Organic Milk Versus Conventional Milk As Functional Milk

Abstract

Chronic diseases progress slowly and generally cause symptoms in middle age onward. It is widely known that there is a close link between diets and chronic diseases in human. Foods which have specific target functions and preventive impacts on human health as well as their basic nutritional effects are defined as functional foods. These foods may decrease risk for chronic diseases due to having health preventive impacts on human health. Milk is an useful baverage for during childhood and adolescence because of its macro and micro nutrients. Milk composition is affected by mainly genetic, nutrition, season, lactation stage etc. Therefore, there are some differences in milk components between organic and conventional milk because of especially heredities of herds and nutrition. Seasonal variations in pasture, amount of grains and forages (fresh or conserved) cause changes in milk fatty acid composition of organic and conventional milk. Furthermore, organic production regulations limit the use of starch-based concentrates and supplements; therefore, some nutrients’ concentrations (protein, thiamine, vitamin B1 and B2, I etc) in organic milk may be expected to be lower than those of conventional milk. In this paper, organic and conventional milk components have been reviewed in term of functional milk.