Milk Fat Content Calculator

This calculator converts a cheese's total fat and moisture percentages into Fat in Dry Matter (FDM) -- the industry-standard figure used to classify and legally label cheese fat content, because water content varies enormously between cheese styles and skews a simple total-fat percentage. FDM is calculated as fat divided by dry matter (100 minus moisture), scaled to a percentage: a cheddar's 33% total fat at 37% moisture works out to roughly 52% FDM, which is why aged, drier cheeses can carry a much higher FDM than their total-fat number alone suggests. Cheese Fat Content is the input that moves FDM the most, followed closely by Moisture Content -- but raising moisture actually raises FDM, not lowers it, because FDM is fat divided by dry matter (100 minus moisture), and more moisture shrinks that denominator while leaving the fat amount fixed. That's the opposite of what happens to plain total-fat percentage, where more moisture dilutes the same fat across a larger total weight and pulls it down -- FDM is deliberately built to strip out that dilution effect, which is the entire point of using it instead of total fat percentage. Dry Matter itself depends only on Moisture Content -- Cheese Fat Content leaves the Dry Matter figure completely untouched, since dry matter is just everything that isn't water, fat included.

Cheese Style sets an expected FDM range drawn from typical values for that style (cheddar 48-52%, mozzarella 40-45%, and so on) purely for comparison; it doesn't feed back into the FDM calculation itself. Estimated Protein Content is a rough residual estimate (100% minus fat, moisture, and an assumed 4% for minerals/ash), not a lab-measured figure. Because fat is physically part of dry matter, FDM is capped at 100% -- if Cheese Fat Content and Moisture Content together describe an impossible composition (their sum leaving no room for anything else), the calculator treats fat as filling the entire dry matter rather than reporting a reading above 100%. What this doesn't account for: real mineral and salt content varying by recipe, the specific legal FDM thresholds that differ by country and cheese-labeling regulation, or curd-handling technique differences that shift moisture retention independent of the recipe's target.