Plant-based “meat” products are not something you’d have ever thought of seeing. But an Israel-based food startup, Meat, The End, is engaged in making such products and have just revealed the world’s first texturized burger.
Naturally, one would wonder what the difference between the two might be but this company claims that their product mimics the smell, size, and bite of a classical meat burger.
This is a great revolution in the food industry and a great breakthrough point as well that aims to provide a protein source to everyone without involving animals as many already argue against. For this very purpose, it relies on a process called extrusion which has been in use for the production of products like cereals and puffed snacks and uses it to process plant proteins into mimicking animal-sourced meat.
Before this, all plant-based meat companies followed the same or almost similar trend of either utilizing protein from soy and later on from peas as well. But only recently, chickpeas which was known to consist of high protein content was discovered to be an ideal processing ingredient to mimic the texture of meat.
Meat, The End (MTE), took a very different approach from all its fellow competitors in the race in building the best plant-based meat burger. This race began some time ago with Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat looking to impress their customers by getting their burger patties to taste just like the meat-based ones.
MTE had always believed that the key to a satisfied customer is in the texture of the meat and hence changed the source of protein.
Founder and CEO Yishai Mishor told The Times of Israel that the company uses an advanced extrusion technology to turn chickpea protein into alternative meat that has the “structure, bite and juice” that one would expect from animal-sourced meat.
To get to this point, the company has used artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology to infuse additional steps into the conventional extrusion process and produce texturized protein ingredients, which can then be used to build the burger patties.
Since extrusion is cost-effective and also utilizes fewer resources for its production comparatively, the company plans to set up its extrusion plant in the country where it can produce texturized protein at an industrial scale.
Such products are expected to be available by 2023 in the markets.
