Millet Milk: A Potential Cattle Milk Alternative—Extraction and Value Addition

Abstract

Consumer health concerns in recent years have spurred a shift from dairy consumption to dairy-free or plant-based diets. Factors such as lactose intolerance, milk allergies, ethical concerns, environmental sustainability, and personal health preferences drive this trend. Millet milk offers a viable alternative for cattle milk like any other plant-based milk. Compared to other plant-based milk alternatives, millet milk has a better nutritional profile. Moreover, the extracted millet milk can be used for the development of various value-added products. Millet, being a potential source of antinutritional factors, requires pretreatments before milk extraction. This review discusses in detail the nutritional profile of millets along with the pretreatments to reduce the antinutritional factors in millets, followed by the extraction of millet milk. The comparative study of millet milk versus other plant-based milks has also been explored. The potential usage of millet milk for further value addition has also been highlighted in the present article.