ABSTRACT
Milk is a very nutritious and versatile food and the starting point for a wide range of dairy products. The main property of milk that is of great interest to the researchers is the presence of potential bioactive peptides. Dairy‐derived bioactive peptides can be released during the following situations: gastrointestinal digestion, food processing, or enzymatic/bacterial fermentations. Digestion of milk-derived proteins in vivo or in vitro produces bioactive peptides that enter the bloodstream and exert their systemic effects, such as antihypertensive, anti‐inflammatory, immunomodulating, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anticancer, antioxidant, and antithrombotic effects, among others. The release of these encrypted peptides from milk represents an important mechanism for increasing the functional diversity of compounds which present several benefits for their consumers. Although much is known about the nutritional properties of dairy products, it is still a vast field to be explored. The study of the bioactive peptides from dairy products will shed new light on their application as functional foods and may be helpful in the prototype design for the development of new drugs by the pharmaceutical industry.
