Alternative Products Selling Sustainability? A Brazilian Case Study on Materials and Processes to Produce Plant-Based Hamburger Patties
, Evelyn Araripe 1,4, Karine Zanotti 3, Aylon M. Stahl 3 and Caroindes J. C. Gomes 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
It is opinion of the reviewer that this interesting and well prepared paper before acceptance needs several corrections/modifications. My individual comments are listed below.
Title – The firs capital letters should be used.
The list of abbreviations should be added.
The sensory properties of soybean preparations should be briefly described.
L. 48 – “antibiotics” instead of “antimicrobials”.
L. 56 – It should be “foods”.
L. 66 – It should be “Farm to Fork” strategy.
L. 122 – It should be “… use – the majority, ….”.
P. 4 – The map showing the region should be presented.
L. 128 – It should be .. “…greenhouse gases (GHGs) …”.
L. 168 – It should be “[23,24], which …”
L. 177 – Which classes of pesticides?
L. 220 – What does it mean “Soybean types”?
P. 6 – The removing of the anti-nutrient compounds during processing should be mentioned/described.
L. 256 – What about neutralization?
L. 291 – It should be “… oil extraction …”
L. 340 – What does it mean “chemical and physical variations”?
L. 350 – “ppm” is not any SI unit.
L. 395 – It should be “into other chemicals”.
L. 346 – SPC is mainly obtained be protein precipitation at isoelectric point. The comment is needed.
L. 427 – It should be “Green”.
L. 451 – The form of the used soy protein?
L. 626 – Not complete reference.
Author Response
Lüneburg, 08 August 2022
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
Thank you for your important comments and suggestions related to a minor revision of our manuscript entitled Alternative Products Selling Sustainability? A Brazilian Case Study on Materials and Processes to Produce Plant-based Hamburger Patties.
The title has been changed, as well as some keywords and words suggested. The list of abbreviations and the map of Brazil (states and regions) have also been added. Regarding the consumption of meat alternatives in Germany (Introduction), we aimed at bringing an international perspective that was not only focused on Brazil. Germany is indeed known as one of the countries with the highest increase in consumption of PBMA and where vegetarianism and veganism are growing trends. This is why reference number 8 refers to Germany considering data about these trends as the main reference.
We cannot assume PBMA products are consumed significantly more than vegan due to eatertainment because there are still no data available on that, but what we can see in the literature is that hamburgers can be considered one of the symbols of eatertainment - regardless of the protein used - and a plant-based hamburger does not avoid the practice of eatertainment.
Our intention with information about illiteracy (Brazilian Scene) was to illustrate the inequalities in agriculture and livestock in Brazil, where many producers do not have basic educational conditions. Thus, we reformulated the final sentence to exemplify this reflection better. As requested, two sentences were added referring to the anti-nutrient compounds - one at the end of the paragraph explaining the extrusion process and the other at the end of the paragraph explaining soy protein concentrate and isolate obtention. We included a brief mention of the neutralization step for SPC obtention.
Regarding the description of the sensory properties of soybean preparations, we considered this a relevant suggestion for the article but we do not have references and/or knowledge on the area for the proposed discussion/description. Moreover, we believe that the scope of the work does not lie in the preparation, but protein alternatives.
Regarding some aspects in Section 3, we clarified the reviewers’ comments, and we adopted SI units and changed the sentences to shorter ones, making the corrections proposed in the selected terms. In line 346, a comment was suggested, and it is important to say that reference [34] contradicts it, therefore we stood by the original version. Regarding hexane, according to the literature adopted, a greener solvent was not considered. When mentioning the frequency of hexane use, we added some sentences about worker safety and referred to subsequent topics for a more detailed explanation of what we meant. In line 283, we chose to maintain the paragraph because we understand that it brings a discussion about defatted flake use as animal feed and the scenario previously presented of the search for sustainable alternatives for human protein consumption. Finally, we checked the spelling, grammar, syntax, and SusChem reference style, and the manuscript was revised by a professional language reviewer from the UK.
Thank you again for the invitation to publish our manuscript in this important journal and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards
Prof. Vania G. Zuin Zeidler
(Leuphana University, Germany)
Reviewer 2 Report
Your perspective manuscript “Alternative products selling sustainability? A Brazilian case study on materials and processes to produce plant-based patties” is a very important issue for the alternative food industry. Simply replacing something, it is easy to miss the problem of what is being replaced. The author did an analysis of these things, which was very interesting. So to submit this I need some fixes for some issues.
