Cholesterol oxidation in feta cheese produced from high-temperature bleached and from non-bleached butteroil from bovine milk

Abstract

SummaryDuring chill storage, cholesterol oxidation in feta cheese produced from bovine butteroil bleached at high temperature was compared with cholesterol oxidation in feta cheese produced from non-bleached butteroil. The bleaching was performed at two different temperatures, 265 and 280 °C, and the oil was bleached for 2·4, 3·8 or 4·3 min; a reference feta cheese was produced without bleaching. All cheeses were stored in brine at 4 °C, and cholesterol oxidation was measured during a storage period of 5 months. For the first 11 weeks of storage, the concentration of cholesterol oxides was comparable for the bleached feta cheeses, but on longer storage the concentration of oxysterols was highest in feta cheeses produced from the butteroil bleached at 280 °C. The bleaching temperature rather than the bleaching time affected cholesterol oxidation, which was minimal in the non-bleached reference cheese throughout the storage period compared with the bleached feta cheeses. 7-Ketocholesterol was found to be the dominant oxysterol in the feta cheeses at the end of the storage, comprising ∼ 50% of the total cholesterol oxides. In feta cheeses based on butteroil bleached at 265 °C, the concentration of 7-ketocholesterol ranged from 3·7 to 4·9 µg/g lipid at the end of the storage period, and in feta cheese based on butteroil bleached at 280 °C the concentration was 10·4–13·1 µg/g lipid. In the reference feta cheese the concentration of 7-ketocholesterol was 1·2 /µg/g lipid. There was no difference in yellowness, measured by tristimulus colorimetry as the Hunter b characteristic, of the feta cheeses bleached at 265 and 280 °C, and a small scale bleaching experiment with butteroil showed that it was possible to secure complete bleaching at temperatures down to 220 °C. We suggest that bleaching of butteroil for feta production should be performed at temperatures as low as possible in order to prevent cholesterol oxidation.