Tag Archives: yogurt

How Cultures & Enzymes Move the Dairy Industry Forward

by Steve Funk | Senior Cheese Technologist at Nelson-Jameson

Cultures and enzymes are biological catalysts for dairy product production, but they’re also catalysts for the dairy industry as a whole. These hard-working elements work quietly behind the scenes to strengthen the industry’s brand reputation, increase dairy product market share, and delight consumers. 

As the industry continues to adapt to changes and face new and long-standing challenges, cultures and enzymes help dairy advocates respond with answers. The trend toward plant-based alternatives is answered with vegetarian enzymes. Interest in health and wellness is answered with cultures that stimulate the probiotic benefits of yogurts, kefirs, and other cultured dairy. Here are five ways that cultures and enzymes are helping dairy processors.  

Consumer Trends: Year after year, dairy processors aim to strike a balance between tradition and innovation. Consumers count on the availability of their favorite dairy products, but they also want new flavors and formats. Cultures and enzymes keep consumers happy by providing consistently produced dairy staples as well as inventive products that introduce new tastes and textures. They can also impact how well a cheese melts, browns, or blends, providing additional variety to culinary usages. 

Food Safety: The use of cultures and enzymes is increasing because of its success in maintaining the integrity of dairy products and enhancing food safety. New bioprotective cultures can replace chemical preservatives, providing consumers and suppliers with preservative-free products that also have better shelf stability.  Of course, cultures and enzymes are not a substitute for other safety protocols, such as knowing your milk source, understanding plant sanitation, and carefully following all steps in a cleaning process. Still, ongoing advances in cultures and enzymes allow dairy processors to inhibit yeast and mold growth, prevent spoilage, and better protect their products. 

Health and Wellness: Ongoing demand for the gut-health benefits of probiotics continues to keep yogurt at the top of cultured dairy sales. Cultures and enzymes also support other health-driven consumer preferences such as reducing lactose or increasing organic consumption. Beyond product features, the health and wellness benefits of cultured dairy enhance awareness of and interest in dairy as a category and its place in the famous food pyramid.

Food innovation: Industry scientists continue to find new pathways for cultures and enzymes. Product developers can use a 50-year-old, patented culture and/or a novel culture developed within the last year to expand a product line – the old and new work in tandem with each other.  Technical experts are creating new avenues for culture and enzyme usage, such as the use of non-traditional cultures to transform the effects in long-standing cheeses. Dairy processing operations benefit from culture and enzyme innovations as well. They can be added to help accelerate production or make it easier to utilize equipment. 

Brand Strength: As dairy processors utilize cultures and enzymes to enhance product uniqueness, satisfy consumers, and find creative solutions to challenges, a bonus result is industry brand strength. Consumers stay engaged with a food & beverage category when it’s both consistent and innovative, and fosters trust in food safety and health benefits.  In turn, this brand strength bolsters marketing and selling opportunities. 

Cultures and enzymes continue to be the workhorses of cultured dairy products, but they’re also indirect lobbyists for the industry. Dairy processors can benefit from continued focus on the role of cultures and enzymes in all aspects of production. 

If you need more insight on enzymes for your dairy product production, contact the experts at Nelson-Jameson (www.nelsonjameson.com).


About Steve Funk

Steve Funk is Senior Cheese Technologist at Nelson-Jameson. As a passionate dairy industry veteran with more than 40 years of experience, he provides customers with advice on ingredients, production processes, and manufacturing improvements to enhance cheese and fermented dairy product results. His innovative approach to quality cheese-making has helped dozens of customers create and launch unique cheese recipes that are market favorites today. Steve is an active member of numerous dairy industry associations and serves as a WDPA representative on the prestigious Master Cheesemakers Board. He supports the next generation of dairy innovators by serving as a NE-DBIC Dairy Processor Expansion Grant reviewer and a mentor for its Northeastern Dairy Product Innovation Competition, an inaugural program managed by Cornell University’s Center for Regional Economic Advancement and the Northeast Dairy Foods Research Center. He holds a B.S. in Dairy Science and Animal Health from the University of Vermont. When not at work, he enjoys skiing, kayaking, gardening, and spending time with his wife of 38 years, Carla, and their daughter and grandson.

