Plant protein for food: opportunities and bottlenecks

Abstract

Dietary proteins represent a key issue for the future regarding worldwide food security. Besides animal sources, plant proteins represent an opportunity to mainly contribute to protein demand. Whether some plant protein sources could appear as deficient in some essential amino acids, mixtures from different sources could represent opportunities to further propose adapted supply regarding specific demand. Such opportunities includes legumes as well as by-products of oil processing, i.e. canola and sunflower cakes. The nutritional benefits of such new sources are still under investigation considering benefits and limits like allergenicity. Finally, consumer behavior and acceptability remains the final bottleneck for developing new protein sources.

Keywords

• Dietary proteins
• animal and plant protein sources
• essential amino acids
• oil processing-derived proteins