Plant-based cheese and meat: The nut has not been cracked yet

In the 1980s, the first plant-based cheeses appeared on the U.S. market. They were mainly made from soy or rice, held together by starches and fats, and their appeal was primarily that they contained no animal products, making them suitable for vegans.

However, the taste, texture, smell, aroma and mouthfeel were nothing to write home about, and they failed to attract other consumers. This is largely still the case today. As Christina Rune, a PhD researcher in plant-based cheese and meat, puts it, plant-based cheese remains a nut that has not been cracked yet. The same goes for plant-based meat substitutes.

- Researchers have been working on this problem since the 1970s, and they still haven’t solved it. The question is whether it will ever be possible to make a plant-based cheese that looks, smells and tastes like real cheese, or a plant-based burger that tastes like meat - and whether we should continue this fight or start developing entirely different plant-based foods that don’t need to resemble something they’re not, she says.

Resembling sausages, nuggets and grated cheese

It might seem like an obvious solution to drop plant-based look-alike products that no one really wants to eat anyway - but replacing them with other plant-based products could be a significant challenge, Christina Rune believes. Or rather: You can launch as many new products on the market as you like, but if the consumers will not buy them, you have achieved nothing.

- On one hand, many consumers want plant-based products. But on the other hand, they don’t want anything too strange or unfamiliar. A plant-based burger or cheese meets both needs," says Christina Rune.

The paradox is that consumers cling to something they do not actually find very tasty - but prefer it over something they do not know what to do with, such as tempeh, which is fermented beans in brine. Tempeh and its sister product, Seitan, made from wheat, are available on some Danish supermarket shelves, but their market share is significantly smaller than plant-based products designed to resemble something, the consumer knows: Grilled burgers, sausages, salami, sliced deli meats, pâté, mince, fish sticks, nuggets, sliced cheese, grated cheese, milk, butter, yogurt.

Vegans are so few that they hardly count for the producers

There are many different types of consumers, and the flexitarians described above are, of course, just one of them. But they are probably the largest group and therefore the most interesting to the producers.

- There are so few vegans and vegetarians that they are a very small and thus insignificant target group for the producers. The largest and most interesting target group is the flexitarians; those who eat both animal products and are open to plant-based alternatives. However, they are not interested in trying something entirely new - it must resemble something they already know. It is for their sake that we see all these plant-based foods resembling something familiar, Christina Rune explains.

This dilemma also leads to another major challenge: Plant-based cheese and meat can be ultra-processed products and therefore potentially unhealthy to eat and environmentally damaging to produce.

The ultra-processed plant-based mince

Ultra-processed foods should be distinguished from processed foods, which basically are foods that have been altered in some way. These can be anything from bread and smoked fish to mayonnaise, and they are not necessarily unhealthy. More worrying are ultra-processed foods, which contain industrial ingredients and undergo industrial processing that ordinary people cannot do at home.

This may involve extracting proteins and starches and adding substances to color, soften or harden a mass that can then be mold-pressed. Common examples of ultra-processed foods include breakfast cereals, ready-made sauces and margarine.

- The problem is that ultra-processed foods often contain a lot of sugar, salt, starch, and/or fat and that nutrients and fibers are lost in the industrial processes. This can also happen in the production of plant-based meat, where, for example, protein extracted from peas is used instead of using the peas as they are, Christina Rune explains.

Plant-based burgers could be as CO2-heavy as meat burgers

She points to yet another trap that producers of plant-based foods could fall into: Resource consumption during production.

- To make a plant-based burger, many different plants must be grown and then transported to a place where proteins, starches and other functional components are extracted from the plants using large instruments and machines as well as water and electricity. There is also a potential for significant food waste, and then the product must be transported to the producer who makes the plant-based burger and then to the retailers. There is a lot of transport and many steps in the production of the ingredients for a plant-based burger, she says, adding:

- I am not entirely sure that a plant-based burger will always have a lower CO2 footprint than a meat burger.