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Science Fare

Food Science Blog Pic

Source: Institute of Food Technologists

The science of sustenance. Diet developments. Munchie modification. Whatever alimental alliteration you choose, it’s all covered under a food processor’s “Research and Development” department. Almost all food manufacturers have an R&D division whose responsibility it is to improve existing products and manufacturing processes, extend current product lines and develop entirely new foods. Today we highlight some of what’s trending in food development.

Apples and Orange (Bananas)
Color is extremely important when it comes to food perception. Studies have shown that when it comes to our experience of food, food color is more important than food labeling or food taste. On a related note, food presentation garners similar results. Enter the “Arctic Apple”, a new breed of non-browning apple. Arctic Apples look and taste like a regular apple, but do not brown like traditional cut apples unless they sustain significant damage, like a fungal or bacterial infection. Proponents of the Arctic Apple feel that nonbrowning apples are more attractive to consumers, and thus will reduce food waste and increase fruit consumption.

Bananas are also getting a makeover. Scientists are currently testing a “super banana” with orange flesh that’s derived from genetically-modifying the banana’s amount of beta-carotene. The peel is yellow and it tastes like a normal banana, but the inside fruit is an attractive shade of cantaloupe orange. The hope is that the super banana will eventually help to prevent blindness in malnourished children around the globe.

A new variety of “Burgundine” asparagus is currently being trialed in the United Kingdom. Burgundine asparagus is the result of crossing normal green asparagus with an heirloom breed of purple asparagus. The resulting violet-hued stalks contain less lignim, the substance that makes asparagus fibrous, and can be eaten raw or cooked. Bring on the dips!

There’s Diamonds in Them Thar Jars
Put down the spoon and back away from the jar. That peanut butter that you were about to lick might be better suited for your home safe than for your cupboard. By mimicking the conditions of the earth’s mantle, a researcher in Germany has turned peanut butter into diamonds. What the what? Yes, peanut butter diamonds. Diamonds need carbon combined with intense heat and pressure in order to form, and, as it turns out, peanut butter is a pretty good source of carbon. Don’t run to Costco just yet, though. The peanut butter diamonds are small, fragile and impure, and eventually disintegrate.

Lick Or Treat
A Google search for “licking the yogurt lid” yields over 90,000 results, Facebook pages and blogs are dedicated to the activity, and ad campaigns by Yoplait and Muller have been based around it. Until recently, however, there was no solution to the obligatory-yogurt-stuck-on-the-lid phenomenon. Morinaga Milk, a Japanese company, has changed that. They’ve developed a nonstick technology for yogurt lids that’s inspired by the lotus leaf, which is known for repelling water and staying dry and clean. As to the obvious question as to why no one’s thought of this before, apparently it’s quite difficult to simultaneously repel yogurt while maintaining container sealability. Pesky physics.

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Haute Culture: The Rise of Yogurt

2012 appears to have definitely produced a dairy and food industry powerhouse: yogurt. Sales of yogurt are up 15% from 2010 and yogurt interests are gearing up for more of the same ahead. In the grocery store, in fast-food settings like McDonald’s, and elsewhere, the popularity of yogurt has seen remarkable growth in the past few years in the United States.

Several key industry moves indicate the strength of yogurt in the U.S. market. The introduction of greek-style yogurts by companies like Chobani and Fage has agreed with American taste buds: both are expanding their operations in the United States. Dannon, a well-known yogurt brand in the U.S. is increasing the size of its operation, and perhaps most interestingly, PepsiCo has put their hat into the ring. Partnering with Theo Muller, a German dairy company, PepsiCo is “investing $206 million in a 363,000-square-foot plant in Batavia, N.Y., announced in February, that will employ some 180 people and churn out five billion cups of yogurt a year.”

One of the hopes yogurt makers have is that this trend will continue, and that American consumption will begin to mirror consumption in Canada and in European countries: “Americans on average consumed 12 pounds of yogurt a year, or half as much as Canadians and a third the amount of Europeans.”

With such unprecedented growth, it is hard for yogurt producers to not be excited, but the question remains if the growth that has been witnessed reflects a fundamental change in the American palate, or if this surge of popularity reflects an extended fad. Only the coming years will be able to dictate which is the right answer, but in the meantime, the food industry is looking at yogurt with a new sense of vigor and respect.

At this juncture, the immediate future looks good for the product and yogurt producers are attempting to meet and push demand even further. As Stephanie Strom stated in her piece for the New York Times, “Let the yogurt wars begin.”

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