Calcium fortified dairy products

Abstract

Nutritionally improved cultured dairy products such as yogurt products include a fine powdered calcium phosphate salt of reduced particle size having a mean diameter ≦6 μm in amounts sufficient to provide a total calcium content of 0.25% to 0.75%. A method for producing the calcium fortified yogurt is also provided wherein an fine powdered insoluble calcium salt is admixed with a milk blend prior to fermentation. The yogurt is prepared by conventional fermentation. Both stirred style and cup set style yogurt products can be prepared.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates to food products, especially refrigerated fermented dairy products such as yogurt that are calcium fortified and to their methods of manufacture, and more specifically to yogurt fortified with calcium. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention provides improvements to those calcium fortified yogurt products and methods of preparation that are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,820,903 entitled “Calcium Fortified Yogurt and Methods of Preparation” (issued Oct. 13, 1998 to Fluery et al.) and which is incorporated herein by reference. The '903 patent describes the post fermentation addition of a calcium phosphate having a particle size of less than 150 microns to produce a calcium fortified stirred style yogurt. In important part, the present improvement resides in selecting and adding a more fine powder form of calcium phosphate having a particle size of less than six microns to a milk base prior to fermentation. By utilizi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

"The present invention is about methods for making fermented dairy products with added calcium that are visually undetectable and have good taste. The method involves adding calcium phosphate powder to warm milk, inoculating it with a starter culture, and fermenting it to make yogurt. The resulting yogurt has a high calcium content and is viscous. The invention also includes high moisture food products like milk-based foods or dairy products that have a calcium phosphate salt added to them to increase their calcium content. The calcium salt can be tricalcium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, or their hydrates. The fine calcium phosphate powder used in the process has a mean diameter of 6 microns or less."

Problems solved by technology

This problem is even more severe for yogurt products containing up to about 20% fruit sauce since such fruit materials are low in native calcium content.

Serious practical difficulties have been encountered in incorporating supplemental calcium into dairy products because most calcium salts have very low solubility in milk.

Added calcium salts, being generally insoluble and not suspended by casein, therefore tend to settle out, frustrating attempts to maintain uniform dispersions during manufacture.

This problem of suspending insoluble calcium salts is compounded by the fact that generally the yogurt base should not be agitated during the incubation period, i.e., the yogurt should be quiescently fermented.

Thus, in the manufacture of yogurt using vat incubation, the required lack of agitation during incubation can cause a substantial portion of an insoluble calcium salt to settle to the bottom of the vat.

In light of these cleaning difficulties, this process is not only impractical using conventional yogurt manufacturing equipment, but also is likely to adversely affect the texture of the product.

Settling can result in a product unacceptable to the consumer.

Usage of such required chelating, however, can adversely affect the flavor of the product.

More importantly, however, the cost of the calcium source is prohibitive for a commercially practical product.

While useful, such formulations require addition of expensive special ingredients or extensive processing to form the materials in situ.

While useful, not all yogurt flavors popular today contain fruit.

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