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Title
Abstract
Acid curd cheeses produced according to traditional methods contain, almost exclusively, casein proteins, whereas during the production, nutritionally valuable whey proteins are removed together with whey and, thus, are lost. Several solutions were developed, which made it possible to incorporate whey proteins, useful for the technology of acid curd cheeses, into a product. The following methods are of practical importance for the dairy industry: thermal processing incl. calcium chloride added, ultra-filtration (UF) process, a method with the particulate whey protein concentrate (PWPC) added, and a method, being just developed, which applied transglutaminase (TG). In the methods that involve: thermal processing with calcium chloride added plus UF used to separate curd cheese mass, and TG, whey proteins are directly incorporated into the product during the production process. A method with PWPC added is a multistage solution where whey proteins are separated from whey; next, the whey protein concentrate is microparticulated and added, in this form, to the raw material under processing. The incorporation of whey proteins into curd cheese results in a considerable increase in the concentrations of essential (exogenous) amino acids in the protein of the final product and, consequently, in an increase in the values of chemical indicators that describe its nutritional quality. In turn, a higher cheese yield and a higher nutritional value of proteins are factors that give explanation why those methods are improved, which include the incorporation of whey proteins into unripened acid-curd cheeses.
Keywords
unripened acid curd cheeses, whey proteins, incorporation of whey proteins into cheese, nutritional value of protein