High Protein Milk Ingredients - A Tool for Value-Addition to Dairy and Food Products

Dairy ingredients are used in food systems because they provide desirable sensory properties, physical properties, and/or nutritional traits in a convenient, wholesome and economical way. These key attributes, which are made available in a wide array of dairy ingredients, make them desirable to food formulators. Milk protein ingredients provide not only nutrition, but also specific technological functionality when applied in food formulations. Milk protein ingredients are natural, trusted food ingredients, and are ideal for unique nutritional and functional applications [1]. Proteins are vital ingredients since they provide all the essential amino acids needed for human health combined with a wide range of dynamic functional properties, such as the capacity to form network structures and stabilize emulsions and foams. The proteins of milk have excellent functional properties and nutritional value, and some have distinctive physiological properties, which are widely exploited in the food industry. Advances in the dairy industry such as ultrafiltration (UF), microfiltration (MF), nanofiltration (NF) and ion exchange (IE) have brought about radical changes in the commercial processing of dairy ingredients, especially protein ingredients. Powders in which both casein and whey proteins are present in high concentrations would be particularly valuable as ingredients in dairy and non-dairy foods since the unique characteristics of both the proteins would be harnessed [2].