Plant Proteins as Healthy, Sustainable and Integrative Meat Alternates

Vegetarian protein diet based food industry have emerged as one of the fastest growing industries with largest than ever shelf space it has created in today’s market. The rapid growth of plant protein industry is attributed to increased health awareness, economic and environmental sustainability issues of animal proteins and their nutritious, economical, and healthy food image among masses. Technological interventions like extrusion texturization has enabled the food engineers to create the imitation meat which approximates the esthetic attributes (texture, flavor, and appearance, binding ability, chewiness, firmness or softness) and/or chemical nature of meat. These texturized plant proteins are healthier and economical meat substitutes with sufficient opportunity to manage modify or change their functional properties in accordance to specific consumer demands