NUTRITIONAL-EVALUATION OF THE SOY-WHEY MILK ANALOG LA COLINA

The milk analog La colina is a product which contains mainly whey, soy protein isolate and vegetable oil, designed for infants since one yea r, children, adolescents and adults of all ages. The concept behind th is product is to offer an alternative to milk consumption which during the last decade has decreased dramatically in Venezuela mainly due to its high price and low availability. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to evaluate nutritionally this new product in order to dete rmine if from a nutritional stand point it could represent a valid alt ernative to milk consumption. The results showed that La Colina offers the same amount of protein, energy, vitamin A, calcium, phosphorus an d potassium as whole milk powder and more sodium, iron and zinc. In ad dition, a rat assay showed that the energy in these two products is eq ually available and even though the proteins in La colina are 3.9% les s digestible, their quality determined by growth, PER or the nitrogen retained are excellent and identical to the quality of the proteins in milk. These results agreed with the theoretical chemical score of the proteins of this new product, which indicated that the amino acid pro file of the mixture can fulfill the amino acid requirements of childre n, adolescents an adults. Both milk and La colina are products with a high fat content. The fat in this new product however, is vegetable oi l and therefore it has a more convenient fatty acid profile than whole milk and about one third of its cholesterol. In short, these results showed that La Colina from a nutritional point of view is an excellent alternative to milk consumption.