The growing global protein demand is creating an interest in alternative sources to address sustainability challenges from traditional animal agriculture, meet nutritional needs, and cater to consumer interest in health, ethics, and environmental impact (Sha & Xiong, 2020). These factors, including rising population, environmental concerns about resource depletion, and a desire for more equitable food systems is driving innovation and investment in diverse alternative protein sources with lower environmental footprint such as plants, insects, and cultured meats and using them to create foods that suit the diverse culinary tastes and textures of the global population (Aghagholizadeh & Rigi, 2025).

While low-moisture extrusion is extensively used to make texturized plant protein-based analogues for minced meat applications, high moisture extrusion is being studied to develop whole meat analogue applications. High moisture extrusion produces denser anisotropic and fibrous structures due to the coupling of extrusion with a cooling die (Mateen & Singh, 2023). This is in contrast to low moisture extrusion which produces expanded, low density structures. The high density structures form high moisture extrusion have a greater likeness to real meat making this process a potential route to making whole meat analogues.

Soy protein is one of the most popular proteins for generating plant-based meat analogues due to its ability to texturize & it's essential amino acid profile that is close to that of animal-origin proteins (Chiang, Loveday, Hardacre, & Parker, 2019; Pietsch, Werner, Karbstein, & Emin, 2019). However, 100 % high moisture extruded soy is harder in texture as compared with whole muscle meat because of the high water absorption and gel forming capacity of soy protein (Huang et al., 2024). Pea protein has also gained popularity as an alternative to soy protein for developing high moisture meat analogues (HMMA) due to its non-genetically modified organism (GMO) perception (Plattner et al., 2024). HMMA derived from pea protein tend to be softer & less elastic due to their lower gelling ability compared to soy protein-based (Schreuders et al., 2019; Sun, Zhang, Zhou, Ren, & Wu, 2023). Since both these plant proteins on their own do not give good whole meat like textures, many studies have focused on blending these two proteins with other ingredients to improve texture of the HMMA. One of the most popular blends is soy & wheat gluten (Chiang et al., 2019; Dekkers, Boom, & van der Goot, 2018; Schreuders et al., 2019). The improved texture & fibrous pattern of multi-component protein is thought to result from factors such as the creation of a dispersed phase by the secondary component, improved protein aggregation and crosslinking, and changes in rheological properties (Peng, Zhao, Li, Wen, & Ni, 2023).

Besides texture, nutritional profile, especially essential amino acid profile is another important consideration in developing HMMA's, though lesser explored (Elzerman, Hoek, Van Boekel, & Luning, 2011). Blending different plant proteins, besides improving texture, can also be used to improve the amino acid profile of the texturized proteins. Outside of soy, proteins from most leguminous sources have lower than optimal sulphur containing amino acids (SAA). Cereal-based proteins have lower than optimal lysine. A strategy of blending legume & cereal-based proteins can thus improve essential amino acid profile as they have complementary amino acid composition (Sangeetha, 2017). There are a number of publications that have studied combinations of legume & cereal-based proteins. However, most of them have only explored the combinations with respect to textures of the extrudates without identifying blend compositions from a nutritional adequacy perspective (Table S1). In this work, the focus was on identifying blend compositions that would meet the multiple asks of amino acid profile, texture and colour from HMMA.