Chapter 6 - Product innovation: palm oil fat in plant-based meat

Abstract

Meat analog or plant-based meat is a rapid growing food segment globally in the food market, both in retail and food service industries. The growing demand of alternative proteins in food products is supported by consumer concern on environmental sustainability, animal welfare, global shortage of animal protein, strong demand for wholesome and religious (halal) food, and various economic reasons. Allied Market Research reported that the global meat substitute market was measured at USD 4.51 billion in 2019 and is estimated to hit $8.82 billion by 2027. Therefore extensive development and innovation works are conducted globally anticipated to benefit from the lucrative opportunities in the future. Nevertheless, with the consumer expectation for engineered meat to be almost indistinguishable from traditional meat products, with similar nutritional properties and sensory, this will be big challenges for the manufacturer to fulfill the consumer expectation. To achieve the high acceptance, the food industry currently studies to improvise the quality of meat alternatives, such as the structural and sensory. Aside from protein, vegetable fat is found to be an important ingredient that able to contribute the overall eating quality for plant-based meat that helps to improve palatability, flavor release as well as able to contribute to the feeling of satiety. In this chapter, the potential of using palm oil as animal fat replacer in comparison to other vegetable fat sources and its acceptability are discussed. Furthermore, palm fat being a plant source is also accepted as a product to replace animal fat as some consumers are restricted to religion and health matters.