New types of milk-based products by high pressure
Issue 4 2010 / 26 August 2010 / Vibeke Orlien, Head of Research Group Food Chemistry, University of Copenhagen
High pressure technology offers new opportunities for nutritional and healthy milk products. Based on skim milk and added whey protein or hydrocolloids, high pressure makes it possible to produce milk products ranging from yoghurtlike to pudding-like, but without the sour taste and with less sugar. Moreover, high pressure is a minimal food processing method which addresses consumer preferences and reflects the human ethics of natural, tasty, clean-labelled and eco-friendly products.
The production of various types of milk products like yoghurts involves, in short, a souring processing step to form the gel network and typically requires bacterial fermentation of a starter culture and an incubation step involving heat that can be relatively time consuming. In such a sour milk gel, the gelation is based on the acid-induced dissociation of the casein micelles and the thermal-induced denaturation of the whey protein β-lactoglobulin (β-Lg) which link together and form a strong gel network. It has been discovered that aqueous solutions of β-Lg and of whey protein subjected to high pressure (HP) treatment also form gels, and the perspectives of designing new types of dairy products blaze up.
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