Cheese powder is technically finely chopped cheese without water. Most of our cheese powders consist of 95% cheese and up to 5% melting salt. We also have a range of Clean Label Cheese Powders, where the products are produced without emulsifying salt and therefore, they consist of 100% cheese.

However, it is not always only the ingredients in the product that determine if something is natural, but also the manufacturing process. There is no EU legislation within this area, so whether cheese powder can be declared as a natural ingredient or not depends on the specific requirements in the country where the end product is launched.

All powders which have lower water content than the surrounding air, will absorb water. Cheese powder is, however, not as critic as other powders (like sugar, salt ect.). If your product is highly water soluble, your product will also be highly hygroscopic. 

Usually, emulsifying salt is added, which will help the cheese melt and emulsify before dried into a powder. Most of Lactosan Cheese Powders will contain approx. 95% cheese and up to 5% emulsifying salt. Lactosan has also products with less cheese content, but with minimum 50% cheese. These products have added dairy ingredients, salt, flavouring, colour, etc.

We also have a line of Clean Label Cheese Powders without emulsifying salts. The products have been developed in close co-operation with KU Food (The University of Copenhagen) in order to meet the growing demand for Clean Label Foods with no additives (E-numbers).

A lot of Lactosan cheese powders have Halal status. We have a wide range of HALAL/vegetarian Cheese Powders.

Cheese powder is a decent emulsifyer due to the content of free fatty acids, proteins and peptides. However, it cannot fully replace emulsifyers in certain products like mayonnaise.      

No, cheese powder is made from cheese and you cannot reverse the process. Cheese powder is used in various processed cheeses and imitation cheeses to give a natural, authentic cheese taste. 

As a starting point, it is easy to use Lactosan Cheese Powders in various applications as our cheese powders are relatively easily soluble, easy to dose and is included in the natural food matrix.

No. Lactosan buy cheeses from all parts of the world but do not produce cheese ourselves. We buy cheeses primarily from the EU, but also New Zealand and Australia. We use more than 200 different cheeses with different maturation degrees  in our production. It would not be physically possible to produce such a large variety of cheeses. In addition, many cheeses cannot be produced in Denmark (Parmesan, Feta, Gorgonzola etc.). Maturation in temperature-controlled warehouse is an important part of the quality assurance.

Most of Lactosan Cheese Powders have 18 months of shelf life when stored below 25° C. Storage above the recommended storage temperature may affect the shelf life of the powder and cause Maillard reaction (browning).

It takes approx. 2 kg cheese, depending on dry matter in the specific cheese. Soft cheeses have a higher content of water than hard cheeses. 

As a rule, 10 l of milk will be used to produce 1 kg of cheese. Dry matter of the cheese varies from type to type but it is about 50% in general. 

At Lactosan, we remove the water from the cheese in the process of making it into a powder, which means we use about 2 kg cheese to produce 1 kg of cheese powder, or 20 l of milk to produce 1 kg of cheese powder.  

It depends on cheese type and dry matter. From a tasting point of view the conversion is often less than the calculation will tell you as Lactosan primarily uses cheeses with a high maturation degree.  

Legislation is often a national issue, and it can be different from country to country. The most general term used on the ingredient list is Cheese Powder. Additionally, the addition of cheese powder also allows to declare "Made with real cheese" and to declare specific cheeses, such as Cheddar, Emmental, Gouda, etc.).

In some countries one can also "calculate backwards" and declare the original amount of cheese before spray drying, so if 10% of cheese powder is added, and the cheese mix used for this powder had a dry matter of 50%, it is possible to declare "made with 20% cheese" and not just the 10% cheese powder added.

Our Clean Label products without emulsifying salt can be declared as dried cheese.

A new study at the University of Copenhagen published in the July 2015 issue of The Journal of Nutrition, shows that matured Cheese is healthier than young Cheese. 

