At this year’s Dairy Ingredients Symposium, attendees gained new insights on the latest market trends, science and technology for suppliers and end users of milk and milk products.

Symposium organizer Phillip S. Tong said the two-day event “provided a 360-degree look at the full range of dairy ingredients, with special emphasis on market opportunities, nutritional and wellness, dairy ingredients quality and innovations in dairy ingredient process technologies.”

The 18th annual event was held in February at The Cliffs resort in Pismo Beach, Calif., and was organized by the Dairy Products Technology Center at the University of California, San Luis Obispo. Tong is a UC professor and a Dairy Foods columnist. He provided the following summaries of proceedings from the symposium.

Opportunities for dairy-based foods

Dairy protein-based ingredients are being used in a wide range of customized new products that appeal to millennials, including novel snacks, protein-fortified beverages, better-for-you desserts and meatless protein patties.

There is real potential to grow dairy consumption through novel and convenient cheese, yogurts and other dairy protein-fortified foods. California Milk Advisory Board wants to assist by providing promotional support and a consolidator program for export opportunities.

Dairy proteins provide the food industry new opportunities for creating clean-label products, and to meet consumer desire for more protein in the diet. There are real needs and real opportunities to improve dairy foods and ingredients for foodservice, retail and a wide range of nutritional products.

Milkfat’s role in wellness

Human clinical trials have found that milkfat globule membrane consumption reduced inflammation and improved metabolic health in overweight and obese men and women. These new findings support the idea that milkfat globule membrane-containing products (like whole milk) may attenuate cardiovascular disease. Metagenomics will be a useful tool to help the food industry design structures in food for optimal nutrition and wellness.

Dairy ingredients quality

A new fluorescence analyzer has been developed to provide a rapid assay for protein denaturation in dairy ingredients, Maillard browning, ingredient composition and a wide range of measurement of end-product quality (attributes such as nutritional, physical and solubility).

High-protein dairy ingredients’ sensory and functional qualities are influenced by a wide range of factors and these are more challenging as protein load increases.

Improving current raw milk hauling practices can improve total processed milk quality.

Age-related hardening of protein nutrition bars can be reduced by making a three-component co-solvent system and using small molecules to mask hydrophobic protein-protein interactions.

Ultrasound spectroscopy and focused beam reflectance measurement provide more detailed information about dairy powder dissolution properties.

Milk proteins which have been concentrated can behave differently than unconcentrated proteins upon reconstitution.

Processing technology

Microfiltration can be effectively deployed to produce high-purity micellar (native) casein concentrates and milk serum (whey) protein isolates

New generations of CIP for dairy processing will evolve from “prescriptive” to a more “predictive” philosophy. New CIP will provide big data analysis and actionable intelligence to minimize over- and under-cleaning and save on chemical usage for optimal system performance.

Cal Poly Dairy Products Technology Center will continue to generate new talent (trained students), new knowledge (research) and transfer information to industry (outreach).

Advances in membrane separation technology and centrifugal separation have resulted in improved capabilities to produce whey protein isolates of higher purity and microbial quality. Computational fluid dynamics is now available and can be used to optimize physical spray dryer design and capacity, increase powder quality and increase spray dryer safety.

Among those presenting were: Jay Amamcharla, Kansas State University; David Barbano, NEDFRC, Cornell University; Bruce Blanchard, GEA Group; Bob Carroll, California Milk Advisory Board; Milena Corredig, University of Guelph, GayLea Foods; MaryAnne Drake, SEDFRC, NC State University; Fabian Dubar, Spectralys Innovation; Tony Erickson, Ecolab; David Everett, DPTC, Cal Poly; Lisbeth Goddik, Oregon State University;  Bill Graves, National Dairy Council; Rafael Jimenez, Center for Applied Biotechnology and DPTC, Cal Poly-SLO; Don McMahon, Western Dairy Center, Utah State University; Carrie O’Neal, GEA Group; R. J. Twiford, Tetra-Pak Filtration Solutions; Shakeel Ur-Rehman, Fairlife; Marta Van Loan, USDA, ARS Western Human Nutrition Center; Robert Vu; and Carrie Walker, Abbott Nutrition.