Guest: Dr. John Lucey, University of Wisconsin This episode of the Real Science Exchange podcast was recorded during a webinar from Balchem’s Real Science Lecture Series.
This episode of the Real Science Exchange podcast was recorded during a webinar from Balchem’s Real Science Lecture Series.
Throughout the last 30 years, the dairy industry has moved to producing highly concentrated versions of milk proteins. In cows’ milk, about 80% of the protein is casein and 20% is in the serum or whey phase. These ratios vary by species. There are three major caseins in cows’ milk: alpha-S-casein, beta-casein, and kappa-casein. The first two are rich in phosphate for calcium binding. Kappa-casein is critical in a micellar structure that allows these structures to stay suspended in the milk. (1:21)
Whey proteins also differ by species. In cows’ milk, about 50% of the whey protein is beta-lactoglobulin. It’s rich in branched-chain amino acids, and it is not present in human milk so it is a focus of allergy research. Alpha-lactalbumin is found in all mammals and is a cofactor for lactose production. (10:34)
Caseins and whey proteins are different from one another and are in completely different classes of proteins. From structure, to size, to amino acid content, to solubility; these two types of proteins are yin and yang. (11:51)
When fluid milk or whey is concentrated by removing water, some sugars and other materials dissolve via evaporation or membrane filtration. It results in dried powders, milk protein concentrate, milk protein isolate, whey protein concentrate and whey protein isolates. Concentrates contain 80-85% protein and isolates contain more than 90% protein. (17:14)
What's driving the current and probably future popularity of these dairy proteins? One, is their versatility in many food applications, and the other is the superior nutritional quality of the proteins. Nearly half of the milk protein concentrate use is for mainstream nutrition and sports beverages. Similar trends have been observed for whey protein isolates. (20:05)
Dairy proteins are very rich in branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) like leucine. BCAAs help initiate protein synthesis, are important for muscle recovery, help with weight loss by maintaining blood glucose levels, are synergistic with exercise, and can promote healthy aging. Dr. Lucey gives several different examples of products utilizing dairy proteins. He predicts that the increased focus on nutrition products, interest in isolating individual proteins and improving export opportunities will continue to drive demand for dairy proteins in the future. (27:21)
All of the main milk proteins have genetic variants, which are minor amino acid differences in the same protein. Variants occur at different frequencies among breeds. Beta-casein has two variants, A1 and A2. There is one amino acid difference out of 209 total amino acids, located at position 67 where a histidine is found in variant A1 and a proline is found in variant A2. When histidine is present, the beta-casein is prone to cleavage at position 67, creating a fragment called beta-casomorphin-7 (BCM-7). When proline is present, it hinders the cleavage of casein at position 67. BCM-7 is an exogenous opioid peptide with the potential to elicit opioid activity on a range of tissues and organs. It’s known as a “bioactive peptide” and some others from milk and cheese have been implicated as anti-hypertensive. (35:26)
In the late 1990s, some researchers claimed that A1 milk was implicated in diabetes, coronary heart disease, autism, and schizophrenia. Subsequent reviews and investigations by significant international bodies found no evidence of these claims. (40:34)
In closing, Dr. Lucey answers questions from the webinar audience. He talks about the potential of breeding cows customized for the production of minor milk components, milk components as renewable bio-plastics, and the superiority of milk proteins compared to plant proteins. Watch the full webinar at balchem.com/realscience. (47:41)
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opening (00:00:00):
The following podcast was taken from a webinar presented by Dr. John Lucy from the University of Wisconsin, titled “The Future of Milk Protein as a Functional Food”. To view the full webinar and Access the slides referenced during this podcast, visit balchem.com/realscience and use the search bar to jump to this webinar from May 26th, 2020.
commercial (00:00:31):
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Dr. John Lucey (00:01:21):
So the things I wanna cover this morning are an introduction to milk proteins and give you a background to it and then talk a little bit about, after talking about milk proteins, talk about milk protein ingredients. Because what we've seen over the last, especially over the last 30 years, is rather than the dairy industry focus on producing cheese, yogurt fluid milk, they have moved to producing highly concentrated versions of milk proteins. And those proteins, either in their original form or their modifying form, are now massive ingredients that are sold around the world. So I wanna talk about how those are produced and also talk about their uses in application. What drives the popularity of these proteins and why have we seen such a surge in their production and uses? I'm gonna focus on two topics that have shown key growth in the last especially in the last 15 to 20 years, and I think you'll see more growth in this area. And then as we're on the topic of interesting milk proteins, I wanna talk about a two milk and what kind of proteins they are. And, and then there's a lot of talk about are they better for you or different and so on. So I wanna talk briefly towards the end about what a two milk is and what's the evidence, and then we'll wrap up with some conclusions.
Dr. John Lucey (00:02:48):
So let's take a little step back and do a little bit of an introduction to talk a little bit about what, what we're talking about when we mention milk proteins. Up till about 1920, there was really a thought that in milk there was really only one protein, and those were called cains, and they were related to the terminology around curds and whey. The cains were taught to be the curd, the stuff that you formed a gel or a curd when you fermented milk. So you can hear a little Miss Mt is eating her curds, and the whey was considered a liquid. After a while, they figured out, obviously there was some sugar in it, mostly lactose. And until about 1920, they really didn't figure out that there was multiple casings and there actually was some protein in this whey or the liquid as well for cow's milk. Those ratio between those two cains and whey proteins are about 80% Cain and about 20% in the serum phase. That ratio depends on the species of animal or mammal that we're talking about. In humans, that ratio is about 40% caines and 60% whey protein. So this number is changed depending on the needs of the, the milk and the nutritional requirements that it has for the young.
