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Vegetarian schnitzel and sausages meat substitute products are booming
Vegetarian and vegan foods have experienced a veritable boom in recent years. Even in conventional supermarkets meatless schnitzel, burgers or sausages are now on the shelves. The production method is similar in some cases to the production of peanut flips. There is no consensus on how healthy meat substitutes are.
Vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes
If vegetarians or vegans were mocked by some people as "grain eaters" a few years ago, a meatless diet today is widespread in all strata of the population and regions. More and more people are vegan or vegetarian for health, environmental, moral or ethical reasons. At the same time, the market has changed as well. In the past, there was meat substitute, which tastes like meat, almost only in the health food store or health food store, today, such products are available in almost every well-stocked supermarket. A news agency dpa reports more about the production of vegetarian alternatives to meat.
Vegan meat replacement products are growing in popularity. (Image: photocrew / fotolia.com) Sales increased by almost 90 percent
In the laboratory hall of the German Institute for Food Technology (DIL), the employee Florian Singer tilts ground soybean meal in deafening noise into a funnel of a man-high apparatus. Although it escapes the eye, what happens in the machine, but in the end swells like a tube of a flat, gray dough out. Of these, Singer's colleague Hendrik Thoben cuts off about 50 centimeters long rectangles and places them in a box. This is the first step to a meatless schnitzel. According to the Federal Food Law and Foodstuffs Agency, the umbrella organization of the German food industry, sales of meat substitute products have increased by 88 percent over the past four years.
Meatless goods from sausage manufacturers
Even food manufacturers who have made their name with sausage and meat products now offer meatless products. The sausage manufacturer Rügenwalder Mühle, for example, currently has 16 such products on offer; including vegetarian cold cuts, schnitzel or vegetarian minced meat. According to dpa, Godo Röben, who is responsible for marketing, research and development for the food manufacturer, says the first vegan products are now on the market: "At the end of 2015, vegetarian products accounted for approximately 20 percent of our company's sales."
"Praise - especially from consumers"
Competitor Wiesenhof has been offering vegan meat sausage and mortadella since last September. According to the managing director of Wiesenhof marketing, Ingo Stryck, other products will soon be on the market, including a vegetarian frozen schnitzel. "So far, we're very pleased with the launch and have received a lot of praise for our veggie line, especially from consumers," says Stryck. According to the dpa, the meatless schnitzel or the chicken nugget starts at a production plant like the one at the DIL in Quakenbrück in the Osnabrück region. The institute was founded in the 1980s and carries out research and development work for the medium-sized food manufacturers in the region.
As in the production of peanut flips
DIL spokesman Sebastian Biedermann explained that the process used is extrusion and in principle is the same method used to make peanut flips. The raw material - in this case soybean meal - is driven through two counter-rotating screws. Under the influence of pressure, heat and water, the dough mixture finally forms, which, unlike the flips, does not fluff up at the end, but rather reminds of meat and pork, beef, poultry or fish meat due to their texture and later "mouthfeel". "The secret lies in the cooling nozzles," says Biedermann. After the extrusion, the dough blank is cooled again, at the end comes out a vegetable product with the mentioned properties of meat: "What happens at the molecular level, we do not know yet." According to the spokesman, the DIL for ten years researched the technology that is now in use worldwide.
Taste only in the further processing
It goes on to say that the "natural" taste of meat substitution from plants is neutral. A taste of the dough blank resembles a piece of edible cardboard. The final taste and appearance of the product in further processing, such as marinating and portioned, explained Singer. Ingredients such as dyes or flavor enhancers are added - substances that many health-conscious people do not want on their plates. "The higher the processing level of a food, the more ingredients and additives are used," said Silke Restemeyer of the German Nutrition Society (DGE). However, general statements about the variety of products are difficult. For example, a simple tofu product of processing grade is similar to cheese.
Health benefits?
"If someone is vegan-eating and simply replacing the meat with highly processed meat substitutes, he does not necessarily end up on a balanced, full-fledged vegan diet," says the nutritionist. Rather, it depends on how often you eat something like that. Whether vegan diet is good or bad for health is not consistently answered by experts. People who rely on purely plant-based foods, while dispensing with cholesterol, but also on the important vitamin B 12. Therefore, vegans are often advised to resort to appropriate nutrient preparations. (Ad)