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International audience; Purpose. While consumer demand for meat substitutes is growing, their varied composition raises questions regarding their nutritional value. We aimed to identify and characterize the optimal composition of a meat substitute that would best improve diet quality after complete meat replacement.Methods. From an average individual representing the dietary intake of French adults (INCA3, n=1125), meat was replaced with an equivalent amount of a mostly pulse-based substitute, whose composition was based on a list of 159 possible plant ingredients and optimized non-linearly to maximize diet quality assessed with the PANDiet score (considering adequacy for 32 nutrients), while taking account of technological constraints and applying nutritional constraints to limit the risk of overt deficiency in 12 key nutrients.Results. The optimized meat substitute contained 13 minimally processed ingredients. When used to substitute meat, the PANDiet score increased by 5.7 points above its initial value before substitution (versus -3.1 to +1.5 points when using other substitutes on the market), mainly because of higher intakes of nutrients that are currently insufficiently consumed (e.g. alpha-linolenic acid, fiber, linoleic acid) and a lower SFA intake. The meat substitute also mostly compensated for the lower provision of some indispensable nutrients to which meat greatly contributed (e.g. vitamin B6, potassium, bioavailable iron), but it could not compensate for bioavailable zinc and vitamin B12. Conclusion. Choosing the correct ingredients can result in a nutritionally highly effective meat substitute that could compensate for reductions in many nutrients supplied by meat while providing key nutrients that are currently insufficiently consumed.

Background Rapeseed is an emerging and promising source of dietary protein for human nutrition and health. We previously found that rapeseed protein displayed atypical nutritional properties in humans, characterized by low bioavailability and a high postprandial biological value. The objective of the present study was to investigate the metabolic fate of rapeseed protein isolate (RPI) and its effect on protein fractional synthesis rates (FSR) in various tissues when compared to a milk protein isolate (MPI). Methods Rats (n = 48) were given a RPI or MPI meal, either for the first time or after 2-week adaptation to a MPI or RPI-based diet. They were divided in two groups for measuring the fed-state tissue FSR 2 h after the meal (using a flooding dose of 13C-valine) and the dietary N postprandial distribution at 5 h (using 15N-labeled meals). Results RPI and MPI led to similar FSR and dietary nitrogen (N) losses (ileal and deamination losses of 4% and 12% of the meal, respectively). By contrast, the dietary N incorporation was significantly higher in the intestinal mucosa and liver (+36% and +16%, respectively) and lower in skin (-24%) after RPI than MPI. Conclusions Although RPI and MPI led to the same overall level of postprandial dietary N retention in rats (in line with our findings in humans), this global response conceals marked qualitative differences at the tissue level regarding dietary N accretion. The fact that FSR did not however differed between groups suggest a differential modulation of proteolysis after RPI or MPI ingestion, or other mechanisms that warrant further study.