The Healthiness of Commercial Butter in Malaysia: Evaluation of the Physicochemical and Microbial Quality

Abstract

Food safety includes all health aspects of the food, especially microbiological quality. Butter, particularly commercial butter is one of the highly consumed foods in Malaysia. The research objective was to investigate the microbiological, physicochemical characteristics and structure of fatty acids of a commercial cows' butter (CCB) sold in Malaysia. Chemical, microbial quality and fatty acid compositions of 7 randomly purchased butter samples from the market were analyzed. The results show the existence of substantial variances in physicochemical parameters between butter samples. The range of pH was between 3.32 to 4.90. The moisture content of all commercial cows' butter samples except sample 5 and 6 was in international standard range. Peroxide and iodine values of all samples were in range of international standard limit. The determination of fatty acids composition by gas chromatography showed the prevalence of the saturated fatty acids dominated by palmitic acid, with a low rate of unsaturated fatty acids, dominated by oleic acid. The results also show the presence minimum of total aerobic mesophilic bacteria (TBC) as well as psychrotrophic bacteria, while coliforms bacteria were not detected. Moulds and yeasts were detected in all samples as minimum counts except samples 2 and 4 which were free from them. Therefore, it was found that the microbiological quality of commercial butter samples is generally good and thus health safety.

The Use of Arabic Gum in the Manufacture of Like-Margarine

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Improving the microbial quality and sensory properties of pasteurized sweet cream butter during refrigerated storage using chia seed ethanolic extract

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