INFORM September 2024

8 • inform September 2024, Vol. 35 (8)

The scale at which livestock is currently raised in factory farms—and the methodology used to raise it—generate meat that is bad for the environment, bad for the animals, and bad for the people who eat them. Alternative, plant-based meats are providing consumers with the experience of eating meat while avoiding some of these pitfalls, but they will only be successfully insofar as they can duplicate the sensory pleasure associated with a drippy burger or a sizzling steak. And much of that pleasure comes from animal fat. replacements for alternative meats Diana Gitig Plant-based fat

In her bestselling cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat , Samin Nosrat writes that the aromatic molecules that give each kind of meat its distinctive flavor tend to be fat rather than water soluble. Hence, an animal’s fat actually tastes more like the animal than its meat does. As meat cooks, the solid fat within it slowly renders, keeping the meat juicy. The flavor ful liquid fat that remains coats the tongue, allowing the flavors to linger. Mimicking the experience by generating the mouthfeel that consum ers want and expect is hard–so hard, in fact, that some alternative meat companies are just adding animal fat back into their plant-based meats. All the while, food scientists are working toward other solutions. The goal is to get plant-based, liquid oil to act like a solid animal fat. This is difficult for the same reason that it is desirable: animal fats contain cholesterol and around 40 percent saturated fatty acids. Plant-based oils are usually around 10-20 percent saturated fatty acids. Coconut oil, for example, is frequently used to substitute ani mal fat in alternative meat products since it is 90 percent saturated fat and solid at room temperature. However, it melts quickly at only 24 °C, since it is rich in medium-chain saturated fatty acids, and leaks out of the meat product during cooking, leaving it dry. It is also unsustainably sourced from the rainforest and often mixed with methylcellulose to lend hardness. “Who wants to eat that,” said Alejandro G. Marangoni, food science professor at the University of Guelph, Canada. According to researchers, there are three primary options for plant based fat replacements for meat alternatives. Oleogels are liquid oils that have been solidified using physical methods, such as adding a structuring or solidifying agent—typically a small molecule that crystallizes. Emulsion gels add an additional phase (usually water) to the system. In emulsion gels, only one phase is in a gel state, for example oleogel droplets within a water phase. Finally, there are bigels, wherein both the water phase and the oil phase are gels. Polysaccharides and proteins—molecules that

• To improve the sustainability and health of the modern food supply, food scientists are experimenting with ways to replace animal fats with plant-based lipids. • Consumer concerns surrounding sources like palm oil and coconut oil have resulted in researchers focusing on oils rich in unsaturated fatty acids. • Here we present some highlights of research efforts on emulsions and structured oils. • And we conclude with some examples of research that successfully resulted in a commercialized product.