A brief review of the science behind the design of healthy and sustainable plant-based foods

Abstract

People are being encouraged to consume more plant-based foods to reduce the negative impacts of the modern food supply on human and global health. The food industry is therefore creating a new generation of plant-based products to meet this demand, including meat, fish, egg, milk, cheese, and yogurt analogs. The main challenge in this area is to simulate the desirable appearance, texture, flavor, mouthfeel, nutrition, and functionality of these products using healthy, affordable, and sustainable plant-derived ingredients, such as lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates. The molecular and physicochemical properties of plant-derived ingredients are very different from those of animal-derived ones. It is therefore critical to understand the fundamental attributes of plant-derived ingredients and how they can be assembled into structures resembling those found in animal products. This short review provides an overview of the current status of the scientific understanding of plant-based foods and highlights areas where further research is required. In particular, it focuses on the chemical, physical, and functional properties of plant ingredients; the processing operations that can be used to convert these ingredients into food products; and the science behind the creation of some common plant-based foods, namely meat, egg, and milk analogs.

Fig. 1. Globular plant proteins are often present as multimers linked together.

The 3D view is for the soy glycinin hexamer, which is from the Protein Data Bank 1FXZ: Adachi, M., Takenaka, Y., Gidamis, A. B., Mikami, B., Utsumi, S. Crystal structure of soybean proglycinin A1aB1b homotrimer. J. Mol. Biol. 305, 291–305 (2001). doi: 10.1006/jmbi.2000.4310.

Fig. 2. The muscles in meat have a complex hierarchical structure.

The image of the meat structure used is from: OpenStax, CC BY 4.0.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 3. This figure shows the change in SFC with temperature (top), as well as the different crystal contents in lipids with temperature (bottom).

The SFC-temperature profile of an edible fat determines its functionality.

Fig. 4. Soft matter physics is used to create meat-like structures from plant ingredients.

The authors thank Xiaoyan Hu and Cheryl Chung (UMASS) for providing the images of adipose tissue and plant-based muscle fibers. The image of the muscle fibers is by Nephron and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The image of the raw beef steak is by Jellaluna and is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Fig. 5. Plant-based milk can be produced by fragmentation or homogenization methods.

Image of soybeans from CSIRO (CC BY 3.0). Image of “Soy Milk” by Kjokkenutstyr.net is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (www.kjokkenutstyr.net).