Assessment of the Content of Dietary Trans Fatty Acids and Biologically Active Substances in Cow's Milk and Curd

Abstract

The present study aims to establish the content of natural trans fatty acids (TFA), biologically active and anticancerogenic components in cow's milk, obtained from the Bulgarian Rhodope Cattle breed and the curd produced by it during the lactation, and to evaluate the fatty acid composition of milk fat as a healthy source of human nutrition. The insurance of livestock with nutritional resource rich of linoleic and alpha linolenic acid on pasture grass rearing cows leads to an increase the quality in the fat fraction of milk in terms of biologically active fatty acids- omega-3, omega-6, CLA, trans and cis-fatty acids and decreases the amount of saturated fatty acids. The production of curd does not lead to substantial changes in the fatty acid composition resulting from well-conducted and respected technological processing. The assessment of the lipid preventive score, atherogenic and thrombogenic index in the milk and the curds produced by it give us an idea of the usefulness of the given product- high lipid preventive score and atherogenic index (over 1.0) and low cholesterolemic index (less than 1.0). The studied cow’s milk are characterized by product as low content of trans fatty acids (from 0.11 to 0.21 g / 100 ml product) and high amount of saturated fatty acids, the results obtained of curd are similarly- product with low content of trans fatty acids (0.34 to 1.09 g/100g product) and a high amount of saturated fatty acid content (from 12.63 to 19.96 g/100g product).