Is there a lab test to distinguish between milk solids and non-dairy creamer in a dry powder product?

Question

In my business, I use a product that is made from a combination of powdered milk solids and non-dairy creamer. With milk prices rising, manufacturers might be tempted to use a greater percentage of non-dairy creamer to protect their profit margin. I feel the need to monitor the contents of the finished product to ensure that the quality remains high. Is there a test that will alert me to a lower percentage of milk solids in the packaged product I am buying?

Answer 1

There is a simple, inexpensive test, to test the levels of glucose in your products. This test was designed to determine the effectiveness of lactace in breaking down lactose in milk. But would work just as well for your purpose. This gives you a clear, strong, positive glucose test to compare to.

Using the "Clinistix" reagent strips for urinalysis, by Bayer. These come in 50 strip boxes for about 7 dollars. Substitute the samples of your product that you know contain the correct  ratio of milk solids and non-dairy creamer as the control sample. And compare the sample of the new products for glucose content. If you start getting higher glucose contents then you will know that your new products contain higher percentages of non dairy creamer in them and less milk solids. The non-dairy creamer contains glucose, and the milk solids don't.

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Answer 2

Your best bet is to find a local analytical lab for qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. Unless you are a huge corp. you probably won't want to spring for a gas chromatograph. U.S. products are fairly well controlled in production and distribution. Obviously if your raw stock comes from one of "those" foreign countries who have no good control system (I won't say any names but one is spelled C-h-i-n-ahh never mind), only then should you have a real great concern. If you want to be better insured, buy American, or at least North American, then you only have to test infrequently. Ask for guaranteed analysis data and compare with your private lab. Report all discrepancies.

Answer 3

interesting queston!

Answer 4

hmm... find out what compounds are in the non dairy

if you can find say a protein that is in the non-dairy solid and not in real milk you can use that to determine any change in the concentration of nondairy solid.

better yet

Find out if the non dairy contains lactose.  If it doesnt then an easy thing to do would be to monitor the concentration of lactose in the product compared to what it should be in pure milk solid