Date of Award:

5-2011

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Sciences

Committee Chair(s)

Donald J. McMahon

Committee

Donald J. McMahon

Committee

David W. Britt

Committee

Silvana Martini

Committee

Marie K. Walsh

Committee

Robert E. Ward

Abstract

Ranjeeta Wadhwani in supervision of Dr. D. J. McMahon, has worked on investigating the various strategies to improve three qualities of low-fat cheeses. These three qualities were meltability, color, or feasibilities to incorporate dietary fiber into the low-fat cheese with its simultaneous effect on texture. There has been an ongoing research on improving the quality of low-fat cheese. In our study, low-fat Mozzarella cheese curds of 4 different fat content (1.5, 3.0, 4.5, and 6.0%) were comminuted and externally added with melted butter in the amount to get 6% fat in final cheese for low-fat claim. Addition of melted butter helped in prompt release of fat from cheese while baked on pizza thereby improving the melting profile. For color optimization, nine different cheeses were manufactured using three levels of annatto and titanium dioxide. These cheeses were evaluated by descriptive panel for their flavor profile and by consumer participants for overall liking, color, and flavor. Interestingly, all these nine cheeses were rated significantly differently for their liking even though they had similar flavor profile. Cheeses added with titanium dioxide scored higher than annatto when added alone, proving our hypothesis that color of low-fat cheese influences its liking by the consumers. Four dietary fibers (inulin, pectin, polydextrose, and resistant starch) were tested for incorporating in low-fat Cheddar cheese using different methods. When added in milk, these fibers had poor retention in cheese, when added to comminuted cheese they adversely affected the cheese texture, finally when added as double emulsion in milk, inulin had maximum retention with positive effect on cheese texture.

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6739d162f61ec814806cc80a4a761ccc

Comments

This work made publicly available electronically on April 10, 2012.

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