Nutritional quality and use of whey in human food for its valorization

Abstract

Whey is generated during cheese making and can be up to nine times the weight of cheese. The objective of this work is to highlight the nutritional quality and the importance of whey in order to explore other ways of valuing it in human food with a view to improving the nutritional quality of locally processed foods in Benin. To achieve this goal, a literature review was carried out between January and September 2020. The results revealed that whey contains more than 90% water. It also has a high content of lactose (75% of the dry matter), a low content of fat, soluble milk proteins (approximately 20% of total milk proteins) and various minerals. It also contains other components, such as citric acid and lactic acid, non-protein nitrogenous materials such as urea and uric acid and group B vitamins, mainly vitamin B1 (thiamine), vitamin B2 (riboflavin) and vitamin B6 (pyridoxine). Whey is exploited indirectly through its constituents in the food and pharmaceutical industry and also directly through the production of some variants of cheese.