Comparison of composition, nutritional aspects and market price between UHT milk and UHT plant-based beverages

• Autor(a) principal: Mello, Luiza Oliveira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Francisquini, Júlia d’Almeida, Costa, Juliana de Carvalho da, Kharfan, Daniela, Perrone, Ítalo Tuler, Stephani, Rodrigo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Research, Society and Development
• Texto Completo: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/20860
• topic: Etiqueta; Legislación; Sucedáneos de la leche.; Label; Legislation; Milk substitutes.; Rótulo; Legislação; Substitutos do leite.

The demand for milk substitutes is growing by people who claim environmental concerns, sustainability or who exhibit some type of food restriction such as vegans, vegetarians, lactose intolerant or allergic to milk protein. Within these substitutes, the consumption of vegetable drinks is increased, which still lack specific and consolidated legislation to control their identity and quality, which is already established for UHT milk. Thus, the objective of the work was to carry out a comparative study of the information available on the labels of vegetable beverages (five types of vegetable sources produced by three different companies) and UHT cow's milk (three types of milk produced by five different companies) regarding nutritional aspects, total shelf life, claims, ingredients list, sales denomination and market price. Statistical and exploratory analyzes of the data obtained were performed. It could be verified that vegetable drinks have an average price per liter of product approximately 3.4 times higher than UHT milks, and that they exhibited a greater amount of added ingredients and variations in their nutritional composition, demonstrating the need for specific legislation. Through principal component analysis, the samples of soy vegetable drinks were grouped with the UHT milk samples for having compositional attributes closer to that of animal-derived product. Therefore, there is a niche to be explored in the search for greater standardization and a reduction in the market price of vegetable drinks.