Dataset about the Life Cycle Assessment of new fermented food products mixing cow milk and pea protein sources

Juliette Huguet; Christophe Chassard; René Lavigne; Françoise Irlinger; Isabelle Souchon; Stephan Marette; Anne Saint-Eve; Caroline Pénicaud

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2023.109263

Dataset about the Life Cycle Assessment of new fermented food products mixing cow milk and pea protein sources

Data Brief. 2023 May 24:48:109263. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2023.109263. eCollection 2023 Jun.

Authors

Juliette Huguet¹, Christophe Chassard², René Lavigne², Françoise Irlinger¹, Isabelle Souchon³, Stephan Marette⁴, Anne Saint-Eve¹, Caroline Pénicaud¹

Affiliations

¹ Université Paris-Saclay, INRAE, AgroParisTech, UMR SayFood, Palaiseau 91120, France.
² Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, Vetagro Sup, UMRF, Aurillac 15000, France.
³ Avignon Université, INRAE, UMR SQPOV, Avignon 84000, France.
⁴ Université Paris-Saclay, INRAE, AgroParisTech, Paris-Saclay Applied Economics, Palaiseau 91120, France.

Abstract

In recent years, the food industry has expended considerable effort to design novel products that replace animal proteins with legumes; however, the actual environmental benefits of such products are often not quantified. Here, we performed Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) to evaluate the environmental performance of four new fermented food products based on different mixtures of animal (cow milk) and plant (pea) protein sources (100% Pea, 75% Pea-25% Milk, 50% Pea-50% Milk, 25% Pea-75% Milk). The system perimeter encompassed all stages from agricultural production of the ingredients to the creation of the final ready-to-eat products. Impacts were calculated for all environmental indicators included in the EF 3.0 Method in SimaPro software based on a functional unit of 1 kg of ready-to-eat product. Life cycle inventories included all of the flows analyzed by the LCA (raw materials, energy, water, cleaning products, packaging, transport, waste). Foreground data were acquired directly on the manufacturing site; background data were taken from the Ecoinvent 3.6 database. The dataset contains details on the products, processes, equipment, and infrastructure considered; mass and energy flows; Life Cycle Inventories (LCI); and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). These data improve our understanding of the environmental impact of plant-based alternatives to dairy products, which is currently poorly documented.

Keywords: Dairy products; Environmental impacts; Environmental performance; Inventory data; Legumes; Sustainability; Sustainable proteins.