DEVELOPING SOFT CHEESE INDUSTRY SUPPORTED WITH MEDICINAL HERBS AS FUNCTIONAL FOOD

Abstract

Herbs and spices have long been used to support various food products, including dairy products because of their flavoring, taste, texture and general appearance as well as therapeutic properties such as antioxidant activities, infections, microbes, anti-diabetes and hypertension. Therefore, this study aimed to demonstrate the effect of adding ginger, cinnamon, lycopene extract and olive oil on the physiochemical properties, the quality of the soft cheese produced and the extent of its acceptance by the Iraqi consumer, who prefers this product in abundance to other types of cheese. So, this study was prepared with ten liters of fresh cow's milk used in the manufacture of soft cheese by the dairy factory/ Abu Ghraib/ Baghdad. Standard soft cheese was processed by filtering raw milk first, heating, cooling, adding rennet, incubating, cutting, drainage the whey, salting and supplementing with different addition. Five treatments of soft cheese were made by regular method and supplemented as follows: The control treatment is to make white soft cheese without adding anything other than the basic ingredients for making soft cheese. While adding 2.5% of each of the ginger, cinnamon, lycopene and olive oil for each of the second, third, fourth and fifth treatment, to the curd of milk and supplement its manufacture from squeezing and preserving it until the necessary analyzes were done. The results of the study showed a clear and significant variance (P<0.05) of the percentage of fats, total solids, ash contents and calibrated acidity as the storage period of the soft cheese product increased to 21 days. The results of the statistical analysis also showed that ginger, cinnamon, lycopene and olive oil with certain concentrations had a positive effect (p<0.05) on the physiochemical composition of cheese and on all sensory properties. It was founded that supported cheese with cinnamon had the highest concentration in phenol contents follow: cinnamon cheese> lycopene cheese> olive oil> ginger cheese> control cheese which was 643, 564, 497, 424 and 213 mg\ kg respectively. Also, It was found that lycopene cheese appeared highest scavenging activity for free radical produced from DPPH followed by Lycopene cheese, Olive oil cheese, Ginger cheese and Cinnamon cheese were 96, 94, 91 and 88% respectively. Consequently, the study concluded the importance of producing milk products fortified with medicinal plants and spices and their availability to many consumers who want to consume these fortified products to improve and preserve their health.