Dr. John Lucey (00:04:16):
When we look at the different types of Cains, there are three major types, at least in cow's milk or bovine milk. There's the, what we call Alpha s Cains, beta Cain and Kappa Cain. They have these funny Greek symbols and letters, mainly because of the terminology and technology that was used originally to separate the, the casings. As I said, back in 19, around the 1920s, they still thought there was just one protein called Cains. But as they started to develop some separation technologies like chromatography and electrophoresis, they started to see multiple bands could be separated from that one original Cain band. And that started to give those letters different different casings, different Greek symbols to represent which bands they could see on their electrophoresis. So that's, that's the reason why we have these Greek symbols here. The alpha s means s means sensitive, sensitive to calcium.
Dr. John Lucey (00:05:19):
The Alpha S case were found to be very quickly if they put 'em into solutions to calcium, they were very quickly precipitate. One of the reasons we found out later is that they're very rich in phosphate, and that's part of the overall master plan for the caseins. They are really our calcium binding proteins, and that's their role in life because for the milk of the mammal, and we're talking here about cow, she really wants to deliver to the young lots of protein, high quality protein. We'll talk about that coming up. But also she wants to deliver lots of calcium and phosphate for bone development, and that is very important for that the young. So she has to find some way to deliver that calcium into the milk, and she does it by making the caines highly phosphorylated and phosphate binds the calcium and then it delivers it in the milk to the young. One thing about the alphas caines is they're not present in human milk. So some of these caines can be interchangeably have the purpose of doing, for example, calcium binding or delivery of calcium. They don't necessarily have to be there. The alpha caines also precipitate readily with acid and are part of the network that makes things like yogurt.
Dr. John Lucey (00:06:38):
If we look at the middle sec column here, beta cains, they're less quantity in cow's milk than the alphas cains. They are rich, but not as rich as the alphas Caine, so they have less phosphorylation onto the mine acid chain. There are two main genetic variants, but there are other genetic variants, and we'll come back to that when we talk about a one and a two. And it's a controversial topic, but right now there's no real solid evidence that the A two genetic variant is healthier. And I'll talk about that towards the end of it.
Dr. John Lucey (00:07:13):
The CAPA is very important casein. Without the capa caseine, there wouldn't be the casein structures in milk and it wouldn't be able to deliver this high amount of calcium and phosphate for bone development. It plays a very important protective role in forming structures that can stay suspended within the milk. That protein, this cap caseine is actually the target for the edin enzyme that's used to actually make and start the cheese making process. It specifically goes in hydrolyzes chops up that protein, and because it loses its stabilizing ability, we very quickly get a clot.
Dr. John Lucey (00:07:56):
The topic around the structures of these cain particles has been a, a major area of interest for the last 50 plus years. One of the reasons, and you see a couple of electron micrographs here on the screen in both the, the bottom left and corner in the top right and corner, is that when you image the kce in structures using things like electron mics, there really isn't a nice three dimensional kind of models that we're used to seeing for proteins and enzymes with things like alpha helixes and so on. They tend to be large. You can see here that in with the scale bar on the bottom left-hand, one that they can be over a hundred nanometers. Putting that in context, many of the glr proteins you will see the whey proteins are gonna be two to three nanometers, so they can be more than 50 times and even much bigger than that relative two, the whey proteins.
Dr. John Lucey (00:08:52):
So huge aggregates is what they are. And this is just one example of a model here that I'm showing here from Dr. David Horn out of the H Institute. And, and scientists have tried to figure out how do they form these massive aggregates that contain thousands of casings. And there's also a very important role for what is shown here is to triangles the CCP, which is the calcium phosphate that's buried within the casein particles. These structures were developed to do two things. The first is to deliver lots of the calcium and phosphate buried within the protein structure, and then make sure that it's stayed stable within the mammary gland of the cow. We've all probably heard of things like kidney stones, which are very painful, and what they are are precipitates of calcium and salts that can form within the body, and then they precipitate out within the body, and then they're very difficult to remove.
Dr. John Lucey (00:09:49):
We don't really want the cow to have kidney stones in the milk. So having these calcium and phosphate precipitate and form small crystalline type materials within the proteins is a safe packaging mechanism to make sure that it doesn't happen to the cow and block up the, the, the and the memory gland structures and allows it to be delivered to the o. Once this KC mys cells enters the gut and is consumed by the calf, these calcium and phosphates are dissolved by low phs and start to be absorbed into the protein. So it's a really smart and safe packaging mechanism to put it inside these casing particles.
Dr. John Lucey (00:10:34):
Let's move on to the whey proteins. The type of whey proteins present in the different milks, the different species milks varies in cow's milk. About 50% of all the whey proteins is a protein called beta lactoglobulin. It is very excellent nutrition properties, but it's actually not present in human milk. So therefore it must have an interchangeable function depending on which mammal needs different types of milks. It's also a target for allergy research because obviously it's not present in human milk. Anything that isn't present in human milk becomes an object or a protein of interest to see if it causes allergic reaction in some children. Alpha lac albumin, on the other hand, is in every milk. Why? Because it's a cofactor or a modifier for the production of lactose. Lactose is the sugar founded every milk of every mammal, and it's the only real source that you can find that sugar. And that's actually because the alpha lact albumin modifies the enzyme pathway and make sure that enzyme pathway now produces lactose. So lactose and alpha, alpha lac albumin go together.
