September 2011/Prepared Foods -- The goal of life sciences is to build an integrative view of diet and health and to apply this knowledge to improving health and preventing disease. To this end, it will be necessary to understand the targets in individual humans on which diet acts to actually improve their health and lower their risk of future disease. How could such targets be found?
Milk and lactation evolved under the constant Darwinian selective pressure to be nourishing, protective and supportive of the health of mammalian infants. The molecules, structures and mechanisms by which milk achieves its benefits to infants are now guiding scientists in the search for the targets of health for everyone. Whey is a unique product stream that can provide, in turn, the means to deliver targeted health benefits to the marketplace. The emergence of indigestible oligosaccharides as a component in milk that selects and nourishes a protective microbiota is a vivid example of the insights into diet and health that milk and whey provide. This research is changing the way scientists and technologists are viewing human health.