Comparison of the Quality of Selected Meat Products and Their Plant-Based Analogs

The aim of this study was to compare the quality of selected meat products, i.e . frankfurters, Polish kabanos sausages, and salami, with their plant-based (vegetarian) analogs. Five items from five different product batches were analyzed in each examined product category. The analyzed items were vacuum-packaged in bags to standardize the parameters of the compared products, and their quality was evaluated before the use-by date declared by the manufacturer. Meat products had higher dry matter and lipid contents. Salami contained more protein, whereas frankfurters and kabanos sausages contained less protein than their respective analogs. Moreover, traditional kabanos sausages had a higher pH than their vegetarian alternatives. Indicators of the nutritional value of lipids and pH of vegetarian frankfurters and salami were higher than those of their meat counterparts. In turn, lipids of vegetarian kabanos sausages had lower ratios of unsaturated to saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated to saturated fatty acids and hypocholesterolemic to hypercholesterolemic fatty acids than traditional kabanos sausages. Among the color parameters, redness ( a *), yellowness ( b *) and chroma ( C *) of plant-based meat analogs were higher compared to those of meat products. These results indicate that the names of plant-based analogs, which make a direct reference to the corresponding traditional meat products, can be misleading for consumers who expect products with similar quality attributes.