Unlocking the performance challenges of plant-based

Well-established plant-based proteins such as soy and pea already offer impressive nutritional and functional properties, giving developers more scope to influence everything from structure and water binding to texture and mouthfeel. However, a more capable ingredient does not automatically make a better product. The biggest challenge in plant-based product development can be treating protein selection simply as the starting point, rather than defining the required eating experience first.

Three questions are particularly important: how does the ingredient behave during processing, can the required characteristics be achieved consistently and, ultimately, will consumers enjoy the finished product enough to buy it again? Together, they move the focus from the performance of an individual protein to the performance of the product as a whole, requiring developers to understand not only what a protein can do, but how it interacts with the wider formulation and affects the final eating experience.

Looking beyond the protein

Plant proteins bring challenges as well as functionality, with factors such as solubility, emulsification, gelation, water binding and stability influencing both how an ingredient behaves during processing and what it ultimately contributes to the finished product. Consumer response is governed by a different set of considerations, with flavour, mouthfeel, appearance and aroma sitting alongside expectations around satisfaction, convenience and price.

The two are closely connected. In a high-protein baked product, for example, increasing protein content can affect the wider recipe, changing texture, moisture or processing characteristics. Depending on the protein and application, formulators may therefore need to manage flavour, viscosity, structure, moisture and shelf-life performance at the same time. When looking at burgers, the formulation must deliver structure, bite, juiciness and browning, while sausages, meatballs and nuggets bring their own requirements around emulsification, textural stability, cohesion and texture.

This is why understanding technical performance matters. ACI Group’s Hybrid Meat & The Future of Sustainable Protein whitepaper highlights sensory performance and consumer familiarity alongside nutritional and environmental benefits, while recognising the formulation and processing expertise needed to deliver consistent results. The challenge, then, is not simply finding a protein with the right specification, but understanding how that protein performs within the formulation and what it contributes to the final eating experience.

Purposeful protein blending

It can be tempting to look for one protein that solves every formulation requirement, but in practice there can be more value in understanding what different ingredients contribute and how they work together. ACI’s whitepaper highlights protein blending as one route to balancing nutritional, textural and functional requirements rather than expecting a single protein to do everything.

A protein may provide the nutritional foundation and contribute to structure, while fibres, starches, hydrocolloids, enzymes or flavour systems address other requirements. Processing is another part of the equation, with extrusion and wet or dry texturisation able to influence protein functionality and the resulting texture.

This suggests a different starting point for product development. Rather than choosing a protein and then asking what can be done with it, developers can start with the required eating experience and work backwards through the functionality needed to achieve it. A burger needs bite and cohesion, for example, while a sausage has different requirements around moisture, fat and cooking performance, and a baked product brings another set of considerations altogether.

ACI’s protein portfolio includes pea and soy proteins that can contribute structure, bite, water binding and protein content, alongside blended protein solutions designed to support textural and functional performance. Through its relationship with IFF, ACI also supplies pea and soy protein solutions offering functionality such as water binding, emulsification and textural stability.

The objective is not to add more ingredients for the sake of it, but to understand what each component needs to contribute and how those contributions work together to deliver the desired result.

Performance has a price

Formulation performance also has to make commercial sense, which means ingredient cost, inclusion levels, processing requirements, shelf life and supply resilience all need to be considered alongside sensory and nutritional targets. Commercial viability and scalability become particularly important when high-performance ingredients and supply-chain requirements are involved.

This is why comparing proteins simply by cost per kilogram can give an incomplete picture. A lower-cost ingredient may require a higher inclusion level or additional flavour correction, stabilisation or processing, while a higher-cost ingredient may deliver the required functionality more efficiently or reduce the need for intervention elsewhere in the formulation.

For development teams, therefore, the more useful measure is what an ingredient contributes for the cost of using it, particularly once its inclusion level, processing requirements and impact on the wider formulation are considered. That becomes critical when a formulation moves from development into production, because it needs to perform consistently at scale, meet shelf-life and regulatory requirements, fit available processing capabilities and reach the market at a price consumers will accept.

Formulate for the consumer, not the category

Hybrid meat offers an interesting lesson because these products are designed around familiar foods and formats, retaining taste, texture and cooking characteristics while changing the nutritional and environmental profile through partial replacement of animal protein.

For plant-based development, the lesson is not necessarily to copy the format, but to reduce the distance between innovation and familiarity. Rather than asking how to persuade consumers to want something different, developers can ask what would make the product worth choosing in its own right.

That puts sensory expectations into the development brief from the outset. Consumers are not assessing the technical merits of a protein system when they eat a product; they are deciding whether they like it, whether it delivers what they expected and whether they would buy it again.

ACI’s whitepaper proposes blind sensory testing as a quality gate for hybrid products, with criteria including texture and bite, flavour, aroma, juiciness, browning and overall acceptability. It sets out a target of at least 85% of target consumers being unable to distinguish the hybrid from the conventional equivalent or actively preferring it.

The precise benchmark will vary by application, but the principle is broadly relevant: sensory performance needs to be assessed in the context of the finished product. Health and sustainability benefits can strengthen a product’s proposition, but they cannot substitute for an eating experience that meets consumer expectations.

Where ingredient expertise makes a difference

This broader view of performance changes what manufacturers need from an ingredient supplier. Access to the right ingredient is only part of the requirement; understanding how it will behave within a particular formulation and process can be just as important, particularly when several requirements need to be balanced at once.

Is the challenge protein density, structure, water retention or texture? Is flavour limiting inclusion? Will processing affect functionality? What happens over shelf life? Can the formulation be produced consistently at the required scale and cost? These questions all sit behind effective ingredient selection.

At ACI Group, relationships with ingredient specialists, including IFF and GoodMills Innovation, provide access to technologies across protein, functional ingredients and applications. More importantly, they allow us to approach the formulation requirement first rather than starting with a predetermined ingredient.

There may be no single ingredient that delivers everything a product requires. The solution can instead lie in how proteins, other functional ingredients and processing are combined, with each contributing to the performance of the final formulation.

Manufacturers that are achieving the greatest success with plant-based and hybrid products are taking a formulation-first, rather than an ingredients-first approach. Understanding how proteins and complementary ingredients interact can help brands gain a competitive advantage – particularly as products scale from concept to commercial production.

For more insights into ACI Group’s plant-based protein ingredient portfolio, or to access the White Paper, visit www.acigroup.biz or speak to a member of the team.