In many regions, particularly Western countries, trending plant-based and flexitarian dietary patterns reflect the growing concern in the population for environmental, ethical, and health issues associated with intensive animal farming [1]. This shift in dietary patterns has stimulated rapid innovation in the formulation and processing of meat alternatives, particularly plant-based meat analogs (PBMAs) designed to replicate the sensory and nutritional properties of conventional meat. Among the available technologies, high-moisture extrusion (HME) has emerged as one of the main strategies to structure plant proteins into fibrous, meat-like matrices [2].

Despite the rapid expansion of research on PBMAs and HME, most existing reviews focus on macroscopic structure formation, physicochemical properties, sensory performance, or general protein digestibility, while peptide-level molecular information remains fragmented and insufficiently integrated. In particular, the consequences of extrusion-induced protein transformations for peptide release, peptide diversity, and potential bioactivity [3], [4], [5] during digestion are rarely examined from a mass-spectrometry-driven perspective, although the benefits of peptidomics analysis in food have been suggested in previous literature [6].

The objectives of this review are therefore threefold:

(i) to concisely outline the key molecular transformations induced by HME that are most relevant for peptide generation and release;

(ii) to critically synthesize current liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) peptidomic strategies applied to extruded plant proteins, highlighting analytical challenges related to complex food matrices, digestion models, and data interpretation; and.

(iii) to summarize and compare available peptidomic evidence from plant-based and animal-based products, with emphasis on peptide diversity, digestion kinetics, and functional attributes.

The novelty of this review lies in its peptide-centric focus, which deliberately narrows the scope from general PBMAs characterization to peptidomics as a mechanistic bridge between processing, digestion, and nutritional functionality. By consolidating the still limited but growing body of peptidomic studies on extruded plant-based matrices, identifying quantitative gaps, and outlining future directions involving multi-omics integration, in silico prediction, and process-specific peptide markers, this review provides a framework for incorporating peptide-level information into the rational design and evaluation of next-generation PBMAs.