Ph.d.-forsvar
PhD defence by Sanne Todorov
Sanne Todorov will defend her PhD thesis "Studying the potential of unusual fungal and bacterial fermentations for plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy"
Principal supervisor
- Associate professor Claus Heiner Bang-Berthelsen
Co-supervisor
- Associate professor Tim Hobley
Examiners
- Professor Egon Bech Hansen, DTU Food
- Professor Dennis Sandris Nielsen, University of Copenhagen
- Professor Eddy Smid, Wageningen University
Chairperson at defence
- Senior researcher Jette Jakobsen
Resume
Plant based meat and dairy alternatives have the potential to decrease a major part of the food related greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, and soil acidification. But the current plant based alternatives have problems such as difference in taste, texture, smell, and nutritional values compared to the products they hope to mimic.
In this PhD thesis, it is investigated whether fermentation using unusual microorganisms and/or plant bases can bridge the gap between meat and dairy, and the plant based alternatives. Currently we only use around 11 plant bases for commercial dairy alternatives, and a selected few plant bases for commercial meat alternatives, while more than 27,000 plants are registered as edible.
The same is the case for microorganisms. The majority of commercially fermented plant based foods contain some beneficial bacteria, or some yeast or mold cultures. However, with more than 195 bacterial species and more than 60 species of fungi being found to be beneficial to use in food fermentations, opportunities are lost when only a few are actually utilized for commercial products.
During the project, different combinations of raw materials and microorganisms were combined in order to create meat and dairy alternatives with enhanced values. The dairy alternatives were mainly tested for their organoleptic properties as well as metabolic similarity to the product they were mimicking. The meat alternative was further tested on physical properties as well as nutritional properties. Based on results from the project, it is concluded that there is a rich and underexplored potential in unusual plant bases and microorganisms when preparing new meat and dairy alternatives.