Dr. John Lucey (00:11:51):
So if we start and look at the cas in whey proteins, and I've tried to make a little list here of nine specific topics. When you're comparing the cas in whey proteins, it's, it's like a yang and a yang. They're both completely different and almost every major characteristic. I'll go through briefly some of those differences, but they really are completely different types of proteins. They're in completely different classes of proteins. But by having bolded them in milk, we probably maximize both the benefits and the properties and the nutrition from having bolded them present, for example. And number one, the caseins are what are called in biochemical parlance random coil. One of the reasons for that is they have a huge high prolene content which disrupts ordered structures. So in one layman's language might say it's already denatured before you start for whey proteins, they have these beautiful structures that I show you on the last slide with lovely alpha helixes and so on.
Dr. John Lucey (00:12:53):
They have very low proline content. Cains have sulfur, but not a lot of their key chains have sulfur amino acids. But whey proteins are rich in sulfur or amino acids. So on that benchmark you can say that they're a little bit better nutritionally than the chains. A topic I'll come back to when we talk about nutrition is that chains have a normal amount of branch chain of amino acids. Branch chains of amino acids are things like leucine and isoleucine, which are getting a lot of attention from muscle synthesis and, and other aspects. Whey proteins have the highest natural source found in any protein. We already mentioned that the Cains are phosphorylated. That's done on purpose. That's a post-translational modification of Syrians, and it's done on purpose within the mammary cells to make sure that the Cains become calcium binding proteins. The whey proteins are not far, that's not their function.
Dr. John Lucey (00:13:52):
We already saw some pictures of the Cains. They're huge colloidal suspensions. We call 'em cace misel, but they're not true misel like surfactants. Misel whey proteins are small soluble proteins like most other proteins we come across caseins. When you put them when they're consumed and they go into your stomach, they actually clot pretty easily within the stomach and then they start to digest. Whey proteins don't get really digested in the stomach, but mostly as you pass down through the small intestine and there, they start to get rapidly digested. Caseins are soluble at neutral pH. Think of milk, it's not a clot until it goes sour. So at the natural neutral like pH of milk caseins are very soluble. Whey proteins are soluble over a very war broad pH range when they're native. What I mean by that is if you heat them, they lose this ability and also start to clot.
Dr. John Lucey (00:14:52):
Caseins are stable to heat. Think about some of the canned and retorted milks that are out there, or sterilized milks that may be available on the market. That's really weird because you think about other proteins like eggs and you boil 'em for a few minutes and they clot. That's the same for whey proteins. They're readily denatured by heat because they have ordered structures during the heating. They lose these ordered structures and start to aggregate. Caines have a very uneven distribution of different classes of the amino acids, in particular the hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids. It makes it very surfactant like an emulsifier which very, very helpful for its functionality. Whereas whey pro whey proteins have a much more even non segregated or segmented types of distribution and caseins haven't been crystallized or a non globulin protein, whereas whey proteins, all the major crystalline structures have been reported for whey proteins. So really very different properties, but they're both in milk and they both contribute to the properties of milk and milk products. If you look a little bit at the proteins in in human and cow's milk, I just wanna mention a couple of things here. Human milk is a much lower concentration of Casey.
Dr. John Lucey (00:16:08):
The humans are obviously in a different type of human. Babies are on a very different types of growth process compared to cows and calves. Calves are up walking around within minutes. That's not obviously true for human babies. Human milk also doesn't contain beta electro globulin. We talked about that already. But you also see some of the very interesting differences for minor proteins. Like lactoferrin is very high in human milk and exceptionally high in colostrum. Colostrum is the first milk that comes out right after birth lysozyme too. These have functions that are getting a lot of interest, for example, antimicrobial and other types of stimulatory functions and protective functions for the young. Unfortunately, cow's milk, they're sacrificing more of the effort towards chains to deliver calcium binding good nutrition, et cetera. And less for these things like these lactis and lysosomes, very protective. It's very much about what the nature of the young is.
Dr. John Lucey (00:17:14):
So let's move on beyond just consuming fluid milk, we can take a raw material, whether it's milk or whey, we can go through a process of concentrating it and we can do the concentrating that is removing water, are removing some sugars and other dissolved materials. And we can do that by either evaporating it, which is either condensing it or boiling it under a vacuum. Or we can use membranes to filter out some of the soluble components. That technology started to be worked on primarily in the seventies and really hit the big time in the 1980s. And it's become a billion dollar industry around the world. That produces a range of powders that you see down at the bottom here. These dried powders are either milk based or they're whey based, and they have words like milk protein concentrate. Then that means that we have, by this process, increased the protein content to maybe in the concentrate up to 80 or 85% protein. You can also go as high as an isolate, which is over 90% protein in the powder. It does that by removing most of the fat, most of the lactose, most of the other materials because it wants to get such a high level of protein. And the same is true for the whey side, where you have whey protein concentrates and you have whey protein isolates. These are driving the growth and popularity of dairy ingredients for many of the applications that require high amounts in protein. And we'll talk about some of those coming up.
