Rachel (Hutchinson) Dietrich is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is working with Dr. Audrey Girard and Dr. Gulustan Ozturk, professors in the Department of Food Science, on research funded by the Dairy Innovation Hub. Their goal is to increase the value of underutilized dairy whey coproducts, including whey protein phospholipid concentrate (WPPC) and delactosed permeate (DLP), by incorporating them into nutritious snack foods.
Consumer demand is increasing for foods high in fiber and protein content, especially bioactive proteins with additional health benefits. Additionally, only 6% of Americans consume the recommended amount of dietary fiber, so adding fiber to highly sought-after high-protein foods could improve public health (NHANES 2017-March 2020). Underutilized sources of these nutrients include dairy whey coproducts WPPC and DLP. WPPC contains more than 50% protein, including 23% milk fat globule membrane proteins as potential prebiotics (Levin et al., 2016; Ozturk et al., 2022). DLP contains 60% lactose, which can be polymerized into fiber (Burrington et al., 2014; Tremaine et al., 2014). US dairy farms produce billions of pounds of WPPC and DLP each year as coproducts of cheese production (USDA, 2022; Levin et al., 2016). Yet, these abundant and nutritious coproducts are primarily used in low-value products, including animal feed and fertilizer.
In her work, Dietrich used WPPC and DLP to make extruded puffed snacks that contain 20% protein. Additionally, extrusion maintained ~8.5% of xanthine oxidase activity present in WPPC, demonstrating that puffs contain bioactive protein that could provide additional health benefits. Currently, she is further developing a method to polymerize lactose in DLP to form dietary fiber, which will be used to increase the fiber content of extruded puffs. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using whey coproducts in nutritious snack foods, which will increase the value of dairy whey ingredients.
Listen to Dietrich give a summary of this work in the video below.