The Effect of Atmospheric Plasma on the Shipping Stability of Powdered Whey Protein Isolate
Whey protein powders are the most nutritionally available proteins on the market. As such, their accessibility has led to a wide commercialization including online retail, which in turn has resulted in these products being exposed to several shipping and handling conditions that could adversely affect their structural integrity and therefore their efficacy and nutritional value. The objective of this study was to investigate the ability of commercially available whey protein powder isolate to structurally withstand various shipping and handling conditions and whether that resilience could be enhanced via PSM treatment. Using Protein Thermal Shift Assay (PTSA), we demonstrated various structural changes in whey protein isolate powder as a result of shipping methods, whereby 2-3 day shipping had the least structural impact, followed by ground shipping. The highest structural impact was observed with the shortest transportation method, namely 1-day shipping, where a 9.14% change in structure was observed via PTSA. Furthermore, PSM treated whey powders had an overall 58.04% lower structural variation than their non-treated counterparts. Overall, we demonstrate that commercially available whey protein powder isolates undergo significant structural variations due to shipping and handling. We also show that PSM treatment lessens those variations and as such serves as an effective method in preserving protein structure of commercially available whey powder isolates.