Importance of Ingredients in The Manufacture Of Plant-Based Alternative Food

Plant-based foods need to be sustainable, palatable, safe, nutritious, and affordable. Society is moving toward sustainability in all aspects of energy, foods or preserving life. Food sustainability is one of the driving factors for human’s survival. A significant concern in the food value system is feeding of 10 billion population by 2050, which requires significant changes in the value chain for sustainability, minimizing the food waste and leading the world population towards more sustainable plant-based foods. The vision of sustainability is nutrition-rich food within limited resources to all humanity.

Paradigm changes are happening in the food industry as manufacturers create novelty plant-based products that are ethical and sustainable. In addition, they are meeting expectations of taste, convenience and affordability. In this write-up, we will briefly touch on the importance of various ingredients in the manufacture of plant-based foods and their importance to physicochemical and sensory attributes. The next generation of food requires meeting animal foods’ composition, bioavailability, and nutrient profile.

1.1 Protein

Protein is the most distinguishing element due to its functional properties imparted to food products in structuring, texturizing, emulsifying, foaming, moisture holding, and nutritional profile. In general, commercial plant-based protein ingredients come in three primary forms: flours concentrates and isolates. Typically, the protein concentration increases as one moves from flours to isolates, but the fraction of native proteins often decreases.

One of the significant problems in the plant-based food area is the lack of consistent ingredients with the desired functional attributes. In addition, the native structure of the plant proteins during the isolation process is destroyed, and the individual globular proteins are to various extents, which reduces their water- solubility. The water-solubility of plant proteins is essential for many food applications since it is a prerequisite for good functional performance. The properties of plant protein depend upon the source of origin and are influenced by extraction and processing conditions used to convert them into food ingredients. Major issues with proteins are: 1.2 Carbohydrates

The molecular, physicochemical, and biological characteristics of plant carbohydrates differ greatly, affecting their functional effectiveness. They may differ in molar mass (low to high), structure (linear or branching), and charge at the molecular level, for example (anionic, neutral, or cationic). They can differ in terms of water solubility (soluble or insoluble), emulsification qualities (good or terrible), thickening power (low to high), gelling properties (gelling or non-gelling), and water-holding properties at the physicochemical and functional level (good or bad).

Their digestibility (rapid, slow, or none) and intestinal fermentability are different on a nutritional and physiological level (fermentable or non-fermentable). As a result, determining the qualitative features and nutritional profile of plant-based food products requires choosing a suitable carbohydrate source.

1.3 Lipids

The composition of the fatty acid profile in animal products plays a vital role in the functionality they impart to a product. Generally, the fatty acid is triacylglycerol which is three fatty acid molecules covalently attached to a glycerol molecule through ester bonds.

The molecular characteristics of the fatty acids in a triacylglycerol determine lipids’ physicochemical and functional properties. For example, the melting point of lipids tends to increase as the chain length of the fatty acids increases and the degree of unsaturation decreases. For this reason, many animal fats, which contain relatively high levels of long-chain saturated fatty acids, such as those found in milk fat or beef lard, tend to be solid-like at ambient temperature.

The crystallization and melting properties of fats are critical for providing desirable properties to many animal-based foods, such as the spreadability of butter, the foaming of whipped cream, the meltability of cheese, and the texture of ice cream. Consequently, it is often important to mimic the crystallization properties of animal fats using plant-based alternatives.

Plant-sourced fats contain relatively high levels of unsaturated fatty acids, which tend to be fluid at room temperature. These fats can be made more solid by reducing their degree of unsaturation using hydrogenation processes, but this is often undesirable because it generates trans- or saturated fatty acids, linked to an increased risk of heart disease.

For this reason, food manufacturers often choose to use natural sources of solid fat, such as coconut fat, because it has a relatively high solid fat content at ambient temperatures and can therefore provide solid or plastic characteristics. Some of the most common plant-based lipids used in the formulation of commercial plant-based foods include avocado oil, canola oil, cocoa butter, coconut oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, soybean oil, and sunflower oil.