Considering milk has been a diet staple for 10,000 years, we have not had a full picture of its chemical composition - until now.

David Wishart's team at the Genome Alberta supported Metabolomics Innovation Centre at the University of Alberta have created a comprehensive, centralized database of all known milk compounds. The United Nations says that 800 million tons of milk are produced annually and its composition and quality can vary depending on the breed of cow, type of feed, and many other factors. The TMIC team however kept the choice simple and assessed ordinary purchased skim, 1 percent, 2 percent, and whole milk. 

Dr. Wishart talked with freelance broadcaster Don Hill about the project.

The data are freely available on the Milk Composition Database. More than 2,300 metabolite entries are in the database, and it will be the first time that approximately160 of these substances have been reported on in milk. The study was published this week in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.