ARCHIVE OF NEWS ARTICLES

June 2008 site news update

The article on gas production in cheese has been updated.  The text has been edited and some additional photographs added.

A review article on whey as a growth medium for probiotics, that may be useful in treating diarrhoea, has been received and is being reviewed.

There have been a number of interesting posts on the forum including controlling cracks/slits in cheese, increasing the yield of Holstein cows, effect of using milk from animals with mastitis on the quality of dairy products, and there is still some interest in benzene in soft drinks.

The ice cream mix calculator is being used extensively and it would be appreciated if "heavy users" would let me know how useful it is. The calculator uses linear programming to calculate the ingredients required to manufacture an ice cream mix to specification.

I have further developed the Harvard-style reference writer. The literature citations now go to database and they can be printed as a word document in which they are listed alphabetically and by date order. 

Namesco hosting problems now resolved

January 2008 site updates

The articles on cheese starters and probiotics have been updated. In particular additional information on enterococci has been added including the biochemical key developed by by Manero and Blanch (1999).

Some students find referencing Emails, Mintel reports, blogs, E-discussion lists, E-journals let alone traditional journals difficult.  A Harvard-type reference wizard has been developed and should be of help to anyone wishing to reference major literature sources correctly.

Using computer software to calculate how readable written text is, is somewhat controversial for scientific writing.  The site now contains a readability calculator that with judicious use may be useful to those writing essays, assignments and dissertations.

The discussion forum has had a number of interesting posts including the significance (and enumeration) of enterococci in whey protein concentrates.

Becoming entrepreneurial-minded

This article by Dr Cecilia Hegarty from the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship (NICENT), provides students with an overview of why employers are increasingly attempting to recruit graduates with entrepreneurial skills. It also explores why economies within the European Union need more people with imagination and drive to think and act in an entrepreneurial manner to create exciting opportunities for themselves and others.

Vaccancy for a dairy scientist

Current vacancy. Dairy scientist added 20 November, 2007.

Kate Yuxl from the ChinaClick2 Group is seeking to recruit an experienced dairy scientist. Details of the vaccancy are given in the job vaccancies section.

Article on Montebore has been updated

Following discussions concerning the geographical location of the producers of Montebore cheese the article on this Italian cheese has been updated by Professor Zeppa.

14 October, 2007

Science and technology of wine making

An article on the science and technology of wine making has been added to the Dairy Science and Food Technology web site. In the article, author Professor Giuseppe Zeppa from the Department of Exploitation and Protection of the Agricultural and Forestry Resources, Turin University, Italy explores the history of grape growing and wine making, discusses red and white wine production, explains how speciality wines are produced and offers an insight into how particular wines compliment particular foods.

La scienza e la tecnologia della vinificazione

 

Nel Mondo vi è un elevato numero di bevande ottenute dalla fermentazione alcolica di liquidi zuccherini quali succhi vegetali, miele, latte ecc., ma le più importanti per diffusione e quantità prodotte sono senza dubbio il vino, la birra ed il sidro. Lo scopo di questo breve articolo è quello di riassumere la storia e la tecnologia produttiva di una di queste bevande, ottenuta dalla fermentazione dell’uva, il vino. Conosciuto già dagli Egizi, il vino ha accompagnato con alterne vicende l’uomo in tutta la sua storia, divenendo nella cultura cristiana simbolo, con il pane, dell’unione stessa con Dio. Prodotto in quasi tutto il modo anche in virtù dell’ampio areale di coltivazione dell’uva, il vino si presenta al consumatore in varie tipologie (rosso, bianco, rosato, dolce, secco, spumante ecc.) volte ad interpretare al meglio le caratteristiche della materia prima ed a soddisfare le esigenze del consumatore stesso. Alla base di queste diverse tipologie di prodotti vi sono altrettante tecnologie venutesi a definire nei secoli ed i cui aspetti fondamentali vengono descritti in queste pagine con la speranza di stimolare il lettore ad approfondirne lo studio sui numerosi testi specialistici attualmente disponibili.

E-mail this news item to a friend or a colleague

Casu Marzu myth or reality?

The latest forum posting concerns Casu Marzu. Over the July period I received several Emails enquiring about an Italian ‘worm or maggot’ cheese called Casu Marzu. Apparently there had been an article in a UK newspaper and questioners wanted to know if it was a late April-fools joke! The forum posting concludes that Casu Marzu is real but that its production is illegal at present. It is one of the world's many interesting cheeses.

Chr. Hansen advice on EC Reg. 1924/2006

New regulation on nutrition and health

A new European regulation, Regulation no 1924/2006, has been issued to help protect the public from false or misleading nutritional and health claims.  The regulation requires that nutrition and health claims be authorised and added to the European Community (EC) list of permitted claims. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is responsible for compiling the UK national list and is currently inviting food businesses to submit eligible claims for inclusion.

