Eat low in fat thanks to lupine proteins
In countries like China or Brazil, meat consumption is increasing dramatically. Since 1961, the consumption of red meat has increased fourfold worldwide. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO expects that global meat production will double by 2050 due to increasing prosperity. This raises the question of whether our globe, with its limited arable land resources, will still be able to meet all needs in the future.
Dr.-Ing. Peter Eisner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising.
The production of meat requires a lot of land. "In order to produce one kilogram, seven to 16 kilograms of grain or soybeans are used as animal feed," reports Eisner. "As a result, around 80 percent of the grain in the USA is fed to livestock." Compared to meat production, the cultivation of plants for food requires much less land. While the production of one kilogram of meat requires 40 square meters, the same area could instead produce 120 kilograms of carrots or 80 kilograms of apples. The researcher emphasizes: "Plants can not only be used to produce high-quality food, but also technical raw materials and energy sources." He demonstrates this using sunflower seeds as an example:
So far they have been pressed to extract oil, and the residue is used as inferior animal feed. In this way, around 950 euros can be earned per hectare of cultivation area. But if you were to prepare all the components and process them into high-quality raw materials for the food, cosmetics and fuel industries, you could get around 1770 euros from one hectare of cultivated land.
The use of plant-based food ingredients as a substitute for animal-based raw materials is also likely to be of particular importance. Eisner presents a "milk substitute" made from lupine proteins, which can be used as a basis for ice cream or cheese. It contains no lactose, has a neutral taste, is cholesterol-free and rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Lupine seeds are also the basis for a new vegetable protein isolate with fat-like properties that IVV researcher Daniela Sußmann has developed. Using a special production process, a highly viscous protein suspension with a very creamy texture can be obtained from the lupine seed. »The microscopic structure of this product is similar to the fat particles in sausage meat. That's why you can use it to make low-fat sausage products that taste just as good as the original," says the researcher. In sensory tests, she examined whether adding lupine protein could improve the juicy and creamy impression of a low-fat sausage recipe. With success: "By adding ten percent protein isolate, we were able to significantly improve the fat-like impression of low-fat liver sausage."
It would be a step in the right direction, because sausages are high-fat foods. On average, every German eats 31 kilos per year. The result: obesity and cardiovascular diseases. If some of the fat could be replaced with protein from plants, everyone would benefit: the consumer because they eat less fat, the farmer because they can achieve higher yields, and the environment because growing plants is more sustainable than that of meat.
Source: Freising [ Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging ]