Dr. John Lucey (00:18:47):
I looked at the information brought out by some of our trade associations, A DPI and others, and they looked and did stats and surveys of what types of milk-based ingredients are produced every year. This is stats only for the us. So in 2018, the last available stats, they were about 3.5 billion pounds produced here in the US. About half was nonfat dry milk, and about another 16% was skim milk powder. These are very closely related materials, which only minor differences in their properties depending on the protein content. So the bulk of what is produced here in the US is non-fat, dry milk, skim milk dried milk, basically without changing the protein content. But as you go to some of the minor ones over here, you can see that milk protein concentrates and milk protein isolates are about 4% whole milk powder, another 4%. And there's a wide range of buttermilk and other things. So what we're seeing is that although yes, here in the US we're we're the bulk of what we produce is still dried milk without concentrating the protein. There are, there are these other types of milk proteins that are starting to become popular in the last number of years.
Dr. John Lucey (00:20:05):
So let me get back to my main topic. What's driving the popularity or the growth of dairy and, and likely to be also for the future popularity of these dairy proteins? I would say there's two main things. One is their versatility in many food applications. And we'll see some of those applications coming up. So they're very versatile, can go in lots of places and be very beneficial. And then I would say that excellent quality, high nutritional quality and superior to almost every other protein. And where quality matters, that's where people are making the choice to put in dairy proteins, taking one of those protein milk, protein milk based or case based ingredients. Here are the numbers from 2018 and you can see nutrition is a huge segment of it. You can see close to half of the applications for milk protein concentrated reader are sports beverages, which tend to be kind of nutrition-like and mainstream nutritional products. So you can see nutrition in this instance is really driving the growth of milk protein concentrates. And these nutritional products are lots of different things, whether they're either drinks or recovery drinks or other kind of products. You can see that mainstream nutrition and sports beverages are really the king here in terms of the main applications for these milk protein concentrates.
Dr. John Lucey (00:21:33):
I looked at some of the reports that are coming out around milk protein concentrates. And this just gives you an idea, and this is a couple years old. You can see what type of products that are going into, what kind of products are using these high protein milk-based ingredients. And you, the first thing I would say on this slide is this a long list. There are many different types of applications that have been, are products that have been launched with these high protein things. And that gives you a, an idea that there's there has been and continues to be a lot of interest in protein fortified or increased protein products, whether that's energy bars, nutritional powders, drinks, yogurts, oral feeding would be more for medical type of applications, cheese and other kind of products. It's a broad range and that's fueling it's growth.
Dr. John Lucey (00:22:22):
And here's some examples driving down a little bit more of what exactly are some of those, whether it's desserts or sports nutrition. Dairy means used in other dairy products for fortifying like processed cheese application, other kind of things or Greek yogurt. And you can see bakery soft drinks, confection, et cetera. This is a broad spectrum. Nutrition is heavily mentioned in here too. From the whey side, you also see a a trend, especially for the whey protein isolate. That's the form that's over 90% in protein. So it's the highest protein version of it. You can see a trend towards things like sports bars and related nutritional products are are very popular and some of the trends change from year to year, but that has been the way things have been going for in recent years for whey protein isolates because you really have a paying more because it's a higher protein product, but you're looking for applications that really need an isolate versus a concentrate.
Dr. John Lucey (00:23:24):
Scientists and industry have looked at various things over the years to to not just accept what we get from the cow, but what can we do to either concentrate it as I mentioned, or change the properties like taking out some of the sugar or minerals or fat or isolate some individual materials, for example, isolate the sugar like lactose. The dairy minerals are individual proteins and we have commercial processes for isolating a number of the key. Both chains now are of interest, but also whey proteins like lactoferrin and alpha lac albumin, et cetera. And we can of course modify things too by looking at either hydrolyzing or enriching it or heat treating it as well. So scientists and industry are very creative and not just accepting what they get but modifying it to suit some market applications. And what are some of these market applications?
Dr. John Lucey (00:24:17):
And these really, in most cases here, these market applications have really come along in the last 20, 30 years. You've got high protein products. We talked about nutrition and sports bars, et cetera, and drinks. We've been able to reduce the fat content of even existing whey protein concentrates for drinks and other kind of products for athletes. Hydrolyzed proteins where you chop 'em up with enzymes can go into more heat stable applications or bars that don't harden as fast and so on. And there is interest in the enriching things like infant formula in one type of protein. For example, I mentioned earlier on that in cow's milk we have a lot of beta lactic globulin as the whey protein, but that's not present in human milk. So we can tweak and modify the types of proteins that are present in cow's whey protein to make it more look like what we're present in humans. And they call that humanizing. And that's a process that's researched a lot. How can we by processing techniques and separation techniques deliver a a, a protein profile that looks closer to infant formula, the idea that mother knows best and can we tweak and modify the cows to look more like what breast milk looks like?
Dr. John Lucey (00:25:37):
I wanna change gears a little bit here and talk a little bit about the concentration and nutritional aspects of milk proteins. And here's just some data looking at the nutritional quality of milk protein. And what I wanna point out here is a couple of things. The first point I would make here is that some of the key essential amino acids are extremely high levels in milk proteins. Whether that's just whey proteins or chains, they both have extremely high levels of these. In fact, probably you for some of these, we probably would say the whey proteins are slightly higher and the some of the other barristers FAO for example, is Wal Wal Herta organization has organizations that look at the quality of proteins, particularly from an infant formula, nutritional point of view. And what you can see here is from the BCAA is branch chain amino acids and for things like branch chain amino acids and lysine and other key amino acids, dairy proteins, both of them are very, very high and excellent sources. Since the 1970s, a lot of exciting nutritional research started to look at leucine and other branch str amino acids like lucine, valine, et cetera. And what they found when they looked at various available protein sources is that way is the richest natural source of branch chain of amino acids. And you can see here it's about over 26% of its protein is branch chain of amino acids. And it's a very high concentration of leucine higher than even eggs and soy and some of the other products as well.