The FSA website states that they will close this list on 21 September 2007.

The EC register of approved claims should be available by January 2010.

The FSA has provided a template  to enable businesses to make claims and to date, the 13^th January, 2008; nutritional claims have been submitted for calcium, folate and iron.  The current situation regarding claims is available here. I understand that claims for two probiotic bacteria are likely to be submitted shortly.

The regulation will also result in the establishment of nutrient profiles for foods. Once these are established, health claims where any nutrient does not meet the criteria set by the nutrient profile for that food will not be permitted. It will be interesting to see how this works out for traditional foods high in fat for example, many cheeses, which provide major nutrients such as calcium.

Providing there is good scientific evidence it would appear to be relatively easy to make claims and businesses should benefit from reviewing the claims made to date.

SHOP Cheese Awards September 2007

SHOP offers an exhibition for the Retail, Food and Drink Industry, while benefiting from the support of two of Ireland's largest and most successful food trade events - IFEX (Ireland's International Food, Drink & Hospitality Exhibition) and Forecourt (Ireland's Convenience, Retail and Forecourt Equipment Exhibition). SHOP, takes place at the RDS Simmonscourt, Dublin from September 2nd - 4th 2007.

The SHOP (formerly IFEX) cheese awards is now firmly established as the major event in Ireland for the cheese industry.

The appeal of the awards is the competition between the small cottage based producers, large commercial creameries and importers and the acknowledgement of the role each plays in developing trade on the island of Ireland.

Shop also delivers a buying audience from specialist delicatessen outlets to multiple retailers and from hoteliers to restaurateurs.

The competition provides a showcase for visitors and professionals to view and sample first hand the tremendous variety of cheeses now available in Ireland.

Want more information? Then download a cheese brochure or visit the Shop website.

Added 28 June 2007

Article on thermal processing

An article on thermal processing is being developed.  This includes a calculator for determining the equivalent antimicrobial effect of the total heat, F value, received by spores or vegative cells of microorganisms compared with a reference temperature.  While the default value for reference temperature is 121.1° C, this can be varied.  The Z-value has been set at 10 ° C but can also be varied.

 The calculator converts temperature readings to lethal rates, plots the lethal rates against temperature, and determines F values for a heat process.  The area under the curve is determined using the Trapezoid rule and the calculator is capable of giving very accurate F determinations for most thermal processes. The application can also undertake F calculations on uploaded comma separated text (CSV) files containing temperature and time readings.

 It will be some weeks before this article is publicly available but can be accessed for testing and feedback purposes http://www.dairyscience.info/lethalcomp.aspx. The calculator can also be used to look at the equivalency of pasteurisation type heat treatments e.g sous vide processes

International Dairy Conference

The Organizing Committee of the ICTDF 2007 takes great pleasure in inviting you to this conference. This mega event is expected to bring and knit together dairy and food scientists, academicians, industrialists, policy makers, farmers and students from all over the world to participate in the deliberations. The conference spread over four days will also have other concurrent activities. A large number of internationally renowned Dairy and Food Scientists will be delivering key note addresses, plenary lectures and technical oral presentations. Dairy Expo will host a large number of national and international companies involved in the manufacture of food processing equipment and machinery, analytical tools for dairy and food products as also for traditional Indian milk delicacies. Besides the oral presentations, there will also be a poster session to promote young and budding dairy researchers. Special events for career opportunities are also planned for the benefit of students. Conference details can be had from the society website www.dairysociety.org. Please forward this message to those working in the areas of dairy and food sciences

I look forward to your participation in this conference

Thanking you

Dr. R. R. B. Singh

Secretary

Dairy Technology Society of India

Division of Dairy Technology

National Dairy Research Institute

Karnal - 132 001 (Haryana), India

Tel: 91-184-2259250 (O)

Tel: 91-184-2272887 (R)

Fax: 91-184-2250042

Cell: +91-9416468437

How to solve cheese yield problems

New article on ice cream

Carnosine, meat eating and cataracts

I have been receiving Emails regarding the above and thought this might be a topic that others might wish to comment on.

Carnosine (beta-alanyl-L-histidine) is a dipeptide of the amino acids beta-alanine and histidine and is present at high concentration in muscle and brain tissue.

In vitro studies have shown carnosine to be a potent antioxidant and an inhibitor of glycation. The latter is apparently involved in cataract formation.

Does anyone have information of the incidence of cataracts in meat eaters? Is it possible that meat consumption, meat contains carnosine, may inhibit cataract formation?

