Spray-Dried Cheese Whey-Soy Flour Mixtures

Abstract

Liquid sweet whey combined with full fat soy flour and then pasteurized, homog- enized, concentrated in vacuo to 40 to 45% total solids, and conventionally spray dried yields a free-flowing powder of good nutritive value suitable for beverage pur- poses. Homogenization reduces the amount of settling of soy solids and produces a more milk-like suspension. Concentration in vacuo and spray drying reduces the typical beany flavor of soy flour. The prod- uct reconstitutes in water to yield a mild, cereal-flavored, sweet-tasting product which easily lends itself to artificial flavoring. The dried product has good storage life and resists oxidative change. Stiffening federal and state policies against environmental pollution will soon demand ade- quate treatment of wheys before diversion into waterways as waste. This entails considerable expense. Therefore, new methods for the uti- lization or disposal of wheys should be devel- oped. In consideration of the rapidly develop- ing global food shortages, we have interested ourselves in converting whey to human food use. Since Sasaki and Tsugo (7) had shown that a nutritious milk-like beverage could be produced by extracting soybeans with hot whey, we investigated the processing of various sweet whey and soy flour combinations using conven- tional dairy product manufacturing techniques. This paper reports simple methods for the production of a powder containing soy flour and whey solids which reconstitutes easily to a highly nutritious milk-like beverage. The superiority of this product to a dry blend of soy flour and whey solids is demon- strated, along with the processing advantages accrued from the reduction of the viscosity of soy flour suspensions by addition of whey.