Friday, July 30, 2010
Yes, peeps...scientists at University of Missouri have created a soy substitute that doesn’t only look like chicken but also feel and taste like chicken. Fu-Hung Hsieh, a University of Missouri professor of biological engineering and food science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and the College of Engineering, is the leader of the project to create a low-cost soy substitute for chicken. According to Hsieh "early tests provided some of the fibrous texture to the final product, but it tasted more like turkey. In order to produce a more realistic product, we had to tweak the process and add extra fiber to give the soy a stringy feeling that tears into irregular, coarse fibers similar to chicken."
Other meat alternatives like soy burger became popular in USA, that it triggered an increase in sales volume of eight percent (8%) for 2007 and 2008.
Soy chicken was created by Hsieh from a soy protein extracted from soy flour. Health wise, consumers will benefit from soy chicken as soy foods contain important nutrition components, some of which help maintain healthy bones and prevent prostate, breast and colorectal cancers. It is also a good source of essential fatty acids and contains no cholesterol.
Hsieh's research has been published in the Journal of Food and Agricultural Chemistry, Journal of Food Science, and Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society.
Source Info:
University of Missouri-Columbia (2010, February 5). It looks, feels and tastes like chicken, but it's made of soy. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 8, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/02/100204144549.htm
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