Did You Know You Could Eat Meat Made From Plant?

What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase plant-based meat?

You might be wondering do we now get meat from plants?🤷🏽‍♀️ I thought that was from sheep, goats, cows etc. 

                            

To put it simply, plant-based meat is meat made from plants. It is created and manufactured to appear, feel, and taste like conventional meat from animal products. Although it's not quite popular in this part of the world,  in more developed countries you can find them in your local grocery and health stores in the form of nuggets, sausage, burger patties, and much more. 

The plant-based market is getting bigger with food companies diversifying into developing fishless fish and plant-based steak, as well as plant-based bacon.

One of the biggest companies into these foods uses a key ingredient called heme. Heme is the molecule that gives meat its bloody taste when raw and creates intense, meaty flavours and aromas when it’s cooked. The major source of heme in meat is the protein myoglobin. As it turns out, soybeans make a character and functionally identical protein known as leghemoglobin. This leghemoglobin is found in the roots of soybean and is very expensive to gather. So it is genetically produced by the fermentation of this genetically engineered yeast which produces the soybean leghemoglobin. Fascinating right!😜

You might want to ask, are GMOs not bad for human health?

Genetic modification technology has been used in food crops to increase the nutritional quality, increase hardiness, improve pest or disease resistance and increase herbicide tolerance. Right now,  there is no proven evidence of a link between genetically modified foods now on the market and cancer risk. Genetically modified (GM) crops have genes altered or genes from other plants or organisms added to increase a plant’s yield or improve it in some way.

Other ingredients used in processing plants based meat includes but not limited to vegetable protein extract, beet juice, soy protein peas, rice, mung bean, canola oil, coconut oil, and cocoa butter

Albeit, meat alternatives may sound new to you but they actually have been in existence for a long while. They have been consumed for years and are called regular household names. A particular example common in the African setting is Mushroom. You guessed right? Mushrooms are neither plants nor animal products but serve as an incredible substitute for meat lovers due to their meaty taste and flavours. Mushroom is a fungus that grows on the ground or on food providing it with nutrients. Another lovely example is the Asian Tofu made from soybeans.

You might want to ask, does that mean these alternatives to meat are healthier than the meat itself?

Well, It’s nice to have both animal and plant-based options, but just because a food matrix is plant-based doesn’t mean it’s necessarily healthier or less healthy. Variety is the spice of Life!

One of the cons with plant-based food is that it has too many ingredients including numerous additives. 

So rather than the choice between plant-based alternatives and the real deal, what you should be more deliberate about is moderation. Now you know you could eat meat from plants.

If you had a choice would you go for plant-based meat or normal meat? You can tell us in the comment section...

Author:  Damilola Ilupeju and Josephine O. Adebayo

Graphics: Timileyin Oladayo

© Food and Agricultural Technology Unit -PARG 2021. 

Edition 1, Volume 1, Article 1