Mixing milk, egg and plant resources to obtain safe and tasty foods with environmental and health benefits

Since the early 1990s, major health and environmental concerns have developed and driven the emergence of diets involving a lower consumption of animal products. However, the transition towards greener diets is being hampered by the poor acceptance of vegan foodstuffs among western consumers. Mixed animal/plant alternatives to familiar dairy or egg products offer a new field of innovation. This review focuses on innovative mixes of egg or milk with plant ingredients – especially legumes – to develop products in which interactions between animal and plant are not usually expected, such as dairy or egg gels, emulsions or foams. The opportunities offered by such products in terms of consumer acceptance, nutrition, digestibility and techno-functional properties are reviewed and discussed with respect to their risk-benefit ratios. In many cases, animal/plant mixes offer enhanced protein stability and synergistic interfacial or textural properties that make them a flexible tool for food design. Fermentation offers important prospects for the nutritional and sensorial enhancement of animal/plant mixes, through the multi-criteria application of microbial consortia. Animal/plant mixes enable reduction in animal protein consumption while preserving amino acid and micronutrient intakes and sensory properties. However, their acceptability to consumers and society will also depend on controlled safety, especially regarding allergies or contaminants, on affordability, their degree of novelty or (ultra)processing, their actual environmental footprint and whether they meet consumer expectations for innovative foods in the transition towards greener diets.