PLANT BASED DAIRY ALTERNATIVES 2021
Animal original meets
plant-based alternative
New hybrid products
“Hello Hybrids” was one of
the Top Ten Trends identified
by Innova Market Insights
last year. “Hello Hybrids” is also
an apt description of a new retail product
segment: Meat and milk products
that contain greatly reduced amounts
of animal ingredients but still appeal
to confirmed carnivores, consumers
who want to reduce the amount of
animal products they eat for reasons
of climate protection, animal welfare,
sustainability or health, but who are
unwilling to make any compromises on
flavour or consistency. This is where
combinations of animal and plant proteins
come in. For this new category
Planteneers has developed stabilising
systems that already contain the
plant component. They make it easy for
meat producers and dairies to cut the
animal ingredients in the final products
by half. Thus, they can profit from the
plant-based hype without completely
eliminating meat or milk from their formulations.
Flavour, texture and appearance
are advantages for hybrid products in
the dairy space as well. With the compounds
from the fiildDairy+ range and
normal cow’s milk, dairies can make
blends that reduce the amount of milk
by 50 percent, replacing it with plant
components. The final product might be
a drink consisting of half milk and half
oat drink, for example. “In the development
of our fiildDairy+ range we paid
special attention to getting the original
flavour of the milk products,” reports
Planteneers Product Manager Katharina
Schäfer. The new compounds form
the basis for drinks, pudding, fermented
milk products like yogurt, and cheese
preparations. Katharina Schäfer adds,
“the final products can naturally be enriched
with proteins, vitamins or minerals.
In this way it’s possible to appeal
to the steadily growing number of consumers
who want to eat healthier.”
A survey done for an in-house master’s
thesis shows the potential that the
combinations offer. Of 2000 respondents,
most of them students, just under
half would try a combined milk and
plant-base beverage, for example. A
third would even buy it. 46% would like
to see further hybrid dairy products.
Thus, the combinations offer many new
possibilities for dairies as well as for the
meat industry.
Compounds from the fiildDairy+ range allow for makimg blends that reduce
the amount of milk by 50 percent (photo: Planteneers)
26 · September/October 2021 ¦ international-dairy.com
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