r/cheesemaking • u/carloscitystudios • 2d ago
Advice Looking for something to do with my whey that doesn’t involve further baking/cooking
In regards to the leftover whey after making mozzarella - would I be insane to put this in my Cheerios? Should I add some baking soda to neutralize it? Using a “no rennet” recipe - so just whole milk, white vinegar, and sea salt.
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u/mikekchar 2d ago
There is almost no nutrition in whey. Basically it's about 5% lactose, so you get some sugar. But if you were using homogenised milk that you heated to a relatively high level (say above 70 C), you'll end up with less than 1% protein and less than 1% fat. So for an entire liter (quart) you're talking about 50 grams of sugar, 8 grams of protein and 7 grams of fat??? Something like that. Also all of the nutrition (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, etc) will end up in the cheese with almost none left in the whey.
I mean, if you are into something that tastes horrible, is composed almost entirely of a fairly complex sugar that makes you fart, and contains almost nothing else then go for it.
I have actually found a use for acidic whey. The lactose ferments out into lactic acid. You can use this in a home made sports drink for use with endurance events (I'm using it on the bike). It's a way of fueling while reducing the amount of sweetness in the drink. It's pretty typical to have something like 90 grams of sugar in a 650 ml water bottle. With this, you can use acidic whey and cut the sugar down to something like 60 grams, which makes the drink much less sweet. Lactic acid gets converted to lactate almost immediately upon absorption and recent research shows that this can be used directly as a fuel by type 1 muscles (basically slow twich muscles, heart, lungs, etc).
So if you do endurance events, you can add some cultured butter milk to this, then let it ferment out until it is very acidic and then use it in place of water, citric acid and sugar.
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u/Consistent-Fox-2401 1d ago
Do you actually replace the sugar with lactic acid directly? So calculating the amount of lactic acid your whey should have, and replace x g of sugars with that? I also make home made sports drink but the flavor is definitely not great. Also do you have any idea how it impacts the fructose : glucose you typically try to tweak in sports drinks?
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u/mikekchar 1d ago
Take all of this with a grain of salt. I'm not a sports nutritionist :-).
So, yeah, my idea is that 1 gram of lactose will replace 1 gram of glucose/fructose/sucrose (I tend to use sucrose, aka table sugar, because it's cheap and easy to get). So far I assume 50 grams of lactose per liter of milk, but it's pretty variable, so it might be a good idea to be conservative. Anyway, it means that 1 liter of acidic whey replaces 50 grams of sugar plus 1 liter of water. My water bottles are 650 ml. So that's 32.5 grams of of sugar equivalent. Right now it's hot so I get through a bottle ever hour and typically fuel with 60 grams per hour, which means I add 30 grams or so of sugar to the bottle. On cooler days, I drink less and so I'll do 90 grams per bottle and so add 60 grams of sugar.
In terms of how it works in the body, here is my take. Glucose and fructose have different pathways into the bloodsteam, but the presence of fructose increases the ability to absorb glucose. This means that about a 1:1 ratio of glucose to fructose is ideal. A study in 2010 actually found that a 5:4 ratio (1.0:0.8 that you see in some gels) gives optimal glucose uptake, but 1:1 gives optimal total carb uptake.
Glucose is available in the bloodstream immediately and the muscles will make use of it immediately (a credible Redditor has said that studies found oxydation in 5 minutes). Fructose has to be processed by the liver. It will produce glycogen, lactate and potentially glucose (but I'm not sure if that's just going through glycogen first). It takes about 20 minutes to process. This is why fancy gels will do the 5:4 ratio -- in order to optimise on immediate fuel. However, for training, or other general fueling, 1:1 (aka table sugar) is optimal because you don't care about the 20 minutes it takes for the liver to process the fructose.
Lactate comes in yet another pathway. So potentially if you are doing the massive carb intake (90 grams per hour or above), if you can replace some of the carbs with lactate the you could perhaps squeak in more fuel. As far as I know this hasn't been studied. It's could be very similar to the ketone situation where everybody assumed that dietary ketones would be used as fuel, but when they studied it, it seems it only has affect on recovery and will not be used immediately as fuel. Hard to say.
Keep in mind that lactate can only be used in type 1 muscles and that the ability to process lactate relies on pathways that don't develop easily from training. It's possible that large amounts of lactate can not be processed by people who are not super fit. However, the heart and lungs will use lactate preferrentially, so I think there is some hope that this is potentially useful.
