Many people have now joined the plant-based meat trend. Protein-rich plants, like soybeans, are commonly used as ingredients, but it’s not known how much of this food enters human cells.
Researchers report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry of the American Chemical Society that proteins in a model plant-based alternative were not as accessible to cells as those from meat.
The team believes this information might potentially be employed to create healthier products.
Almost any kind of replacement meat, from ground beef to fish sticks, is now available for purchase by consumers. Plants are dried into a powder and then combined with seasonings to create a substitute that looks and tastes similar to the real thing. The combinations are then regularly heated, moistened, and put through an extruder.
People often think that these products are better for them than animal meats since the plants used to make them are high in protein and low in fats that are bad for you.
But lab tests have shown that the proteins in substitutes don’t break down into peptides as well as the proteins in meats.
To take things a step further, Osvaldo Campanella, Da Chen, and colleagues tried to find out whether human cells could absorb the same quantity of peptides from a model meat substitute as they could from a piece of chicken.
Using the extrusion method, the researchers created model soy- and wheat-gluten substitute for meat. When the material was cut open, it had long pieces of fiber inside, just like chicken.
The substitute’s cooked chunks and chicken meat were then mashed up and digested with a human digestive enzyme.
In vitro tests revealed that Meat-substitute peptides were less water-soluble than chicken peptides and had lower absorption rates by human cells.
The next step, according to the researchers, is to find additional elements that might facilitate the peptide uptake of plant-based meat alternatives.
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