Chemical and Technological Characterization of Dairy Products

The dairy sector is facing a decisive challenge in developed countries, which could deeply influence its future and its historical status of being a pillar for human nutrition. The most challenging issue is to give suitable answers to the demand for nutritionally balanced and environmentally sustainable products, the two main aspects of the new “food paradigm” that increasingly sees foods as drugs (specifically renamed as “nutraceuticals”) and imposes a stringent eco-friendly approach in their production (“green foods”) [1,2]. In this context, all animal products are often met with hostility that is not always justified under the scientific point of view, particularly when it results in imposing their complete elimination [3,4]. As expected, this challenge has soon been met by researchers in dairy and food sciences, who are giving suitable scientific answers and are driving dairy farms and industries to develop new products and processes that can better satisfy the new requirements. In this context, the Special Issue “Chemical and Technological Characterization of Dairy Products” has collected 13 articles (12 original researches and one review) that give an interesting contribution to the field. The articles can be grouped into three categories: the first one concerns product innovation and includes eight papers reporting technological and compositional details on innovative dairy products developed in line with the nutritional and/or environmental requirements mentioned above; the second one has an interdisciplinary approach (animal husbandry-food technology) and is made of three studies aimed to deepen the influence of the cattle rearing conditions on cheese quality; the third one contains two papers dealing with different aspects of dairy science.