Here’s the deal: it takes a lot of milk—four ounces, the article reports—to make a single ounce of Greek yogurt. And once it’s fermented on a large scale, the mountain of whey is more than a little problematic. Acid whey is toxic to the environment and kills off aquatic life, so it can’t be dumped, and cattle can only tolerate it in their feed up to a point. In the meantime, there’s an ocean of surplus. The Greek yogurt manufacturer Chobani revealed, in response to the Modern Farmer article, that they dispose of acid whey by returning it “to farmers, most of whom use it as a supplement to their livestock feed. Some is used as a land-applied fertilizer but only at farms that have nutrient management plans in place with the state environmental conservation agency. A small percentage is also sent to community digesters, where the whey is used to produce energy.” More from Prevention: How Greek is Your “Greek” Yogurt? Large manufacturers aren’t the only ones concerned. Karen Smith, PhD, a dairy processing technologist at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, is one of the few researchers working to find a solution. She says that whey from Greek yogurt is a lot more acidic and lower in protein than that from cheese sources, so you can’t take the standard path of separating it into whey protein concentrate. “It’s got a lot of calcium and a lot of acid, and neither one of those is easy to process,” she said. To add insult to injury, acid doesn’t dry well, which shortens its shelf life. Dr. Smith said that several solutions look promising; once she and her team create a sensitive enough membrane to separate the tiny particles, the lactose could be used for sweetener syrups, the calcium for calcium supplements, and the oligosaccharides for infant formula. We might see higher prices for the already-pricy Greek yogurt in the future because of how difficult acid whey is to process, Dr. Smith said. But she sees that as a worst-case scenario. “The world won’t end,” she said. “We will not drown in acid whey from Greek yogurt …we’ll figure something out.” More from Prevention: What’s Healthier: Greek Yogurt Or Low-Fat Yogurt?
