ABSTRACT
As the world population continues to grow exponentially, the demand for food proteins will inevitably increase substantially. It has been forecast that within the next decade, in order to just maintain the present level of human nutrition, the supply of vegetable proteins must be doubled together with a fourfold increase in the production of animal-based proteins (1). Since such a dramatic growth in meat production is hard to achieve, human diet will likely rely more on vegetables and cereals as protein sources. In addition to continuing to sustain of human life as they have done for thousands of years, plant-based proteins (or vegetable proteins) offer great potential as functional food ingredients. In the past decades, many processes have been developed to produce proteins to be used as meat extenders in processed meat products or as protein-enriching agents in beverages. In the processing of vegetable proteins, much attention is paid to the preservation or improvement of their nutritional value as well as organoleptic and functional properties.
