As a human being, you are a unique marvel of structure and function.  Breathe deeply and sense the oxygen flowing through your lungs, racing in your red blood cells, giving constant bursts of life to all your body tissues.  Flex your muscles and feel them first tightening and then relaxing.  You’ve just focused your attention on three examples of the myriad of proteins in your body whose tremendous diversity makes life possible: hemoglobin, collagen, and myosin.  Your body contains thousands upon thousands more proteins, each one different to do its special job.

            Where do you get the raw building materials needed to construct all the thousands of specific proteins that make up your body?  You get these essential construction units from the variety of food proteins you eat each day.  Your body breaks these food proteins down into their unit building materials, the amino acids; transports them to the building sites, the cells; and there builds the multitude of specific structures you need, the tissue proteins.  It is this very specificity throughout the process that builds and maintains your body in its unique fashion and makes you you.

AMINO ACIDS – CLASSIFICATION

            Amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – are formed mostly of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Your body needs to use 20 or so different forms of amino acids to function.  Although they are all important, 11 or so of these amino acids are considered Non-essential Amino Acids because these can be synthesized by the human body.  Nine or so amino acids – which can not be synthesized by the body are known as Essential Amino Acids.

*    These amino acids are also classified as semi-essential.  This means they must be made up from essential amino acids if insufficient amounts are eaten.  When this occurs, the body’s supply of certain essential amino acids is depleted.  Researchers now suggest that some other non-essential amino acids assume a more essential status when the body cannot readily generate them.  This occurs during some illness.  ‘Glutamine’ may assume an essential status in traumatic injury, especially in the period after intestinal surgery, and ‘arginine’ is essential for children born preterm.

Essential Amino Acids

            The amino acids that cannot be synthesized by humans in sufficient amounts must be included in the diet.  These nine essential amino acids are also called indispensable amino acids.

            It is important to note that these essential amino acids follow the principle of The All or None: either all essential amino acids are available or none can be used.  Once any of the nine essential amino acids in the body is used up, further protein synthesis would be impossible.  The remaining amino acids would be used instead for energy or converted to fat and stored as such.   The essential amino acid in smallest supply in a food or diet becomes the limiting factor called the limiting amino acid because it limits the amount of protein the body can synthesize.  Moreover, if you ate only one food that contained lower-quality protein- that is one not containing an appropriate balance of all nine essential amino acids-you would need to eat much more than you would be eating to obtain enough of the essential amino acids needed for protein synthesis.

INTRODUCTION TO WHEY PROTEINS

FROM MILK

            Whey proteins are the native proteins recovered from milk separated by high technology ultrafiltration process, and is also called the “MILK SERUM PROTEINS”.

           Whey Proteins are present in soluble form in the milk.  The milk is first coagulated by application of either rennet or acid, casein is precipitated.  Rest of the liquid is called Whey from which Whey Proteins are recovered.  To retrieve whey proteins- whey is clarified and pasteurized.  The pasteurized whey is then passed through the membranes called ultrafiltration technology to concentrate protein to various levels between 20% to 80% as per end use/application suitability and requirements.

            It is the most modern membrane technology which has enabled recovery of these valuable whey proteins, until now unrecoverable.  As this technology subjects the whey to gentle processing, it ensures that the bio-active components naturally found in whey are retained and concentrated.  Among these components un-denatured sulphur amino acids such as cysteine are of particular interest.   Cysteine is thought to stimulate the glutathione system which acts as a powerful antioxidant.

            A widely accepted measure of the general effectiveness of a dietary protein source in providing the metabolic requirements of individuals is an index called the ‘biological value’.  Whey protein has been known for some time to have a biological value superior to that of other naturally occurring proteins (e.g. egg, Soya, beef, casein etc.) Biological value is determined by evaluating many aspects but in particular amino acid profile and protein digestibility.  Whey proteins have an excellent biological value as they score highly on both counts.  It is easily digestible, so that sufficient numbers of these amino acids reach the body’s cells to permit them to make the proteins they need.