Protein powder began as cheese waste that was choking American rivers
Whey, the watery leftover from cheesemaking, was once simply dumped into US rivers and streams. Its protein fed thick blooms of algae that blocked light and oxygen, so the practice was banned. Stuck with the surplus, dairies slipped it into ice cream as cheap filler, and eventually into the tubs of protein powder sold to bodybuilders.
When rennet or acid is added to warm milk, the solids clump into curds and the remaining liquid is whey. Rennet cheeses such as cheddar and Swiss leave sweet whey, with a pH of 5.6 or higher; acid-set products such as strained yogurt leave acid whey at 5.1 or below. Both are about 93% water, with roughly 5.1% carbohydrate, mostly lactose, and only around 0.8% protein. The main proteins are beta-lactoglobulin and alpha-lactalbumin.
People have long found uses for it. Ricotta and Norway's brunost are made from whey, and the Swiss soft drink Rivella counts it among its main ingredients. Joseph Priestley noted that on 22 May 1754, while a student at Daventry, he went with a large group to drink whey, probably mixed with wine. Whey butter is possible but hardly efficient: the whey from 1,000 parts of milk yields only two to five parts of butter, though it tastes tangier and saltier than the ordinary kind.
For supplements, whey is pasteurised at 70 to 80 °C and chilled to 4 °C, a process said to remove 99.7% of bacteria without setting the protein solid, then run through ceramic filters that strip lactose and fat to leave a liquid of 90% protein. The marketing claims outpace the evidence, however. In 2010 a European Food Safety Authority panel reviewed claims that whey builds more muscle, strength, lean mass or faster recovery than other proteins, or aids weight control, and concluded no cause-and-effect link had been established.
The waste problem has not gone away. Cheesemakers worldwide produce about 160 million cubic metres of whey a year, and roughly 42% goes unused or into low-value outlets, including rivers. Researchers are testing anaerobic digesters, including systems that mix whey with glycerin from biodiesel making, to turn it into hydrogen and methane.
Source: Whey
