Spoilage of Milk Powder: Mechanisms, Markers, and Detection

Spoilage markers that appear during food processing and storage are important quality and safety indicators. Canned milk powder is a popular raw material used in the food industry. The identification and assessment of changes occurring at each stage of its shelf life are an important food safety issue. This review systematizes the current scientific knowledge on spoilage types, markers, mechanisms, and detection. The results may help to improve the current quality control strategy for long shelf-life dairy products. The review covered Russian and English-language publications registered in eLIBRARY.RU, Google Scholar, CyberLeninka, PubMed, and ScienceDirect in 2015-2024. The article describes the degradation of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, as well as the most effective methods of its detection. The main processes affecting the quality of milk powder are protein-carbohydrate interactions, e.g., the Maillard reaction, as well as various forms of hydrolytic and oxidative spoilage. Despite the recent progress in the early detection of milk powder spoilage, this field of food science has some unresolved tasks, e.g., detection and monitoring of marker compounds that develop during technological processing. The data can be used to strategize the quality control, increase the stability, and extend the shelf life of canned milk powder.