Flow Behaviour of Vegetable Beverages to Replace Milk

Abstract

Recently, milk consumption has been declining and there is a high demand for cow milk substitutes other than soy beverages. However, market offers are mainly cereal and nut-based beverages, which are essentially poor in protein content (less than 1.5% against the 3.5% in milk) and are not true milk replacers in that sense. Therefore, legume-based beverage was becoming a fast-growing segment in newer food development. This work presents the rheological behavior of commercial non-dairy beverages, showing that they are shear-thinning fluids and it is part of a database containing all information available about commercialized nondairy alternative beverages that is being collected to be used as the target for the development of pulse-based beverages. Flow properties of pulse-based beverages are expected to be typical non-Newtonian fluids, as current non-dairy alternative beverages, where the apparent viscosity decreases over shear, i.e., they are shear-thinning fluids which is fundamental for the mouth feel and consumer acceptance of new developing beverages. The viscosity curves obtained are presented as a guide flow pattern to be achieved by the use of rheology modifiers, if necessary, to find the right mouth feel.