The mechanical and sensory signature of plant-based and animal meat

St. Pierre SR, Darwin EC, Adil D, Aviles MC, Date A, Dunne RA, Lall Y, Parra Vallecillo M, Perez Medina VA, Linka K, Levenston ME, Kuhl E (2024)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2024

Journal

npj Science of Food Nature

Book Volume: 8

Article Number: 94

Journal Issue: 1

DOI: 10.1038/s41538-024-00330-6

Abstract

Eating less meat is associated with a healthier body and planet. Yet, we remain reluctant to switch to a plant-based diet, largely due to the sensory experience of plant-based meat. Food scientists characterize meat using a double compression test, which only probes one-dimensional behavior. Here we use tension, compression, and shear tests–combined with constitutive neural networks–to automatically discover the behavior of eight plant-based and animal meats across the entire three-dimensional spectrum. We find that plant-based sausage and hotdog, with stiffnesses of 95.9 ± 14.1 kPa and 38.7 ± 3.0 kPa, successfully mimic their animal counterparts, with 63.5 ± 45.7 kPa and 44.3 ± 13.2 kPa, while tofurky is twice as stiff, and tofu is twice as soft. Strikingly, a complementary food tasting survey produces in nearly identical stiffness rankings for all eight products (ρ = 0.833, p = 0.015). Probing the fully three-dimensional signature of meats is critical to understand subtle differences in texture that may result in a different perception of taste. Our data and code are freely available at https://github.com/LivingMatterLab/CANN

Authors with CRIS profile

Ellen Kuhl Lehrstuhl für Technische Mechanik (LTM)

Involved external institutions

Stanford University US United States (USA) (US) Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

St. Pierre, S.R., Darwin, E.C., Adil, D., Aviles, M.C., Date, A., Dunne, R.A.,... Kuhl, E. (2024). The mechanical and sensory signature of plant-based and animal meat. npj Science of Food, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-024-00330-6

MLA:

St. Pierre, Skyler R., et al. "The mechanical and sensory signature of plant-based and animal meat." npj Science of Food 8.1 (2024).

BibTeX: Download