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More and more runners are transitioning to a plant-based diet. But with this new style of eating comes unique challenges, like figuring out how to choose the right foods to sustain energy and satisfy hunger.
Although plant-based foods don’t always have the same amount of calories as their meat counterparts, rest assured that going meatless can—and should—be as filling, energizing, and nutritious as an omnivorous diet.
We chatted with Sarah Schlichter, M.P.H., R.D.N., and Casey Seiden, M.S., R.D., C.D.N., to find out which vegetarian and vegan protein foods will do the trick at filling you up just as much as animal-based options so you can continue to run strong….Continue reading…
By: Natalie Rizzo
Source: Vegan Protein Foods | Vegetarian Protein Foods
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Critics:
A meat alternative or meat substitute (also called plant-based meat, mock meat, or fake meat sometimes pejoratively), is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics.
Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy (e.g. tofu, tempeh, and textured vegetable protein), but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn. Alternative protein foods can also be made by precision fermentation, where single cell organisms such as yeast produce specific proteins using a carbon source; as well as cultivated or laboratory grown, based on tissue engineering techniques.
Meatless tissue engineering involves the cultivation of stem cells on natural or synthetic scaffolds to create meat-like products. Scaffolds can be made from various materials, including plant-derived biomaterials, synthetic polymers, animal-based proteins, and self-assembling polypeptides.[7] It is these 3D scaffold-based methods provide a specialized structural environment for cellular growth. Alternatively, scaffold-free methods promote cell aggregation, allowing cells to self-organize into tissue-like structures.
Meat alternatives are typically consumed as a source of dietary protein by vegetarians, vegans, and people following religious and cultural dietary laws. However, global demand for sustainable diets has also increased their popularity among non-vegetarians and flexitarians seeking to reduce the environmental impact of meat production.
Meat substitution has a long history. Tofu was invented in China as early as 200 BCE, and in the Middle Ages, chopped nuts and grapes were used as a substitute for mincemeat during Lent. Since the 2010s, startup companies such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have popularized pre-made plant-based substitutes for ground beef, patties, and vegan chicken nuggets as commercial products.
Some vegetarian meat alternatives are based on centuries-old recipes for seitan (wheat gluten), rice, mushrooms, legumes, tempeh, yam flour or pressed-tofu, with flavoring added to make the finished product taste like chicken, beef, lamb, ham, sausage, seafood, etc. Other alternatives use modified defatted peanut flour, yuba and textured vegetable protein (TVP); yuba and TVP are both soy-based meat alternatives.
The former made by layering the thin skin which forms on top of boiled soy milk, and the latter being a dry bulk commodity derived from soy and soy protein concentrate. Some meat alternatives include mycoprotein, such as Quorn which usually uses egg white as a binder. Another type of single cell protein-based meat alternative (which does not use fungi however but rather bacteria) is Calysta.
To produce meat alternatives with a meat-like texture, two approaches can be followed: bottom-up and top-down. With bottom-up structuring, individual fibers are made separately and then assembled into larger products. An example of a meat alternative made using a bottom-up strategy is cultured meat. The top-down approach, on the other hand, induces a fibrous structure by deforming the material, resulting in fibrousness on a larger length scale. An example of a top-down technique is food extrusion.
Both bottom-up and top-down processing can be used alone or in combination to offer various benefits. As discussed later, different meat alternative products have varying nutritional values. A notable advantage of the bottom-up approach is its ability to provide precise control over the composition and characteristics of the end product, allowing for optimized nutritional profiles.
On the other hand, meat alternatives produced by top-down approaches may have limited malleability but are more scalable and can utilize available agricultural resources and infrastructure effectively. According to a study by Wageningen University & Research titled “Structuring Processes for Meat Analogues,” Techniques that follow the bottom-up strategy have the potential to resemble the structure of meat most closely.”.
A cross-national survey conducted among meat-eaters with varying degrees of meat alternative consumption showed that those who consumed higher quantities of meat were more willing to switch to meat alternatives if they resembled authentic meat more accurately. Which can be accomplished through bottom-up approaches. The study concludes that sensory experience plays a crucial role in utilizing plant-based alternatives for heavy meat eaters.
The types of ingredients that can be used to create meat substitutes is expanding, from companies like Plentify, which are using high-protein bacteria found in the human microbiome, to companies like Meati Foods, that are cultivating the mycelium of fungi—in this case, Neurospora crassa—to form steaks, chicken breasts, or fish.
Meat alternatives have lower amounts of saturated fat, vitamin B12 and zinc than meat products but higher amounts of carbohydrates, dietary fibre, sodium, iron and calcium. In 2021, the American Heart Association stated that there is “limited evidence on the short- and long-term health effects” of plant-based meat alternatives. The same year, the World Health Organization stated that there are “significant knowledge gaps in the nutritional composition” of meat alternatives and more research is needed to investigate their health impacts.
