Hybrid alternative protein-based foods

Protein sources such as plants, cultured cells, insects, mycelia, and microbes are increasingly being explored as alternatives to animal-derived proteins due to sustainability, human health, and environmental concerns.

Hybrid food products, which combine alternative protein sources, are emerging as a promising solution to animal-derived proteins, with enhanced sensory appeal, nutritional profile, affordability, scalability, and consumer acceptance, but designing them requires careful consideration of their organoleptic, health, and safety properties.

To make hybrid foods commercially viable, challenges such as environmental impact, scalability, affordability, and regulatory approval must be addressed collaboratively by key stakeholders.

The successful adaptation of hybrid food products depends on the following critical steps: (i) optimizing individual alternative protein sources [including using Artificial Intelligence approaches]; (ii) developing combinatorial technologies; (iii) creating large-scale manufacturing facilities for economic and scalable production; (iv) improving consumer acceptability via marketing, sensory, nutrition, and cost optimization; and (v) employing life cycle and techno-economic analyses to identify the most sustainable and commercially viable hybrid foods.