Fermentation of Swedish faba beans for foods with improved texture, flavour and nutritional properties

A growing body of evidence is pointing at the need for more sustainable diets and methods of food production.

Plant based milk analogues, which generally represents more sustainable alternatives to their dairy counterparts, is one such alternative. However, plant based dairy substitutes often suffer from comparably poor nutritional and organoleptic quality.

These issues we will solve or reduce through processing, e.g. heat treatment, homogenization and fermentation.The project aims to establish a relationship between processing, fermentation and the nutritional and organoleptic quality of a yoghurt-like food, based on a Swedish legume such as faba bean.To achieve this we will combine different types of pre-treatments such as milling, soaking, homogenization, pulsed electric fields, heating and enzymatic treatment to reduce off-flavors and anti-nutritional factors, improve texture and produce a faba bean milk analogue suitable for fermentation.

We will utilize existing microbial consortia from traditional fermented foods and feed such as kefir, sourdough and silage to identify and design suitable mixed starter cultures.

An investigation of consumer preferences will guide the development of prototype foods which will be evaluated with regard to physico-chemical and sensory characteristics.