The study, published in Current Research in Food Science, analyzed 168 products drawn from the official food composition databases of the three countries: 54 foods from Sweden, 56 from France and 58 from the United States. The team, led by Marta Bianchi of the Research Institutes of Sweden with colleagues from Sweden and France, deliberately excluded heterogeneous products such as flavoured milk beverages, milk desserts and condensed milk, but included flavoured yoghurts and sweetened plant-based drinks. To put the dairy aisle in context, they also ranked the products alongside 20 reference protein foods, including meat, fish, eggs and legumes, drawn from the Swedish database.

Methodologically, the work belongs to a growing field called nutritional life cycle assessment, or nLCA, which tries to answer a deceptively simple question: how much climate impact does a food generate per unit of nutrition delivered? The choice of that nutritional yardstick, known as a nutritional functional unit, turns out to matter enormously. The researchers applied two complementary indicators. The Nutrient Density Score, or NDS, averages the content of 23 beneficial nutrients — from protein and fiber to iodine, selenium and vitamin B12 — per 100 kilocalories, making it suitable for broad comparisons across food groups. The Dietary Shift Index, or DSI, is more targeted: originally built around six nutrients expected to decline when diets shift toward plant-based eating (protein, calcium, zinc and vitamins B2, B12 and D), the team modified it to include iron, a nutrient at risk when meat consumption falls.

The results exposed striking geographic differences. In France, where only 16 percent of the assessed products were fortified, milk had significantly higher nutritional quality than unsweetened plant-based milks according to the DSI, and sweetened dairy yoghurt outperformed sweetened plant-based yoghurt alternatives on both indicators. In Sweden, where 76 percent of products were fortified — largely reflecting mandatory vitamin D fortification of both dairy and plant drinks — and in the United States, where 53 percent were fortified, nutritional quality was relatively homogeneous across dairy and plant-based categories, with no statistically significant differences between them. In other words, fortification can effectively close the nutrient gap between cow’s milk and its plant-based imitators.

The country contrasts were stark in the underlying numbers. Median NDS values for unsweetened plant-based milks ranged from just 3.89 per 100 kilocalories in France to 16.52 in the United States, a more than fourfold difference driven almost entirely by added vitamins and minerals. Vitamin D was the most common fortificant in Swedish and American products, followed by calcium and vitamin B12, while American milk was frequently fortified with vitamin A as well. Notably, fortified nutrients rarely exceeded adult recommended intakes, although a few products — including French fortified milk rich in riboflavin and almond drinks high in vitamin E and calcium — surpassed them, mostly when recommendations for children were applied. A sensitivity analysis applying capping, which truncates nutrients at 100 percent of recommended values, barely changed the overall picture.

The study also tackled the perennial question of added sugar. Both the NDS and DSI capture only beneficial nutrients, so the researchers computed a separate Limiting Nutrient Index (LIM) covering saturated fat, total sugars and sodium per 100 grams. Unsweetened products generally came out ahead, with the clearest signal in Swedish yoghurts, where plain varieties scored significantly better nutritionally than sweetened or flavoured ones. Intriguingly, when the LIM was subtracted from the quality scores, the results could cut both ways: in France it levelled the difference between milk and unsweetened plant-based milks, while in Sweden it accentuated contrasts, making sweetened dairy yoghurt score lower than its plant-based counterpart. Yoghurts, both dairy and plant-based, carried the highest limiting-nutrient loads of the liquid categories, while unsweetened French plant-based yoghurt alternatives posted the lowest LIM of all.

On the climate side, the carbon footprints, drawn mainly from the French Agribalyse database and expressed per 100 grams, per 100 kilocalories and per unit of each nutritional score, confirmed the expected pattern: plant-based milks and yoghurts generally had lower median footprints than milk and yoghurt. Sweetened or flavoured plant-based milks showed the lowest category median at 0.02 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per 100 grams, while unsweetened dairy yoghurt topped the range at 0.17, with individual products spanning from an almond drink at 0.01 to a chocolate-chip yoghurt at 0.51. But the magnitude of the dairy-versus-plant gap shrank when impacts were divided by nutritional quality rather than by mass or calories, and one coconut-based beverage even showed an intermediate climate impact comparable to some dairy products.

The choice of functional unit reshuffled the entire league table of protein foods. Per 100 grams, dairy and plant-based alternatives ranked below all other animal protein sources; per calorie, milk and yoghurt landed near eggs and herring; and per unit of nutritional quality, they shifted upward to align with or exceed nutrient-dense animal foods such as salmon, tuna and game. The DSI, with its narrower, transition-focused nutrient selection, consistently gave milk and several plant-based alternatives more favourable rankings than the broad NDS. Meanwhile, lentils, tofu and chickpeas kept the lowest carbon footprints no matter how the comparison was framed, and cod and game meat topped the pure nutritional rankings.

