Plant-based sausage – for vegans
One of these restaurants is Lucky-Leek. As Deutsche Welle notes, it is a vivid example of the growing interest in "alternative" food. The restaurant's menu includes, among other things, a surprise mango salad, chanterelle mushroom soup, beetroot fritters, carrot risotto with tofu and fried champignons, ravioli with feta and spinach filling, coconut meringue cake... Meat dishes are completely absent. And yet, there is no shortage of visitors, the restaurant owners assure.
PLANT-BASED MEAT
But plant-based dishes can also replace meat for those who do not want to give up meat. It sounds paradoxical, nevertheless, it is true. Meat, it turns out, can literally be made from these plant products. Dozens of scientists and gastronomes have been working on creating all sorts of substitutes in recent years.
The first meat substitutes appeared on the shelves of specialized German supermarkets several decades ago. They were soy meat of indeterminate color, unappetizing-looking tofu patties, and spelt fritters with a hard-to-define taste. They did not cause much enthusiasm even among adherents of vegetarian nutrition. It is a different story today. Not only the "content" but also the appearance has changed. Biologists, chefs, designers, physicists, ecotrophologists (specialists in healthy nutrition) are working on this.
The results are evident: "surrogate" (i.e., plant-based) sausage, steak, or schnitzel quite adequately replace the meat originals. But biochemist Patrick Braun, founder of the company "Impossible Meat," dreams of more – of a global revolution in nutrition. Recreating proteins and biologically significant elements important for the human body from plants is a more than feasible task, Braun is convinced.
PLANT-BASED SAUSAGE
He has already practically "perfected" the technology for making a hamburger with a patty made from "plant-based beef." For this, the components of such a patty are brought together: amino acids, fats, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and aromatic substances. Scientists have managed to find most of the components in wheat and spinach. To obtain the pseudo-meat "base," plant protein in powder form is mixed with water and spices, and heated. The resulting viscous mass is passed through a sieve and, to give it a meaty taste, seasoned with heme – a complex compound that, as the biochemist puts it, "essentially makes meat what it is." Heme, or leghemoglobin, is found in the tubers of leguminous plants. True, under natural conditions, the production of leghemoglobin in large quantities is impossible, and Braun uses genetically modified yeast cells.
THE HARSH REALITY OF THE SUBSTITUTE
The more authentic the taste qualities of the substitute product, the greater the chance of interesting a wide range of consumers, gradually convincing them of the "adequacy" of plant-based nutrition. In the development of new methods for manufacturing substitute products, there are tangible successes: chicken meat, cheese, eggs, and even a pseudo-steak, which was "grown" in one of the Dutch laboratories, are already being produced. The results indicate that the range of possibilities for transitioning to plant-based food that will replace meat is enormous.
German researchers have focused their attention on lupine, whose seeds are rich in high-quality protein and oil. The milk substitute obtained from lupine corresponds to cow's milk in basic parameters, experts assure.
There is another point of view. Klaus Damm, working at the Educational and Research Center for Poultry and Small Animal Husbandry in the city of Kitzingen, does not think that substitute products can 100% replace meat products. The scientist cites facts: tofu contains only 85% digestible protein, while egg white, for example, is 100% absorbed by the body, and cow's milk is increasingly found to contain elements such as bioactive peptides, which are very beneficial for humans.
Experts in healthy nutrition at the Consumer Protection Center in Hamburg are also skeptical, where meat and dairy substitutes are outright rejected, emphasizing the "too high content of fats, salt, artificial flavors, and food additives."