Lactic Acid Bacteria as Starter-Cultures for Cheese Processing: Past, Present and Future Developments
1. Introduction The identification of solutions to improve the life and health of consumers, providing safe and nutritious foods, is the major concern in Food Science. Toward that goal, preservation methods such as salting, drying, high/low temperature application, fermentation, and more recently, pulsed electric field, high pressure and radiation - alone or in combination – may be applied. The chosen method will depend on the type of raw materials, availability of the method, cost, effectiveness and degree of change it causes to the flavor and nutritional features of the food product. Fermentation, also called biopreservation, is a cheap, widely accessible method that meets today’s increasing consumer´s demand for minimally processed/preserved food products. Biopreservation with lactic acid bacteria (LAB) is indeed one of the oldest and highly efficient forms of non-thermal processing method. Cheese production is based on LAB ability to ferment sugars, especially glucose and galactose, so to produce lactic acid and aroma substances that give typical flavors and tastes to fermented products. LAB also release antimicrobial metabolites so called bacteriocins, which are considered safe and natural preservatives, with great potential to be used on their own, or synergistically with other methods in food preservation.
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