individual essential amino acids, computing DIAAS values  from those scores.

Both beef and pork burgers scored as “excellent” sources of protein (DIAAS scores 100+, for people of all ages). The Impossible Burger also scored as an excellent protein source for ages 3 and up, but not under 3. Beyond Burger scored 83, a “good” source of protein for ages 3 and up.

“We have previously observed that animal proteins have greater DIAAS values than plant-based proteins and that is also what we observed in this experiment,” says Hans H. Stein, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Illinois and co-author on the European Journal of Nutrition study.

Since burger patties are usually eaten with a bun, the researchers looked at the impact of adding the low-protein bun and as expected, it reduced DIAAS values.

Consuming the Impossible Burger together with a bun reduced the DIAAS value to “good” for ages 3 and up. But when pork or 80% lean beef patties were consumed together with buns, DIAAS values were still at or above 100 for the over-3 age group, demonstrating that the needs for all essential amino acids were met by these combinations.

“There was a greater DIAAS value of mixing either the pork or beef burger with the bun – values of 107 and 105 respectively, for the over-3 age group—than there was for the Impossible Burger, which had a DIAAS value of 86 if consumed with the bun. That means you need to eat 15% more of the Impossible Burger-bun combination to get the same amount of digestible amino acids as if you eat the pork-based or the beef-based burgers. And if you have to eat more, that means you also get more calories,” said co-author Mahesh Narayanan Nair, professor at Colorado State University.

Stein said, “It’s particularly children, teenagers, lactating women, and older people who are at risk of not getting enough amino acids. Results of this experiment, along with previous data, demonstrate the importance of getting animal-based proteins into diets to provide sufficient quantities of digestible essential amino acids to these populations.”

Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Meat Substitutes Don’t Offer the Same Nutrition as Meat

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A study comparing meat and plant-based burger patties has found significant differences in nutritional content.  

As plant-based foods have improved in quality and availability, some have achieved a taste and texture remarkably similar to real beef, and they may even seem nutritionally equivalent in terms of items such as vitamins, fats and protein, based on their nutritional information labels.

But a Duke University research team’s deeper examination of the nutritional content of plant-based meat alternatives, using an analysis known as ‘metabolomics,’ shows they’re still quite different.  

Manufacturers of meat substitutes have gone to great trouble to make their plant-based products as meaty as possible, such as adding leghemoglobin, a plant-derived iron-carrying molecule to simulate bloodiness. Indigestible fibres like methyl cellulose thicken the texture of the meat substitutes. And to bring the plant-based meat alternatives up to the protein levels of meat, they use isolated plant proteins. Some meat-substitutes also add vitamin B12 and zinc to further replicate meat’s nutrition.

However, many other components of nutrition do not appear on the labels, and that’s where the products differ widely from meat, according to the study, which appears this week in Scientific Reports.

The metabolites that the scientists measured are building blocks of the body’s biochemistry, crucial to the conversion of energy, signaling between cells, building structures and tearing them down, and a host of other functions. There are expected to be more than 100 000 of these molecules in biology and about half of the metabolites circulating in human blood are estimated to be derived from our diets.

“To consumers reading nutritional labels, they may appear nutritionally interchangeable,” said Stephan van Vliet, a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute who led the research. “But if you peek behind the curtain using metabolomics and look at expanded nutritional profiles, we found that there are large differences between meat and a plant-based meat alternative.”

The researchers compared 18 samples of a popular plant-based meat alternative to 18 grass-fed ground beef samples from a ranch in Idaho. The analysis of 36 carefully cooked patties found that 171 out of the 190 metabolites they measured varied between beef and the plant-based meat substitute.

The beef contained 22 metabolites that the plant substitute did not, while the plant-based substitute contained 31 metabolites that meat did not. The greatest distinctions occurred in amino acids, dipeptides, vitamins, phenols, and types of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids found in these products.

A number of important metabolites were found only in beef, or in greater quantities, including creatine, spermine, anserine, cysteamine, glucosamine, squalene, and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA. “These nutrients have potentially important physiological, anti-inflammatory, and or immunomodulatory roles,” the authors wrote in the paper.

“These nutrients are important for our brain and other organs including our muscles” van Vliet said. “But some people on vegan diets (no animal products), can live healthy lives – that’s very clear.” Besides, the plant-based meat alternative contained several beneficial metabolites not found in beef such as phytosterols and phenols.

“It is important for consumers to understand that these products should not be viewed as nutritionally interchangeable, but that’s not to say that one is better than the other,” said van Vliet, who eats a plant-heavy diet which still includes meat. “Plant and animal foods can be complementary, because they provide different nutrients.”

More research is needed, he said, to determine whether the presence or absence of particular metabolites in meat and plant-based meat alternatives have any short- or long-term effects.

No funding was received to perform this work.

Source:  Duke University School of Nursing