Due to the issues like lactose intolerance and milk allergy arising from the consumption of cow's milk, there has been an increased demand in the plant based alternative milks around the world. Food industry has addressed these demands by introducing various milk beverages which are promoted as alternatives coming from plant sources which include almond milk and soy milk. Though they are popularly advertised as healthy and wholesome, little research has been done in understanding the nutritional implications of consuming these milk beverages in short term and long term. Further, consumers associate these alternatives to be a direct substitute of cow's milk which might not be true in all cases. This review tries to address the issue by outlining the differences between cow's milk and commercially available alternative milks in terms of their nutrient content. Though various plant based alternate milks have been studied, only the four most consumed milk beverages are presented in this review which are consumed widely around the world. A complete nutritional outline and the corresponding health benefits of consuming these plant based milk beverages have been discussed in detail which could help the consumers make an informed decision.
With the turn of this century, novel food processing techniques have become commercially very important because of their profound advantages over the traditional methods. These novel processing methods tend to preserve the characteristic properties of food including their organoleptic and nutritional qualities better when compared with the conventional food processing methods. During the same period of time, there is a clear rise in the populations suffering from food allergies, especially infants and children. Though, this fact is widely attributed to the changing livelihood of population in both developed and developing nations and to the introduction of new food habits with advent of novel foods and new processing techniques, their complete role is still uncertain. Under the circumstance, it is very important to understand the structural changes in the protein as food is processed to comprehend whether the specific processing technique (conventional and novel) is increasing or mitigating the allergenicity. Various modern means are now being employed to understand the conformational changes in the protein which can affect the allergenicity. In this review, the processing effects on protein structure and allergenicity are discussed along with the insinuations of recent studies and techniques for establishing a platform to investigate future pathway to reduce or eliminate allergenicity in the population.
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