Scientist Developed New Food Products

The next time you pick up a carton of low-lactose milk or reduced-fat mozzarella cheese at the grocery store, you are holding the result of Virginia H. Holsinger's research. She also developed a shortening used in baked goods and created a low-lactose powdered milk used in military field rations.

Most important, Dr. Holsinger, who died Sept. 4 of breast cancer at Inova Fairfax Hospital at age 72, created a whey-soy drink mix that was shelf-stable and nutritious enough to be used as a replacement for milk in international food donation programs. She also developed a grain blend that, when mixed with water, can create a porridge in emergency situations such as famines, droughts or other natural disasters.

"Holsinger's efforts have helped feed needy children and families around the world," said Floyd Horn, who was administrator of the Agricultural Research Service in 2000, when Dr. Holsinger was inducted into its Science Hall of Fame.

"I still get letters from missionaries in Africa" asking about the lactate products that Dr. Holsinger and her team developed, said Peggy M. Tomasula, her successor at the research service.

Dr. Holsinger, the former head of the dairy products research unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Wyndmoor, Pa., developed the enzyme treatment that makes milk digestible by people with lactose intolerance, research that resulted in the commercial product Lactaid. Her work also led to the development of a mozzarella cheese with 50 percent less fat, which is used in school lunches.

"When you think of mozzarella, you want a cheese that melts, stretches and strings out," she told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1994. "If people don't get it, they are disappointed."

She also provided other tips. The half-teaspoon or so of salt that most cake recipes call for is not necessary, she told Science News in 1987: It was a vestige of a time when baking soda and other ingredients did not provide enough salt or flavor.

While dairy provides nutrition, she knew it wasn't always needed in American diets.

"Yogurt, for some reason, has an image of a diet food," she told The Washington Post in 1992. "Yet when you look at the calories, it's really quite high."

Virginia H. Holsinger was born in Washington and graduated from Washington-Lee High School in Arlington County. She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from the College of William and Mary in 1958 and a doctorate in food science and nutrition from Ohio State University in 1980.

She started her research career as an analytical chemist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service's dairy products laboratory in Washington and transferred in 1974 to the Eastern Regional Research Center in Pennsylvania, where she stayed until her retirement in 1999.

While working there, she kept a home in Arlington, said her brother, Gordon Holsinger of Arlington, her only survivor. She sang in the Grace Episcopal Church choir as a young woman and was past president of the ladies' auxiliary of the American Legion and a member of the auxiliary to the local chapter of the VFW.

Dr. Holsinger wrote or co-wrote more than 100 scientific papers and received multiple awards from agricultural and food chemistry organizations, as well as the Women in Science and Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.