Fat Percentages In Milk

Title: What is the effect of different fat percentages in milk on the mass of curds produced?
Purpose:
The purpose of the experiment was to determine if the percentage of fats and proteins in different types of milk would affect the mass of curds produced.
Background Information: In different types of milk there is a variety in percentages of fat and slightly different percentages of protein. For example, in one cup of skim milk there is approximately 8.3 grams of protein, while in one cup of whole milk there is approximately 8 grams of protein. This occurs because skim milk is simply milk without including the majority of the fat. If a cup of whole milk were to be measured, and then all of the fat were to be removed, creating skim milk,
This occurs because the pH of the milk has been changed. Casein, one of the main proteins in milk, is a weak soluble, meaning it doesn’t dissolve well in water. When vinegar is added to the milk, it causes the milk to become more acidic, and the protein casein to unfold. By tampering with the usual shape of casein, the protein now interacts with other denatured proteins and results in clumping (Lawandi, 2015). These clumps are known as curds. Many people use the curdling of milk in order to make many different food products such as cheese, yogurt, butter, and cream cheese. When scientists or cooks want to make milk curdle, they may use many different methods including heat and adding a specific enzyme to tamper with the protein present (Lohner, 2017). In addition, adding an acidic solution such as vinegar will cause the casein to react with the vinegar, and unfold. This means that the more protein present, the greater the mass of the curds should be after vinegar is added, because there is more protein to unfold and clump.
The amount of protein present does affect the mass of the curds produced. Because skim milk has approximately 8.3 grams of protein per cup, while whole milk only has 8 grams of protein per cup, skim milk produced the curds with the greater mass. The curds yielded from skim milk averaged to 4 grams which is greater than the average of whole milk which was 3.7 grams. Likewise, 1% milk which has approximately 8.2 grams of protein had an average curd mass of 3.8 grams, which is slightly more than the average of 2% milk, with 8.1 grams of protein, that had an average curd mass of 3.7 grams. This shows that the hypothesis that the mass of curds will be higher when the percentage of protein is higher was supported by the data