Recently, because the artist Guan Xiaotong's consumption of plant meat dumplings related topics on the hot search, plant meat once again into the public eye, its related nutritional issues have also been hotly discussed.
Food experts said that plant meat is a vegetarian meat made of soy protein as the main raw material, compared with products such as spicy strips that Chinese are familiar with, the common plant meat on the market has been innovative in research and development technology and presentation form, but due to the lack of trace elements, it cannot completely replace meat. If a lot of salt and oil are used in deep processing, the calories of plant meat are not necessarily low, and consumers should eat it rationally and appropriately.
Picture /IC photo
Plant-based meat is "bean to meat"
On the evening of May 19, because the video of Guan Xiaotong eating plant meat dumplings was suspected of fake eating, the topic of "Guan Xiaotong plant meat" landed on the top of Weibo's hot search. In addition to the attention paid to the authenticity of eating and broadcasting, what nutrition of plant meat has also become the focus of heated discussion among netizens.
Zhu Yi, associate professor of the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University, introduced to the Beijing News reporter that artificial meat is divided into two kinds, one is in the laboratory, using petri dishes to cultivate animal cells little by little to meat, which is "from meat to meat". This artificial meat culture technology still needs to be improved, the development cost is high, there is no related products in the world officially to the market, and there is still a long distance to the consumer's table.
The other is the familiar imitation vegetarian diet Chinese, which is made from soy protein as the main raw material, that is, "from beans to meat". The familiar vegetarian chicken and spicy strips are such products, and the ingredients used in the plant meat dumplings that Guan Xiaotong ate this time and the plant meat currently produced by Beyond Meat, Zhou Zero and other enterprises belong to this category.
The same is soy protein as raw materials, what is the difference between traditional vegetarian chicken, vegetarian balls and other vegetarian meat foods and the hot "plant meat" ingredients? Ruan Guangfeng, director of the Science and Technology Communication Department of the Food and Health Information Exchange Center of Kexin, told the Beijing News reporter that the current plant meat is mainly innovative in product categories and research and development technology. "In the past, it was basically some vegetarian balls, but now there are vegetarian meat fillings, vegetarian hamburgers, etc."
In recent years, the concept of plant-based meat has been popular. Zhu Yi believes that the main reason is that people's demand for meat has soared; from an environmental point of view, greenhouse gas emissions in the process of raising animals and antibiotic abuse may cause pollution to the environment; and from the perspective of animal welfare, there is no harm without killing, and eating meat products may also cause a number of public health problems. "But the plant meat that people are talking about now is more of a capital gimmick, and there is no need to deliberately pursue it."
Plant-based meat is not a complete substitute for meat
After all, plant meat is not real meat, in this incident, many netizens from the nutritional point of view to raise the plant meat in the soybean protein will be inferior to the animal protein in meat and other questions. In this regard, Ruan Guangfeng said that the amount of plant protein such as soybean protein will not be too bad, there is a certain dietary fiber, and does not contain cholesterol, for people who often have big fish and meat, plant protein vegetarian meat or artificial plant meat or can be used as a vegetarian, want to control blood lipid cholesterol and other people's alternative products, appropriate to eat.
However, Zhu Yi suggested that the plant protein in plant meat is a deeply processed protein, which may not be as good as directly from ingredients such as soybeans. At the same time, plant meat imitates the color and flavor of animal protein meat, and will use vegetable oil to imitate the fat of meat to improve the taste, and if over-processed, the intake of calories will be higher than that of animal meat. Nguyen Also pointed out that although it does not contain cholesterol, many plant meat products are added with coconut oil, which has a lot of saturated fat. "From a health point of view, these artificial meat products do not have special nutritional advantages, and everyone should be rational when choosing."
As for whether plant meat can completely replace meat, Ruan Guangfeng believes that compared with animal meat, plant meat needs to worry about not protein nutrition, but the lack of trace elements such as iron and B12. If you often eat plant meat and do not pay attention to the supplementation of trace elements, it is easy to be iron deficiency and anemia. "So, plant-based meat is not a complete replacement for meat, at least not for everyone." If you want to eat plant meat, pay attention to iron and B12 supplementation. ”
Beijing News reporter Wang Sijiao
Edited by Zhu Fenglan Proofreader Jia Ning
Source: Beijing News