## 1 Introduction  
Eating habits have considerable impact on the climate and on the efficient utilization of natural resources. The food sector is one of the major environmental burdens, where the majority of the products is of animal origin. Meat has been a significant food of mankind for a long time, and it is an important component of the diverse and well-balanced diet. Meat has an inevitable role in protein intake. The food consumption level of a country is often related to the social development [1], so it can be concluded that social development is usually manifested in elevated meat consumption [2]. Meat consumption in Europe is 69 kg/per capita/year on average [3]. The rapid increase in meat consumption shed light on the resource demand of meat production. Cattle are responsible for about 6.52% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (3.19 Gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents) [4, 5] and the production of 1 kg of beef causes 26.5 kg CO\({}_{2}\) emission and needs 15,000 litres of water (equal to 50 days' household water use per capita in EU) [6, 7]. Many researchers suggest that meat consumption need to be decreased to protect and preserve the environmental resources. Decreasing global meat consumption would cause a significant positive effect on the environment [8; 9; 10]. Meat consumption also contributes to public health issues. Excessive meat consumption may bring serious harmful health effects according to scientific literature. Red meat consumption was shown to be a major cause of cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, atherosclerosis, etc), chronic inflammatory conditions, and Type 2 diabetes [11; 12; 13]. Eating less meat significantly decreases the risk of cardiovascular conditions, obesity, diabetes, and cancer [14]. Plant-based nutrition is popular worldwide: 45% of the younger generation regularly eat vegetarian and vegan food, and a full quarter of 25-34-year-old Americans are vegans or vegetarians [15]. Although the number of vegans and vegetarians are rapidly increasing, the plant-based market is driven by followers of the flexitarian diet. Meat reduction is proving to be a bigger trend than meat avoidance [16]. However, many people are reluctant to change their diet to eat less meat [17; 18; 19]. A survey conducted in Germany and New Zealand revealed that 14-18% of consumers are willing to try innovative food and replace meat; however, 25-30% of consumers do not think about meat replacement with meat analogue products [20]. There are many ways to decrease meat consumption level, and a common method is the replacement of meat ingredients with some non-meat component, while keeping the nutritional and hedonic characteristics almost the same. According to the literature, the current meat consumption level could be decreased by the use of plant-based meat analogues, insects, microorganisms, or in the near future, with laboratory grown meat (cultured meat or in vitro meat) [21; 22]. Nowadays, the most common means for meat replacement is the use of plant-based meat analogues [23]; thus, we focus on these products in our present research. Meat analogues are different from traditional vegetarian alternatives, promising to be indistinguishable from animal-derived meat. Good-quality meat analogues should reproduce the appearance, texture, smell, flavour, processing behaviour, nutritional values, and enjoyment value of various meat types. Nowadays, several products that meet the above-mentioned criteria are in the market. The main task in meat replacement is to ensure adequate protein content and to maintain the meat-like taste, texture, colour appearance, and consumer experience. The most frequently used raw materials of meat analogues are cereals and legumes [24; 25]. Previously, soybean and wheat gluten were the primary raw materials, but nowadays there are many more alternatives such as maize, rice, barley, oat, sorghum, bean, lentil, pea, lupine, etc. [26]. The protein is extracted from the plant resulting in a protein isolate, protein concentrate, or protein texture.