# Meat alternative

A meat alternative (meat substitute, meat analogue, plant-based meat, mock meat, or alternative protein) is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten by people as a replacement for meat. Meat substitutes might be based on soybeans (such as tofu and tempeh), gluten, pulsess, tree nuts, or mushrooms. In meatless tissue engineering, biotechnologists cultivate stem cells on natural or synthetic scaffolds to create meat-like products.

## Quotes

* With global protein demand rising and the perceived environmental, health, and animal welfare drawbacks associated with meat production and consumption, there is growing interest in expanding alternative protein markets. The first and second generations of plant-based meat alternatives represent potential alternatives, and other alternatives, such as lab-grown meat, are emerging as prospective outlets. ... Meat alternatives, specifically second-generation plant-based and lab-grown options, display growth potential while facing market and regulation challenges. Nevertheless, they come with mixed environmental and health impacts. They offer reduced carbon footprints and enhanced resource efficiency compared to traditional meat production. However, their manufacturing processes tend to be energy-intensive. Furthermore, although their nutritional profiles feature lower saturated fat content, concerns arise due to elevated sodium levels and the heavily processed nature of some products, casting doubts on their overall healthiness.
** Vincenza Caputo, Jiayu Sun, Aaron J. Staples, and Hannah Taylor, (June 2024)"Market outlook for meat alternatives: Challenges, opportunities, and new developments". Trends in Food Science & Technology 148: 104474.
* The emergence of cultivated meat provides a sustainable and ethical alternative to traditional animal agriculture, highlighting its increasing importance in the food industry. Biomaterial scaffolds are critical components in cultivated meat production for enabling cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation, and orientation. While there's extensive research on scaffolding biomaterials, applying them to cultivated meat production poses distinct challenges, with each material offering its own set of advantages and disadvantages. ... Cellular agriculture is an emerging field focusing on the production of agricultural products from cell cultures rather than whole plants or animals ... Compared to traditional agriculture, cellular agriculture can be used to produce a variety of products, including meat, dairy, and other animal products, without the need for traditional livestock farming ... By utilizing cell cultures, cellular agriculture seeks to address some significant environmental, ethical, and public health issues associated with conventional animal agriculture. For example, it has been reported that >75 % of infectious diseases in humans stem from animal sources due to the increased close human-animal contact from animal agriculture, the destruction of wildlife habitats, and the increasing human population and global mobility ... Moreover, the use of antibiotic resistance in intensive animal production contributes significantly to the development and spread of antibiotic resistance in animals and food of animal origin ... Intensive animal agriculture also contributes to climate change due to land and waste usage ... This is primarily due to the production of animal feed and contamination from animal waste.
** Samantha Fasciano, Anas Wheba, Christopher Ddamulira, and Shue Wang, (September 2024)"Recent advances in scaffolding biomaterials for cultivated meat". Biomaterials Advances 162. DOI:10.1016/j.bioadv.2024.213897.
* ROAST OF PROTOSE Protose, 1 pound. Strained tomato, 1/2 cup. Chopped onion, 1. Nut butter, 2 tablespoonfuls. Browned flour, 2 tablespoonfuls. Sage. Cut the protose lengthwise through the center, then cut each half in six pieces. Place in a deep baking-pan, let the first piece lean slantingly against the end or side of the pan, the second against the first, and so on. Sprinkle this with finely chopped onion, and a little powdered sage, and pour over it a nut cream made of two heaping tablespoonfuls of nut butter emulsified, in enough hot water to cover the protose. Add to this the browned flour, rubbed smooth in a little tomato. Salt to taste. A little celery salt may be used if desired. Cover and bake till the gravy is thick and brown.
** Edward Guyles Fulton, Vegetarian Cook Book: Substitutes for Flesh Food. 1904. p. 72.
* Plant-based meat analogues, edible insects, and cultured meat are promising major meat alternatives that can be used as protein sources in the future. It is also believed that the importance of meat alternatives will continue to increase because of concerns on limited sustainability of the traditional meat production system. The meat alternatives are expected to have different roles based on their different benefits and limitations. Plant-based meat analogues and edible insects can replace traditional meat as a good protein source from the perspective of nutritional value. Furthermore, plant-based meat can be made available to a wide range of consumers (e.g., as vegetarian or halal food products). However, despite ongoing technical developments, their palatability, including appearance, flavor, and texture, is still different from the consumers’ standard established from livestock-based traditional meat. Meanwhile, cultured meat is the only method to produce actual animal muscle-based meat; therefore, the final product is more meat-like compared to other meat analogues. However, technical difficulties, especially in mass production and cost, remain before it can be commercialized. Nevertheless, these meat alternatives can be a part of our future protein sources while maintaining a complementary relationship with traditional meat.
** Hyun Jung Lee, Hae In Yong, Minsu Kim, Yun-Sang Choi, and Cheorun Jo, (28 July 2020)"Status of meat alternatives and their potential role in the futre meat market — A review". Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences 33 (10): 1533–1543. DOI:10.5713/ajas.20.0419.

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Meat alternative on Wikipedia
* (March 7, 2024)"Large-scale, lab-grown meat: Step inside a cultivated meat factory | Hard Reset". Freethink, YouTube.