Helping Meat Analogues Stick Together

Meat analogues need binding agents to keep the ingredients together. In animal meats, proteins do that job.

Methylcellulose is currently the predominant choice for meat analogue products. While it works well from a functionality perspective, says Pascal Moll, a recent doctoral student at the University of Hohenheim’s Institute of Food Science and Biotechnology, it is a chemically modified cellulose derivative that’s also used for things like household glues. And that is not exactly a good marketi…