Dairy By-Products: A Review on the Valorization of Whey and Second Cheese Whey

Abstract

The search for new food products that promote consumers health has always been of great interest. The dairy industry is perhaps the best example regarding the emergence of new products with claimed health benefits. Cheese whey (CW), the by-product resulting from cheese production, and second cheese whey (SCW), which is the by-product of whey cheese manufacture, have proven to contain potential ingredients for the development of food products with improved nutritional characteristics and other functionalities. Nowadays, due to their nutritional quality, whey products have gained a prominent position among healthy food products. However, for a long time, CW and SCW were usually treated as waste or as animal feed. Due to their high organic content, these by-products can cause serious environmental problems if discarded without appropriate treatment. Small and medium size dairy companies do not have the equipment and structure to process whey and second cheese whey. In these cases, generally, they are used for animal feed or discarded without an appropriate treatment, being the cause of several constraints. There are several studies regarding CW valorization and there is a wide range of whey products in the market. However, in the case of SCW, there remains a lack of studies regarding its nutritional and functional properties, as well as ways to reuse this by-product in order to create economic value and reduce environmental impacts associated to its disposal.

Antihypertensive Peptides from Ultrafiltration and Fermentation of the Ricotta Cheese Exhausted Whey: Design and Characterization of a Functional Ricotta Cheese

“…RCEW proteins have a globular structure, with a uniform distribution of non-polar, polar, and charged groups; they include β-lactoglobulin, α-lactalbumin, immunoglobulins, serum albumin, lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, and several enzymes. Other protein components such as glycomacropeptide or caseinomacropeptide, which are released from κ-casein in the first step of enzymatic curdling are also present [1].…”

“…The management of food waste and by-products, due to the global increase of population and food consumption, is a challenge for the agri-food industry that faces growing economic costs for the treatment and/or disposal of waste and stringent environmental regulations [1].…”

“…Among different production activities [1], the dairy industry annually produces millions of tons of by-products, mainly represented by cheese whey (CW), which corresponds to the liquid fraction remaining after milk coagulation. Around 9-10 L of whey results from the production of 1 kg of cheese.…”

Biological Approaches for Extraction of Bioactive Compounds From Agro-industrial By-products: A Review

“…Several wastes can be used to obtain bioactive compounds, including cereal bran, which is rich in phenolic compounds, flavonoids, glucans, and pigments (Pauline et al, 2020); fruit and vegetable wastes, which are sources of phenolic compounds (Trombino et al, 2021); and complex carbohydrates (Pérez et al, 2002), as well as animal wastes, e.g., fish wastes rich in omega 3 (Bonilla-Méndez and Hoyos-Concha, 2018) and milk processing wastes as sources of peptides (Pires et al, 2021).…”

Exploring the DPP-IV Inhibitory, Antioxidant and Antibacterial Potential of Ovine “Scotta” Hydrolysates

“…“Scotta”, also called “ricotta cheese exhaust whey” (RCEW) or “second cheese whey” (SCW) is the residual liquid by-product of the ricotta cheese production process, obtained by thermal flocculation of whey proteins, and heating the whey at a temperature of 85–90 °C and 78–85 °C for bovine or buffalo and ovine or goat whey, respectively [ 1 ]. Whey composition, the treatments performed during ricotta production process (i.e., adding milk, whey protein extraction method), and ricotta yield (depending on the temperature of protein coagulation, pH, and ionic strength of the whey) are the main factors that affect the physicochemical characteristics of scotta [ 2 ].…”