Structure formation and structure evolution during high moisture extrusion of soy proteins

There is growing societal awareness that the current agricultural production of animal proteins is ecologically not sustainable. The food industry is now exploring radical new avenues to provide consumers with plant-based meat alternatives. High-moisture extrusion has been adopted as a technology that allows for upscaling and serving a growing market. A limitation of the currently commercially used HME process is the lack of robustness against variations in ingredient and processing conditions. The main cause is a lack of insight into how multiscale protein structures evolve during shear processing. The dead-stop operation is a feasible and effective method to collect material from different extruder and cooling die zones. In this study, we use (U)SAXS to study the evolution of meat analogue structure by sampling material after a dead stop.