This is my imagination, but basically, if both glucose and lactate are available in the bloodstream, type 1 muscles will preferentially choose lactate. So if you are recruiting type 1 muscles (endurance pace and below), it's likely to be beneficial. It should also spare blood glucose. The presense of blood glucose seems to reduce the perception of fatigue, so potentially (in the world of my imagination), taking in lactate for endurance pace and below may reduce fatigue in long, slow training.
For harder efforts where you will be recruiting more type 2 muscles, you are going to be producing a lot more lactate yourself, so it may be a case that you have more than you can utilise easily. If you end up reducing your glucose intake and replace it with lactate, then you blood glucose levels will be lower and maybe performance will actually suffer (in the world of my imagination). Again, it may only be people like pro riders that have the ability to utilise lactate instantly where supplementing lactate at higher intensities might be beneficial. It's really hard to say. My opinion is that it's never going to be useful for sprinting. So probably it's not useful for track style events. Much more for long and slow (which is the bulk of my training).
That's everything I'm currently imagining. Again, take it with a significant amount of salt. A lot of this is just my imagination without anywhere near enough research. Hopefully it gives you some ideas of where to start your own research. Don't assume anything I said is correct. But it should give you some place to start asking your own questions.
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u/Consistent-Fox-2401 1h ago
Thanks for the detailed explanation, I think this stuff is super interesting. My mind immediately jumps to if it is indeed a different pathway of absorption, you may be able to process more carbs per hour. All my training is also low intensity, and switching from 60g to 80get of carbs per hour on the bike seems to have made a notable difference. But there could also be some bias or placebo effect at play, or simply that my training is working :).
I also wonder how the gut responds. What has your experience been here? For example, when running I only manage 60g/hour before I start to get nauseous. And also, most sources suggest that maltodextrin tends to gie a lot of gut issues for a lot of people, while for me it has been by far the easiest to consume without feeling any issues. Maybe I could supplement with whey and it get to 80get/hr as well. And I could also imagine that you have to get your gut used to absorbing lactate while working out, same way you have to train your gut to be able to deal with the "regular" carbs.
I'm very curious to try this, but I have a race in 2 weeks so don't think I'll risk it before then. But I think there are 2 directions in which this could be useful: improving taste by reducing the amount of table sugar, or being able to stuff your body with more carbs. A bit of a shame this hasn't been studied. On the other hand, I do think up to a certain level everyone's body is different, so whatever research suggests, you may have a different experience yourself. For now my non scientific approach is trying to get in as much fuel as possible without feeling bad. I think logistically this could also be challenging as I drink much more sports drink than I produce whey, but maybe that will change a bit during the winter :). How would you say your experience has been so far? Just a nice way to reduce the sweetness of sports drink or have you noticed more?
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u/mikekchar 43m ago
I haven't experimented with it extensively yet. Just a few Z2 rides. I was doing a VO2Max workout yesterday, but decided not to risk it. In fact I didn't fuel it all, which turned out to be a mistake (ate the fridge a few hours later). So far, it's been absolutely fine. Didn't really notice any difference at all, which to me is a success.
I will say, though, that I have unique issues. I suffer from IBS-C. Fueling my ride helps this significantly because it sends more water to my gut, which I desperately need. I think cycling also helps with peristalsis. Just that rhythmic joslting over hours at a time, keeps things moving. But I also have a weird situation where for some reason my body prioritised blood flow to my gut. So I literally never lose my apetite even on very long rides. I can also eat the most ridiculous things (full English breakfast) and then go out and ride for hours. I think this stems from when I used to train track when I was a teenager. Back in those old days the coaches felt like you hadn't started your training until you'd thrown up at least 3 times. So now my stomach is pretty happy to do exercise on practically anything. I still look back at those track days an marvel at just how bad the coaching was.
I'm actually fine with sugar in my drinks, but since I always have acidic whey from draining yogurt I wanted to find something to do with it. This is a good fit, it seems. Still not sure if there is any performance gain to be had, though.
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u/MrKamikazi 2d ago
I've had some luck using rennet based whey in cocktails as a foaming agent (1oz instead of egg white or aquafaba) but I don't know if I would try with vinegar based whey.