U.S. Cheese Industry Works to Reduce Sodium and Fat

MILWAUKEE ? In the centuries that Americans have been making cheese, they have gotten very good at it, producing world-class Cheddars and ch?vres, to name just two varieties. But more recently, cheese making has been something of a struggle.

Under pressure to reduce sodium and saturated fats in American diets ? especially those of children ? the cheese industry has tried to make products with less salt or fat that consumers will like.

It has not had great success.

?We?ve made some progress in that arena,? said Gregory D. Miller, president of the Dairy Research Institute. ?But we have not been able to crack the code.?

Dr. Miller, whose group is financed by the dairy industry, was referring to efforts to reduce salt, but he had a similar appraisal of the challenges of low-fat cheese. ?When you take a lot of the fat out, essentially cheese will turn into an eraser,? he said.

The trouble with cheese is that salt and fat are critical components, responsible for far more of its character than consumers might think.

Salt helps control moisture content and bacterial activity ? the starter culture that is added to the milk and naturally occurring strains. All of them can flavor the cheese, for better or worse, as it ages.

?Salt serves as a preservative, as a director of flavor development,? said Mark Johnson, senior scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ?If I remove it, my flavor goes in a different direction.?

Fat affects moisture levels, too ? less fat generally means more water, which can speed spoilage ? and helps govern texture, balancing out proteins so a cheese slices properly and feels right when chewed.

Because salt and fat both affect moisture, it is particularly difficult to make a product that is low in both.

?If you really want to make bad cheese, make a low-fat, low-sodium one,? said Lloyd Metzger, a professor of dairy science at South Dakota State University.

To be sure, few people are talking about tinkering with specialty cheeses ? making a low-fat Camembert, say, or a low-salt Roquefort. ?I?m buying those cheeses at a premium,? Dr. Johnson said, ?and I want that premium flavor.?

But what the cheese industry calls ?American type? (natural Cheddar, Colby and similar varieties) and ?Italian type? (mozzarella, provolone and others) together account for about four-fifths of the more than 10 billion pounds of cheese made in the United States each year. So producing good-tasting, good-textured versions with ?reduced? fat or salt (defined by the government as at least 25 percent less than typical) or ?low? fat or salt (containing a specific small amount) could have a large effect on Americans? diets.

There are some cheeses, like Swiss and mozzarella, that are naturally lower in salt than others, and cheese companies have had success marketing reduced-fat mozzarellas, particularly for school-lunch foods like pizza. But food shoppers have not flocked to most other lower-fat or lower-salt cheeses.

Some cheeses are especially problematic. Most processed cheeses, in which natural cheeses are heated and mixed with other ingredients, use sodium-containing emulsifiers for blending and to control melting. A typical slice of American cheese can contain more than twice the sodium that the same amount of a natural Cheddar has.

At its most basic, cheese making is a straightforward process. Bacteria is added to milk, converting lactose (milk sugar) to acid and starting the curdling process. Enzymes are added that break down the proteins in the milk and help the curdling, and salt is usually added to limit the bacterial action and draw out more of the liquid whey from the curds. The curds then settle or are formed into a block of cheese.

But there are countless variations in the process, which account for the hundreds of cheese varieties made around the world: the source of the milk (cow, sheep, goat and even more exotic animals, including reindeer), its fat content, whether it is pasteurized, the strain of starter bacteria used, when and how the salt is added, whether the curds are ?cheddared? (cut up, allowed to set, then cut and stacked several times, a process that was developed in Cheddar, England), whether the block is pressed or molded, how long and where it is ripened ? the permutations are almost infinite.

?Cheese is just this big biochemistry experiment,? said Tonya C. Schoenfuss, a professor of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota.

It?s an experiment in which salt plays a large role, and cheese makers ?really haven?t found a magic approach? to reducing sodium, said Dr. Miller of the Dairy Research Institute. ?It?s a real technical challenge.?

Most efforts focus on young, mild cheeses, because even though the reduction of salt may make it more difficult to control bacterial activity, the cheeses are not aged long enough for this to affect flavor, Dr. Metzger said. But no cheese maker is going to spend the time and money to age a Cheddar for several years, for example, and risk that it may develop off flavors.

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ef434829bd0247a2e3f7cd7ea870c878

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