As much as I love a thick, juicy burger, the way that we raise animals for  wide-scale meat consumption is … not great for the environment.

It leads to high levels of  deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and biodiversity loss, among other things. And in recent years, we’ve made a lot of progress creating  meatless meat using soy, wheat, and peas as substitutes.

For some people, these  Plant-Based Meat Alternatives, or PBMAs, can be indistinguishable from  the meat they’re replacing! But for others, the flavors,  textures, and appearance still aren’t quite meaty enough. And the nutritional content  isn’t exactly like meat, either.

So researchers are searching for plant ingredients that can provide all four  and create the perfect PBMA. And good news! They’ve found some really promising options, in some really unlikely places.

From algae to duckweed, here are the five meat alternatives of the future. [intro music] This episode was made in partnership with HHMI Tangled Bank Studios, and their documentary Wild 

Hope: Mission Impossible, a story that explores why the  journey to perfect plant-based meat is an endeavor of planetary proportions. Watch it now, streaming free here on YouTube. Like I said, meat derived from animals like cattle has some unsavory downsides. It emits a lot of greenhouse  gases and pollutes our waterways.

Not to mention all that extra  land needed to sustain livestock. Plus, eating a lot of red meat  isn’t great for your body. It’s linked to cardiovascular  disease and other health issues.

Then there’s the animal  welfare side of the equation. The majority of animals raised for meat in the US are  factory-farmed to meet demand. Which is every bit as bad as it looks.

And unfortunately, I’m not done yet! Since we often feed animals antibiotics  as a “just in case” measure, this fuels the rise of  antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are just a few of the reasons why some people might choose not to eat meat.

But other people also really like it. So to help our planet out, scientists are trying to find  something else for them to chew on that mimics the real thing. We’re not going to save the planet  by just focusing on vegetarians; we need a product that wins over meat-lovers, too.

There are four key challenges here: appearance, flavor, texture, and nutrition. Because yeah, a meat alternative  can’t just fake your senses out; it also has to provide your body with enough  of the proteins, minerals and vitamins it usually gets from meat. And in addition to meeting all of those standards, the food has to be affordable, too!

That means cost-effective scalability is a must. Plus, current PBMAs often have  artificial ingredients added to them to get the final product as meat-like as possible. And for some consumers,  reading a bunch of additives on the ingredients label might make them wary of buying it.

So scientists are also looking for plants that just naturally contain  some of those ingredients. Overall, having better starting materials could mean less cost and processing to make future products even more meat-y. Which leads us into our first candidate …Algae.

No, really! Hear me out. It comes in two types: Macroalgae, a.k.a.

Seaweed, and Microalgae, like chlorella. On their own, they have a  pretty good nutrition profile, rocking some important proteins and fatty acids. They even have high levels of B12, a vitamin tricky to get from non-animal sources.

But they’re certainly no burger. No one’s thinking of slapping  a stack of those seaweed snacks between two buns and calling it lunch. This brings up an important point: PBMAs are rarely just “Turn a plant into a patty”.

Researchers are looking for  something hiding inside the plant that could be combined with  ingredients from other plants that all work together to create  the perfect meatless meat recipe. In addition to protein, algae  are full of polysaccharides … which are types of complex carbohydrates. One you may have seen on a snack’s  ingredient list is called carrageenan.

Polysaccharide molecules are super useful for creating a meat-like texture because they’re fibrous and retain water, which helps make the food juicy and gives it the desired mouthfeel. So adding ones that were just extracted from a clump of algae could make a PBMA product more like meat in those ways. And that’s not the only reason why certain algae are targets of PBMA research.

It can be grown in water, and saltwater at that. In other words, a giant algae farm doesn’t have to use up a bunch of freshwater that could be used for something else. It also doesn’t require dedicated land use.

Another win for the environment! But there are some challenges with working algae into our meatless meats. After it’s harvested, it has  a pretty short shelf-life.

Like, about four days. So to tackle that, scientists are looking into  new preservation methods, like freeze-drying. Then there’s the fact that, despite the great nutrient profile, seaweed tastes a bit … oceany, which might put off some consumers.

But again, researchers are  already working on workarounds, such as combining it with  other proteins, like from peas, along with natural flavors from other foods. In terms of our key challenges,  seaweed does pretty well on scalability, nutrition, and  texture, but has a way to go on taste. So if you’re looking for something less fishy and with a longer shelf-life, how about our next group of plants: Pulses.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it's a group of dry seeds that include lentils, mung beans, and fava beans. They’re already a common protein  component of vegetarian diets, which is a good start. And as ingredients in meatless meat, different pulses bring  different benefits to the table.