Dr. John Lucey (00:27:21):
Why the focused on branch chain of amino acids. The interesting nutritional research over the last 15 years, as I mentioned, have really focused heavily on these branch chain of amino acids. And in fact, before the regular consumers were aware of branch chain of amino acids, the weightlifters bodybuilders and really serious advocates for nutrition had already figured this out. And that's why you go off into these GNC stores or other kind of supplement stores and you'll see them advertising like OSE can here 100% whey proteins. 'cause They already have figured that out. Why? Because research has shown that high concentration in branch genome amino acids helps initiate protein synthesis and also is very important for muscle recovery. More, more recently there's been a lot of interest looking at weight loss and how it might affect blood glucose levels. And there's also very exciting effort research that talks about the synergies with exercise.
Dr. John Lucey (00:28:23):
And as we get older, we need actually a little bit more protein as some as we lose the benefits of the younger younger population have of hormones, et cetera, to help with muscle synthesis and protein recovery. And, and sarcopenia is a, is a loss of muscle mass in aging and it can help and be needed for those kind of aspects as well. So a lot of very exciting nutritional research focusing on branch gen amino acids. What's also clear is that taking protein makes you feel full and there's a couple of different mechanisms by by how that would possibly work. So this feeling of fullness carries forward in producing the desire to have more snacking and more food and more calories. So it has a double benefit bought for affecting overall signaling within the, within the body from having high concentration of branch gen amino acids, but also feeling fuller and not wanting to consume as many calories. And this is one, these are some of the reasons why you see the interest in high protein products. Not just become a quick fad because there is a lot of solid science around the benefits of protein, especially these proteins that have these high branch genome amino acid and those leucine and its ability to signal and modify our me our metabolic processes.
Dr. John Lucey (00:29:49):
For example, some nutritionists propose that it's important to get high amounts of protein throughout the day and propose that what we're talking about here is not just to have a large dinner with steak or something in the evening and getting a lot of protein there as you see on the right end part of it, but that they talk about getting a balanced amount of protein throughout all meals. And that way you get maximum protein synthesis and get the maximum benefit of the high protein diet. In both cases on this graph, they're both and the they're both getting about 90 grams of protein a day. In one case it's getting it evenly and the others it's not. So I would say that this kind of research in terms of the quality of importance of protein, but also the importance of things like leucine, which is a branch genome amino acid, is really part of why we see a lot of these milk proteins end up in these nutritional type products, whether it's drinks, bars, et cetera.
Dr. John Lucey (00:30:53):
If we look, step back a little bit again and look at where we are seeing these products go into, you can see for example lots of nutritional products, but also fortifying unusual products like mac and cheese, but it's 'cause it's part of making the cheese product and velveeta as well. But you also see it in things like some of the ice cream products and the higher protein ice cream products that are coming out in the last couple of years. Isolate, which again is over 90% protein, see it in bars or even some pizza applications, shakes and into some of modified infant formulas as well.
Dr. John Lucey (00:31:31):
Coming back to the weight management in terms of focusing more on protein than in carbohydrates. Here you can see a lot of different types of, of options here and whether it's for the satiety feel full and then consume less, or whether it's for having an effect in protein synthesis and therefore affecting things like glucose and insulin resistance, et cetera. You can see a lot of different either drinks, pars and shakes. And here's for more for muscle recovery. So after exercise, taking some products to recover, whether these are the professional athletes or us as regular people doing some exercise, there's a lot of these products that will come out over the last 15 years. Primarily they've been for made with whey protein, but not all of them.
Dr. John Lucey (00:32:21):
So that type of demand has fueled the production here in the US of milk protein concentrates starting from almost zero about just over about 15 years ago. You can see an increased production here in the US steadily over that time. There are still imports of these of these products from around the world, but US production is increasing. And in fact, I believe in recent years, there's been actually a small amount of milk protein concentrates now exported. Where are those opportunities for these exports? Well, for example, China, you can hear this is a distribution of some of the types of products that they were importing. But in recent years, obviously the US has had a problem with tariffs and trade wars, et cetera. But you can see that a lot of different opportunities for, for different dairy products were historically there before these recent issues.
Dr. John Lucey (00:33:19):
So in this phase of it, I wanna pause there and say in general, talking about milk protein, there has been a growth in higher protein products, less lactose, et cetera. And those are very diverse uses for milk proteins in many different types of products. Researchers have developed many techniques both in the lab that have been moved to factories to modify or improve their functionality and tweak it and make it more suitable for whether it's a bar or whether it's a drink or whether it's a yogurt or some other kind of product. We see an increased focus on nutritional products, protein bars, weight management products, beverages, recovery drinks, infant foods, food for seniors, supplements, et cetera. And I believe that will continue to grow. Why? I think it's because of the high nutritional quality and not everybody right now understands the quality of proteins and really thinks all proteins are the same.
