Effect of fiber properties and orientation on the shear rheology and Poynting effect in meat and meat analogues

The development of plant-based meat analogues is an important aspect of the transition towards using more plant proteins. Production of such products with texture (and rheology) adequate for consumer acceptance like meats is a great challenge. However, there is a current lack in quantitative methods to compare whole cut meats and plant-based analogues that also consider its fibrous structures. We tackled this problem by combining non-linear shear rheology and shear-induced normal stress measurements on whole cut meats (beef and chicken) and plant-based fibrous model systems for meat analogues (soy and pea protein isolates combined with wheat gluten). We found different response in the linear viscoelastic regime for different samples, and the non-linear viscoelastic regime provided a deeper understanding into the role of structural components. Meat samples showed rearrangements at small strains and lower energy dissipation, higher intracycle strain stiffening, and a larger normal stress response at large strains than plant-based fibrous products, due to more elastic fibers. The plant-based fibrous products behave more solid-like until a larger strain, but the fibrous structures break down at large deformations resulting in higher energy dissipation, and show a lower normal stress response than meat. We therefore explore the importance of fiber properties and orientation on the nonlinear rheology of fibrous model systems for meat analogues, and provide a robust methodology to quantitatively compare different mechanical responses of meat and plant-based fibrous meat analogues. These results thereby allow comparison and tuning mechanical responses of plant-based meat analogue products towards real meat.