A 2023 review concluded that replacing red and highly-processed meat with a variety of meat alternatives improved quality-adjusted life years, led to significant health system savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions; replacement of meat with minimally-processed vegetarian alternatives, such as legumes had the greatest effect. A 2024 review found that plant-based meat alternatives have the potential to be healthier than animal-based foods and have smaller environmental footprints.
Some consulting firms and analysts demand more transparency in terms of the environmental impact of plant-based meat.Through a survey, analysts from Deloitte discovered that some consumers negatively linked meat alternatives to being “woke” and politically-left leaning. These ideas emerged in response to Cracker Barrel’s introduction of Impossible Sausages in their restaurants in August, 2022.
In 2021, 68% of consumers who purchased plant based meats believed it was healthier than animal meat. The number dropping to 60% in 2022, demonstrating a decline in consumers beliefs in the healthiness of these meats. Some states have instituted legislation stating that meat alternatives are not allowed to label themselves as “meat”. In Louisiana, the so-called, “Truth in Labeling of Food Products Act” was challenged by Tofurkey, complaining of free speech violations and was successful on those grounds.
Alternative meats companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have attempted to appeal to meat eaters. University of Oregon marketing professor Steffen Jahn thinks that this has run afoul of human psychology, saying “the mimicking of real meat introduces that comparison of authenticity.” Jahn argues that marketing plant-based meats with traditional meats leads to an artificiality that many consumers do not love.
Consumer psychologists split foods into categories of “virtue” and “vice” foods, which ultimately guide how products are marketed and sold. Virtue foods are those that less gratifying appealing in the short term, and typically healthier, whereas vice foods are the opposite, having more long term consequences. Many ready-made meat alternatives combine these categories with their long list of ingredients.
Consumers who are likely to want to be “virtuous” by avoiding damage to the environment or animals are also likely to want “virtuous” food in the form of simple ingredients.
- . “Meat alternatives: an integrative comparison”. Trends in Food Science and Technology. 88: 505–512. doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2019.04.018.
- ^ Nezlek, John B; Forestell, Catherine A (2022). “Meat substitutes: current status, potential benefits, and remaining challenges”. Current Opinion In Food Science. 47: 100890. doi:10.1016/j.cofs.2022.100890.
- ^ Takefuji, Yoshiyasu (2021). “Sustainable protein alternatives”. Trends in Food Science and Technology. 107: 429–431. doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2020.11.012.
- ^ Jump up to:a b Holmes, Bob (20 July 2022). “How sustainable are fake meats?”. Knowable Magazine. doi:10.1146/knowable-071922-1. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
- ^ “All sizzle, no steak: how Singapore became the centre of the plant-based meat industry”. The Guardian. 5 November 2022.
- ^ Ahmad, Khurshid; Lim, Jeong-Ho; Lee, Eun-Ju; Chun, Hee-Jin; Ali, Shahid; Ahmad, Syed Sayeed; Shaikh, Sibhghatulla; Choi, Inho (15 December 2021). “Extracellular Matrix and the Production of Cultured Meat”. Foods. 10 (12): 3116. doi:10.3390/foods10123116. ISSN 2304-8158. PMC 8700801. PMID 34945667.
- ^ Rodrigues, André L.; Rodrigues, Carlos A. V.; Gomes, Ana R.; Vieira, Sara F.; Badenes, Sara M.; Diogo, Maria M.; Cabral, Joaquim M.S. (15 October 2018). “Dissolvable Microcarriers Allow Scalable Expansion And Harvesting Of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Under Xeno-Free Conditions”. Biotechnology Journal. 14 (4): e1800461. doi:10.1002/biot.201800461. ISSN 1860-6768. PMID 30320457.
- ^ Moroni, Lorenzo; Burdick, Jason A.; Highley, Christopher; Lee, Sang Jin; Morimoto, Yuya; Takeuchi, Shoji; Yoo, James J. (26 April 2018). “Biofabrication strategies for 3D in vitro models and regenerative medicine”. Nature Reviews Materials. 3 (5): 21–37. Bibcode:2018NatRM…3…21M. doi:10.1038/s41578-018-0006-y. ISSN 2058-8437. PMC 6586020. PMID 31223488.
- ^ Daly, Andrew C.; Kelly, Daniel J. (8 January 2019). “Biofabrication of spatially organised tissues by directing the growth of cellular spheroids within 3D printed polymeric microchambers”. Biomaterials. 197: 194–206. doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2018.12.028. PMID 30660995.
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