Chen Zeng wrote this based on his experience as a student researcher while pursuing his Master of Food Science at Cornell University.
Vegan cheese alternatives is one of the categories that is growing rapidly in recent years and different styles of vegan cheese alternatives (mozzarella, cheddar, pepper jack, etc.) have started to pop up. In general, there are two categories of vegan cheese alternatives available produced with different processing techniques. Starch-based cheese products usually come in shredded or sliced form and they are produced by simply mixing all the ingredients together. Nut-based cheese products are usually sold as a spread or block and they are produced in a way similar to dairy cheese, which involves fermentation and aging. Even though these two types of cheese alternatives fill out part of the market demand, many in the past both lacked certain properties that consumers are looking for. For the starch-based cheese, they usually have very little amount of protein as starch is used to mimic the melting and stretching properties of dairy cheese. For the nut-based cheese, they have a certain amount of protein and nutritional value but the texture is very different from dairy cheese and they are not suitable for people with nut allergies. Consumers are looking for a product that is high in protein but also has dairy cheese-like texture.
My project on fava bean based vegan cheese is targeted at filling out this market blank by creating a vegan cheese product that has some amount of protein while maintaining a desirable stretching and melting properties. Unfortunately, the limiting factor of the texture of vegan cheese is plant protein itself. Casein, a type of dairy protein, has the unique properties of melting and forming stretchable strings upon heating. It is difficult to find a substitute for dairy protein in the plant protein world simply because the protein structure and the way protein molecules interact with each other are different between casein protein and plant protein. A 1:1 substitution of plant protein to casein protein in vegan cheese will end up with a product that is tough and doughy in texture. To solve this problem, some forms of processing is needed to improve the functionality of plant protein so that a higher amount of protein can be incorporated into the cheese without compromising texture. There are mainly three types of processing that include physical, chemical, and enzymatic processing. Extrusion processing, a form of physical processing, was chosen for this study. Extrusion is commonly used to produce vegan meat analogs, pasta, cereal, etc. Ingredients will go through mixing, heating, and shearing stages and finally through a die to form the ideal shapes. Many research studies suggested that extrusion processing is also capable of alternating plant protein orientation and possibly improving the functionality of protein besides the common uses. Therefore, we tested out this hypothesis with fava bean protein and used the products that came out of this process to make our final vegan cheese product. Compared to a prototype using unprocessed fava bean protein, extruded fava bean protein prototype has shown a 40% improvement on stretching quality and 10% improvement on melting quality. This extruded fava based vegan prototype is also able to achieve a comparable texture profile (stretchability and meltability) as commercial vegan cheese but with a higher amount of protein at 10%.
These promising results are suggesting that plant protein could be an option for protein-rich vegan cheese products after proper treatment and dairy protein is not a necessary element to produce protein-rich cheese with good texture. Despite the promising results from stretch test and melt test, this study did not address much on the evaluation of the sensory aspects of the extruded fava cheese prototypes. In the future, this project will shift toward investigating the sensory aspect and further improving the stretching and melting properties of protein-rich vegan cheese to the next level.
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