Effect of Providing Marketing Information about the Nutritional Composition of Milk and Rearing System of Cows on the Overall Liking of Cheese

Abstract

The taste preference for cheese is primarily dependent on an individual’s habitual experience, such as personal memories since childhood. Cheese is not a traditional food in Korea, and therefore, the liking of cheese is acquired mainly through the exposure to European natural cheese by frequent travels rather than habitual experience. Although Korean dairy farms started the production of European style natural cheese because of surplus milk undulation, yet its demand has been consistently increasing in the last decade. Most of the mountain cheese variety in Europe are produced during the summer season on mountain pastures, especially in countries surrounded by the Alps. Nevertheless, not only consumers but also mountain cheese producers cannot comprehensively explain the differences in the nutritional properties of the milk from cows that grazed on mountain pasture and cows that were raised indoors. As the demand for cheese consumption is steadily increasing in Korea, it is necessary to study the effects of providing marketing information regarding the health conditions and rearing system of dairy cows in relation to the nutritional composition of cheese. In addition to the marketing focus on health-promoting unsaturated fatty acid composition of milk and cheese, the relationship between providing the marketing information on the raising environments of cows and the overall liking of mountain cheese were also investigated.