Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada; Département de Sciences Mathématiques et Physique, Université de Saint-Boniface, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2H 0H7, Canada.
Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada.
Food Res Int. 2023 Nov;173(Pt 1):113193. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2023.113193. Epub 2023 Jun 28.
Plant-based meat analogues offer possible alternatives to meat consumption. However, many challenges remain to produce a palatable meat analogue as well as to understand the roles of different processing steps and ingredients on both the texture and nutritional properties of the final product. The goal of this paper is to help with addressing these challenges by using a low-intensity ultrasonic transmission technique, both online and 24 h after production, to investigate high-moisture meat analogues made from a blend of soy and wheat proteins. To understand the ultrasonic data in the context of traditional characterization methods, physical properties (meat analogue thickness, density, peak cutting force) and protein nutritional quality attributes of the meat analogues were also characterized separately. The ultrasonic velocity was found to decrease with the feed moisture content and to be strongly correlated (r = 0.97) with peak cutting force. This strong correlation extends over a wide range of moisture contents from 58% to 70%, with the velocity decreasing from about 1730 m/s to 1660 m/s over this range. The protein quality was high for all moistures, with the highest amino acid score and in vitro protein digestibility being observed for the highest moisture content treatment. The accuracy of the ultrasonic measurements was enhanced by the development of an innovative non-contact method, suitable for materials exhibiting low ultrasonic attenuation, to measure the meat analogue thickness ultrasonically and in a sanitary fashion - an advance that is potentially useful for online monitoring of production problems (e.g., extruder barrel-fill and cooling-die temperature issues). This study demonstrates, for the first time, the feasibility of using ultrasonic transmission techniques to measure both velocity and sample thickness simultaneously and provide information in real time during production that is well correlated with some textural and nutritional attributes of meat analogues.
植物基肉类仿制品为肉类消费提供了可能的替代品。然而，要生产出美味的肉类仿制品，并了解不同加工步骤和成分对最终产品的质地和营养价值的影响，仍然存在许多挑战。本文的目的是通过使用低强度超声传输技术，在生产后 24 小时内对由大豆和小麦蛋白混合制成的高水分肉类仿制品进行在线和离线研究，来帮助解决这些挑战。为了在传统特性化方法的背景下理解超声数据，还分别对肉类仿制品的物理特性（厚度、密度、最大切割力）和蛋白质营养质量属性进行了研究。发现超声速度随进料水分含量的增加而降低，与最大切割力呈强相关性（r=0.97）。这种强相关性在 58%到 70%的宽水分范围内延伸，在此范围内，速度从大约 1730m/s 降低到 1660m/s。所有水分含量下的蛋白质质量都很高，最高的氨基酸评分和体外蛋白质消化率观察到的是最高水分含量处理。通过开发一种适用于低超声衰减材料的创新非接触式方法，提高了超声测量的准确性，以超声方式和卫生方式测量肉类仿制品的厚度——这一进展可能有助于在线监测生产问题（例如，挤出机筒填充和冷却模具温度问题）。本研究首次证明了使用超声传输技术同时测量速度和样品厚度的可行性，并在生产过程中实时提供与肉类仿制品一些质地和营养属性相关的信息。
