Factors like increasing awareness of consumers toward a vegan diet, lactose intolerance among the population and demand for various fortified dairy food and beverage applications are boosting the market growth. Whilst the high cost of dairy alternative milk and prominence of low cholesterol and low fat conventional milk will impede the market growth, the innovation in flavour and sources of dairy alternative beverages and increasing demand for soy milk, rice milk and almond milk proteins provide wider opportunity for the market to grow.
In terms of exciting product developments in this industry, according to Emily Heil at afr.com there is a high-tech vegan ice cream threatening to upend the dairy industry.
For years, people buying plant-based alternatives to animal products were used to flavours and textures that weren't quite the same as the article they were trying to copy. However, just as veggie burger makers like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are inching ever closer to mimicking the real thing, with lab-concocted beef-like marbling and juices, the creators of a new vegan ice cream are using technological wizardry to create a product that could fool even the most die-hard dairy aficionados.
Ice cream has been particularly tricky to veganise: Nut "milks" often freeze up hard or chalky or leave an aftertaste. "Dairy is one of the hardest things for us to conquer," says Washington chef Todd Gray, who hosted a tasting of the new offerings by Eclipse Foods recently. Eclipse founders Thomas Bowman and Aylon Steinhart hope to roll out their products to more food-service settings, such as tech campuses and universities, before going retail. They also have big plans for plant-based cheese, sour cream and yoghurt. But first, they're out to conquer ice cream.
Bowman and Steinhart claim they've re-created the texture, taste and functionality of dairy by using plant products to form micelles, "the magic spheres" that are the molecular structures of milk proteins. However, their ice cream's base ingredients – which include oat fibre, cane sugar, glucose, canola oil, cassava starch and potato protein – are less important than the process used to create it, they say. Tinkering with the steps - how to incorporate the ingredients, and the precise heating, pressurising and blending – was the key. "It enables the functionality that makes it indistinguishable from its animal counterpart," says Thomas.
As with all alternative ingredients, the proof is in the testing. The product will be rejected if the texture (and flavour) is not true to consumer expectation. That’s where texture analysis comes in. Once the dairy alternative product is formulated it will need to be compared with the ‘gold standard’ product, who’s texture analysis fingerprint will have been created as the ideal textural quality. If the new formulation is in any way different to the traditional product’s texture it may well be back to the drawing board. Can you risk launching a new product that doesn’t measure up in every sense? Make sure texture analysis is part of your product development process. See typical examples of texture analysis in the dairy industry
Cargill have written an interesting article which summarises the latest trends in product development for the dairy industry entitled “Texture innovation smooths the way for todays’s dairy”. Clean label, reduced sugar and dairy alternatives feature as the latest trends – all of which require reformulation and therefore, ultimately, a check on the effects on product texture. Read the report
There is a Texture Analysis test for virtually any physical property. Contact Stable Micro Systems today to learn more about our full range of solutions.
For more information on how to measure texture, please visit the Texture Analysis Properties section on our website.
The TA.XTplus texture analyser is part of a family of texture analysis instruments and equipment from Stable Micro Systems. An extensive portfolio of specialist attachments is available to measure and analyse the textural properties of a huge range of food products. Our technical experts can also custom design instrument fixtures according to individual specifications.No-one understands texture analysis like we do!
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