The invention provides novel food compositions having a realistic meat-likeappearance, feel, and texture. Thecompositions comprise from about 40 to about 90% functional proteins, fromabout 0.05 to about 2% of one or more cross-linkingagents, and from about 60 to about 10% of a meat slurry, wherein the meatslurry comprises meat and one or more humectantplasticizers in a meat:humectant plasticizer ratio of from about 20:80 toabout 80:20. The compositions are produced by heating apreconditioned mixture of the food components under pressure and thenexpanding the heated composition to form the foodcomposition.
