subject: milk

IMGC 17th International Symposium on Milk Science and Health Will Be Held Virtually October 13-16, 2020

by in
IMGC 17th International Symposium on Milk Science and Health Will Be Held Virtually October 13-16, 2020

The International Milk Genomics Consortium (IMGC) is the world’s signature organization that for 20 years has been linking scientific research on lactation and milk to the applications of that research to the health of babies to adults. IMGC will hold its 17th annual conference from October–13-16, 2020 in a lively, engaging, and interactive virtual format. The conference will bring together a multidisciplinary field of experts from all over the world to discuss their scientific research on milk and human health. i Read More...

California’s Dairy Industry Has Grown Kinder to the Environment

by in
California’s Dairy Industry Has Grown Kinder to the Environment

Milk is big business in California. It’s the agricultural product that brings in more farm revenue than any other in the state. It employs about 190,000 workers, and involves 1.78 million cows. Indeed, dairy has been important to California’s economy for decades, and over time innovations in animal husbandry, feeding and in growing crops that dairy cows eat have led to substantial changes in greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, Ermias Kebreab and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, calculated exactly how much these emissions have changed in the 50 years from 1964 to 2014. Although the total emissions from the state’s dairy industry increased over that period, the state also produced much more milk, and the industry has become more efficient in terms of its emissions. Read More...

A Gene that Helps Humans Consume Fermented Dairy

by in
A Gene that Helps Humans Consume Fermented Dairy

Humans have many unique attributes, as does the family of species within which humans evolved—the hominids. About 15 years ago, geneticists added to the list of hominid-unique attributes by noting that species within this family have a gene called HCA3 that other mammals lack. Now a group of researchers from Leipzig, Germany has figured out what this gene does and why it was preserved by natural selection. Their evidence suggests that HCA3 blessed the hominids with the ability to eat many bacteria-riddled foods without getting sick. These include some foods that played important roles in the story of human evolution, such as fermented milk products. Read More...

Feeding Method Affects Human Milk Microbes

by in
Feeding Method Affects Human Milk Microbes

It seems counterintuitive that breastmilk would be anything but sterile—human infants have a naïve and immature immune system and their first food should be free of potential pathogenic organisms, right? But study after study demonstrates that milk indeed contains microbes. Precisely where these microbes originate and how they make their way into human milk, however, is still being worked out. There are two, non-mutually exclusive hypotheses to explain their origins: one argues that milk microbes originate from the mother’s gut and are passed to the mammary gland (entero-mammary translocation) and the other that bacteria from the infant’s oral cavity move back into the mammary gland and influence the types and quantities of bacteria passed via milk (retrograde inoculation). Because not all milk microbes are equally beneficial for the infant, finding support for one or both of these hypotheses offers the potential of modifying the milk microbiome in ways that could improve infant outcomes. Read More...

How Human Milk Oligosaccharides Can Influence Bone Biology

by in
How Human Milk Oligosaccharides Can Influence Bone Biology

Undernutrition is a pressing global health challenge and contributes to the deaths of more than three million children under the age of five every year. Children who are considerably shorter than the median for their age are defined as stunted, and so far, nutritional interventions have been mostly unsuccessful at reducing stunting. Read More...

PMS Symptoms Improve with Daily Recommended Dairy Intake

by in
PMS Symptoms Improve with Daily Recommended Dairy Intake

Dairy foods are probably best known for their beneficial effects on bone health. But the same vitamins and minerals from dairy that help to build and maintain strong bones—calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and riboflavin—may also have a positive influence on the symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). Expanding on previous research that found as association between increased calcium intake and decreased risk of PMS symptoms, a new paper from a team of Turkish researchers suggests the suite of micronutrients provided by dairy may be successful at alleviating both the emotional and physical symptoms of PMS. Read More...

How to Breed Climate-Friendly Dairy Herds

by in
How to Breed Climate-Friendly Dairy Herds

When methane emissions that contribute to global warming are blamed on cows, they should, more precisely, be blamed on the microorganisms that live inside them. It stands to reason, therefore, that in seeking ways to reduce methane emissions from the dairy and beef industries, researchers’ primary target should be cows’ microbiomes. In line with this perspective, a group of researchers with teams in four countries recently carried out a detailed analysis of the microorganisms living in the rumens of different herds and breeds of cattle. These researchers have identified a population of bacteria, protozoa, anaerobic fungi and archaea that consistently form the core population of the rumen microbiome. By linking microbiome components to phenotypes such as methane emissions, they propose the establishment of microbiome-led breeding programs as a means to make livestock farming more climate-friendly. Read More...

Healthy Human Infant Gut Microbes Block Cow Milk Allergy in Mice

by in
Healthy Human Infant Gut Microbes Block Cow Milk Allergy in Mice

Proteins in food often suffer from mistaken identity. Instead of being seen as the innocuous food items they are, immune systems instead take these proteins for harmful invaders and mount a response. To understand why some immune systems are sensitized to cow milk protein whereas others have an inappropriate reaction, researchers are turning to gut bacteria. In animal models and in humans, food allergies have been associated with a lack of diversity in gut bacteria species. And specific research on cow’s milk allergy (CMA) suggests that there might be particular species of gut bacteria that can prevent the development of allergy or allow for complete resolution of CMA in late infancy or early childhood. Read More...

Fighting the Resistome

by in
Fighting the Resistome

We are incredibly lucky. We live at a time when antibiotics work their magic saving people from infections. Only a few generations ago, infections reigned supreme and struck down some people in most families. It had always been that way, but memory quickly fades. Modern society assumes that the effectiveness of antibiotics is here to stay—it’s a monument to human ingenuity. However, the continuing emergence of antibiotic-resistant microbes and the lack of new antibiotics in the developmental cupboard are looming threats to human health, and a stark reminder that today’s respite from infection could easily be temporary. Read More...

Meet our Elite and Premier Sponsors

Join Our Mailing List

Join