PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND RHEOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF COMMERCIAL DAIRY FERMENTED BEVERAGES

The Technical Regulation on Identity and Quality of Whey-based Drinks establish few parameters to dairy beverages, which may impair standardized product providing to the consumer. The ingathering of the physicochemical characteristics provides information that allow the standardization of the product and provide safety to the consumer, whereas the rheological characterization in important for the processing. Samples of five commercial brands of strawberry flavored dairy beverages, with ten to fourteen days of manufacture, from three different batches were analyzed in triplicate in order to study the percentage of protein, fat, pH, titratable acidity, total dry extract, fixed mineral residue and lactose. It was performed a colorimetric determination and verification of the presence of starch .The rheological tests were carried out in a rotational rheometer and the data was adjusted by Herschel-Bulkley’s model. The statistical analysis was executed by an analysis of variance and the Tukey’s test with 5% significance. The analysis showed that the percentages of lipids of three brands were below the required by legislation. Furthermore, the presence of starch in the composition was detected for all analyzed beverages. Both for the physicochemical and rheological parameters the brands of dairy beverage examined differed between themselves in several parameters. These results indicated the need to establish well-defined identity and quality standards aiming at product quality control and consumer safety improvement