Closer milk does not cause allergies.

Spanish researchers apply a special treatment to the protein that causes more digestive problems for allergy sufferers.

Researchers have seen that proteins treated with light pulses are better digested, which opens the door to possible non-allergenic milk.

Cow's milk is one of the foods that causes the most allergies after eggs and fish.. It affects approximately 2% of the population. yes, Milk allergies are not always well identified when they are allergies; And many of us confuse allergies, caused by milk proteins, with intolerance to the sugar it contains, lactose.

Researchers from the University of Granada and Azti-Tecnalia are developing a procedure that could stop milk and other foods from causing allergies., without altering its nutritional properties. They publish their results in Soft Matter.

Researchers have focused on a protein called β-lactoglobulin, which acts as an emulsifier in milk and other foods, keeping fats dispersed in the water; Without β-lactoglobulin, milk would separate very easily into a watery substance., the whey, and fat, What happens if we try to mix oil and water?.

This protein has a very compact structure, which makes it difficult to digest. This difficulty makes β-lactoglobulin a potential cause of allergies., making the partially digested product an allergen; in fact, approximately the 9% of milk allergies are caused by difficulty digesting β-lactoglobulin.

Milk pretreatments could alter the structure of β-lactoglobulin so that it would be more digestible, but this would mean that the protein would lose its functionality and the treated milk, therefore, would separate into fat and water.

However, Researchers propose using something already known in food treatment to do something more subtle than altering the entire protein structure.

Light pulses are already used in industry to kill microbes that cause food spoilage.; these same pulses, if they are intense enough, can cause small changes in the protein structure, causing certain areas to be exposed to the action of digestive enzymes, thus facilitating digestion without significantly altering the emulsifying properties of β-lactoglobulin.

Researchers from the University of Granada built equipment that replicates the digestion process, with which they were able to study what happens to the protein as it passes through the mouth, the stomach and intestines.

Like this, found that in the case of proteins treated with light pulses, Indeed these were better digested. To verify that the treatment of the proteins did not affect their ability as emulsifiers, they used a simple oil-water interface and were able to verify that some interfacial properties even improved..

Now it remains to demonstrate that the treated proteins are really less allergenic and to verify the effect of the treatment on other allergenic proteins., like caseins.

There is still some time before we see milk and other foods treated with light pulses on supermarket shelves. But it will be interesting when they arrive because of the relief it will bring for allergy sufferers..