Time-travelling Milkman

Choosing plant-based dairy for our diet has been suggested as a promising route for a sustainable future. However, dairy alternatives are not as appealing as dairy products largely due the unavailability of a creamy fat ingredient.

Improving the creaminess of dairy alternatives has been attempted by manufacturers with several ingredients. However,  stable, sustainable and healthy fat ingredients have yet to be found.

TTM is taking inspiration from solutions provided by Nature. It has been greatly overlooked that inside plant seeds, fats are organized in naturally occurring fat droplets, called Oleosomes. Oleosome fat droplets are the ideal milk fat equivalent due to the following reasons:

• A very compct membrane makes Oleosomes droplets as stable as milk fat droplets;
• Oleosomes have shown a high potential as milk fat equivalents for creamy and tasty dairy alternatives;
• Oleosome fat droplets are healthy ingredients and can be produced from European seeds without solvents.

The primary objective of TTM will be to investigate how can the noteworthy qualities of Oleosome fat droplets be successfully conveyed to dairy alternatives.

The milk fat substitute ingredients of TTM have a huge potential in the currently expanding dairy alternative market. As the current and future market potential of dairy alternatives is enormous, it can be expected that high quality, inexpensive and sustainable ingredients will be needed by the manufacturers.