Mung beans have good water retention, which means they can replicate  the juiciness of meat. Lentil proteins do pretty well  at mimicking meat-like texture. And overall, pulses have  good nutritional profiles, including some much needed vitamins and zinc.

But the tricky thing about pulses is that they also have anti-nutritional factors. These aren’t bad for you, they can  just make protein harder to digest, so you don’t get the full nutritional benefits. Combine that with all the  plant fiber you’re eating, and it means your gut can’t absorb plant protein as well as it can animal protein.

But there’s good news! Heating these proteins can  improve their digestibility by deactivating some of their  anti-nutritional factors. Meanwhile, pulses have another problem  for scientists to contend with.

They might not taste like the ocean, but beans do taste, well, bean-y. And tasty as they are, current bean  burgers are definitely not beefy. One potential solution involves targeting an enzyme called lipoxygenase, also known as LOX.

It’s responsible for triggering  the chemical reactions that produce the bean flavor. There are several ways to do this, though some are still in the R&D stage. We could genetically modify a plant so it doesn’t have the gene  that tells it to make LOX in the first place.

Or, we could add an enzyme to the harvested beans that destroys the fatty acid  precursors of the beany compounds. That way, the LOX enzymes don’t have  the thing they need to react with, and no chemical reaction takes place. Or if we want an old-school solution, we could opt for heating to  get rid of the lipoxygenase.

Which, as I mentioned earlier, also helps get rid of some of  the anti-nutritional factors. It sounds like a win-win, except it  might also decrease the protein content … So all in all, pulses do well  on scalability and texture, but scientists are still working  on flavour and nutrition. There have been breakthroughs  in making pulses more meat-like, but there are PBMA candidates out there that start with a better nutritional profile … and without the unfortunate tradeoff with flavor.

For example Pseudocereals. These are basically plants that  are similar to cereal grains, but aren’t in the grass family. So yeah, if you like eating rice, oats, or wheat, it basically means you like eating grass.

Pseudocereals include quinoa and amaranth. Quinoa in particular has emulsifying properties that might create a good chewiness that can help mimic meat’s texture. But pseudocereals are also  a target for future PBMAs because they contain essential amino acids.

Amino acids are the building  blocks of our proteins. Of the 20 different blocks our bodies use, we make 11 of them internally. The other nine, we have to get from our diet.

These nine are called essential amino acids. Protein sources that have all  nine essential amino acids are called complete. And some pseudocereals are exactly that, although the overall amount of amino acids in them often isn’t super high.

You’d have to eat a lot of quinoa  to satisfy your body’s needs. But generally speaking, plant proteins are way less  complete than animal proteins. So finding those rare complete proteins  in the plant kingdom is super useful.

Unfortunately, researchers have found that extracting and purifying  the pseudocereal protein at scale is a lot trickier than in the lab. So right now, it’s not really a  commercially viable option on its own. But like I said, when crafting a PBMA product, scientists often combine  multiple plant protein sources.

And with their emulsifying properties and all those essential amino acids,  pseudocereals make for a good co-ingredient, even though on their own they’re not  currently protein-rich enough to replace meat. Except for maybe one pseudocereal, which is chia, because it’s also an oilseed, along with pumpkin, sesame, and flaxseeds. And oilseeds are our next PBMA candidate.

Oilseeds are basically seeds grown  primarily for their edible oil. And when you crush them, you don’t just get oil. You also get a product called oilseed meal, which is very high in protein.  Like up to 65% by mass.

This protein source is not just easily digested, it often has anti-inflammatory properties, too! Now, not all oilseeds are  a complete protein source. Some lack one or more essential amino acids.

But that’s not too bad; it’s fairly easy to add the missing  ones using another protein source. Oh, and oilseeds can also  contain anti-nutritional factors, like the ones that slow down protein digestion. But just like pulses, good ol’ heating can help get around that problem.

Soaking them in warm water for  several hours can help, too. But the same trade-off applies, with some loss of protein  content after these treatments. And as for the flavor?

Well, they don’t taste oceany or beany, but they’re still not particularly meaty. But there are ways to deal with that. Previous PBMAs have made use of  yeast extract or heated proteins to replicate a caramelized, meaty flavor.

