05/02/2020
"Do people really consume milk to fulfill their nutrition requirements or just as a habit or as an addiction?”
Plant-based Milks 🥛🥥🥜😋
Many consumers are interested in decreasing their consumption of animal products because of health, environmental and ethical reasons.
Many researches findings are prove that the consumption of high levels of animal-based products, particularly those obtained from cows, such as beef and milk, is one of the major factors contributing to the negative impact on health.
Therefore consumers are interest to switch to plant-based diets with considering health, food sustainability, environmental pollution, land use and water use.
Animal milks such as bovine milk, goat milk and cow milk are most popular animal based milk in the global. According to the USDA milk production continues to increase in the United States, with over 215,000 million pounds being produced in 2017.
There are already many plant-based milk products on the market such as almond, soy, rice, coconut, and oat based milk substitutes.
However there is a doubt in the preference of customers for these products due to sensory characteristics.
So when developing plant-based milk has to consider on the following factors;
• Affordable
• Convenient
• Desirable
• Nutritional
• Sustainable
And also consideration has to focus legislation to referring the product wording as “milk”.
Because in many countries plant-based fluid products are usually referred to as drinks, beverages, dairy alternatives or some other name other than “milk”.
Mainly development of successful alternatives depends on understanding the characteristics of real milk, such as composition, structure and functional properties.
In nature, milk serves as a nutrient delivery system from the mother to infant, as well as stimulating the development of the infant’s immune system.
However the problem in now days is, do people really consume milk to fulfill their nutrition requirements or just as a habit or as an addiction?”
Understanding the applications;
Milk is often used as a hot or cold beverage, but it may also be used in various other ways such as;
• It can be added to tea, coffee
• It can be used to prepare cereals
• It can be used as dressing, sauce
• It used to prepare bakery items
• Mainly for desserts
Not only that, milk can be converted into a variety of other dairy products such as;
• Milk powder
• Whipped cream
• Heavy cream
• Yogurt
• Ice cream
• Butter
• Cheese
Therefore it is important to study how plant-based alternatives use in similar manner, otherwise people will not switch from consuming animal-based milk to plant-based alternatives.
Food technologists are highlighted the two main production routes for fabricating plant-based milk;
I. Disruption of plant materials (nuts, seeds or legumes) to form aqueous suspensions of oil bodies.
II. Formation of oil-in water emulsions by homogenization of oil, water and emulsifiers.
Presently many companies produced a board range of plant-based milk products.
A recent report from the Good Food Institute stated that “in 2018, retail sales of plant-based milk were $1.8 billion, which equals to 13% of the total U.S. retail market”.
In the future, it will be important to develop high-quality plant-based milks with desirable sensory attributes as well as with good physio-chemical stability.
So, now it is time to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different plant-based milks.