Production of Fish Analogues from Plant Proteins: Potential Strategies, Challenges, and Outlook

Abstract

Fish products are consumed by human beings as a high-quality protein source. However, overfishing, and pollution puts out an urgent call to seek a new strategy to substitute fish protein for secure eco-sustainability. Plant-based fish analogs, which mimic the structure, texture, and flavor of fish meat products, are a rapid-growing segment of the food products. The purpose of this review is to discuss the feasibility and potential strategies for developing plant-based fish analog. The nutritional properties, especially the protein quality of plant-based fish analogs, were discussed. Furthermore, a thorough comparison was made between fish and terrestrial animal muscle structures, including both macroscopical and microscopical structures. Potential processing technologies for producing plant-based fish analogs from plant proteins and approaches for the characterization of the fish analog structures were elaborated. Comparing all the current processing techniques, extrusion is the predominately used technique in the current industry. At the same time, 3D-printing and electrospinning have shown the prominent potential of mimicking fish muscle structure as bottom-up approaches. Finally, key challenges and future research were discussed for the potential commercialization of plant-based fish analogues. The primary focus of this review covers the innovative works that were indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection in the past five years.

Keywords: fish analogue; fish meat structure; plant protein; processing; sustainability.

Figure 1

Rationale for developing plant-based fish analogues and the negative impact of fishery and aquaculture.

Figure 2

A schematic diagram indicating the hierarchical structures of fish muscle structure (Adapted from Kazir and others with permission) [29].

Figure 3

(a) Standard vertical setups of electrospinning process setup reprinted from [53] with permission. (b) Schematic description of a wet-spinning process for plant proteins, reprinted from [55]. (c) Syringe-based type extrusion, (d) air-pressure-driven extrusion, (e) screw-based type extrusion. (c–e) reprinted from Sun and others with permission [56].