Champagne: The lighting recipe to limit discoloration and lipid oxidation of cheese

Rich, creamy Cheese

A curated selection of world cheeses – it’s often a foodie’s favorite spot in the supermarket. But how can you best display your wares while also maintaining freshness and peak quality? The answer lies in a lighting recipe that meets all expectations.

Preserve the freshness

While the fats in cheese are what gives this delicious food its richness, they’re also problematic when it comes to properly lighting this area of the supermarket. When cheese is exposed to light, the fats (or lipids) begin to oxidize – first changing the cheese’s appearance and then altering its taste and smell. This process occurs in only a few days. Light-induced discoloration and lipid oxidation can put customers off buying the product, and could influence their enjoyment of the cheese if they do decide to purchase it.

Experience Champagne: the fresh food LED recipe for cheese

Usual lighting

Champagne recipe

Our Research:

There is a large effect of light spectrum on the amount of lipid oxidation. The amount created by conventional lamps is much higher than when cheese is illuminated by LEDs. Optimizing the LED spectrum can further reduce lipid oxidation.
Lipid oxidation can penetrate up to 0.5 cm into the cheese.
We discovered that once cheese is exposed to lighting, the process of lipid oxidation continues in the dark. If the store uses traditional lighting, the increase in the dark is greater than when LEDs are used.

Graph 1a Amount of lipid oxidation

Effect of spectrum and illuminance on lipid oxidation. Data after 10 days illumination. Red treshold line is based on sensory evaluations in literature: above this line odor and taste affected by light.