India's No.1 PU & Degree With Integrated IAS & IPS(UPSC/PSC) Training College.
What is ‘meat’ from plants, and is ‘just like’ meat vegetarian?
Why in News?
- Recently, Various plant-based meat startups have come up such as Shaka Harry,
Beyond Meat, and UnCrave.
What is Plant-based meat?
- Plant-based meat (also referred to as a meat alternative or fake meat) is a food
product eaten as a replacement for meat.
- It bio-mimics or replicates meat, seafood, eggs, and milk derived from
animals — by looking, smelling, and tasting like them.
- It is made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients such as soy, wheat gluten,
pea protein or mycoprotein.
Significance
- These are consumed as a source of dietary protein by vegetarians, vegans,
and people following religious and cultural dietary laws.
- Their demand has also increased among non-vegetarians seeking to reduce
the environmental impact of meat production in terms of greenhouse gas
production, water, and land use.
- For starters, vegan meat is the best solution to reduce animal cruelty.
- They are sustainable and environmentally friendly.
- Practically in every parameter including land usage, water consumption, and combating climate change, vegan meat has the potential to make a significant impact favoring the environment.
- Livestock farming is one of the most carbon-intensive activities around, it releases a lot of greenhouse gases.
- Plant-based meals can reduce carbon emissions significantly.
Criticism
- These are not necessarily healthier than meat due to their highly processed nature and sodium content.
- Uses of preservatives in plant-based meat, etc.
Issues with large-scale meat consumption:
- Large-scale animal husbandry is unsustainable. For example, plants convert 10% of the sun’s energy into calories. Further, animals eat plants and only give us 10% of those calories in the form of meat. But the generation of greenhouse gases is much higher in the process.
- Either we all learn to eat less meat and pay a premium price for it, or we won’t have much of a planet left to enjoy a filet mignon in the near future.
Technological solutions:
Now, Technology has a potential solution to the problem, just like it first enabled large-scale factory farms.
- Growing meat in a laboratory setting: In simple terms, it means growing animal muscle tissue from its DNA to produce low-carbon footprint meat. But this is a complex solution. Further, This meat does not have the same texture and flavour as a walking, breathing animal.
- Converting plants into meat-like or Mock meat: This method involves taking protein from plants like wheat, peas and soybean, use flavour additives and binding chemistry to synthesise something that tastes exactly like meat. The main challenge in this method is plants don’t have muscle tissue (elastic and flexible). Instead, they have rigid structures. However, this tech isn’t new.
- Mock meat made from soy has been catering to Buddhist monks in East Asia for ages.
- Some food-tech firms in the US have made breakthroughs in the looks, flavour and texture department.
- Beetroot extract, pomegranate powder and soy leghemoglobin are used to mimic the colour(Look) of red meat.
- For flavour, plant-based meat uses plant-based saturated fats to mimic the intra-muscular fat in animal tissue.
- To get the texture, the plant protein also has to be laid out in a layered fibrous structure that mimics muscle tissue. For this, scientists use a process of high-moisture extrusion, a combination of heating, compression and cooling that can be sequenced precisely.
- The tech has reached a point where even foodies can’t tell the taste difference between beef and plant-based meat.
