5 Facts on Plant based meats
1. What is Plant-based Meat?
Plant-based meat are meat made from plants. What? you may start to question how did that do that. Plant-Based meat are specially designed to look, feel, taste, and even cook like conventional meat. They come in different forms such as burger patty, nuggets, minced meat, sausages and some even in fish slices. Tradionally to vegetarians these options are know as mock meat , vegan meat or even known as meat analogue. Because of their similarities to conventional meats they are prepared simillarly.
2. What are Plant-based meat made from?
Traditionally Plant-based meat are made from tofu or soy beans wheat gluten (Mian Jin) was also commonly used. Nowadays Plant-based meat could be made from a variety of ingredients, ranging from grains and legumes for their proteins, fibers, and starches. They go through process like hydration, shearing and cooking in order to get to taste smell and look like the conventional meat. Soy bean flour and gluten are commonly used in most Plant-based meat avaliable in the market today. Different companies uses different recipies unique to themselves to differensate themselves from others.
3. Are Plant-based meat healthier?
The answer is yes and no.
Consuming convenional meat and processed meats can lead to high cholestrol, cancers, cardiovascular disease, obesity, type-2 diabetes and other potientiall deadly and chronic diseases according to the U.S Department of Health & Human Services reports. The World Health Organization also classifed processed as carinogenic.
Plant-based meats on the other hand contains no Cholesterol. Take local brand Onmimeat for example - *Each 100g of OmniMeat contains 0mg cholesterol and 4.6g dietary fiber **Compared with uncooked regular ground meat (84% lean) #, the calorie, saturated fat and cholesterol content of OmniMeat are 68%, 100% and 100% lower respectively. (#Reference: USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference)"
However in terms of sodium these Plant-based meats are generally higher in sodium but richer in fiber which the conventional meat does not have any.
4. Plant-based meats are good for the enviroment.
Apart from health Plant-based meats are generally more substainable than their conventional counterparts. According to GFI Plant-based meat uses 47-99 percent less land than conventional meats which conventional meats raised for human consumption takes up to almost 77 percent of world agriculture land but we only consume 17 percent of it.
Green house emmison for Plant-based meat is also less damaging up to 90 percent. Lastly water and nutrient pollution is almost 0 percent thanks to Plant-based meat.
5. Are Plant-based meats vegetarian?
Yes Plant-based meats are entirely made from vegetables or grains. While some Plant-based products do inculde emulsifers such as eggs or dairy products to enhance flavour or texture. Please be mindful that depending some resturants may be using the same cooking enviroment or utensils to prepare these food hence causing it to be contaminated. Otherwise Plant-based meats are vegetarian on it's own.
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