Implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in the dairy sector: Perspectives on the use of agro-industrial side-streams to design functional foods
From 2017 to 2020, global milk production ranged from 610,724 to 643,769 thousand
tons, but the dairy industry still faces issues related to its carbon footprint and sustainability. According to the
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), by 2030, food processors, governmental bodies, and
consumers should take actions regarding food production patterns and consumption to decrease the generation
of by-products and side-streams and increase their circularity by developing nutritious-rich products. Dairy
products have traditionally been manufactured without bioactive ingredients to boost consumers’ health and
well-being. To achieve the sustainability goals and the need to reformulate traditional dairy foods to make them
more nutritious and reduce their carbon footprint, it is paramount to implement integrated approaches that
embody the “farm to fork” ethos.
Scope and approach: This review integrates concepts of food science, technology, nutrition, circular economy, and
sustainability to provide an overview of the technological applications of dietary fibre, polyphenols, functional
lipids, and carotenoids obtained from agro-industrial side-streams in dairy food formulations.
Key findings and conclusions: Dairy processors can use bioactive ingredients and extracts obtained from agroindustrial
side-streams to design potentially functional food models and tentatively market these products
with nutritional claims or even with a health claim in case the bioactivity is verified in human intervention trials.
This approach will increase the nutritional value of traditional dairy foods and contribute to circularity within
food systems, reducing food waste, and enhancing human health.
The authors are thankful to Flaticon (https://www.flaticon.com) and
Biorender App (https://app.biorender.com/) for the icons used in the
figures. The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds
FCT/MCTES (UIDB/00690/2020). M. Carocho thanks FCT for his
employment program–contract (CEEC-IND/00831/2018), and L. Barros
also thanks the national funding by FCT through the institutional scientific
employment program.
