Innovation or Tradition? Contribution of Novel Technologies to the Quality and Safety of Consolidated Dairy Products

Europe and particularly its Mediterranean regions have a long and rich dairy heritage. At the same time, the dairy industry is nowadays an incubator of innovations particularly regarding fresh cheeses, yoghurts and milk desserts. However, the traditional dairy products are anchored to rigid protocols that limit the introduction of technological innovations. More than ten years of experimental evidences showed the great potentialities of a novel technology - the high pressure homogenization (HPH) within 80 and 180 MPa - in the generation of product innovations and improvement of the quality and safety also of traditional dairy products. The HPH pre-treatment of the starter cultures used to produce cheeses or probiotic fermented milks is one of the most promising applications of this technique. The stress-induced activation of specific metabolic activities in some Lactobacillus species starter cultures resulted in relevant changes in fermentation dynamics and final products having different texture and richer flavour patterns. Moreover, a precocious release of intracellular and cell wall located proteolytic enzymes accelerated casein breakdown during the subsequent cheese-making phases. The HPH treatment of milk before starter inoculum strongly reduced spoilage and pathogenic species viability also due to an enhancement of the activity of naturally occurring enzymes such as lactoperoxidase and lysozyme, suggesting the use of this cold technique as an alternative to heat treatment also for traditional products. In particular, long ripened cheeses from HPH-treated milk were characterized by a relevant reduction of the accumulation of biogenic amines. Moreover, dairy products obtained from HPH-treated milk were characterized by an accelerated ripening, with a faster lipolysis and proteolysis resulting in a higher production of volatile molecules that improved the scores attributed to the products during sensorial evaluation. The ability of HPH to induce conformational changes of milk proteins results in texture and microstructure changes of dairy products with respect to those from heat treated milk and can be regarded as a useful tool to differentiate probiotic fermented milks and expand the range of innovative products able to satisfy the heterogeneous consumer demand