Development of synbiotic vegan beverages: probiotic viability,sensory profile, consumers’ acceptance and functional stability

Abstract

The development of synbiotic vegan drinks expands the probiotic food options on the market as an alter-native to dairy products and with no added sugars. This study aimed to investigate the impact of fermen-tation and inulin addition in mixed carrot-orange juice with Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (LP) on thesensory profile, consumer acceptance and functional stability. The results demonstrated that allfermented juices had high antioxidant capacity (AOC) and were a rich source of bioactive compoundssuch as b-carotene and phenolics. However, only the b-carotene showed a high correlation with the AOC.Inulin could improve LP survival, remaining at high concentration during the 21 days of storage. Onlyfermented juices with 2% inulin showed a positive correlation with sweet taste and had the best impacton sensorial properties. Fermentation with LP and inulin addition could contribute to the improvementof orange flavour and taste. Penalty analysis showed that the control-unfermented juices were the sampleswith a clear need for improvement with respect to the fermented ones. Therefore, carrot-orange juices rep-resent a promising vegan food matrix for probiotic delivery.