Indonesia is short of milk, so it uses "fish milk" to feed its children. When can fish produce milk?

Image source: Internet

Indonesia is trying out an unexpected idea - turning fish into milk to provide a solution for its school lunch program which is struggling with milk shortages.

Fish are not mammals, so how can they produce milk? You can’t squeeze it out, but you can squeeze it!

Local fishermen catch fish from the waters of Inderamayo every day and send them to a company called Berikan Protein Initiative. After processing, the fish are deboned and ground into fine white protein powder, which eventually becomes a "fish milk" that can be made into a drink.

Fishing for milk Source: wsj

To be honest, isn't this just white fish soup?

"It tastes like regular milk, at least to me," said Mafatihul Khoiri, a manager at the company responsible for its production.

Fish milk color source: wsj

The drink is promoted as a nutritious source of protein suitable for children and adults. According to interview data, a 23-year-old consumer tried it three times and even called it "very delicious." Fish milk is nothing new, and this experiment is not unique to Indonesia.

As early as 2005, a company in Wuhan, my country launched a fish milk product with completely independent intellectual property rights. The production process of fish milk is a dairy product obtained by deep processing of freshwater fish, aiming to provide a new high-nutrition drink.

According to a report in the China Fisheries Newspaper, the inventors developed fish milk because fish meat has high nutritional value, but some people hate the fishy smell of fish, and some people are afraid of fish bones getting stuck in their throats. These factors have greatly affected people's consumption of fish. So after using a combination of various foods, they successfully developed a fish milk.

Nutritionally, fish milk is rich in omega-3 fatty acids, while cow's milk is rich in lactose and calcium. Fish milk is a good alternative for people with lactose intolerance.

If you are interested, you can find the production process of this fish milk on the patent website (found in the references). Here is a brief description: add pure water to the fresh fish to make a pulp, then add protease and stir, inactivate the enzyme, and then vacuum filter to obtain the fish paste protein hydrolyzate. Emulsifiers are added later for emulsification, high-pressure homogenization, and finally pasteurization and canning.

The most important step is enzymatic hydrolysis, because only by using specific enzymes to break down the protein in the fish can more soluble components be released. This not only helps improve the extraction efficiency, but also improves the texture of the liquid, making it smoother.

Image source: Internet

Emulsifiers make fish milk closer to milk in texture, as they can blend the water and fat in the fish into a stable liquid state, similar to the technology used in making margarine or dairy products.

How do you get rid of the fishy smell? Different companies use different methods. Some add natural herbs, juices or plant extracts to adjust the flavor. Others use bamboo charcoal, tea leaves and other absorbent substances to remove the fishy smell, or use steaming, fermentation and other techniques to reduce the fishy smell.

As for why fish milk has no market in China, it's very simple. Firstly, there is no shortage of milk in China. Secondly, the production cost of fish milk is too high (the technology is complicated). The extra nutrients in fish milk can be obtained by drinking more milk and other foods. There is no need to drink fish milk.

Currently, no company has yet achieved significant success in marketing fish milk on a global scale. Although fish milk has shown potential as an alternative in some studies and experiments, it is still in its early stages and has not yet entered the market widely. Indonesia's fish milk project is undoubtedly a bold "innovation" to introduce into daily life.

So why is Indonesia short of milk? According to data from the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics, Indonesia's annual milk production is about 900,000 tons, while domestic demand is as high as 5.78 million tons, resulting in a shortage of 4.88 million tons.

While increasing the number of dairy cows is one way to address the shortage, it is not a long-term sustainable solution. Indonesia's climate conditions and land resources limit the scale of dairy farming, while the increase in farming costs has greatly reduced the feasibility of this method. Coupled with the low production capacity of many Indonesian dairy cows, inbreeding and a lack of effective breeding measures have made dairy cows inefficient, further affecting the supply of milk.

Some schools in Indonesia use fish milk as lunch milk. Image source: the Jakarta post

The shortage has forced Indonesia to rely heavily on imported milk, mainly from countries such as New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

In addition, for Indonesia's dairy industry, the quality of imported milk is relatively stable and meets industry standards. However, local milk is often rejected due to quality issues (such as high water content, added syrup, carbonate, etc.), which further exacerbates the domestic milk supply problem. The head of the Indonesian Dairy Processing Association once said that the quality of local milk is difficult to compete with imported milk.

The cost of imported dairy products is also gradually increasing with the fluctuations in the international market. If you don’t want to import milk, you can only find other ways, such as producing fish milk.

But is fish milk really okay? In addition to the cost issues mentioned above, there are some potential nutritional issues. Milk is widely regarded as a good source of calcium, while fish milk is generally low in calcium. While some fish (such as sardines) are rich in calcium, the processing of fish milk may cause its calcium content to drop significantly. In order to compete with milk, fish milk may need to have additional calcium added, but this may affect its naturalness and healthiness.

Even if fish milk contains calcium, the calcium may not be absorbed as efficiently (i.e., bioavailable) as calcium from milk. Calcium in milk is usually accompanied by lactose and other nutrients that aid calcium absorption, and fish milk may lack these cofactors.

In addition, the fat composition of traditional milk is usually mild, and modern low-fat milk products can effectively reduce cholesterol intake. However, the fat composition of fish milk is more complex, and the proportion of fatty acids contained in different types of fish varies greatly, which may lead to instability in nutritional intake.

Not to mention that fish protein may cause some allergic reactions, especially in people with seafood allergies. Although fish milk is generally less allergenic, it may still cause discomfort to some people.

Image source: Internet

In order to improve the taste of fish milk, manufacturers may add a lot of flavors, sweeteners or other food additives, which may affect the naturalness and healthiness of the product. Too many artificial additives may bring unnecessary health risks.

As a potential substitute for cow's milk, fish milk has unique advantages in sustainability and healthy ingredients, but it still faces considerable challenges in taste, nutritional balance and production costs. Perhaps its true value lies in reminding us: when resources are limited, is there really only one kind of "milk" that can feed the world?

References

[1https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/fish-milk-indonesia-protein-drink-c99cf55e

[2https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101095456A/zh

Planning and production

Source: Bringing Science Home (id: steamforkids)

Author: Su Chengyu

Editor: Yinuo

Proofread by Xu Lai and Lin Lin