Abstract
Non-dairy milk alternatives (or milk analogues) are water extracts of plants and have become increasingly popular for human nutrition. Over the years, the global market for these products has become a multi-billion dollar business and will reach a value of approximately 26 billion USD within the next 5 years. Moreover, many consumers demand plant-based milk alternatives for sustainability, health-related, lifestyle and dietary reasons, resulting in an abundance of products based on nuts, seeds or beans. Unfortunately, plant-based milk alternatives are often nutritionally unbalanced, and their flavour profiles limit their acceptance. With the goal of producing more valuable and tasty products, fermentation can help to the improve sensory profiles, nutritional properties, texture and microbial safety of plant-based milk alternatives so that the amendment with additional ingredients, often perceived as artificial, can be avoided. To date, plant-based milk fermentation mainly uses mono-cultures of microbes, such as lactic acid bacteria, bacilli and yeasts, for this purpose. More recently, new concepts have proposed mixed-culture fermentations with two or more microbial species. These approaches promise synergistic effects to enhance the fermentation process and improve the quality of the final products. Here, we review the plant-based milk market, including nutritional, sensory and manufacturing aspects. In addition, we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art fermentation of plant materials using mono- and mixed-cultures. Due to the rapid progress in this field, we can expect well-balanced and naturally fermented plant-based milk alternatives in the coming years.
Highlights
Plant-based milk alternatives have been consumed for hundreds and thousands of years
Commercial products positioned as plant-based milk alternatives are typically amended with additives such as vitamins, amino acids, and minerals (Sethi et al 2016)
This review introduces the key criteria for major plant-based milk alternatives, including nutritional and sensory qualities as well as manufacturing perspectives
Summary
Plant-based milk alternatives have been consumed for hundreds and thousands of years. The design of mixed-culture fermentation with two or more microorganisms, naturally occurring in many food production processes (Adler et al 2013), is becoming increasingly important (Ciani et al 2010; Smid and Lacroix 2013) The latter appears promising for plant-based milk alternative fermentation due to the potential synergistic effects within the microbial consortia, which helps to improve quite diverse quality criteria with only one process (National Research Council 1992; Sieuwerts et al 2008). The protein content and essential amino acid composition can differ substantially following mono- vs mixed-culture fermentation of plant-based milk alternatives (Fig. 5b).
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