Article Archive - November 30, 2007

Companies work to improve, expand reduced-fat cheeses

Editor’s note: Each month CMN profiles a different cheese, giving our readers a comprehensive look at production, marketing and sales, as well as any other details we can unearth. Please read on to learn about this month’s featured cheese: reduced-fat varieties.

By Rena Archwamety

MADISON, Wis. — The reduced-fat wave that hit grocery store shelves in the early 1990s in response to a new era of health-conscious consumers featured new lowfat alternatives consumers described as tasting like cardboard, plastic or worse. Among those foods were the first generation of reduced-fat cheese or cheese-like products.

“With the introduction of SnackWells and other products, there was a big push for fat-free or reduced-fat cheeses,” says Jed Davis, director of marketing, Cabot Creamery Cooperative, Cabot, Vt. “A lot of those efforts fell on their faces.”

In the rush to lower the fat content, many cheese producers also sacrificed the flavor profiles that consumers had come to expect.

“The good news was they took out all the fat, but you also have to respect ... that fat equals flavor,” Davis says. “A decade ago you had a lot of reduced-fat cheeses that did a disservice to reduced-fat dairy products.”

Cheesemakers eventually rebounded from those initial failures and have begun to offer more appealing alternatives to full-fat cheeses.

“In the last decade, cheesemakers have been doing a much better job,” Davis says. “Reduced-fat cheese delivers on the qualities customers expect in flavor, texture and mouthfeel.”

In addition to the taste and texture, reduced-fat cheese also must resemble the original varieties in ingredients and nutrition, says Barbara Gannon, vice president of corporate and marketing communications, Sargento Foods Inc., Plymouth, Wis.

“What we’ve definitely noticed is that consumers are rejecting imitation cheese,” Gannon says. “When people look at the ingredient list, they are used to seeing four or five ingredients. When they go to imitation cheese, it has a very long ingredient list with items they don’t recognize. It looks like a processed food, not a natural cheese. It’s only offering lowfat, but not a lot of taste, protein, calcium or other nutrition.”

To reduce the fat but retain most of the same taste and texture, Gannon says many cheesemakers use the same types of cultures between reduced-fat and full-fat cheeses to deliver a similar flavor profile. They also use skim or reduced-fat milk, which retains the nutritional benefits of the cheese while reducing the fat content.

One of Sargento’s best-selling reduced-fat products, the 4 Cheese Mexican shredded cheese blend, for example, uses 2 percent milk and contains 33 percent less fat and 25 percent fewer calories than Sargento’s regular Mexican blend. The nutritional benefits, however, are comparable between the two, with the reduced-fat cheese even boasting slightly more protein and calcium than the full-fat variety.

“Definitely in the last 10 years we’ve seen big improvements in that whole subcategory,” Gannon says.

And while the percentage of cheese that’s reduced-fat has remained fairly steady with slight increases over the past five years, Gannon says increased total cheese consumption is fueling double-digit annual growth rates of the reduced-fat cheese segment.

While natural and processed fat-free cheese sales have dropped nationally since 2001, natural light and reduced-fat cheese sales have surged over the last few years, according to 2007 IRI scanner data provided by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Natural light and reduced-fat cheese sales growth in the United States increased 16.5 percent from 2004 to 2005 and 17.2 percent from 2005 to 2006. The subcategory has increased 8.3 percent from 2001 to 2006.

Since it first became big in the early 1990s, the demand for reduced-fat cheese has followed a cyclical pattern, Davis observes.

“Reduced-fat cheese first came out of everything being fat-free early on. Then there was a huge swing back in the other direction that helped triple cremes, but was not a boost for reduced-fat cheese,” Davis says. “As we turned into the millennium and with baby boomers retiring, we’re starting to see a little bit more focus on doctors’ instructions, and also a general focus with things from childhood obesity to healthy living permeating the media. It’s making people reconsider their choices.”

Luckily, consumers now have more choices than ever when it comes to lowfat and reduced-fat cheeses.

The degree to which the fat is reduced is one area where cheesemakers have started to provide more options. Cabot Creamery offers 50 percent or 75 percent reduced-fat varieties of its Cheddars.

“The industry is offering a choice in the spectrum of fat content,” Davis says. “Some have no fat, some have up to 75 percent reduced fat. There are a number of 50 percent reduced-fat cheeses, some in the 33 percent reduced-fat category. There is more segmentation.”

Joby Rumiano, an associate at Rumiano Cheese, Crescent City, Calif., says the family-run company that specializes in foodservice distribution will manufacture different reduced-fat percentages according to the customer’s needs.

“The good part for us is we’re small enough to cater to the customer’s needs,” Rumiano says. “We do different versions depending on what the customer is looking for — 25 percent, 33 percent or 50 percent reduced. Twenty-five percent is most popular, in particular the Cheddar.”

Rumiano says he has seen the demand for reduced-fat cheese increase significantly, and this fourth quarter has by far been the strongest for the company’s reduced-fat cheeses.

He also has seen an increase in demand for less traditional varieties of reduced-fat cheeses.

“I definitely see it going more toward some specialty varieties in the future,” Rumiano says. “Right now it’s been mainly commodity-style cheeses, but we’ve had some demand in other varieties like Asadero and Queso Quesadilla. We haven’t made as much of it as lowfat Cheddar and Jack, but I can see more interest in the specialty varieties.”

The reduced-fat market is dominated primarily by larger cheese manufacturers and distributors that need a product to meet consumer demand. Reduced-fat artisanal cheeses are not as common, though some specialty cheesemakers have managed to find a niche for these varieties.

Alain Foster, president and co-owner of Coach Farm Inc., Pine Plains, N.Y., which specializes in goat’s milk products, offers a reduced-fat stick of goat cheese with half the fat of the regular version, and recently introduced reduced-fat spreads in natural and flavored varieties.

The reduced-fat stick, which the company has sold for five or six years, meets customer demand for a lowfat cheese as well as the creamery’s need to use up extra product.

“The reason we make this cheese is that we have the opposite, a triple creme. We get lowfat milk as a byproduct, so we make the reduced-fat cheese,” Foster says.

“To me, as a producer, it was a good way for us to utilize products from some other products,” he adds. “Also, the consistency of the product is very close to regular goat cheese.”

Foster says that while customers tend to notice a difference in lowfat varieties of other cheeses like Swiss and Jarlsburg, which can have a more chewy texture in its lower-fat forms, the crumbly properties of goat cheese makes the reduced-fat variety more similar to the original in taste and mouthfeel.

“People love goat cheese, but if they can find a kind with lower fat that tastes almost as good as the regular version, that’s better,” Foster says.

Some cheeses like Farmers or Mozzarella are naturally low in fat, but across the board, the key to a successful reduced-fat cheese is to make it taste as close to the original version as possible.

“Consumers might buy a reduced-fat product once because they want fewer calories, but they won’t buy it again if it doesn’t taste good,” Gannon says.

Davis says consumers have the same expectations of reduced-fat cheese as they do of traditional full-fat cheese.

“It’s sort of that holy grail of can you come up with a cheese that flavor-wise is unidentifiable from full-fat cheese,” Davis says. “Some consumers feel some cheeses are already there.”

CMN

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