The federal
agriculture department is investing $10 million in Vitalus Nutrition Inc. of
Abbotsford, B.C., to help it turn a component of milk into a prebiotic.
Vitalus
supplies customized dairy ingredients to the food, beverage and nutraceutical
industries.
It owns
technology to produce a prebiotic from milk permeate, a milk by-product.
This
prebiotic can be used in infant formulations and other foods to enhance their
nutritional characteristics, including dairy products and beverages, fruit
drinks, and fruit preparations.
The feds
say in a news release that “commercializing this new ingredient will help the
dairy industry transform a currently unused by-product into a value-added
functional food product, helping grow the middle class by creating new economic
opportunities in the food processing sector.”
