A modern demand for the future challenges in functional vegan food products and human health: future challenges and perspectives

The overpopulation, rapid urbanization, climate change, and excessive natural resource utilization cause major concerns regarding food production and human health. To manage with these issues, a sustainable road map in agriculture system and healthy foods are inevitability. Animals are one of the most important resources for human food supply. However, livestock industry has tremendous impacts on the environment such as greenhouse gas emission, deforestation, loss of natural biodiversity, soil erosion, and many. In contrast, vegan food products seem to be less destructive to the environment with an improved agro-management system and public awareness. In addition, culture meat and microalgae are other alternatives to the animal-based food products that can be helpful to reduce the environmental impacts. Cocoanut, soybean, cashews, cassava, and pea are appropriate examples of plant-based resources for vegan food products that can resemble dairy and livestock products. The nutritional value and sensory properties of these alternatives should be comparable to the traditional foods to be acceptable for the market. Hence, a comprehensive knowledge and information must be considered and various fields such as nutritional science, food and technology science, sensory science, agriculture, process engineering, and many are required to make vegan diet and veganism as a successful and sustainable approach for future food products and human health. Thus, in this review, vegan food products have been well thought-out and aimed to describe their nutritional properties and constrains. Moreover, it is attempted to pay attention to the present limitations in processing, global market trend, policy, and life cycle assessment of novel alternative foods.