Novel Drying Technologies for Future Animal- and Plant-Derived Protein Foods: Research Progress, Challenges, and Potential Applications

The future food industry is facing urgent challenges that need to be addressed, mainly providing sufficient quantity and quality of food to meet the growing population, reducing environmental pollution, improving production and processing conditions to adapt to climate change, protecting biodiversity, and improving food resource utilization. The global per-capita protein demand and consumption continue to grow, making it difficult for traditional protein supply channels to provide sufficient quantity and quality of protein. Ensuring a high-quality protein supply is an important task for future food processing, and the development trend of future food processing is mainly reflected in sustainable development, health, globalization, energy conservation and emission reduction, nutrition, technology, intelligence, and automation. These factors make the development and application of alternative proteins of great practical significance. Alternative proteins are still in the development stage; the relevant research focuses on the flavor, nutrition, safety, and consumer acceptance of the products. Different drying processes need to adapt to different types and applications of alternative proteins, and the drying process will have a significant impact on the recovery rate, recovery quality, and amino acid composition of proteins. This article provides a brief and comprehensive review of the development background, significance, types, applications, challenges, and solutions of alternative proteins based on the classification criteria of animal and plant derived from the perspective of alternative proteins. Some new drying technologies that can be used for alternative proteins are also introduced, including spray drying (pre-treatment, post-treatment, and optimization of process parameters), vacuum microwave drying, and other combined drying technologies.