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Milk research opens health & wellness opportunities

A health and wellness leader with Dairy Management Inc. says gut health research could open a $150 billion market for new dairy products.

Vice President of Health and Wellness Partnerships Chris Urban tells Brownfield dairy foods support a healthy gut microbiome which can lead to widespread benefits.

“Keeping that healthy affects other systems in your body, like your brain and your physical performance,” he says.  “Making sure you keep a strong gut health is important in overall physical and mental cognition.”

Urban says he expects more food innovation to follow current studies that link milk components to specific health outcomes.

“Eighty-seven percent of milk is water, the other 13 percent are different bioactives and nutrients,” he says.  “We’re doing a lot of work to understand what those nutrients are, how we harness them in a more effective way to deliver products in the health and wellness space that are new and different to where we’ve been in the past.”

He says research on tryptophan in milk is an example of how future dairy products could provide sleep benefits.

Brownfield’s Larry Lee interviewed Urban during the recent Dairy Strong in Green Bay, Wisconsin.