Dairy Foods Columnists

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It’s nutritious, inexpensive, readily available and versatile. National Dairy Month is the time to reinforce to consumers the vitality of milk, cheese, yogurt and other dairy foods.

Hop on the breakfast bandwagon and help consumers start their day with sufficient protein. Foods and beverages containing dairy deliver energy, promote heart health and aid in weight management.

Cultures and enzymes have become more specific over the past few years. They help dairy processors increase yield from milk and speed processing time. Cultures and enzymes also prolong the shelf life of foods, a real benefit for consumers.

Someday, science may show that particular prebiotic, probiotic, and synbiotic ingredients help prevent certain age-related disorders and lengthen lives. Although the anti-aging effects of pre- and probiotics are plausible, supporting science is scant and inconclusive to date. However, scientists have developed several hypotheses about how aging may alter the intestinal microbiome and how certain pre- and probiotics may help prevent or reverse these changes.

The United States has arrived as a major player in the global dairy market. But if U.S. dairy exporters do not show continuous improvement, and if rules and regulations are not altered, then off-shore dairy and nondairy competitors will chip away at our position.

Because of considerable historical improvements in all dairy safety programs, it is difficult to precisely assess the impact of 3-A Sanitary Standards Inc. on preventing food-borne illness.

The principles for producing nondairy frozen desserts from vegetable “milks” are the same as for conventional ice cream. However, the challenges are uniquely different. (In this article “milk” will refer to plant-based milks.)

If you need an icebreaker to use at a dairy-industry gathering, try this: “Functional foods: passing fad or future of the business?” It works wonders at sparking discussion.

When science is oversimplified, the resulting messages are often misconstrued and misleading. So it is with food. Consumers have bought into the misguided message that foods are unfit for human consumption if they contain more than five ingredients, ingredients they can’t pronounce or ingredients their grandparents wouldn’t recognize.

After what feels like decades of straining to eat virtuously, the backlash has arrived in the form of a generalized weariness with the whole notion of “good for you.” How else to explain the success of foodservice stunts like the Pop-Tart ice cream sandwich from hamburger purveyor Carl’s Jr., or Taco Bell’s successful-beyond-belief Doritos Locos Taco?