Dr. John Lucey (00:34:17):
I think as more people understand things like the high amount of branch chain amino acids in dairy proteins, they will see that not all proteins are the same. Another emerging areas interest in individual proteins and separating our individual proteins and isolating 'em and selling them for, for, for example, lactoferrin has become hot in the last 10 years and it can, it can cost more than a thousand dollars per kg depending on the kind of purity we're talking about. So, so probably that price will go down as more people come in. But this is an example of where an individual protein is worked a lot more than the, than the starting proteins. But obviously lactoferrin and cow's milk has a low concentration, so you have to do a lot of purification to get it, and I believe they will be increasing export opportunities for countries like the US right now. Dairy exports are worth about 6 billion in 2019. And I think with the high nutritional quality and quality of these products, I think that will help, help it grow into the future. And I think dairy proteins will be part of that.
Dr. John Lucey (00:35:26):
So lastly, I wanna talk a little bit and spend a couple minutes talking about a two milk and discuss what it is and then a little bit about what's the scientific evidence around some of the, some of the discussion comments around a two milk. So the first thing I wanna mention is that this word polymorphism. So all the main milk proteins have various genetic variants that you can find depending on the animal if you go back through their genetic trace their genetics. When we talk about genetic variants of these proteins, these are minor amino acid differences. Typically, they can be just one difference in an amino acid. Most of the milk proteins we're talking about here have aino acid chain links that are maybe 200, around 200 amino acid. So a, a genetic variant could be just one difference in one amino acid in there. And that's true for the A one and A two variants. These variants occurred at different types of frequencies between breeds. Some are very rare, we have found them, but they're very rare and others are extremely common.
Dr. John Lucey (00:36:35):
So when we're talking about beta casein a one and a two, it's an amino acid polymorphism or variant, it's one amino acid outta over 200. Remember the beta casein makes up about 30% of cows milk. So it's not the main protein in main type of casein protein in cows milk. Most breeds such as Holsteins, produce a mixture naturally of a 180 2 beta casein. And it probably relates back to some sort of mutation that happened a long time ago. And here are examples of some of the frequencies for some of the main polymorphs of the major milk proteins. Obviously there are other variants that I haven't talked about for BCS like the B, CS and Ds, et cetera, which may or may not be found in some of these types of breeds. You can see for the Holstein intrusion depending on which country in which survey, you can see that it's probably somewhere maybe around 50 50 or something slightly different between a one and a two variant. But if you go towards the jersey and the Sey, they're mostly a two. So, and Jersey and and Brown Swiss have low a one content. So it depends on the breed.
Dr. John Lucey (00:38:01):
What what could be a potential factor. Talking about why people are, have become interest in both a one and a two variants of beta casein. This change happens at the position 67 along the AM amino acid chain, and it changes it from proline, which is in the A two to histamine, which is in the A one. What that means is that some potential digestion enzymes when this casein is being digested may or may not be able to cleave this particular small segment of the cas 'cause. Typically, when we go consume milk, we want our digestion enzymes to chop it up, and usually it has to be chopped up into small segments, usually to get into the blood of less than three amino acids to be absorbed across that barrier. The idea here is that by changing that one amino acid, we can change whether or not this be what is called this beta case.
Dr. John Lucey (00:39:04):
Amorin fragment can be formed or not, whether it could be released because with proline there it may not be released. That's the hypothesis here we're talking about when we're talking about these kind of peptides and things, and we have a word here called beta case of morphine. We have to talk about a little bit about the fact that these little peptides that are released during digestion of foods and proteins are sometimes have a biological active activity on their body. In other words, they, they act a little bit like drugs or a hormone. They stimulate some physiological function within the body. We call this bioactive peptides.
Dr. John Lucey (00:39:46):
So this beta casein, Morphin seven is an exogenous OpID peptide. What that means is e elicits a response on our body. These responses can affect things like feeling of stress and pain. I would caution that the levels that are product here are tiny compared to drug responses. These bioactive peptides potentially can affect physiological responses and affect some of the more interesting ones that are, can be derived from things like milk and cheese are anti-hypertensive peptides. Those are ones that potentially could reduce our blood pressure or hypertension. So there's a lot of interest in looking at what could be removed and whether they have a physiological effect in our body.
Dr. John Lucey (00:40:34):
Back in the 19 1987 at a New Zealand conference, which actually I was attended that was hosted by the International Dairy Fe Federation. Professor Elliot proposed that this a one was implicated in serious diseases. And at that meeting, which actually was broadcast on the evening news, there was a big news conference about it from his epidemiological studies. He talked about the fact that based on his analysis of the type of breeds produced by cows worldwide and their association with various diseases, that there could be a risk for things like diabetes, coronary heart disease, autism, and schizophrenia. Obviously this is, was big news and, and very serious claim and a very interesting hypothesis that was looked at and subsequent that you had various books and publications and companies formed to talk about a one and a two milk. And here's an example of one that you may or may not have come across.
Dr. John Lucey (00:41:38):
And an A two milk company was formed originally to do the genetic test, to show which, which animals had the this gene, either the A one or a two, because they were concerned about whether it was linked to some serious illnesses. And there was highlights and books and CLS in this talking about a correlation between the high intake and a one milk and various types of serious conditions. However, a number of significant international bodies and reviews have looked at the claims around this, A one and a two milk. I've highlighted down in the bottom here, one of those reviews. And it says, this review concludes that there's no convincing or even probable evidence that the a one beta case common milk has any adverse effects in humans. And it was talking here about things like diabetes, coronary heart disease, et cetera. Similarly, in New Zealand and Australia, their food safety and food standard authorities also looked at these claims and also did not find that there was convincing evidence to support it.
