The Advances of Plant Product Meat Alternatives as a Healthier and Environmentally Friendly Option for Animal Meat Protein Consumption

High protein from meat consumption has been associated recently to environmental depletion and health related issues despite the important contribution of meat and meat products in diet and growth development. This has motivated debates on a drastic shift from excessive meat consumption amongst stake holders, academics, animal rights activists and environmentalist as informed consumers are pushing food scientist for a more sustainable alternative protein source. Plant proteins are considered a suitable alternative protein. However, the nutritional, functional potential and the form of presentation have shown some technological difficulties which indicates that direct transformation of plant proteins to meat products is less feasible. Though meat alternative research is promising in developed countries, there are technological breakthroughs that have permitted to replace in part or fully certain sensory attributes of meat inspired by the technology behind the ancient east Asian traditionally structured products like tofu, seitan and tempeh. However, despite the global increase in meat consumption associated with high standard of living, the search for the meat protein alternative from plant products have been limited to the conventional sources of soybeans, beans, lentils, vegetables and pulses. Future research could be diversified and orientated towards improving the existing African foods produced endogenously from wild orchid tubers widely consumed in low middle income countries in the form of cakes, meat substitutes, fake meat, mock meat and/or meat replacements. The successful production of a convenient and acceptable plant-based meat replacement will go a long way to reduce or eliminate excessive meat consumption. This review is geared towards a wider data search concerning the advances in meat alternative research and particularly to illustrate on some neglected African endogenously processed products consumed as meat alternatives that needs further research on the wild tubers sources as ingredients for potential convenient and acceptable meat alternatives or extender.