The authors are careful about the limits of their analysis. The indicators measure nutrient content but not bioavailability or the effects of the food matrix — increasingly recognized as decisive for dairy, where the fermentation of yoghurt appears to blunt the expected cardiovascular downsides of saturated fat. Iodine data were missing from the US database, potentially underestimating the quality of American products, and the climate assessment captured only greenhouse gases, leaving out water use, land occupation and biodiversity. A relatively small set of carbon footprint values had to represent a wide variety of products, and the emissions from producing fortificants themselves were not included. The inclusion of reference foods, the team stresses, was a methodological exercise, not a claim that legumes can simply be swapped for milk.

Even so, the take-home message is provocative. In countries with strong fortification traditions or mandates, plant-based alternatives can approach dairy on nutritional quality per calorie, while retaining a genuine climate advantage in most categories. Where fortification is rare, as in France, the nutritional case for keeping milk in the diet strengthens considerably. As dietary guidelines such as the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations already suggest including fortified plant drinks when milk intake is low, the study argues that fortification policy deserves the same scrutiny as the crops and livestock it influences — and that future sustainability assessments should choose their nutritional yardsticks deliberately, because the ranking of foods on the road to a climate-friendly diet depends on it.

Subject of Research: Nutritional life cycle assessment of dairy and plant-based milk and yoghurt alternatives across France, Sweden and the United States.

Article Title: Linking Nutritional Quality and Climate Impact of Dairy and Plant-Based Milk and Yogurt Alternatives: Evidence from Three Countries.

Article References: Bianchi, M., Lundmark, V., Barman, S., Hallström, E., & Bryngelsson, S. (2026). Linking Nutritional Quality and Climate Impact of Dairy and Plant-Based Milk and Yogurt Alternatives: Evidence from Three Countries.. Current Research in Food Science, Article 101598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101598

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.crfs.2026.101598

Keywords: nutritional life cycle assessment, plant-based milk, dairy alternatives, fortification, carbon footprint, nutrient density, dietary shift index, sustainable diets, yoghurt, food policy, vitamin D fortification, functional unit

The team’s choice of almond protein isolate was deliberate. Almonds already have a reputation in the plant-milk world for mild flavor and smooth texture, avoiding the beany off-notes and allergenic baggage that complicate soy. The isolate is roughly 97 percent protein, most of it the water-soluble globulin amandin, which makes up 65 to 70 percent of the total. Crucially, almond protein shares an isoelectric point with casein, in the pH 4.5 to 5.5 range, and retains about 70 to 80 percent solubility even at pH 4. That means it can undergo heat- and acid-driven structural changes at almost exactly the point where yogurt fermentation ends, mimicking the acid coagulation that builds dairy gels. The researchers hypothesized that varying the almond protein concentration within a xanthan gum-stabilized millet matrix would tune protein–polysaccharide interactions and dictate whether the final gel held together or fell apart.

The experimental design was straightforward but rigorous. Millet milk was prepared by soaking, blending, and filtering proso millet grains, then supplemented with almond protein isolate at 0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 percent weight per volume, alongside 0.5 percent xanthan gum, 3 percent inulin as a prebiotic, and 3 percent sucrose. After hydration, pasteurization at 90 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes, and inoculation with a vegan starter culture containing Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, L. acidophilus, and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis, the mixtures were fermented to pH 4.6 and chilled. The resulting yogurts were then put through an unusually complete battery of tests: proximate composition, fermentation kinetics, electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, zeta potential, free sulfhydryl measurement, selective-solvent interaction analysis, colorimetry, water-holding capacity, texture profiling, rheology, and a trained sensory panel.

The compositional results alone tell a striking story. Millet milk starts with a meager 1.23 percent crude protein, and the unsupplemented control yogurt contained just 0.38 percent. Adding almond protein raised protein content in a concentration-dependent manner, reaching 2.23 percent at the 2 percent dose, roughly a six-fold increase over the control. Fat stayed below 0.5 percent across all formulations, comfortably meeting the European Union criterion for a fat-free claim. But the more consequential effects appeared during fermentation. Yogurts with 1 percent almond protein or more acidified faster and reached the pH 4.6 endpoint earlier than the control, and viable lactic acid bacteria counts climbed from 5.29 log CFU per gram in the control to 7.00 log CFU per gram at the highest dose. The likely explanation is nitrogen: the o-phthaldialdehyde assay showed that trichloroacetic acid-soluble amino groups rose significantly during fermentation, from 2.39 to 3.42 millimolar glycine equivalents in the 2 percent formulation, providing the peptides and free amino acids that fuel bacterial metabolism and acid production.

