Functional dairy products as a source of bioactive peptides and probiotics: current trends and future prospectives.

Milk is an incredibly healthy food world-wide. However, the "lactase deficient" individuals cannot digest milk's carbohydrate lactose. A large part of the world population is depriving of highly beneficial milk proteins like casein, lactoalbumin, lactoglobulin, etc. Due to lactose intolerance. Production of functional foods and bioactive peptides from milk with natural antioxidants and the addition of probiotics could be the best alternative to extend the use of milk functionalities. Among different probiotics, the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) like Lactobacillus delbrueckii sub sp. bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus and some species of Bifidobacteria and their metabolites (paraprobiotics and postbiotics) have been given more preference to add in milk-derived functional foods. These species are generally considered as heat-tolerant, highly proteolytic, and peptidolytic towards milk proteins and they liberate smaller molecules of bioactive peptides during fermentation and other processes that stimulate the enzyme lactase to help people in digestion of milk carbohydrate lactose. Moreover,...