Technical note: Vitamin D-fortified Cheddar type cheese produced from concentrated milk

The technological challenge related to cheese fortification with vitamin D is the loss of a large proportion of vitamin D during the wheying-off step. The use of ultrafiltration (UF) to concentrate the milk before vitamin D enrichment and cheese manufacturing could be a way to reduce the volume of whey and consequently the vitamin D losses in cheese whey. Control (1.0×) and concentrated milks (1.4× and 1.8×) were fortified with vitamin D at a concentration of 450 IU per gram of milk. The 1.8× cheese milk concentration reduced slightly the vitamin D loss during the draining step (19.8%) compared with the control cheese (25.5%) and vitamin D remained stable during Cheddar cheese processing and ripening.