Abstract #281

# 281
Testing functional boundaries of dairy ingredients in protein-fortified dairy gel systems.
Haotian Zheng*1, Wanqi Wang2, Jiaying Lin2, Thiago Mendes Borges2, 1Dairy Innovation Institute, Animal Science Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 2Department of Wine, Food and Molecular Biosciences, Lincoln University, Christchurch, New Zealand.

The global high protein based food market is strong and it has been increasing since the last decade. According to the latest projection from “technavio,” the size of the market for high protein foods (2017–2021) will reach to 91.07 billion USD by 2021. In the current research, Greek-style yogurt (GSY, 6.0% protein content) and Requeijão processed cheese (RPC, 10% protein content) were chosen as high protein food models. Milk protein concentrate (MPC80), micellar casein concentrate (MCC), Ca-caseinate (CaCN), and whey protein concentrate (WPC80) were used as protein fortifiers for increasing the total protein contents of the 2 food models. Using mixture design approach, we studied the functional features of different dairy ingredients in terms of modulating textural attributes and stability of the yogurt and processed cheese systems. The GSY gel was prepared using both fermentation and GDL (glucono delta lactone) induced acidification methods. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed that there is no discrimination between fermented GSY and GDL acidified GSY made from different ingredients in terms of textural attributes. Mixture design counter plots (MDCPs) (P < 0.05) showed that the GYS syneresis rate was significantly reduced when MPC, WPC, and CaCN mixed at optimum proportion as a protein-fortifier bundle rather than using individual ingredients along indicating the synergistic effect among dairy protein ingredients. The RPC was prepared using direct acidification method, the MDCPs (P < 0.05) showed that MPC and MCC had a similar capability in terms of enhancing the adhesiveness, MCC has unique functionality in increasing firmness and viscosity of the processed cheese comparing with MPC and CaCN. The current research demonstrated the synergistic functionalities of different dairy protein ingredients in protein fortified dairy gel systems, such knowledge may be used for creating “clean-label” or “all dairy” formulations.

Key Words: dairy protein ingredient, Greek style yogurt, processed cheese