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Microalgae are booming as a sustainable protein source for human nutrition and animal feed. Nevertheless, certain strains were reported to have robust cell walls limiting protein digestibility. There are several disruption approaches to break down the cell integrity and increase digestive enzyme accessibility. This review's intent is to discuss the digestibility of microalgae proteins in intact cells and after their disruption. In intact single cells, the extent of protein digestibility is chiefly related to cell wall structural properties (differing among strains) as well as digestion method and when added to food or feed protein digestibility changes depending on the matrix's composition. The degree of effectiveness of the disruption method varies among studies, and it is complicated to compare them due to variabilities in digestibility models, strains, disruption method/conditions and their consequent impact on the microalgae cell structure. More exhaustive studies are still required to fill knowledge gaps on the structure of microalgal cell walls and to find efficient and cost-effective disruption technologies to increase proteins availability without hindering their quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field-to-fork concept comprises opportunities for providing consumers with nutritious and health-beneficial food in order to meet the growing interest in health-beneficial foods and to counteract the increase of diet-related diseases worldwide. While raw plant-/animal-based starting material is considered as the primary source of such compounds (see Part I), waste fractions from this primary biomass are additional sources. Opportunities hidden in such fractions are described in the first part of this review Part II. Additionally, specific opportunities further down the field-to-fork system are explored, namely those from processing technologies for plant- and animal-derived foods (e.g. application of heat, pressure, fermentation, etc.). Potential health benefits of raw materials can indeed be positively or negatively influenced by processing whether mild or intense. Processing may affect matrix-associated parameters like density, nutrient interactions, etc. and as such, play an important role for nutrient stability and bioavailability. In addition to attempts to maintain/augment the amounts of health-beneficial compounds within food commodities/products along the primary production and processing chain, opportunities such as concerted actions of the food industry aiming at reducing the levels of certain nutrients (e.g. sugar/salt/fat) can also be explored or applied within the framework of encouraging a balanced dietary pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High levels of meat consumption are increasingly being criticised for ethical, environmental and social reasons. Plant-based meat substitutes have been identified as healthy sources of protein that, in comparison to meat, offer a number of social, environmental and health benefits and may play a role in reducing meat consumption. However, there has been a lack of research on the role they can play in the policy agenda and how specific meat substitute attributes can influence consumers to partially replace meat in their diets. This paper is focused on consumers' preferences for so-called meathybrid or plant-meathybrid products. In meathybrids, only a fraction of the meat product (e.g., 20% to 50%) is replaced with plant-based proteins. Research demonstrates that in many countries, consumers are highly attached to meat and consider it as an essential and integral element of their daily diet. For these consumers that are not interested in vegan or vegetarian alternatives as meat substitutes, meathybrids could be a low-threshold option for a more sustainable food consumption behaviour. In this paper, the results of an online survey with 500 German and 501 Belgian consumers are presented. The results show that more than fifty percent of consumers substitute meat at least occasionally. Thus, about half of the respondents reveal an eligible consumption behaviour with respect to sustainability and healthiness, at least sometimes. The applied discrete choice experiment demonstrated that the analysed meat products are the most preferred by consumers. Nonetheless, the tested meathybrid variants with different shares of plant-based proteins took the second position followed by the vegetarian-based alternatives. Therefore, meathybrids could facilitate the diet transition of meat-eaters in the direction toward a more healthy and sustainable consumption. The analysed consumer segment is more open-minded to the meathybrid concept in comparison to the vegetarian substitutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]