Breaking The Wall of Vegan Steak Structure

Despite the urgent need to mitigate climate change through a reduction in global meat consumption, vegan alternatives, especially to less processed meat products, are still not widely accepted by consumers due to insufficient sensory quality, particularly texture, juiciness, and mouthfeel. In this Falling Walls Lab Pitch from 2026 I present the solution. Hybrid Extrusion Printing (HEP) is a scalable and cost-efficient structuring approach that enables plant-based meat analogues with hierarchical fibre and gel/fat architectures, significantly improving product enjoyment and thereby facilitating a broader shift towards more sustainable and animal-friendly diets. HEP combines the advantages of precision 3D printing and high-throughput extrusion in HEP via an innovative die design, enabling multiscale fibre structures and juiciness-enhancing binding layers. The approach aims to closely mimic the complex structure of animal meat. HEP enables forming fiber bundles from structured protein and integrating a binder phase via die design. Unlike standard high-moisture extrusion, this approach allows macroscopic fiber formation and their embedding in fat-rich binder layers, improving texture and closing in on complex meat structure. ... mehrIn the future, consumers will benefit from more enjoyable plant-based alternatives to low-processed meat products such as steaks, roast slices or goulash.