The nutritional quality of the proteins in infant milk formulas, babies’ only food until the age of 6 months, is crucial for growth and normal neurological and immune system development.
There are European-wide regulations governing recommended amino acid nutrient intakes.
In particular, heat treatments are applied to the formulas to transform them into powder while ensuring satisfactory storage characteristics and microbiological quality. These treatments inevitably cause partial modification of certain essential amino acids, such as lysine, tryptophan and thioamino acids.
It is therefore essential to closely control the nutritional quality of of formulas, which does not just depend on the recipe, but on the process implemented to manufacture the formula as well. The inevitable variations, whether in the composition and quality of the raw materials or in the processes themselves, have a direct impact on the ultimate levels of these amino acids and therefore on the nutritional quality of the proteins in the formula.
Regular checking of each production batch is the ideal solution to ensure compliance with the very strict specifications imposed on manufacturers of infant formulas and their ingredients.
In action in several industrial companies, our AMALTHEYS analyzer has already demonstrated its ability to measure available lysine and tryptophan in 1 minute using fluorescence technology and its integrated software. The calibration models are specific to each industrial company in order to adapt as seamlessly as possible to their recipes and manufacturing processes. The level of measurement accuracy is closely linked to the quality of the reference measurement.
This is why, whenever possible, we are working with well-known laboratories to develop the reference measurements. Our data scientists construct these calibrations and enhance them until they cover the recipes’ entire range of variability.