Overall, this title does not seem to be contained in the manuscript. Is there any reason why the title is called pattie instead of vegetable protein? For soybeans, the manuscript appears to be handling the issues of pesticides in cultivation and chemicals in processing. Then, I wonder if there is a need to set this up as in Brazil and take hamberger as an example. The question arises as to whether only pattie needs a chemical reaction.
It seems that the Keyword is very simple compared to the manuscript and does not contain the overall content.
The meaning of the line 36 sentence was the same as line 44, and the location is awkward, so I recommend deleting line 36.
It is not clear what you are trying to say in the second paragraph, lines 44-49. It is necessary to make it clear whether this paragraph originally intended to refer to chemistry in food, chemistry in the SDGs, or whether the purpose of the author's manuscript itself was involved.
Line 83: Why did the author explain this in Germany? Germany is the country where products such as sausages began to be produced. I wonder if this is the reason or if there are unusually many vegans in Germany.
In the case of Line 94-102, are PBMA products consumed significantly more than vegan because of eatertainment? If so, what is this proportion?
Since the author needs content about pattie, it seems to continue to be Hamberger as an example, so please specify exactly pattie.
The question arises as to whether the information about the illiterate in Line 194 is essential in this manuscript. Since illiterate people do not have to read about the problem of pesticides to know it, it needs to be considered.
I wonder why the sentence from Line 283 goes into this position. This paragraph discusses products or processing methods containing soy protein, why is this sentence located?
3. ‘Soybean types and their industrial processing steps’ seem to have some problems in distinguishing sentences. The author grouped the sentences into one very large cluster, but it is recommended to divide the content into smaller units. Also, all compounds are present, but the author has a comment about a large amount of hexane. This is not a problem if what this means is clear, but it can be seen that the focus is only on hexane (as if nucleic acid = plant protein extraction problem).
There are many disadvantages to the composition of paragraphs, so it is recommended that you try different methods of composition or division. Although the author is meaningful enough to write a hamburger (= patty) in the title, it is a pity that there is not a single paragraph about the hamburger in this manuscript.
Author Response
Lüneburg, 08 August 2022
Dear Editors and Reviewers,
Thank you for your important comments and suggestions related to a minor revision of our manuscript entitled Alternative Products Selling Sustainability? A Brazilian Case Study on Materials and Processes to Produce Plant-based Hamburger Patties.
The title has been changed, as well as some keywords and words suggested. The list of abbreviations and the map of Brazil (states and regions) have also been added. Regarding the consumption of meat alternatives in Germany (Introduction), we aimed at bringing an international perspective that was not only focused on Brazil. Germany is indeed known as one of the countries with the highest increase in consumption of PBMA and where vegetarianism and veganism are growing trends. This is why reference number 8 refers to Germany considering data about these trends as the main reference.
We cannot assume PBMA products are consumed significantly more than vegan due to eatertainment because there are still no data available on that, but what we can see in the literature is that hamburgers can be considered one of the symbols of eatertainment - regardless of the protein used - and a plant-based hamburger does not avoid the practice of eatertainment.
Our intention with information about illiteracy (Brazilian Scene) was to illustrate the inequalities in agriculture and livestock in Brazil, where many producers do not have basic educational conditions. Thus, we reformulated the final sentence to exemplify this reflection better. As requested, two sentences were added referring to the anti-nutrient compounds - one at the end of the paragraph explaining the extrusion process and the other at the end of the paragraph explaining soy protein concentrate and isolate obtention. We included a brief mention of the neutralization step for SPC obtention.
Regarding the description of the sensory properties of soybean preparations, we considered this a relevant suggestion for the article but we do not have references and/or knowledge on the area for the proposed discussion/description. Moreover, we believe that the scope of the work does not lie in the preparation, but protein alternatives.
Regarding some aspects in Section 3, we clarified the reviewers’ comments, and we adopted SI units and changed the sentences to shorter ones, making the corrections proposed in the selected terms. In line 346, a comment was suggested, and it is important to say that reference [34] contradicts it, therefore we stood by the original version. Regarding hexane, according to the literature adopted, a greener solvent was not considered. When mentioning the frequency of hexane use, we added some sentences about worker safety and referred to subsequent topics for a more detailed explanation of what we meant. In line 283, we chose to maintain the paragraph because we understand that it brings a discussion about defatted flake use as animal feed and the scenario previously presented of the search for sustainable alternatives for human protein consumption. Finally, we checked the spelling, grammar, syntax, and SusChem reference style, and the manuscript was revised by a professional language reviewer from the UK.
Thank you again for the invitation to publish our manuscript in this important journal and we look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards
Prof. Vania G. Zuin Zeidler
(Leuphana University, Germany)
