Milk alternatives and non-dairy fermented products. Trends and challenges

The growing prevalence of allergenicity towards cow’s milk, lactose intolerance, and hypercholesterolemia, as well as the trend of plant-based diets (vegetarian and vegan), is pushing the food industry and the global market towards the design, supply and production of novel plant-based milk alternatives. Today, milk alternatives are commercially obtained from a variety of plant-derived ingredients, such as cereals, legumes, pseudo-cereals, nuts, and fruits. In particular, plant-based beverages and yogurt-like products obtained with oat, rice, quinoa, soy, almond, coconut, hazelnut, sesame, and hemp, are the most commonly consumed. Depending on the raw materials and technology employed in the production processes, large nutritional composition variability, and significant differences from milk counterparts in terms of technological and sensory features have been reported.