The Role for Dairy Proteins in Combating Sarcopenia
12 Jun 2015 | Arla Foods Ingredients
This is Rob Wires at the Vita Foods in Geneva and I'm here with Peter Shao Anderson from Arla Foods ingredients and Arla are highlighting the role for whey proteins in healthy aging and particularly in light of the surge in concern around sarcopenia.
Can you tell me about some of the science emerging around this area and what you're doing here?
So the whole, the whole thing starts pretty much with the sarcopena is a general trend you see all over the world.
There's an elderly population and there's a wish for that the elderly population is staying more independent, even though they're getting elderly, and in part of that there is.
There's some documentation coming on board where whey proteins is actually one of the key components of keeping elderly at a at a at a good pace, so to speak, when they get elderly, because they don't lose their muscle proteins.
That's called sarcopenia.
OK, can you tell me about some of the role for whey proteins in this regard?
Yeah, so the thing with whey protein is that it contains a high amount of leucine, which are key amino acids for triggering muscle protein synthesis, and in elderly, it seems that when you're getting older, you actually need to trigger these muscle protein syn, and you need more proteins than you do when you are younger.
And lucin is a key component to triggering, so that means that for example, an elderly person getting 20 g of protein might not be having this muscle protein syntheses activated, but if they take 20 g of high quality protein rich in leucine, for example, whey proteins, they get it activated.
That means they actually get.
That out of the product that they were wishing for, whereas if they are getting a less good quality of protein at 20 g, they won't get that activation of the motor muscle protein synthesis.
What needs to be done in terms of educating consumers about the dangers of sarcopenia because obviously it's a bit of more of a complex and unknown area, I think it is, yeah, and it's, it's, it's difficult because it's it's all the stuff that happens before you get ill.
And how we as persons or as people in general is that we act whenever we are getting ill and not prior to that, because what happens over the age you you lose your muscle mass.
When you lose muscle mass, you also lose the ability to walk, to run, and and when we get older, we just see it as a natural thing, but it might happen in a lot faster way that you could actually potentially.
See it to be and then if you were to take a weight protein while you are getting elderly, of course this demographic challenge is enormous.
Yeah, yeah, the demographic challenge is huge, and the thing is that the younger population cannot support the elderly population if If it is, if it looks like it is today, so what type of concepts could whey proteins be used in in order to address sarcopenia?
Yeah, it could be, they could use inradi drink formats, puddings, in all the applications, I would say in terms of.
Meeting the needs of the elderly population.
Because you have one concept here.
Could you explain a little bit about it?
So, so this concept we have here is, is what is an ingredient called lacquid and smooth 880, and, the concept is whey proteins added into a juice and it becomes a smoothie and The whole essence of this is that it, it's real fruit.
It's a natural protein, and in those two combined is actually a really good solution and it's very fresh and it looks milky, but it doesn't feel milky whenever you taste it.
Have there been commercial applications of this type of concept already?
This is a very innovative product, I would say, and we haven't seen too many examples of these kind of products in the market yet.
This whole area is obviously something you're pushing, so we can kind of expect more.
Yeah, we definitely hope to see some of these concepts rolling out into the market within the next year or so.
Peter, thank you very much.
