Nutritional scores of milk and plant-based alternatives and their difference in contribution to human nutrition

Abstract

Milk consumption is in decline in developed countries due to changes in lifestyle and habits. Such a reduction is partly due to the expanding plant-based industry which provides attractive alternatives. In this study, the nutritional composition of soya, oat, almond, coconut, and rice-based beverages was compared to that of cow and goat milk by means of 4 commercial nutritional scores (NS). Contribution to the recommended daily intake (RDI) of macro- and micro-nutrients was calculated for comparison. Apart from soya, plant-based beverages (PBB) did not approximate the nutrient profile of cow and goat milk, e.g., they did not provide iodine and contained only limited amounts of calcium, potassium, and magnesium. For several traits important for human health, oat, almond, coconut, and rice-based beverages scarcely contributed to the RDI. Depending on the criteria considered for the score calculation, however, certain PBB achieved better NS than milk. Findings show the difficulty in ensuring coverage of RDI through a non-guided inclusion of PBB as a substitute for milk. Moreover, the inferior contribution of PBB to RDI compared to milk and the high variability in the nutritional scores between the different PBB brands prompts for a standardisation across the plant-based food industry to increase transparency.