Analyzing potato protein isolates for their potential in developing meat analogues

Sammanfattning: To keep up with the rapidly increasing global population, a significant increase in production of protein foods is required. The environmental impact of the meat industry, in combination with consumer awareness, calls for this food production to become more sustainable. One solution is development of meat analogues, which are meat-like texturized products based on vegetable proteins. In this project, potato proteins were analyzed for their potential in developing these meat analogues. Currently, potato proteins with great nutritional value often go to waste as a by-product of the potato starch industry. Therefore, finding ways to utilize these proteins in the food industry is both economically and environmentally beneficial. High moisture extrusion is a promising technique for obtaining fibrous products from vegetable proteins. Here, a Rapid Visco Analyzer (RVA) was used to mimic the process conditions inside an extruder, and to study the behavior of the potato proteins during high temperature (>100ᵒC) heating and subsequent cooling. Various parameters were analyzed, such as heating temperature, cooling rate, shear rate, protein concentration, addition of potato starch, and addition of rapeseed oil. It was found that potato protein isolates were able to form compact texturized products in the RVA, when heated to 140ᵒC. The best structure was obtained for a 6% protein concentration (w/w on wet basis) with addition of 1% starch and 1.5% rapeseed oil. Overall, this research shows that potato proteins show great potential for developing meat analogues, already at low protein concentrations.