The State of the Science on Alternative Proteins: September through December 2022

The U.S. government prioritized alternative proteins

In a review process that took over one year, the United States Food and Drug Administration shared in November that they had no further questions with respect to the safety of cultivated chicken produced by UPSIDE Foods. This news was a historic milestone for the industry and a signal to the rest of the world that cultivating animal cells is a safe way to produce meat. Consumers in the United States are likely to soon gain access to cultivated products, following USDA grants of inspection and decisions on labeling.

There were also several announcements and publications that indicate an increasing recognition that alt proteins should be a key element of our national strategy. The National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Advanced Manufacturing published their latest National Strategy for Advanced Manufacturing, which explicitly calls out alt proteins.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a report on Operationalizing Sustainable Development to Benefit People and the Planet, which lists alt proteins as a key research priority for food systems. The National Academies also published a briefing from their 2022 Food Forum workshop on alternative proteins, which I spoke at alongside GFI grantees Dr. Julian McClements and Dr. David Kaplan. A call for greater government investment in alt protein R&D was a resounding takeaway from this workshop.

These developments indicate a much greater commitment within the U.S. government to investigate the potential of alternative proteins to contribute to national priorities.

There were significant advances in plant-based meat science

Our third theme revolves around all things plant-based. From sidestream utilization to advances in extrusion, the science advancing plant-based meat made big strides in 2022 bringing us several steps closer to taste and price parity.

The use of sidestreams to create plant-based foods is an important trend that can help reduce overall food waste, reduce ingredient production costs, and stabilize protein supply chains by diversifying the portfolio of feedstocks that manufacturers can use. In the last four months of 2022, a number of publications focused on protein-rich sidestreams: including the use of corn gluten meal, wheat bran protein, tomato leaves, and brewers spent grain proteins as inputs for plant-based meat. All of these sources are large-scale commodities with large volumes of sidestreams that could significantly reduce the cost of plant protein production.

There is an emerging and promising trend of adding single amino acids, including L-cysteine and lysine to enhance protein bases such as soy and pea protein. Even Impossible Foods reformulated their original soy and potato protein base burger to now soy protein fortified with amino acid L-tryptophan, claiming that this modification improved their protein quality score.

To make plant-based meat a scalable solution to the world’s most pressing challenges, these products must compete with traditional products in taste and texture. Advances in extrusion took off further at the end of 2022 to provide high-quality textured plant proteins, including optimizing die geometries and testing rotating dies for extruded protein functionality. Shear cell technology and 3D printing continue to demonstrate promise as texturization techniques as well.

These are just some of the many impressive trends in plant-based technical developments that signify a promising future for this industry.