Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Many studies show that plant-based diets are good for both human health and the environment and
recommend lowering meat intake considering mounting environmental and animal welfare issues.
This facet prompted protein transitions around the world, which in turn aided in the emergence of
various diets. Flexitarian is one such diet that encourages people to consume more plant-based
meals while also allowing them to eat meat on occasion, unlike other strict vegetarian diets. This
project aims to develop a flexitarian food product that will complement flexitarian diet followers
as well as consumers looking to minimize their meat intake while offering a tasty flexitarian food
product with high nutritional value and minimal environmental impact, by using plant-based
ingredients and by-products from the meat industry
Mung beans were used as a plant-based ingredient, whereas cattle blood and pork intestine sausage
casing were used as animal-derived components in the Flexi hot dog. Two test products were
created, and panel members were invited to taste the sausages and perform sensory evaluations
using a 9-point hedonic scale. Recipe 2 containing relatively more blood received a higher rating
from panel members and thus became the winning version of the sausage, and however, both
sausages overall impression received at the upper half of the scale, thus both products delighted
the panel members in terms of sensory elements. In order to validate possible consumer demand,
participants were requested to reply to open-ended survey questions to examine the possible target
consumers for flexitarian diet and flexi hot dog. Many participants indicated that they would like
to follow flexitarian diet and buy flexitarian sausage at least once a month. When examining the
nutritional value of the Flexi sausage (based on the Livsmedelsverket food nutritional database for
ingredients) compared to vegan sausages, the Flexi hot dog had higher energy, carbohydrate, fibre
and iron content, and lower fat content. The Flexi hot dog has a relatively low environmental
effect of roughly 1.3 kg CO2eq/kg, which is similar to vegan sausages, but lower than regular meat
sausages.
According to the findings of this study, the flexitarian hot dog pleased consumers’ taste palates,
while also offering them nutritious flexitarian food with a low environmental impact; moreover,
consumers are predicted to purchase this product at least once a month. Future developments of
flexitarian food products are recommended to not deviate from the notion of flexitarian and
emphasize the use of legumes and animal by-products, for a resource efficient food system.