There is milk fat and then there is milk fat. Much of the fat we consume through dairy products is determined by what the cows eat; whether it is summer or winter, whether the cows graze or not, and whether the cows are pushed to the highest possible milk yield by feeding them extra fat in the form of palm oil. The image below illustrates the shifts in milk fat composition, and was created based …
Take home message Making good cheese is a skill Gouda cheese is made from (raw) milk, rennet and starter culture. The starter culture converts milk sugar into lactic acid (= fermentation), while the rennet causes certain proteins (casein proteins) to …
Take home message In the past, milk was obtained from the farmer in the village, warm, every day if necessary. For people living in cities, this became a problem at the end of the 19th century. The distance to the city …
A wolf on the Dutch region ‘the Treek’ and a child who has been bitten. Imagine it was your child. A chicken egg from your own garden, where your chickens are free to roam, and your PFAS intake rises to …
…however, rich in different genetic strains. Research into a tradtional starter culture for Gouda cheese, which was maintained through daily back-slopping, showed that only two bacterial species are present, namely Lactococcus lactis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides (Erkus et al., 2013). This …
Take home message What a cow wants? A cow is a mammal and a ruminant. This makes her special, along with other ruminants. Like us, the cow has a digestive system with a stomach and intestines, however she is also …
Take home message From a cow on pasture to an indoor animal What an animal will produce, depends on both nature and nurture, the interplay between genetics and environment. Cows have looked very different over the course of domestication. Roman …
The so-called ‘Blue Zones’ around the world (including Okinawa (Jp), Sicily (It), Costa Rica (Central America) are home to above-average numbers of older people. They are called Centenarians (over 100-year-olds). This is an intriguing phenomenon with the question, ‘what is …
Take home message Realising spreadable butter kept at low ambient temperature Butter competes with margarine and ‘spreads’ when it comes to spreadability. Butter is a natural product with different fatty acid composition in summer or winter. Margarine is made up …
Take home message Kefir grains (= kefir plant = SCOBY) can be found all over the world, but are there any differences? The dairy industry has discovered kefir in the past 10 years and you can buy kefir everywhere in …
