Abstract
Meat analogue products are considered to help consumers reducing their meat consumption. Their key success factor is their high similarity in sensory properties compared to meat. Even though the structure and texture characteristics of meat are well documented, dedicated methods used to analyse meat analogues are limited still. This review summarises texture and structure analysis methods of meat and meat analogues: mechanical testing; for example Texture Profile Analysis, spectroscopy; for example NMR and imaging techniques; for example hyperspectral imaging. Furthermore, the advantages and limitations of each texture and structure method are described. Finally, characterizations aspects specific to meat analogues are discussed. Promising methods for future research are described that have potential to get more insight into the fibers of meat analogues and the structure development during thermomechanical processing of meat analogues. Industrial relevanceTo be commercially successful for large groups of consumers, alternatives for meat should be highly similar to meat. That is why meat analogues should resemble existing meat in their texture. It is thus important to understand the texture properties with the help of relevant techniques, such as mechanical, spectroscopy and imaging techniques. In this manuscript, we describe promising texture methods for characterization of properties specific to meat analogues. The development of novel techniques to quantify meat analogue properties will stimulate the development of meat analogues that satisfy the values and wishes of consumers.
Highlights
Plant protein-based meat analogues that mimic the sensory proper ties of meat could be a route to help consumers to reduce their meat consumption (Elzerman, Hoek, van Boekel, & Luning, 2011; Hoek et al, 2011; Michel, Hartmann, & Siegrist, 2021)
This review summarizes and discusses methods typically used to characterize the properties and quality of meat products and discusses the feasibility to apply those for meat analogues
We conclude that a broad range of methods could be readily employed to analyse meat analogues or slightly modified to make those methods suitable to analyse meat analogues
Summary
Plant protein-based meat analogues that mimic the sensory proper ties of meat could be a route to help consumers to reduce their meat consumption (Elzerman, Hoek, van Boekel, & Luning, 2011; Hoek et al, 2011; Michel, Hartmann, & Siegrist, 2021). Meat products are widely different in their properties, they do share many character istics that they do not share with plant proteins. The very small length scale of meat muscle structure consists of myofibrillar protein and myoglobin positioned into a hierarchical fibrillar structure that is not replicated in plant-based meat analogues. As described by Dekkers, Boom, and van der Goot (2018), two approaches exist to make meat analogues: top-down and bottom-up The latter approach aims at mimicking the full hierarchical structure of meat, but these methods are laborious and require more resources than the top-down approach. While the existing methods are quite adequate for meat, it is not clear whether these would be sufficient to characterize the differences between meat and the plant-based matrices. We will assess whether they cover the complete parameter space and describe the need for new techniques for those properties of plant materials that are different from meat products
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