by Colleen MacPherson, Canadian Light Source
Plant-based meat substitutes are popular with people who want to reduce their meat consumption or who choose a vegan diet. However, concerns persist about the products becoming dry when cooked and lacking the mouth feel associated with real meat. Enter Dr. Alejandro Marangoni, who has developed two sustainable, low-cost solutions for ensuring these alternatives retain oil when cooked and have the texture we associate with ground beef.
“People like their burgers and meat to be juicy,” even with plant-based products, said Marangoni, a professor of food science and Canada Research Chair Food, Health and Aging at the University of Guelph. What is missing is the connective tissue or gristle that holds fat in place in meat. “Plant-based products don’t have that” and, as a result, any added oil simply leaks out during cooking.
The first step in Marangoni’s research was to understand how connective tissue holds fat. He and his team used computed tomography at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to produce 3D images of both raw and cooked meat tissue, “and it looks remarkably like a sponge, an open-cell foam” with fat contained within the voids.
As a replacement, the researchers used small pieces of carrot, broccoli and asparagus that were freeze-dried to remove moisture and then filled with different oils, “and it worked extremely well.” Using this method, “all you’re eating is a dried piece of vegetable and natural oil.” Their results were published in a recent issue of Current Research in Food Science.
A second paper, published in February in Future Foods, outlines another approach—using a gel made of pea starch, chickpea flour and oil that, when added to plant-based products, provided the “chew” and oil retention of meat. “We added enough (gel) to turn lean ground meat into medium ground meat, and the properties were identical,” said Marangoni.
Both methods work equally well, producing meat-like chew and moistness, and Marangoni said that in his own taste testing of products, “there was no weird flavor or weird texture.”
In terms of sustainability, he said the gel material “is very beneficial.” The extraction of pea protein leaves large amounts of starch as a byproduct. By using that starch to make the gel, “we close the loop on total utilization of a pea or lentil.” Canada is the largest producer of peas and lentils in the world.
Marangoni added that the natural ingredients he has used help “simplify the label” of plant-based products that are often criticized for being ultra-processed.
There are no patents on their work, and he hopes food manufacturers will use his discoveries to create products that more closely resemble meat and that will appeal to those considering meat alternatives. “We’re just very interested in having people try it out.”
Marangoni said using CLS imaging technology is “critical and essential to the development of our products” as it allows greater understanding of ingredients and their interactions. There is more work to be done, he added. “There are still a lot of mysteries associated with plant proteins and the way they behave in plant-based food products.”
Provided by Canadian Light Source