Dr. John Lucey (00:42:47):
The European food Safety authority also got involved in this to see was there any concern about a one milk causing any serious diseases like some of the claims we saw there. And they published a report, an extensive report, and I just highlighted one section from their overall summary based in on the present review of available scientific literature, a cause effect relationship between the oral intake of this beta casein morphine seven or any related peptides cannot be established. Therefore, a formal risk assessment is not recommended. So basically they punted on this and said they didn't see any significant cause effect type of proof that it could have a potential health impact.
Dr. John Lucey (00:43:38):
So if you fast forward to the launch recent, in recent years of a two milk here in the US and I I quote here from Greg Miller from the National Dairy Council, and, and basically there's still ongoing research related to a two and a one milk. But right now, I would say from the scientific community, it's still a theory. The more recent focus from about A two milk is whether it helps digestion. And I would caution a couple of things as a, as a food as a food chemist is one is that there, the A one and A two does not affect lactose digestion because lactose digestion is related to a lactase enzyme. And both of these milks contain the lactase enzyme. And whether or not we digest sorry, both of these milks do not affect the amount of lactase present in the milk.
Dr. John Lucey (00:44:33):
That's something that's present in us, not in the milk. So I, I don't see that it has effect on lactose digestion. So people who have lactose digestion, this really is not related to that. It doesn't really impact allergies because there are a variety of different cains that can have allergic reactions and also whey proteins in some sensitive individuals, particularly infants. And changing just one amino acid in this beta cain a one and a two really isn't gonna make much difference. So it's not really about lactose maldigestion and it's not really about milk allergies. It there, the, the current focus from the, from this research is really about whether or not people tolerate the milk better and whether it affects gut mobility and the feelings of whether or not within the stomach it, it's more palatable for people to drink it.
Dr. John Lucey (00:45:29):
And remember that this peptide that we're talking about could affect some sort of response within the body. So the real idea here is whether or not there's different levels of this peptide and whether that affects our gut and, and affects gut mobility or our residents time and in our gut when we consume milk. And that remains to be seen. And I think there's a number of research projects that are ongoing looking at that. But whether or not this is a big factor or not, and whether it's a big factor for people to consume it or not, I don't know. All I can tell you is the original claims around things like diabetes, schizophrenia, heart disease, et cetera, they're, they're no longer of major focus from the scientific community, although some researchers continue on those topics. So I'm gonna pause there and thank you for your attention this morning. I hope I've walked you through a little bit about milk, proteins, their properties, and also about nutrition. And ended up giving you a few thoughts from my perspective about the A two milk. So thank you.
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commercial (00:47:41):
Dr. Lucy, I'm gonna actually ask the first question, and unfortunately I'm must show my age and asking it, but when I was a a young child, there was a a cartoon called the Jetsons, and the Jetsons took place in 2062. And so I'm gonna ask you to put your creativity hat on in 2062. What kinds of milk protein products do you believe Jane Jetson will be buying and putting in her shopping cart for George, Judy and Elroy, or Elrod, I think it was his name, maybe Elroy.
Dr. John Lucey (00:48:15):
Well, it, it's an interesting question. I, I, I think I I would, I would have some thoughts. One of them is that right now, if we look at what we're breeding our animals for, it's really focused on kind of macro kind of things. Either more milk or more protein or more fat depending on which part of the world you're focused on and increasing health outcomes for both the calve and the cow. But let's pause a little bit. Think about if, if you were in my shoes and you were looking at where the growth of milk and its nutritional interest is, could we instead be breeding cows for some of these minor proteins, let's say, for example, for very high levels of lactoferrin are very high levels of some very interesting proteins that are present in milk. So I, I would say that if, if one idea about what might happen in the future is either true traditional breeding or true, some other means that the cows will not be just about producing what they normally produce, but tweaking or modifying the levels of some very interesting proteins.
Dr. John Lucey (00:49:26):
And then those animals and those milks would be used to custom make cows. So it's kind of like designer milk would be one terminology, and I know there's some research on this around the world. Obviously it would require making sure that the consumers are ready for that, but also it may be an opportunity for for herds or for farmers to have a breed of cows that have some, maybe, maybe in a, a safe, natural way to isolate or target housed with very high levels of some of these very minor and interesting proteins that normally in the bulk population of cows are not there. So in the future could be that we have herds that are customized or groups of herds that are customized for a particular interesting protein. In some respects, you could say that's what kind of a two milk is trying to do, breed for a certain variant and then, you know, focus on a herd that is, can be market and labeled with that.
Dr. John Lucey (00:50:21):
But as I say, you know, the science is not so solid and whether there's a benefit to that. And at some point, obviously science doesn't become important if people can market it. But i I think that's maybe one opportunity. What we might see in the future is a transition of maybe not all cows, but some groups of cows are breeding far very interesting high value or a high impactful nutritional type of components. And I can think of several, obviously we talked about some of the proteins, but it doesn't have to be proteins. For example, the, the sugar profile between humans and cows is very different. And there's a lot of complicated sugars present in human milk that provides protection from infection and, and benefits probiotic bacteria. So again, it could be targeting cows to produce a lot more of some of those products, especially if the, if the milk was gonna be on a farm or on a herd or in a supply that was going to go, let's say for example, into infant formula, I was gonna be bottled and used for that particular application. I could see that happening.
Moderator (00:51:29):
All right, very well. I've got another very interesting question for you. There was some research done in the past by USDA investigating the ability of milk protein to be used as a renewable plastic source for food packaging. Is there still, is that still viable research?
