Super Substitutes: Swopping Meat, Sugar And Dairy For Guilt-free Eating

Nature may have provided us with meat, spices and plants, but science is giving us guilt-free eating – through substitutes. Now dairy, sugar and even meat have replacements that look and taste great, and are healthier for us.

- Hayley Tai

While we still aren’t at the stage where we’re popping pills as full meals (like in science fiction movies circa the ’70s), we have reached a juncture where science has overtaken what nature intended. The revolution in substitutes – be it meat, sugar or dairy – seems futuristic, but is clearly here to stay and play. Say goodbye to the Frankenmeats of yore, and hello to faux meats that bleed, tofu cheeses, coconut yogurts and cakes minus the artificial sweeteners. (Dear scientists, we still don’t want the pills.)

MEET THE NON-MEATS

Science has synthesised plant-based protein to the point where you can’t tell – in taste, optics and texture – where meat ends and non-meat begins. Various companies have used ingenious and healthier options as substitutes:

Omnipork, with its obvious pork-like texture, has been a vegan community staple in Hong Kong for a long time. It contains soya-based proteins made of soya, peas, shiitake mushroom and rice.

Quorn (its naked fillets look like chicken and absorb any flavour they’re exposed to) is made from fungi protein. No, it does not taste like mushroom at all – the “chicken” totally tastes like chicken.

Beyond Meat’s burger patties are a combination of beets (for the red beefy colour), peas, coconut oil and potato starch.