Emerging thermal modifying methods in milk protein: A review

Milk protein plays a crucial role in human diets. Thermal modification is one of the most widely used food processing techniques. Traditional heating methods used in food processing, especially for heat-sensitive products, may lead to unintended loss of quality. Therefore, it is urgent to preserve the nutritional value, taste, and appearance of milk as much as possible and to improve the utilization efficiency of thermal modifying heat energy during the thermal processing of dairy products. This review provides an up-to-date overview of studies focusing on the fundamental principles, features, and impacts on the structure and functional characteristics of dairy proteins. Furthermore, it provides insights into the current application status of five emerging thermal technologies: ohmic heating, microwave heating, radio frequency heating, infrared heating, and extrusion heating. Additionally, this review highlights the existing problems of these novel thermal technologies and presents potential solutions. These technologies modify protein structures, enhancing their functional and biological characteristics. At the same time, microwave heating is studied by most countries because of its simple operation and remarkable modification effect. Although microwave heating has the potential to be applied to large-scale industrial dairy processing, it is crucial to explore the characteristics of other technologies to broaden the thermal modifying methods.