Dr. John Lucey (00:51:50):
Well, I think there's two, two aspects to that that I would like to mention. One is that before that there was an industry focused on using these casein based proteins for let's call 'em for nutritional purposes. If you go back around a hundred years or even before that, there was actually a lot of uses for Casey in the main protein. We're talking about to make buttons, to make adhesives, a lot of and some niche applications for Cains to make a kind of natural plastic that that was work that predates the modern plastic industry to develop. And actually the modern plastic industry really came an into, its into its own round, the second world war and beyond it. And because they could do it cheaper and they could modify it in lots of different ways, it kind of decimated the uses of Cain in what I would call industrial type of uses.
Dr. John Lucey (00:52:48):
But now come, come back to today. Does that mean that you couldn't do it without could you go back and produce Cains to produce something like either plastics, adhesives and other kind of materials fibers even for, for, for either for clothes and things like that? Yes, you could, whether they'd be cost effective is the question because the, the, the modern chemical plastic industry is very efficient and very adaptable to it. So, but is there another reason? I know we did some work here with the forest products lab here on our campus to look at some of the adhesives for doors that were inside buildings. And one of the reasons that we were looking at 'em, collaborating with 'em between our department and them was that Casey and soy proteins could be used and they used less formaldehyde. Which has become a topic of interest for some places like EPA in California and Southern.
Dr. John Lucey (00:53:40):
So again, it could be some of the environmental or other kind of sustainable or renewable areas of interest that might drive some of that. One topic on renewable plastics is that there's also not just the proteins, but the sugars could be made into things like polylactic acids and they could be made into plastics and they could be derived from dairy wastes as well. There are some facilities that are doing that. It's pretty limited at the moment. Again, there are other ways to make the lactic acid and the, the this kind of lactic acid plastic has some issues in terms of broad use in for, for example unmodified it, it isn't great at high temperature use, but I think both the chains and some of the Caine byproducts or coal products like permeates and lactose could be made into renewable bio sources for, for making things like plastics. And I, and I would anticipate particularly on the, on both the, the waste stream products and we have a lot of like acid whey from Greek yogurt and permeates that come from these high protein concentrates. I think we'll see a lot of interest around that. And there's, there's some companies actually in some, some research actually on our campus too, exploring this topic
Moderator (00:55:00):
Very well. When milk protein percent increases in a herd, do all milk protein fractions increase proportionally?
Dr. John Lucey (00:55:10):
Yeah, that's a great question. Overall, we, we don't sometimes know that. I think sometimes what happens is that based on the genetics, our feed, that the overall proteins will go up in total amounts. But I i I, I don't know if we know for sure about all the minor proteins for example, the, we can have some change in the ratios of some cas and whey proteins, even just during a single lactation where, for example, I grew up in Ireland, as I mentioned, you could see lactational shifts as well. So I, I think we don't know for sure but I think in general, all things will increase if we increase the amount of protein produced enamel animal. But there we, we are always interested and there are people studying whether that changes some of the profile and it could.
Moderator (00:56:01):
Alright, thank you for that. I've gotten a few questions related to alternatives to, to milk protein, whether it be soy or, or almonds. And so here's an opportunity to make the case. Why milk protein is, is far superior to those products?
Dr. John Lucey (00:56:20):
Well, well a a couple of things to, to bear in mind. I mentioned the branch gen amino acids and cain and whey proteins are very high in the branch gen amino acids higher than soy, which actually is a very high quality protein too, I have to say, but certainly true from a lot of the other plant proteins. Soy is the kind of king of some of these plant proteins and has been competing with dairy for decades on terms some of these, but also have to step back and think about what's present in milk. Milk is a unique material produced to be the sole food of the young calve our human, depending on which milk we're talking about. So it is an extraordinary complicated material. The casings structures we saw this morning are extremely complicated materials. The proteins are complicated, the fat structures are complicated.
Dr. John Lucey (00:57:04):
They're all complicated because they're designed by nature for nutrition and just adding some calcium and some protein and fortifying some beverage products doesn't make and match what we have designed by nature over millennia. That's one thing we have to watch out for. And, and maybe people aren't paying attention and just saying, well, it's got, it's got a certain amount of protein, certain amount of minerals, we don't know about their bioavailability or their quality. Many of the plant proteins, the, the quality of the protein is not as good as, as the main dairy proteins. What that means is it lacks one of the essential orino acids and that means that you don't get the full value of that protein. It might say on the label that it's got 5, 6, 7 grams of protein, but you may not be able to use all of that protein. So that's what I was talking about earlier on.
Dr. John Lucey (00:57:53):
The quality of protein is important, but sometimes on our, on our packages, it doesn't tell about the quality and, and consumers maybe are not all as aware of the quality of protein. So I think if you look at the complexity, it's designed by nature for a nutritional purpose and the fact that it contains so many other materials, whether it's the minerals or vitamins or other kind of nutritional products, I think it's very hard to replicate milk. If you also step back and think about, we don't need to go in the lab to make this milk. We just feed the cow and we can milk her in a few hours time and she produces it already made within our own factories, within our memory cells of the cow. I, I find it hard to believe that it'll be easy to mass produce milk in the lab. It certainly is easy to mass produce high value proteins in the lab because they have high value and it, it bears the cost of growing up, fermenting and isolating in the lab because it's a high value ingredient. I get that we're already doing it with things like Reed, the enzyme used in making cheese. But so I would say that that would be my perspective
Moderator (00:59:04):
On behalf of Balchem, Dr. Lucy, thank you for joining us today.
Commercial (00:59:10):
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