At this year’s IFT Food Expo, many companies were demonstrating products with novel proteins, including plant and insect proteins.
Tasting is believing and so I tasted liberally. Many of these novel proteins worked well in savory applications, but imparted unfamiliar and unpleasant notes to beverages and traditional dairy products such as yogurt. Their protein quality also scores significantly below that of dairy proteins. But interesting work is underway to improve both flavor and quality of novel proteins.