With people striving to resort to more eco- and animal friendly options as the days pass by, vegan diet is climbing up along the graph. According to the Vegan society, 2.16% of the entire world population are vegans, compared to a mere 0.25% back in 2014. Not to be confused with a vegetarian diet, this special type excludes meat, eggs, dairy products and all other animal-derived ingredients. Although the diet is quite healthy in the long run, obtaining affordable non- animal protein sources is a daunting task. To combat this problem, researchers from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have come up with plant- based sausages, eggs and salami which promise to be highly proteinaceous as well as pocket-friendly.
“We started off with eggs because they are more acceptable in the general population. A lot of people who do not eat meat, would eat eggs. Launching the brand with such a product made sense,” said Doctor Kavya Dashora, assistant professor at the Centre for Rural Development and Technology, who is heading the research. The team, funded by the founder of Four Pursuits Ventures, Rahul Dewan, includes several students and food advisor Poonam Desai. The group had begun the experiments with chickpea flour and eventually settles with moong beans owing to its high protein content and similarity to an egg texture.
Mock meat across the globe has been gaining popularity, with an increasing number of researchers trying to come up with better qualities and protein quantities. General experimentation involves usage of soy proteins, which have been proven to be highly unhealthy in the long run. The product from IIT-Delhi has gained an overwhelming positive response from the distributed circles. “We are waiting for the test results from independent bodies to set up a benchmark nutritional figure for the product. If things go well, the plain scrambled egg version should be ready to hit the market soon,” Dashora said.
