Speaker
Description
Small-angle scattering (SAS) is an ideal tool for non-destructive nanostructure analysis. However, due to the overlapping structural information from many different phases, we often prefer to measure model case suppressing the number of constituent phases. In the case of dairy food products, they include fat globule, casein micelles and colloidal calcium phosphate (CCP). And for simplifying system, skimmed milk without fat is often used for SAS studies. However, for studying cheese, all of those constituent phases are important to form cheese shape. Another important factor is the producing process which must affect to the nanostructure. Therefore, well controlling process is required for taking out the key structure from real cheese. Based on these conditions, we make a team with scattering and dairy science and study “Real” Gouda cheese by using laboratory scale small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) which can trace long term change by both in-situ and ex-situ way. The results show the aggregation of CCP during the first week after production. Aggregation of casein micelles were also studied by laboratory USAXS together with texture. Based on the obtained structure-texture relationship, we are proceeding to control texture of cheese which will be presented also in this talk.