Open-source benchmarking of dairy and dairy-free products

Dairy-free products close the overall-liking gap with dairy in some categories, but mozzarella shows the largest deficit at −1.46 on a seven-point scale.

• Why it matters: Open, large-scale sensory benchmarks across dairy product categories are scarce, limiting how well dairy-free products can be evaluated against conventional dairy.
• What they did: The study analyzed the NECTAR Taste of the Industry 2026 dataset with 1,437 respondents, 3,220 overall-liking ratings, and 79,027 survey responses, including 35,762 product-linked responses.
• The result: Barista milk (+0.17), fluid milk (+0.02), and creamer (−0.06) closely approach dairy benchmarks, while mozzarella (−1.46), Greek-style yogurt (−0.68), and butter (−0.54) remain significantly lower after multiple-comparison correction.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.