PLANT BASED DAIRY ALTERNATIVES 2022
Planteneers unites
indulgence and health
Protein enrichment in plant-based cheese alternatives
Katharina Schäfer, Product Manager Planteneers
About 44 percent of Germans are flexitarians,
seven percent are vegetarians and one percent
are vegans. These figures are from the current
Nutrition Report 2022 recently published by the
German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Like
many other domestic and international market surveys,
it confirms that the demand for plant-based alternatives
to conventional animal products continues to rise.
The main driver is curiosity, along with ethical reasons,
flavour and health.
Flavour is a reason to buy for 64 percent of consumers,
while 47 percent choose plant-based foods for
health reasons. These numbers reflect the general expectations
consumers have of foods – for 99 percent
of them it is important that food taste good. According
to the Nutrition Report, health aspects are determining
factors for 89 percent. For this reason, more and
more producers of plant-based alternatives are looking
to enrich their products with nutrients. In plantbased
drinks, for example, the addition of micronutrients
is standard practice. Here, Planteneers works very
closely with its sister company SternVitamin, which has
developed many target group-specific concepts. Its micronutrient
premixes not only prevent deficiencies, but
also meet specific needs, such as mental power, heart
health, gut health, bone strengthening and immune system
support.
6 · September/October 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com
Boosting protein content
Protein enrichment of foods is much more difficult. Even
the best nutritional values won’t save foods whose flavour
and texture aren’t appealing. We stepped up to the
challenge and developed various functional systems for
plant-based camembert alternatives. In these systems,
the focus is both on texture and on enrichment of the
final product with protein. What makes these fiildDairyseries
products unique is that they enable the production
of creamy camembert alternatives with a protein
content of 10 to 13 percent. By comparison, plant-based
alternatives to products like hard cheese, pizza cheese
and processed cheese preparations usually contain less
than one percent protein, much less than in real cheese.
Plant-based soft cheese alternatives using cashews
are an exception. They often have a somewhat higher
protein content, but the texture and flavour of these expensive
products are quite different from the familiar
original.
The manufacturing process of plant-based alternatives
to hard and pizza cheese is also quite different from
regular cheese. The alternatives are usually made in a
double-walled process cooker with integrated shearing
blade. In it, melted fat, starch, hydrocolloids and other
ingredients are typically heated to at least 85°C and
then filled hot. This is much simpler than conventional
/international-dairy.com
