Summing up: Improvements of the nutritional quality of bovine milk

Different countries have different health challenges. In Norway the following modifications of milk composition may be most relevant:

• Secure a low omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, close to 2/1.

• Increase the proportion of oleic acid to 25%–30% of milk fat at the expense of palmitic acid.

• Have knowledge of how to increase the concentration of 9c,11t-CLA,

• Secure a low proportion of vaccenic acid

• Increase the selenium concentration in milk

• Secure a constant content of iodine.

Conclusion

Consumption of 0.5 litre milk daily supplies a significant amount of many of the nutrients that are required daily. Milk components take part in metabolism in several ways; by providing essential amino acids, vitamins, minerals and fatty acids, or by affecting absorption of nutrients. Milk fat is diverse with a wide-ranging spectrum of fatty acids and lipids. Milk fat has been notified for decades, but as discussed in this review a moderate intake of milk fat has no negative health effects, on the contrary, many milk fat component have important roles in the body. Milk protein is especially rich in amino acids that stimulates muscle synthesis, and some proteins and peptides in milk have positive health effect e.g. on blood pressure, inflammation, oxidation and tissue development. Fermented milk has special health-promoting properties, e.g. stimulation of immune response and protection against cancer, virus and allergy, and fermented milk and full-fat milk may also delay gastric emptying from the stomach and possibly have an effect on appetite regulation. For some individuals, milk proteins, fat or milk sugar may cause health problems. Heat treatment of milk may also result in reduction of bioactive compounds and formation of potentially harmful products of carbohydrates and proteins. Milk can be significantly altered by changing the feeding regimes. Content of several fatty acids such as c9, t11-CLA and the ratio between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are affected by the amount of grass and supplemental feeds (concentrate) in the diet. Milk content of several vitamins and minerals are also influenced by the cow's diet. Iodine and selenium are examples of trace elements that may be added to the feed, and thereby milk can be a good food source of these elements.

Main conclusions

• Milk contains many important nutrients.

• A moderate intake of milk fat has no negative health effects.

• The increasing consumption of milk products added sugar and sugar containing jams should be questioned.

• It is possible to adjust feeding regimes to develop milk with increased content of healthy components such as selenium, iodine and some fatty acids.

___________________________________________________________

Anna Haug¹ , Arne T Høstmark² and Odd M Harstad¹

 ¹Department of Animal and Aquacultural Sciences, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway
²Section of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

author email corresponding author email

Lipids in Health and Disease 2007, 6:25doi:10.1186/1476-511X-6-25

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.lipidworld.com/content/6/1/25

© 2007 Haug et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.