This is good news to all lovers of well-matured cheeses. It seems that a 24-month-ripened Cheddar is significantly healthier than a young Cheddar. And there is a good reason to believe that this also goes for other cheese types. During the study, 36 pigs were fed a diet rich in cheese with 4-month-ripened Cheddar, 14-month-ripened Cheddar or 24-month-ripened Cheddar to investigate how it affected their bodies. The pigs had a diet composed of an ordinary Danish diet apart from all fat deriving from cheese. 

Cheddar was chosen because it is one of the most popular cheeses in the world. The differences were telling. The pigs eating long-matured cheese had 30% lower insulin level in their blood. Insulin contributes to blood sugar regulation. Too high levels of blood sugar may cause the development of metabolic syndrome and later type 2 diabetes. The pigs had also a 34% lower level of free fatty acids in their blood. A high level of free fatty acids is stated at overweight and type 2 diabetes. 

The next step is to examine whether the intake of long-matured cheese has the same effect on human beings. The cheese researchers at the University of Copenhagen take an interest in the degree of ripeness because this is one of the hypotheses for why cheese in a number of tests has shown not to have the negative effects which you traditionally expect from saturated fat – eg bad cholesterol counts. Cheese – and yogurt too – differs from butter, inter alia, by being fermented ie partly decomposed and consequently changed bacterial cultures. Old cheese is more degraded than young cheese. Therefore, researchers would like to examine whether the degree of ripeness has an influence on the body.

The bacteria of Cheddar decompose especially the cheese proteins. In other cheeses, eg Camembert, the bacterial cultures decompose the milk fat. In this respect, a previous French study carried out on mice showed that matured Camembert has a better effect on the body than young Camembert. The positive effects were however other than described with regard to Cheddar, eg less fat in the liver than after the intake of young Camembert. This indicates that there may be distinct differences whether a given cheese is healthier than another cheese and in which way.

(Source: Website news of Politiken (Danish newspaper) dated 23.05.2015) 

There is an increasing desire for less additives and a lower sodium level. The trend for cleaner declarations is increasing. By removing melting salt from our Cheese Powder, only cheese is left in our product, thus providing a cleaner declaration. Our Clean label products without emulsifying salt can be declared as "Dried Cheese".

Cheese powder can be used in numerous products, mainly to contribute to taste, but also mouthfeel and texture. Cheese Powder is used in the food industry instead of using cheese since cheese powder is much more convenient to handle, dose and store than traditional cheese.

You get the same real authentic cheese taste from cheeses in cheese powder. It is possible to claim "made with real cheese" and to claim specific cheese types.

All in all, you will get all the positive aspects of the cheese, and none of the negative.  

No carrier is used for the production of Lactosan Cheese Powders. Only melting salts are added for better emulsification before spray drying. That is the reason for the high content of protein and fat as well as low content of carbohydrates and starch in Lactosan Cheese Powders. 

We also produce a range of speciality cheese powders made without emulsifying salt - our range of Clean Label Cheese Powders.

Cheese powder is technically finely divided cheese without water. There is no exact definition of what a Cheese powder must/should contain. There are a lot of different cheese powders on the market, and the cheese content of these varies from 0.5% - 100%.

At Lactosan we are focusing on producing pure cheese powders with 90-100% cheese content. A good indicator of how pure a cheese powder is can be seen from the fat and protein content: the higher fat and protein, the higher cheese content.  

If we cannot buy cheese with the desired maturation degree, we buy cheeses with lower maturation degree and continue the maturation in our stock until the cheese is ready for processing. Alternatively, cheeses with higher maturation degrees are mixed with cheeses that have a slightly lower maturation degree than expected.

Lactosan NCB^® is the abbreviation for Lactosan NCB - Natural Culinary Booster^® - a range of cheese powders constructed as low-dose flavor enhancers. They are natural flavor enhancers for a wide range of products that do not necessarily taste of or contain cheese.

In view of the microbiological quality, this heating step is important. Some customers want the products to be UHT treated before drying, but this is more an exception to the rule as the high heat treatment temperature affects the taste profile negatively.