Accelerating research and development of plant-based meat

The rough estimation of global meat consumption is that it accounts for almost 30% of the total daily calories consumed. The market demand for meat is still growing and is projected to be worth as much as $2.7T by 2040 as quoted by an Industry Analyst.

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, it caused a massive disruption in the global supply chain. Ever since, meat processors are facing challenges in meeting this growing consumer demand due to the localised outbreaks that force immediate factory closures. There are also issues with the border controls and regulations as well as challenges in organising logistics. These challenges have made it difficult to import meat products when the local supply is limited. The possibility of meat shortages to satisfy the protein requirement of a fast-growing population has opened the opportunity for alternative meat products that can be grown artificially or processed from plant-based products.

The shift towards consuming plant-based proteins from traditional meat is also driven by the change in modern diet trends and consumer preferences. Australia has a big opportunity to be a key player in this newly-emerging food market due to its strong global reputation in the agricultural sector.

For those customers that support the alternate meat products, there are demands for the new food products to possess the taste and texture similar to that of the real meat. Therefore, these eating properties have to be thoroughly investigated during the development stage to optimise the composition of ingredients to meet these requirements without affecting its final quality.

Food texture analysis is the science of measuring physical properties of food and using that data to correlate with their subjective characteristics. Actually, it has been around for a long time and has been consistently used by food scientists and manufacturers. They have been used to investigate the effects of mixing different types of ingredients, identifying suitable alternative ingredients or optimising the processing and cooking time to achieve the desired final products.

For meat products, texture analysis can be implemented to measure its tenderness and bite forces which can be directly correlated to the quality of the products. It can optimise the types of ingredients to make plant-based meat taste similar or close to the real meat.

The texture analyser is a material testing machine fitted with customisable jigs and fixtures to stretch, compress or physically deform the samples to calculate its textural properties. It is extremely crucial to choose the correct types of jigs and fixtures as the correct selection highly depends on the types of products and the required properties to be measured.

Shear force test can be applied to measure the tenderness of the meat products by measuring the force required to slice or shear the meat. The most common techniques used are Warner-Bratzler test, Slice Shear force test or Bite test, each conducted with the specific fixtures such as Warner-Bratzler shear blades, Kramer shear cells and Volodkevitch Bite Sets, respectively. These jigs can simulate the direct compression force required for slicing through the samples.

The results from these tests can be directly correlated to the toughness of the developed products. Scientists can control and configure their test methods through the powerful analysis software which can be loaded with a comprehensive list of industry-standard tests. An optional temperature or humidity probe can also be used to investigate the effect of these inherent properties on the texture.

Having the capability to quantify the textural properties of food will set the food manufacturers at the front foot for innovative, modern, sustainable plant-based food products that are popular amongst the general public. This will accelerate the development in this sector so that we are ready to fill in the ever-growing demand.

Top image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/BennyHartono