Contemporizing Cottage Cheese

About a year ago, I blogged about the opportunities with cottage cheese, the original high-protein dairy food.

You can read more HERE about cottage cheese making a comeback.

And you can read more HERE about high-quality dairy proteins and their role in the daily diet, especially their importance at breakfast.

It is exciting for me to report on some recent innovations in the category, at both retail and foodservice, in the States and abroad.

But first I must congratulate the Daisy Brand on its amazing cottage cheese product and its dedication to marketing and promoting the product. Made with three simple ingredients—cultured skim milk, cream and salt—the curds in this product are perfect little cubes and the dressing is smooth and clean. It’s the only cottage cheese I buy! For more information, visit HERE.

Kudos goes to Dean Foods for its new cottage cheese packaging. Since the first of the year, the company has been phasing out the traditional plastic round tub and is rolling out a rectangular resin container with in-mold labeling. This one-step package decorating method helps manufacturers save time and money by integrating the labeling process directly into the forming process. It involves the insertion of a pre-decorated label that can be made from a variety of materials and printing processes into a mold prior to injecting the resin. The label bonds to the surface of the molded part when a thin layer of the label re-melts and solidifies with the resin.
The new packages sport a contemporary look and are designed to attract younger consumers to the category. All of Dean’s cottage cheeses will be available in this package, including its low-fat probiotic formulation. For more information, visit HERE.

Accolades also go to Farmer’s Fridge for breaking the mold on fast food by offering healthy and delicious meals that are made daily and sold in innovative refrigerated kiosks throughout the Chicagoland area. Farmer’s Fridge gives people who are looking for healthy foods a new option: gourmet salads and snacks with the push of a button.
Everything is made fresh each morning and delivered by 10 a.m. to an automated kiosk. Farmer’s Fridge offers foods that provide a variety of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Packaged in recyclable plastic jars, customers can choose from several delicious salad options, as well as breakfast and snack items, each designed to offer various benefits of a healthy diet. 

Dairy highlights on the menu include the Farmer’s Salad, which is cottage cheese, radish, cucumber, sweet pepper, snap peas, tomatoes and chopped dill. The 199-gram salad contains 140 calories, 2.5 grams of fat and a whopping 20-grams of protein. There’s also a Greek Yogurt Parfait made with Greek yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and local honey. For more information, visit HERE.

 

And finally, U.K. retailer Tesco is launching a new range of healthy foods to help its customers lead healthier lifestyles in 2014. The new brand, Tesco Healthy Living, replaces Tesco Light Choices and Tesco Eat Live Enjoy. It aims to give customers an easy and even more appealing way to control the amount of salt, sugar and fats they eat, without compromising on flavor.
The range includes more than 230 products, from bakery and ready meals to yogurts and healthy treats…and, of course, cottage cheese. About 85% of the whole Healthy Living range is new or improved.

All Healthy Living branded products have controlled levels of salt, sugar, fat and saturated fat and none are red on nutritional traffic-light color coding. Each product has also been benchmarked in customer taste panels against Tesco own-brand range equivalents, to ensure they match on flavor.

The new range offers two options to suit customers’ needs:

• Healthy Living – Big on Taste, Lower in Calories – for those looking to lose weight. All products contain at least 30% fewer calories than the comparison product.
• Healthy Living – Beautifully Balanced – for those trying to maintain their weight or wanting to make healthier choices for themselves and their families.

The cottage cheese line comes in a natural formulation, as well as six flavors. Four of them--Cracked Black Pepper, Onion & Chive, Pineapple and Sweet Chili--had previously been offered. Two--Cucumber & Mint and Fruits & Seeds (cranberries, apple and pumpkin seeds)--are new to Tesco's cottage cheese lineup. For more information, visit HERE.

Hopefully you have some cottage cheese contemporizing projects in the works. I would love to hear about it!