Meanwhile, the Impossible Burger adds a molecule found in soy root nodules which mimics that sort of iron-like  flavor you taste after biting into beef. These strategies could also work for oilseeds and other candidates on our list. Basically, while our oilseed meals  do have some nutrition issues, they are great on texture, scalability, and don’t have strong non-meat flavor..

Plus, if you’re into less waste, using the oilseed by-product means less of it, which is another win for the environment! Our potential proteins come  from all over the plant kingdom, and together, offer lots of options! But, there’s one thing that unites  them against us...allergies!

Pseudocereals, oilseeds, pulses, and seaweed can all be allergenic. This was also an issue with wheat and soy, the OG plant-based meat alternatives. And while scientists have  certain kinds of treatments to reduce the allergens inside these PBMAs, finding a completely non-allergenic  alternative would be ideal.

And, as it turns out, there’s one kind of plant protein that  doesn’t have an allergy problem at all. And it’s one of the most abundant  and important proteins out there. They’re called RuBisCos, and they’re found in plant leaves.

Plants don’t need proteins for muscles, like animals do, but they still need proteins to  get stuff done inside of them. RuBisCOs convert carbon dioxide  into sugars during photosynthesis. They’re generally non-allergenic, and they’re abundant.

RuBisCos have the complete suite  of all nine essential amino acids. And they don't have a strong  flavor that needs to be disguised. They also have favorable water  and fat retention properties which are important for texture and flavor.

And depending on the plant, RuBisCOs can comprise anywhere  between 25 and 45% of the proteins in a plant’s leaves. But our current technologies can’t totally isolate those  proteins to get pure RuBisCO. So some scientists, instead  of finding complicated ways to get a vat of 100% RuBisCOs, are investigating plant  leaf proteins more generally as a PBMA ingredient.

One of those scientists is Pat Brown, the guy who founded Impossible Foods, maker of the Impossible Burger. He’d been looking into leaf proteins before that particular PBMA innovation, and he’s now back at Stanford, resuming that old research. Brown had originally focused on spinach leaves, because they were cost  effective and widely available.

But now, he’s expanded to a variety  of plants to see what will work best. He’s exploring which plants have the most protein, and which happen to have any other beneficial  ingredients that can be used, as well. And he’s not alone.

Other research looking into RuBisCOs has featured the likes of broccoli,  beet leaves, alfalfa, and kale. But some scientists are even looking at leaves that don’t come from crops, like duckweed. True to its name, duckweed grows like a weed, which is great from a production angle.

In fact, duckweed is already used in some PBMAs. However, it might be worth focusing on plants that are already being grown for food. As Pat Brown pointed out to us,  you don’t have to build new, specialized systems to cultivate them.

That makes it both cheaper to get  your desired plant leaf proteins, and easier to scale. According to Brown, you could get more high quality  proteins from crop leaves using less than 2% of the land humanity  needs for animal-derived foods. Which is frankly, incredible.

But there are some important hurdles to overcome. For one thing, RuBisCos might not be allergenic, but that’s not true of all of the  proteins you’ll find alongside them. And it’s not only hard to isolate  RuBisCOs from other leaf proteins, but also from the chlorophyll  pigments that make leaves green.

And while I’m all for going green, I’d prefer if my burger patties didn’t. Technically, scientists do  know how to remove chlorophyll from their RuBisCo samples, but not really in a way that’s  scalable for the food industry. At least, not yet.

Making plant-based meats  requires a lot of science. Current products are pretty good, but the candidates on our list showcase what  new plant proteins could do for the field. It’s a fine balance getting  texture, appearance, flavor, and nutrition just right, and making sure it’s not too pricey.

It largely comes down to proteins: what the plants produce naturally,  how easily it can be extracted, and how well it mimics what  we find in animal meat. but thanks to a ton of hard work, scientists have shown how plants can  rise to meat this challenge. Too corny for you? Well, how about this?: Thanks to science, a meat-free  future has never bean closer.

Wait but. I’ve got more: Plants  are helping us raise the steaks. Alright, I’m done.

This video was inspired by HHMI Tangled Bank Studios’ documentary

Wild

Hope: Mission Impossible You can watch the Wild Hope series right here on YouTube or follow @wildhopetv on Instagram

to discover more stories about scientists and changemakers working to restore biodiversity around the globe. Change is closer than you think. [ OUTRO ]