Apple Pomace in Ready-to-Eat Plant-Based Meat Analogs: Functionality, Challenges, and Opportunities

作者：Zi Wang, Fang Wang, Haizhou Wu, Jingnan Zhang · 发表于：Foods · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.3390/foods15122173 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Meat and Animal Product Quality、Nanocomposite Films for Food Packaging、Food Drying and Modeling

Apple pomace is a widely available food processing by-product that has attracted increasing attention in circular and resource-efficient food systems for its potential in value-added food applications. The use of apple pomace in ready-to-eat (RTE) plant-based meat analogs represents a promising pathway. Unlike plant-based meats intended for cooking, RTE systems impose stricter constraints on structural stability, water retention, flavor integrity, and safety under cold chain conditions. Within this framework, apple pomace represents a compositionally complex material with both opportunities and constraints. This review examines how apple pomace and its derived ingredients can be utilized in RTE plant-based meat analogs, with particular attention to the distinct structural and functional requirements of minced-type and whole-cut products. Current evidence indicates that direct incorporation is more feasible for minced systems, where apple pomace fiber and pectin can support water retention, binding, and refrigerated slice stability when particle size, hydration, and sensory limits are controlled. By contrast, whole-cut applications are more likely to require fractionation, selective extraction, or additional structuring because particulate heterogeneity may disrupt continuous phase integrity and anisotropic structure formation. The review further identifies the main barriers to industrial translation, including water management under refrigerated conditions, flavor and color d...