Strive Nutrition Blends Plants and Perfect Day’s Precision Fermentation In New Line of Sustainable Milk

In a partnership that blends precision fermentation and plant-based ingredients, Strive Nutrition has launched a line of dairy alternatives featuring Perfect Day’s animal-free whey.

The new line of milk from Kansas-based Strive Nutrition is aiming to tick all the boxes. Its chocolate and whole milk ‘Freemilk’ options include ten grams of protein from Perfect Day’s whey. It’s also angling for consumers that prefer oat and almond milk, both also with ten grams of Perfect Day’s whey protein. There’s also a protein-enhanced oat barista option.

The animal-free whole milk option contains 25 percent more protein and 7 percent less sugar and less saturated fat than whole cow’s milk.

Strive says the milk options promise to be the “best tasting, most sustainable, and most nutritious milk alternatives on the market today.”

Perfect Day Whey

Perfect Day has become the precision fermentation category leader, using 99 percent less water than conventional dairy, 60 percent less energy, and reducing emissions by up to 97 percent, the company says. It creates a milk protein that looks, tastes, and feels like dairy but contains none of the lactose—a common allergen. It’s also free from antibiotics and hormones common in conventional dairy.

In a process that uses microbial hosts as “cell factories,” explains the Good Food Institute. These microbes then produce specific functional ingredients. Precision fermentation can produce enzymes, as well as flavoring agents, vitamins, natural pigments, and fats. Beyond Perfect Day, companies like Every are using it to produce egg proteins.

Perfect Day’s dairy has been used in a number of products including Brave Robot’s ice cream and Tomorrow Farms’ milk.

“Strive’s new product platform extends the kinder, greener impact of our animal-free protein,” Perfect Day co-founder and CEO, Ryan Pandya, said in a statement. “With their proven expertise in best-in-class beverages, their team has crafted products that appeal to a broad base of consumers who want a full dairy experience or to enhance the nutrition of their favorite plant-based offering. This exemplifies what we see as the sustainable future of food—when our food system offers the best of animal-free options, integrated with and alongside sustainably produced traditional products and plant-based offerings—for every kind of conscious consumer.”

Strive Nutrition milk

Building on its 40 years of experience in developing sustainable, shelf-stable milk, the family-owned and operated Strive Nutrition says the new range delivers all the taste, creaminess, and function of cow’s milk consumers know and love.

“As a family-owned business that’s worked extensively in the dairy industry, we are excited to partner with Perfect Day to create this line of great-tasting, animal-free, protein-enriched beverages,” said Dennis Cohlmia, co-founder at Strive Nutrition Corp.

“Our priority is to develop great tasting ‘WOW’ products with clean ingredient labels, that deliver efficient nutrition to the consumer and are good for our planet’s future generations by addressing climate change. Working with Perfect Day, our vision is to be a force in setting the future direction of dairy.”

The new milk will be available in July.