Sensory-Guided Development of Plant-Based Meat Products Using Freeze-Dried Cashew Fiber

A plant-based meat (also called meat alternative) is a food product made from vegetable ingredients only, but with typically approximate qualities of animal origin products, such as sensory or chemical characteristics. Cashew wet fiber has been already commercially used in the preparation of meat substitute products, but the objective of this study was to develop products from freeze-dried cashew fiber, based on sensory responses from consumers and experts. Initially, a focus group with gastronomy professionals was applied. Once hydrated, the fiber was considered to have excellent technological characteristics to be used in several products, which were prepared and present for discussion. The cashew fiber hamburger with pulses was then chosen to be developed. At first, hamburger formulations were prepared varying the concentration of cashew fiber (10, 15 and 20%) for each pulse (chickpeas, peas and lentils), which were subjected to overall sensory acceptance test, using a nine-point hedonic scale (1: ‘disliked extremely’ to 9: ‘liked extremely’). In second step, burgers with 20% cashew fiber enriched with each pulse were compared to two commercial vegetable hamburger brands (market leaders), one without cashew fiber (CB1) and the other with (CB2), by means of acceptance (overall, appearance, flavor and texture), preference (ranking) and purchase intent tests. The sensory protocols were approved by the National Committee on Research Ethics (CONEP), number 3117036. Data were subjected to ANOVA, Tukey's test and MDPREF by Principal Components Analysis. In general, the samples showed overall and flavor acceptance similar to the commercial products, however, in terms of appearance, the formulations with chickpeas and lentils performed better than the commercial sample CB1. Regarding the texture, CB2 sample was more accepted than the other samples, showing that the freeze-dried cashew fiber hamburger formulations, despite having good acceptance and high viability for industrialization, need to be improved in terms of texture.