While carnosine may be the latest anti ageing agent it comes with a heath warning! Dr. E.K. Schandl at http://2line.com/CARNOSINEwarning.html is very concerned about this material and has issued a strongly-worded warning.

Anyone with information on cataract incidence and diet or wants to comment please   contribute to the forum posting on carnosine.

7 May 2007

May update

I have included a calculator for predicting the theoretical yield of Cheddar cheese using milk composition only and a modified form of the Van Slyke yield equation. More later.

An article on wine manufacture by Professor Zeppa has been accepted and will be available shortly.

4 May 2007 

Dairy Technologist Vacancy

Mosaic Search is recruiting a dairy technologist as Head of Product Development at a new dairy in Pakistan. The person appointed will develop and build a recipe bank of new milk products.  For more information please see the Jobs section.

 24 April, 2007

Employment vacancy for a cheese maker

New forum postings

There have been several postings concerning the use of ash in cheese manufacture. The latest response has been received from Professor Zeppa.

15 April 2007

Pearson Square article has been updated

The article on how to standardise milk for cheese manufacture using the Pearson Square calculator has been updated.

03 April 2007

Site news

The calculator for determining the quantities of ingredients required to prepare ice cream mixes is still being developed. Thanks for the feedback so far. I would still welcome feedback from potential users before making the calculator generally available. If you are interested in testing the application please Email me at the site including 'Ice Cream Calculator' in the title.

The forum has received numerous posting over the last few weeks. Postings have included Chinese cheese, Q-fever, Kefir, a yogurt from China,  and MSNF concentration in cream. Two posters in particular have been very active, Milkman and Childream; both have their own websites that are worth visiting.

I have received a surprising number of Emails to my webmaster address on ice cream related matters.  Note most Emails to this address are deleted automatically by the site's anti spam software so if you do not use the forum please make sure that the title of your Email is self explanatory. 

25 March 2007

Ice-cream mix calculator

I am developing a calculator for determining the quantities of a wide range of ingredients that might be used to meet user-designated ice-cream mix compositions.

If you would be interested in testing the calculator please send me an Email to webmaster at dairyscience.info and I will Email you a link to the test page. The application should be ready for public testing by mid March.

Please include Ice-cream mix calculator in the title of the Email.

Notice of new articles for 2007

Several articles suggested by external contributors have been agreed and will be published on the Dairy Science and Food Technology website in 2007.

An article on wine making which includes a section on quality appraisal is currently at an advanced stage. This will be complimented by an article on Irish whiskey manufacture. Following this Irish theme I am trying to source an article on Ulster breads. Northern Ireland is well known for its soda, wheaten and potato bread and there is now a good export market for these breads particularly to the US.

Listeria monocytogenes is an important pathogen. An article on the significance of listeria in food, their detection and enumeration is currently being prepared.

High pressure technology is increasingly being used in the food industry particularly to produce high-value-added products. While this area is particularly well developed in Japan, there have been exciting developments in Europe and New Zealand in particular. An article on the effects of high pressure on microorganisms will be available towards the middle of 2007.

Congratulations to Dr Giuseppe Aprea

Congratulations to Dr. Giuseppe Aprea who received his PhD at the Universita' Degli Studo Di Napoli, Federico 11 on Monday the 15^th January 2007. I was particularly pleased to be a member of the Commision responsible for examing Guiseppe and the other doctoral candidates.

The author pictured with Professor M. L. Cortesi, Professor N. Murru and Dr G. Aprea at the University of Naples 

Dr Aprea worked with the author and colleagues at Loughry to study fermentation problems with Mozzarella cheese produced using buffalo milk in Southern Italy. The cheeses were manufactured using natural whey or artisanal cultures.

The research involved the isolation and identification of lactic acid bacteria from the starters and the determination of their sensitivity to bacteriophage.  The work identified that many of the lactic acid bacteria, particularly lactobacilli, present in the whey starters contained inclusion bodies comprised of polyphosphate. This work has been published. Two unusual phages for Lactobacillus brevis, the first reported for this organism were also identified.

Giuseppe Aprea working with Professor Ger Fitzgerald at University College Cork has characterised the genome of both phages and determined their sensitivity to high pressure and temperature.

Theoretical yield of Cottage cheese

Posting on Cottage cheese & site news

The latest posting concerns how to predict the theoretical yield of Cottage cheese.

The site forum has been updated from SimpleForum 3.3 to the professional version. The latter enables forum posts to be viewed without having to register.  It also enables  simpler and faster registration for posting and a range of other features e.g. personal messaging, posting attachments; these have still to be enabled. One downside of the upgrade is that the original statistics have been lost. On the positive side posters, providing they have enabled the feature in their profile, will receive an Email each time a response to their topic has been posted.

