Getting closer to the 'real thing' with plant-based dairy

Chemical engineers at UNSW Sydney have created a plant-based cheese that melts, stretches and browns under the grill like the real thing, paving the way for more realistic dairy and meat alternatives that blend plant proteins with complex carbohydrates.

“Colours and flavours are the easy part,” said Professor Cordelia Selomulya, who has been working on plant-based food textures at UNSW since 2019. “But replicating the structure — that pull of melted cheese, or the juicy mouthfeel of meat — is the real challenge.”

While plant-based alternatives have been on the market for many years, some of today’s products still fall short as they behave strangely under heat, fail to effectively deliver the nutrition promised on the label — including sufficient protein — and simply lack the sensory properties of dairy-based products.

Selomulya and her team at the UNSW School of Chemical Engineering are actively working to change that, by layering plant-based proteins with naturally occurring polysaccharides — complex sugars and dietary fibres — to mimic the ‘feel’ of animal products. This also helps ensure the foods hold up under cooking and the freeze–thaw cycles of long-term storage, while also releasing nutrients during digestion.

The team’s most recent breakthrough is a plant-based cheese that pairs pea protein with polysaccharides for a more ‘lifelike’ texture.

“By focusing on polysaccharide blends, we’re now able to achieve the kind of elasticity and structure you'd normally associate with dairy cheese,” said Dr Yong Wang, a lead investigator on the project.

“We’ve also made progress in preserving key nutrients, which is something most commercial products don’t do well.”

The blend of proteins and polysaccharides interacts to create stable, flexible networks so the food product holds its shape during freezing or heating. This process also allows the team to ‘microencapsulate’ fat-soluble nutrients such as vitamin D and stabilise water-soluble nutrients like calcium and vitamins to survive the heating that comes with cooking.

Looking beyond

Cheese is only the beginning of blending diverse plant proteins, each with distinct nutritional profiles, into a structure that mimics their real-life counterparts.

The team’s controlled gelation process — which helps to form stable, elastic networks that resemble those found in dairy products — is leading to similar advancements in other plant-based foods. The same techniques can help replicate the texture of animal fat and muscle — two of the main challenges of meat alternatives.

“The next step is to find commercial partners,” Selomulya said.

“We now have a process that is easily scalable, we don’t need special equipment, and we have a provisional patent that we can license.”

Image credit: iStock.com/Moncherie