What’s holding plant-based cheese alternatives back? A summary
- Plant-based dairy evolves in four generations of taste and nutrition
- Milk alternatives are advancing faster than semi-hard cheese analogues
- Texture and flavour challenges stem from plant protein limitations
- Fermentation offers natural flavour, texture and shelf-life improvements
- AI-powered microbe screening could accelerate cheese analogue innovation
Plant-based dairy alternatives follow a similar product evolution. The first generation needs to look right, with no unpleasant flavours. Generation 2 must also perform like dairy: foaming like milk or melting like cheese. Generation 3 adds nutritional parity, particularly protein, vitamin and mineral levels. And generation 4 combines all this with sustainable sources and fewer additives for more natural, clean-label products. While milk alternatives are already on generation 3 or even 4, semi-hard cheese analogues are still struggling in generation 2.
Protein versus flavour and texture
Semi-hard cheeses have a much higher protein content than milk, and plant-based proteins are notorious for off flavours and poor solubility, which has a major impact on texture and mouthfeel. Semi-hard cheeses also have a much more complex structure than milk - one linked to casein micelles that aren’t present in plant-based ingredients.
The challenge, then, is to increase (plant) protein levels while delivering a familiar cheesy taste and texture, and without introducing unpleasant off flavours.
Artificial flavourings are an option. The industry is making progress here, but an authentic cheese flavour is complex, and we haven’t quite nailed it yet. Moreover, the artificial flavour would need to mask any off flavours. As every plant protein ingredient has its own unique combination of compounds that could produce off flavours, this would be a huge challenge, and requires dedicated flavour development for each new product. Artificial flavouring also wouldn’t tackle texture issues, and would increase additives, complicating the step to generation 4.
An all-natural solution
A more promising option is fermentation. The dairy world has been using fermentation to create flavourful semi-hard cheeses for centuries. In recent years, plant-based has been increasingly exploiting fermentation too.
Fermentation adds flavour and texture. It improves stability and shelf life, through acidification and by producing molecules that inhibit the growth unwanted microbes. And it can be used to remove specific molecules, such as compounds that cause off flavours or anti-nutritional elements, a technique known as bio-purification.
Importantly, fermentation does all that while being 100% natural and without adding extra ingredients. So, it could propel plant-based semi-hard cheeses from generation 2 into generation 3 and, potentially, even generation 4.
Too much choice?
Dairy fermentation is well understood. Milk is a consistent medium, and centuries of cheesemaking experience has identified appropriate fermentation cultures. Plant-based is different. Each protein ingredient or product formulation represents a unique growth environment for microorganisms, and there are millions of possible fermentation cultures, with new ones constantly emerging. Each microorganism can produce or remove different molecules and needs specific conditions to thrive.
Finding microorganisms that will produce/remove the necessary molecules to create an authentic cheese flavour and texture in a particular product is a huge challenge. But it can be tackled through data.
Playing the genetic lottery
We now know much more about the genetic structure of microbes and, specifically, how to link DNA sequences to the potential for creating specific enzymes. This opens up the possibility of (AI-assisted) screening fermentable microorganisms, to identify promising candidates for improving the flavour, texture and/or stability of a specific plant-based, semi-hard cheese analogue.
While the right DNA sequences don’t guarantee an organism will express the desired enzyme in a given product, this kind of screening could produce a feasible shortlist of candidates for further investigation.
To test this approach, NIZO used its existing database and knowledge of microorganisms to identify and develop veganised cultures that could produce realistic cheese flavours and reduce unpleasant flavours in plant-based products. Prototypes using these “boutique cultures” showed it is possible to eliminate off flavours and create a balanced, authentic cheese flavour.
Using AI to accelerate innovation
These prototypes highlight fermentation’s potential to deliver plant-based semi-hard cheeses that match dairy cheeses for taste, texture and nutritional value. But handpicking boutique cultures isn’t a viable approach for mass adoption.
Instead, the industry needs to automate the initial screening of candidate organisms for individual products. The Delicious project – comprising universities, research centres and industrial partners – is currently working on this. It aims to combine mechanistic metabolic models that identify the genetic potential of microbes with machine learning tools that predict how those microbes will grow on different substrates and which compounds they will produce/remove. If successful, this would create a bioinformatics solution that could drive efficiency and innovation in the development of new plant-based cheese analogues.
The next step for plant-based cheese
Plant-based, semi-hard cheese alternatives have struggled to take the next step and deliver tastes, textures and nutritional values that truly rival their dairy counterparts. However, fermentation offers an attractive path to that next step and beyond.
By combining high-quality data on microbe characteristics with emerging bioinformatics solutions, the promise of a plant-based, semi-hard cheese that tastes and feels like cheese could be just around the corner.
