RECOVERY AND COMPOSITION OF SWISS CHEESE WHEY LIPID-CONTAINING FRACTIONS

Cheese whey contains 0.1-0.2% residual lipids. The present study was c onducted to develop a high-speed centrifugation procedure for fraction ating and recovering residual whey lipids (RWL) from commercial Swiss cheese whey (SCW) and to determine the yields and compositions of the resulting fractions. Three RWL fractions were obtained: (1) a low-dens ity lipid-containing fraction (LDLF) at the top of the centrifuge tube s; (2) a medium-density lipid-containing fraction (MBLF) in the clear, middle zone; and (3) a high-density lipid-containing fraction (HDLF) in the small, compact, and gelatinous pellet at the bottom of the cent rifuge tubes. LDLF, MDLF, and HBLF contained about 95, 5, and 0.13% of the total SCW lipids, respectively. Palmitic acid was the major fatty acid, and oleic, stearic and myristic acids were present in lower con centrations. The major phospholipid components of all three SCW lipid fractions were phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, and sphi ngomyelin.