I have finally found a good scientific spelling and proofreading application, sciPROOF and have included some information on this plug-in to both PC and Mac versions of Word.

Finally peace and happiness to all users of this website in 2007.

Milk protein derived bioactive peptides

An article on 'Milk protein derived bioactive peptides' by Emily Haque and Dr. Rattan Chand from the National Dairy Research Institute in India has been added to the Dairy Science and Food Technology website.

This article reviews recent research that has shown that milk proteins can yield bioactive peptides with opioid, mineral binding, cytomodulatory, antihypertensive, immunostimulating, antimicrobial and antioxidative activity in the human body.

The authors review the properties of bioactive peptides, explain that bioactive peptides are encrypted in milk proteins and are only released by enzymatic hydrolysis in vivo during gastrointestinal digestion, food processing or by microbial enzymes in fermented products.

Mention is made of the  significant research  being undertaken on the health effects of bioactive peptides. The naturally formed bioactive peptides in fermented dairy products, such as yoghurt, sour milk and cheese are discussed e.g. antihypertensive peptides have been identified in fermented milks, whey and ripened cheese. Some of these peptides have been commercialised.

The authors conclude with their perspectives on the future of bioactive peptides and suggest that  "Bioactive peptides have the potential to be used in the formulation of health-enhancing nutraceuticals, and as potent drugs with well defined pharmacological effects".

Calculate the energy density of food

An article on how to calculate the energy density of food has been added. The purpose of this article is to discuss how to calculate the energy density or energy content of foods. A calculator is also included to calculate energy density using the chemical constituents of the food.

16 October 2006

Dairy farming in a new environment

Students studying dairy science, food science, nutrition and food technology should have at least an appreciation of the macro aspects of food production on the farm.

Farming in Europe and in North America is challenging for many farm families at present. Farm incomes are lower than many farmers need to sustain and develop their businesses and the costs of meeting environmental legislation are increasing. All of this combined with the considerable purchasing power of the food retailers who tend to drive down farm prices requires  farmers to have excellent business management skills.

What are the business management challenges for farmers?  In a challenging but positive article Ian McCluggage discusses 'Dairy farming in a new environment.'

In his article Ian mentions benchmarking. More information on Ian's work in this area can be found on the Northern Ireland Rural Portal. Further information on benchmarking is also available under the Focus Farm programme. In this innovative DARD-led programme some 80 farmers throughout Northern Ireland share their business expertise through a mentoring programme. Many of these farmers use benchmarking.

Free access to The Thesis Tutor

Many people find writing papers, reports, and theses difficult. From the 26 August 2006 users of the Dairy Science and Food Technology website have free access to  a simple tool (the Thesis Tutor) that may help authors structure their writing better.

Ideally the software should be used in conjunction with a tutor or research supervisor but it can be used as a self help tool.

The Thesis Tutor comprises two sections, a ‘whiteboard’ where you can list your ideas concerning the content of your report and a content planner arranged in table format.

This application took many months to develop and is still being ‘fine-tuned’. It will eventually be relocated to a dedicated thesis support site where users will have access to tutors. In the meantime users of the Dairy Science and Food Technology website are free to use this application. To restrict commercial use registration is required and will enable free use of the application for 30 days. After this time you will encounter a ‘nag screen’ at logon. 

Site updated on the 23rd August

The article on the science of modified atmosphere packaging has been updated to include additional information on non-dairy foods. I have also included some advice on how to cite this and other articles. Thanks to James Atherton for sharing a Javascript used on his Teaching and Learning site.

Finally after many months an article on the use of starter cell concentrates has been added. This material had been written quite a few years ago and I was disappointed to learn that facilities for innoculating bulk starter vessels with cell concentrate have not improved much. No wonder we still have phage problems.

Biotherapeutic properties of yeasts

A paper on the 'Biotherapeutic properties of probiotic yeast Saccharomyces species in fermented dairy foods' by Kalpana Dixit and D.N.Gandhi, Dairy Microbiology Division, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal-132001, INDIA has been added to the Dairy Science and Food Technology site.

Predicting grade of Cheddar cheese

The production of mature cheese is expensive and involves management of several risks. There is increasing interest in using models to predict grade or to reject those cheeses that are likely to develop faults on storage.

An article on the use of the Lawrence model to predict the grade value of Cheddar cheese has been added.

Interesting Cheese Blog

There are several very good cheese 'Blogs'.  Curdnerds.com is a cheese 'Blog' created by Jamie Forrest that has been mentioned in Time Out New York. Jamie's site deals with a wide range of topics related to cheese, all written in an informed, enthusiastic and interesting manner. Well worth a visit!

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