By Alexis Alvarez and Christian Magdaleno, Nov. 19, 2024
A long, yellowish, rectangular strand that resembles fresh pasta comes out of the cooling dye. It’s thick in width, and it’s flat with a smooth, rubber touch. At first taste, fresh from the machine in the CPP food science and technology testing lab, it’s dry and tastes like uncooked pasta. This pasta-resembling product will then turn into plant-based meat alternatives and be a main ingredient in albondigas, pozole, jambalaya and other cultural traditional dishes.
An interdisciplinary team of professors from the Huntly College of Agriculture and the Communication Department and selected Cal Poly Pomona students are paving the way in plant-based meat research to create more sustainable alternatives that would improve diets in underrepresented communities.
Belal Hasan, an assistant professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science, leads this project with the intention to innovate the methods used to create meat alternatives so they can be cleaner and applied to different cuisines. The $15,000-worth project was funded by the Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Grant Program at CPP.
According to Hasan, the market is limited to about three options of plant-based meats, such as patties, nuggets and sausages, which cater to Western diets.
“That’s why we don’t see any changes in sustainability or changes in the food system, because you are creating products that are only for 3% of the (world) population,” Hasan said. “And you expect the others to be on board with you? No, because it doesn’t fit their cooking.”
As a part of this project, student researchers hope to inform Latino communities that plant-based meat can be a healthier option and can be used in traditional dishes.
According to an article published by Sutter Health, eating too much red meat can increase the risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and multiple forms of cancers.
Latinos in the United States are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and 1.5 times more likely to die from it compared to the non-Hispanic whites, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies.
According to Hasan, people are willing to change their diet but not their culture, especially when it comes to food, which is why he said this research is so important.
Student researcher Marlene Pimienta Herrera, an electrical engineering student on the team, plans to make albondigas, a traditional Mexican meatball soup, to see if she can effectively apply the planet-based meat while retaining the flavors of her culture.
The machine used to create samples of plant-based meat is a half-million-dollar machine called an extruder.
“It is a KitchenAid mixer on steroids,” said Abhijit Kamath, a food science and agriculture graduate student.
Kamath also detailed how extruders are like one brain that’s connected with the machine’s different parts: the feeder, the flow rate for the water, the barrel temperature and the cooling dye.
All the parts of the machine listed aren’t the extruder itself, but add-ons. The feeder is a long, metal cylinder that sticks out from the top of the machine where the mixture is poured. The flow rate of the water and the barrel temperature are part of the machine’s internal process;, and it can be altered for any of the product’s needs. The cooling dye is a rectangular piece of metal that sticks out from the side of the machine where the product comes out from; it gives the product its shape.
A powder mixture of almond meal, pea protein isolate and water is poured into the feeder, which then goes through the process in the extruder to give you the final product.
Jerry Larin, a food science graduate student, said, “They are not trying to replace meat but add affordable protein alternatives to the growing population, where it is expected to be about 10 billion by 2050. As of now, there isn’t enough protein to sustain the population.”
Larin also said adding a plant-based meat option would be environmentally friendly since it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen animal cruelty in food production..
According to Julie Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Agribusiness and Food Industry Management/Agricultural Science, the production of animal meat is a cause of many negative environmental impacts, such as air pollution and water pollution. Lee said the harm done to the environment has many cost factors, too.
Lee said research students will use openLCA, a software that will help students understand and quantify the environmental footprint of the whole production process of plant-based meat. As a parti of the more sustainable production practices, students will get a chance to compare the differences between the production of plant-based meat and animal meat,
Harmit Singh, the department chair of nutrition and food science, said, “We are trying to become a hub of plant-based food research and teaching.”
Small-scale industries don’t have the money or resources to develop new products and test them, so the department is trying to help those companies, according to Singh.
Another important role of this type of research is the inclusion of students and the ability to expose them to the processes of developing products that are more sustainable.
“If they are exposed, then they can go back and understand, solve the problems that are faced by the food industry,” said Singh. “Students are really the key. They are the next generation.”
Featured image courtesy of Christian Magdelano
