Meat substitutes: “Not a good idea to stuff half a kilo every day”
Dhe lists of ingredients in foods are often long and cryptic. This also applies to sausage or vegan meat alternatives. Daniel Wefers is a professor of food chemistry and explains what exactly is in meatless mortadella and co.
WORLD: Meat alternatives come amazingly close to the original. However, this is not possible without various additives – the price seems quite high, although no expensive meat is used.
Wefers: The range is actually extremely large. There are meat-like substitute products made from soy that contain little or no additives. The soy protein required for this must first be obtained in a multi-stage process and brought into a fibrous form at great expense. Of course, you need a few tools for products that are intended to imitate boiled sausage, such as vegan mortadella. Simply combining the flavors and thickeners in such a way that in the end the texture and taste is close to the original is quite complex. There’s a lot of development in there. All of this is reflected in the price.
WORLD: I have a vegetarian pepper mortadella here. Let’s go through the ingredients list. The first three ingredients are water, paprika and canola oil.
