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Review
. 2020 Nov 8;9(11):1629.
doi: 10.3390/foods9111629.

What Is the Color of Milk and Dairy Products and How Is It Measured?

Bojana Milovanovic  1 , Ilija Djekic  1 , Jelena Miocinovic  1 , Vesna Djordjevic  2 , Jose M Lorenzo  3 , Francisco J Barba  4 , Daniel Mörlein  5 , Igor Tomasevic  1
Affiliations
Review

What Is the Color of Milk and Dairy Products and How Is It Measured?

Bojana Milovanovic et al. Foods. .

Abstract

Exactly six-hundred (600) scientific articles that report milk and milk products' color results in scientific journals in the last couple of decades were reviewed. Thereof, the greatest part of the articles derived from Europe (36.3%) and Asia (29.5%). The greatest share of researchers used Minolta colorimeters (58.8%), while 26.3% of them used Hunter devices. Most reports were on cheese (31.0%) followed by fermented products (21.2%). Moreover, the highest number of papers reported color data of milk and milk products made from cow's milk (44.81%). As expected, goat's cheese was the brightest (L* = 87.1), while cow's cheese was the yellowest (b* = 17.4). Most importantly, it appeared that color research results reported were often impossible to replicate or to interpret properly because of incomplete description of the methodology. In some of the manuscripts reviewed, illuminant source (61.0%), aperture size (93.8%), observer angle, and number of readings (over 70% of all cases) were not reported. It is therefore critical to set rules regarding the description of the methodology for (milk) color research articles in order to ensure replicability and/or comparison of studies.

Keywords: aperture; colorimeter; computer vision system; illuminant; milk color measurement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Search strategy and article selection process according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines [14].
Figure 2
Figure 2
Interaction of countries with type of device for milk color assessment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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