We go to the store, and there the shelves are full of cheeses. White, yellow, melted, with and without holes, by weight and in convenient packaging. They are with herbs, garlic, paprika, even with salmon or ham … But be careful! Experts alarm that many of these products only pretend to be cheese. What should you consider when choosing a good cheese, not a fake one?
Not every product that looks like cheese is cheese
To produce 1 kg of white cheese, you need 2-4 l of milk, and yellow - as much as 10-12 l. However, nowadays, in the pursuit of profit, producers partially replace milk with cheaper fillers, add cheese improvers, dyes, preservatives.
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As a result, something that is supposed to be cheese smells like oil, breaks, crumbles, sticks to the knife. White cheeses are sour, they are dripping water, yellow cheeses have a rubbery texture and an even bland taste. Such pseudo-cheeses look like cheese, have packaging typical for cheeses and lie on the shelf next to them, so it's easy to get confused.
Cheese or cheese-like product?
The name "cheese" is protected. The European Union allows its use only in relation to 100% products. from milk. Any food that contains vegetable fat or other milk substitutes should not be called cheese.
The use of the term "dietary cheese" in relation to a product to which oil has been added is also illegal. A product that is not cheese should be clearly marked ascheese-likeso that there is no doubt whether you are buying cheese or a counterfeit.
Meanwhile, the producers are trying to get around the regulations. They describe their products as "processed cubes", "cheese slices".
They use a name that is associated with yellow cheeses: gouda, edam, sea (without the word "cheese") or complete the name with information typical for cheeses, eg "yellow rennet ripening", omitting the word "cheese". A common marketing ploy is to use the term 'gouda type' cheese. But it's not the same as Gouda cheese.
How to make cheese? Good milk is enough
Cottage cheese is made from heated curdled milk, draining the whey. On an industrial scale, white cheeses are made from pasteurized cow, goat or goat milksheep, acidified with lactic acid bacteria, whey and cream.
Acid cheeses, called quark or white cheeses, differ in shape (cubes, wedges) and fat content (cream, full-fat, high-fat, half-fat, lean). Depending on the production process, we have granular and homogenized cheeses, and cottage cheese.
Good yellow cheeses are made of fresh milk. After the whey is extracted and renneted, i.e. with a digestive enzyme from the pancreas of young calves (synthetic rennet is used in industrial production), the curd is matured. Anaerobic fermentation is caused by bacterial strains, and aerobic fermentation by molds.
After shaping into blocks, the cheeses are stored in constant temperature and humidity for several days to several years. Maturing cheeses can be divided into different types - Swiss cheeses with holes and Dutch cheeses without holes, hard and soft with mold growth (brie, camembert) and with its overgrowth (roquefort), fatty and semi-fat.
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Additional ingredients in cheeses
Most cheeses are produced today using modern methods, quickly, without traditional recipes and important production stages.
Many cheeses contain a variety of thickeners: milk proteins, whey, powdered milk, modified corn starch and soybean starch, the effects of which on the body are not yet fully understood, so be careful.
Some cheeses contain over 90 percent. vegetable fat. Emulsifiers are used in cheeses to give the products a uniform, smooth structure.
Excess E 450 can damage the kidneys and disrupt calcium absorption, E 452 and E 339 are safe, but chemical additives accumulate in the body and you never know how they will work over the years.
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Acidity regulators, enhancing taste and aroma: E 330 (citric acid), E 331 (sodium citrates), harmless in small doses, in people hypersensitive to monosodium glutamate may cause allergy symptoms and impair the absorption of certain drugs by changing them action.
E 575 (formed during the oxidation of glucose) may come from genetically modified plants and cause diarrhea.
The cheeses are also supplemented with preservatives that preserve the color and extend the freshness of the curd cheeses for up to several months. For example, E 252 (potassium nitrate), E 251 (sodium nitrate), E 1105 (lysozyme) may cause allergies and are not recommended for children.
Cheesehomogenized and melted fluff with nitrogen. Many chemicals are in the flavored cheeses: dyes, aromas, preservatives.
Cheese desserts for children should arouse suspicion. They contain a lot of chemicals, sugar, frosted peas, caramel. Often, sucrose is replaced with glucose-fructose syrup, which causes more metabolic disturbances than regular sugar.
Cheeses with aspartame (E 951) are not recommended for children and pregnant (it can cause diarrhea and headaches).
Tips for buying good cheese
When buying cheese, start by studying the label. Pay attention to the name, make sure that the word "cheese" appears in it at all. Check the composition of the product. Choose cheeses that are low in ingredients. Ideally there should be only milk, rennet, lactic acid bacteria and s alt.
The long list proves that the cheese is far from natural. If you are buying cheese by weight, ask the seller about the ingredients - he is obliged to provide you with a collective packaging label. Particular attention must be paid to the quality of the skim yellow cheeses.
Vegetable fat is added to most of them, which completely changes the taste and structure of the cheese. Choose products with the ellipse mark with the 8-digit identification number of the dairy, PL and EC mark - it proves that the product comes from a dairy subject to control by the Veterinary Inspection.
Check the use-by date on the packaging - suspiciously long means that the cheese is full of preservatives. Curd cheeses are characterized by their instability, regardless of whether they are hermetically packed or not.
Unpackaged white cheese stays fresh for 2 days, cottage cheese and homogenized cheese - for a day. Good quality white cheese is medium pressed, smooth after slicing, slightly sour.
The cheese should not crumble, and cut into slices - stick together. An indicator of good cheeses is the appearance and location of the holes. In hard cheeses they are oval or oblong, arranged regularly and not too densely.
Only single meshes are allowed in soft cheeses. The best yellow cheeses are produced in the form of wax-coated cylinders, not blocks wrapped in foil.
The color of the cheese depends on the variety - bright yellow indicates the addition of dyes. It is better to buy cheeses by weight, because the cut ones, sold in open-close packages, usually contain more preservatives and they dry faster. The cheese must cost at least PLN 20-25 / kg.
Good processed cheeses are melted yellow hard and soft cheeses with the addition of other dairy products. There are many fakes on sale - they have little milk, a lot of water (on the listingredients often in the first place), fillers, preservatives, dyes and thickeners.
Calorific value of cheeses
Blue, yellow and processed cheeses are more caloric than white (lean white - 99 kcal, fat - 175 kcal, melted - 300 kcal, gouda - 316 kcal, camembert - 290 kcal in 100 g).
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