Some may say that there is no way to make cheese even more of a perfect snack but Jason Pronschinske, a Masters student at UW-Madison is working on just that. While cheese is a delicious and nutrient dense snack, increasing shelf stable cheese snack options is an area of growth potential and that’s the driver behind Jason’s research.
Jason grew up in Alma, Wisconsin and while he knew he wanted to go to UW Madison, he didn’t know what his future path was going to be. After 2 years on campus he chose biochemistry as his major and after graduation he started working full time at the Center For Dairy Research. Jason says that working around the grad students there eventually rubbed off on him and he applied for grad school.
Today Jason is part of Dr. Lucey’s lab at the CDR. His master’s research started out with a focus on using extrusion to make shelf stable cheese snacks. But difficulty getting the needed equipment into the lab resulted in a shift in the concept from extrusion to other methods including microwaves and food aeration. The end result is the ability to take a pasteurized processed cheese and create a shelf stable product.
So far the research process has created some failures and some successes. The current iteration of Jason’s product has reached the next step of the research process and that’s sensory panels where people taste test what Jason has created and give their feedback. While the specific product that Jason develops in his research won’t be hitting the store shelves, the research he is doing will create the base for companies to create their own products in the shelf stable dairy space.
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