Dairy products and milk-based food ingredients - Natural Food Additives, Ingredients and Flavourings - page 413

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Dairy products and milk-based
food ingredients
R. Early, Harper Adams University College, UK

Abstract: This chapter explains how milk, a natural source of human nutrition and
functional food materials, serves as the raw material for the production of dairy
products used as foodstuffs in their own right and as ingredients in the manufacture
of formulated and processed foods. It discusses ways in which milk can be reduced
to its component parts, modifi ed, processed and reassembled to achieve specifi c
functional value for the manufacture of natural food ingredients used in specifi c food
applications.

Key words: milk, milk protein, lactose, milkfat, milk-based food ingredients.

17.1 Introduction
Dairy products and milk-based food ingredients are ubiquitous in modern society.
Dairy products consumed as foodstuffs in their own right (e.g. butter, cheese and
ice cream), are familiar in the food marketplace and are appreciated by most
consumers. In contrast, a range of milk-based food ingredients are also present as
components of manufactured foods, but they tend to go unnoticed by consumers.
Many formulated food products containing milk-based food ingredients would
cease to exist, or would be of lower quality, if they could not benefi t from the
variety of functional properties that milk's components impart.
Milk is an important material to both the retail and the industrial food
marketplaces. It is the raw material for traditional and new dairy products. It is the
source of materials central to the production and performance of milk-based food
ingredients which, signifi cantly for modern consumer preferences, are not
allocated E numbers (Table 17.1). This chapter considers milk as the raw material
for dairy products manufacture and as the source of milk-based ingredients used
in food manufacture. Inevitably the chapter only scratches the surface of the topic

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