Microscopy revealed exactly why the control yogurt failed. Under focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, the unsupplemented sample showed a fragmented, poorly connected structure of irregular particles that remained fluid and flowed when the cup was inverted. At 0.5, 1, and 1.5 percent almond protein, however, the gels formed compact, homogeneous networks with honeycomb-like pores, smooth cohesive surfaces, and the ability to hold their shape upside down. At 2 percent, the picture reversed: pores collapsed, fractures appeared, the surface turned rough and aggregated, and visible syneresis, or water separation, set in. The lesson is that gel quality is not a simple dose–response curve. Moderate protein supplementation builds a continuous network, while too much pushes the system past the point where electrostatic repulsion can keep protein molecules from clumping into a coarse, grainy mass.

The molecular explanation lies in the balance of intermolecular forces. Selective buffer experiments showed that electrostatic interactions were the dominant force in most almond-supplemented yogurts, rising from 0.17 milligrams per milliliter at 0.5 percent protein to 0.49 at 1.5 percent before falling back to 0.27 at 2 percent, where hydrogen bonding took over. Zeta potential measurements reinforced this interpretation: all formulations were negatively charged, consistent with the anionic xanthan gum, but the potential became less negative as protein increased, dropping sharply to minus 26.0 millivolts at 2 percent. That collapse in electrostatic repulsion coincided with the aggregation and structural failure seen under the microscope. Free sulfhydryl content did decline during fermentation, indicating some disulfide bonding, but the values were far below those reported for soy yogurt, reflecting almond protein’s limited cysteine content. Disulfide bridges helped, but the electrostatic glue between charged protein regions and anionic polysaccharides was the real architect of the gel.

Physical performance tracked the molecular story closely. Water-holding capacity, the single best indicator of physical stability in set yogurt, jumped from a dismal 17.65 percent in the control to 99.00 percent at 0.5 percent almond protein and 97.92 percent at 1 percent, then slid to 89.47 percent at 1.5 percent and crashed to 59.77 percent at 2 percent. Firmness in the back-extrusion test rose from 0.19 newtons to 21.46 newtons across the same range, and the consistency index climbed from 4.56 to 437.18 newton-seconds. Notably, the 0.5 and 1 percent formulations landed nearest the firmness and consistency values typical of dairy set yogurt, around 2 to 3 newtons and 50 to 60 newton-seconds, while the two highest doses produced gels far harder than anything a consumer would recognize as spoonable. Rheology confirmed the pattern: storage modulus exceeded loss modulus in every sample, confirming solid-like behavior, but the 2 percent gel reached moduli of 10,000 pascals, orders of magnitude above the 1 to 100 pascal range of conventional yogurt.

Perhaps the most counterintuitive finding came from the three-interval thixotropy test, which measures how well a gel rebuilds itself after being sheared apart. The 1 percent formulation showed a significantly higher recovery rate than the 1.5 and 2 percent samples, and the 2 percent gel recovered worst of all. Pearson correlation analysis made the point explicit: firmness and storage modulus were negatively correlated with structural recovery, meaning that stiffer gels bounced back more poorly after mechanical deformation. Strength, in other words, is not the same as resilience. A dense, rigid network built on excessive protein aggregation and hydrogen bonding cannot absorb stress the way a balanced, electrostatically stabilized, porous network can. For product developers, this decoupling of hardness from quality is a critical design principle: the goal is not the strongest gel but the most organized one.

The sensory panel of twenty trained tasters agreed. The millet yogurts outscored a commercial soy set yogurt on appearance, and the 0.5 and 1 percent formulations earned the highest texture scores, consistent with their yogurt-like firmness and rheology. Almond protein improved taste and flavor across the board, but the 1 percent sample achieved the highest overall acceptability at 4.85 on the nine-point hedonic scale, a judgment that weighed color, water retention, microstructural uniformity, texture, and flavor together. The authors conclude that heat-induced protein unfolding and fermentation-driven acidification enabled almond protein to mediate protein–polysaccharide interactions that convert a weakly gelling cereal matrix into a self-supporting, low-fat, soy-free set yogurt whose gelation pattern resembles conventional dairy yogurt. They caution that the detailed molecular events of aggregation were not directly observed and will require further characterization. Even so, the study offers a practical recipe for the next generation of plant-based yogurts: a climate-hardy grain, a mild tree nut protein, and a dose window narrow enough that precision, not abundance, makes the gel.

Subject of Research: Using almond protein isolate to modulate protein–polysaccharide gel networks and improve the physicochemical stability of millet-based set yogurt

Article Title: Modulating protein–polysaccharide gel networks via almond protein to improve physicochemical stability of millet-based set yogurt

Article References: Modulating protein–polysaccharide gel networks via almond protein to improve physicochemical stability of millet-based set yogurt. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104535

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.fochx.2026.104535

Keywords: plant-based yogurt, almond protein isolate, proso millet, protein–polysaccharide interactions, xanthan gum, gel network, water-holding capacity, rheology, lactic acid fermentation, food texture, syneresis, dairy alternatives