Now, in making cheese, what follows? We ought to secure all the
caseine, but we do not quite. There is a small waste. We loose all, or
nearly all, of the albumen. We leave in the whey most of the sugar, if
we do not convert it into acid before getting rid of the whey, in which
case we may have an injurious amount of the acid in the curd, besides
dissolving and washing out nearly all the ash, which is composed of
phosphates, principally of iron, magnesia and lime. These are changed
into lactates, leaving the phosphoric acid free--not a very good
food for anything but rats. We ought to save nearly or quite all the
ash--the phosphates. But by the ordinary process of cheese making,
these are nearly all lost, as is shown by the analyses of whey, which
probably accounts for the low estimate in the popular mind of the
value of cheese as food, it being rated at one-half the value that
it would have were the phosphates all retained. But, four-fifths of
the nitrogenous and muscle-making material has been removed, and also
nine-tenths of the fat, which is heat producing and some say furnishes
motor power. We have retained in the cheese 5.84 of the 12.82 parts
of solids, leaving 5.98 parts, 4.21 parts of which are sugar and not
wanted in the cheese, or, at most, only a fraction of it. We leave less
than one part of the albuminous and caseous matter, which is the most
valuable, and only one-third of one part of fat. So there is less than
one part of solids left besides sugar, and the rest of the whey is
water.