Experts are combining plant-based ingredients such as wheat and soybean protein, cocoa butter, to create “meat powder” for 3D printers.
Animal meat alternatives are becoming increasingly popular worldwide. In research published in the journal ACS Food Science & Technology, a team of experts at Zhejiang University has developed a new method to combine plant-based ingredients into 3D-printed meat alternatives. The best formula requires a unique additional ingredient, cocoa butter, extracted from cocoa beans used for chocolate, SciTechDaily reported on December 28.
3D-printed meat alternative made from plant-based ingredients, including cocoa butter. (Photo: ACS Food Science & Technology)
There are countless reasons why many people avoid eating animal meat, such as animal rights and environmental sustainability. Many current meat alternatives use plant-based proteins, often derived from soy and wheat, which can mimic the texture and nutritional value of real meat.
Experts Songbai Liu and Shanshan Wang at Zhejiang University aimed to create a type of “meat powder” with soybean and wheat protein that could be efficiently produced using a 3D printer. They experimented with formulas containing wheat and soybean protein, along with several other ingredients, using a 3D printer and evaluated them based on their accuracy and ability to maintain shape during printing. They also examined the texture and microstructure of the products.
Tests revealed the importance of several additional ingredients, such as the emulsifier Tween-80 and sodium alginate to control texture. Heat-sensitive cocoa butter was a particularly crucial ingredient, making the powder more pliable at warm temperatures for printing, and then hardening at room temperature, allowing the powder to hold its shape during the printing process.
A limitation is that those allergic to wheat gluten or soy will not be able to consume this new type of meat. To address this issue, scientists attempted to replace soybean protein with pea protein, but the result was a powder that was too soft and unsuitable for printing. Nevertheless, the experiments helped identify a new pathway for formulating meat alternative products, according to the research team.
