Milk that lasts for months
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Personally, as a Brit (pasteurised is the norm) who has lived in France and Belgium, I'd always choose pasteurised. To drink on its own, UHT is significantly not nice to my tastebuds. With breakfast cereal its OK but still worse. A small amount in coffee and I don't notice the difference.
In Paris, finding pasteurised was pretty easy to do - although shops gave much more shelf space to UHT, I rarely struggled to find fresh milk. In Belgium on the other hand... near where I was living in a city, only one of 4 chain supermarkets and none of the cornershops sold non-UHT milk.
It's quite possible that if I spent <x amount of time> drinking lots and lots of UHT milk eventually my preference might change. I'm not planning on trying, though.
Maybe the process has changed, but...
Things have changed a lot now though.. Everytime I visit India or my village I see Cows being injected with a concoction of drugs and hormones .. :(
Perhaps we can see it this way: in France, the dairy industry has long worked to produce high-quality milk products such as cheese -- delivering fresh milk to cities was thus less of a big deal.
I don't know why England should be different. Maybe because of country-folk during the industrial revolution coming to the big city at just about the same time as the British Empire fell in love with the kind of tea that goes well will milk.
I just had a quick look at a UK supermarket's online site and both seemed similarly priced with some comparable options being cheaper on one side or the other. Without bothering to spend more time actually doing the maths, and looking at more than one store, it could be that there is a significant difference on average.
In France/Belgium I equally never bothered to check the price difference (I'd still be choosing pasteurised where available if it cost 5x as much), but anecdotally I saw it more in higher-end (most expensive) supermarket chains.
Time is money, so vat pasteurized milk is more expensive than HTST milk which is more expensive than UHT milk. The downside of higher temperatures is that more of the flavor compounds tend to be destroyed in the process. This has a secondary effect of driving the milk producer towards lower milk quality, since it all tastes the same after the UHT process.
I agree with your general observations. I tend to keep some UHT packs at home as backup (as well as hotel-type half-and-half portions). But I would never use them on a day-to-day basis especially to drink straight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_process...
Or it's possible my sample size was too small. Would be curious to know how many people feel which way, but somehow doubt there's any good data sets for that!
That said, I had a colleague who was mad keen on getting absolutely the perfect traditional milk. This meant the proper kind of high-speed machine had to do the shaking. But it also, apparently, meant using old milk.
He would actually ask servers whether the milk fresh, and walk out if they said "yes".
Being french, I'm used to UHT, but I notice the difference and mind very much. But maybe it's also due to what kind of pasteurisation is used (there are apparently several), and whatever is used here in Japan for the milk sold refrigerated makes it almost tasteless to me. No supermarket around where I am even sells UHT milk (they call it long conservation), but I can fortunately find some online.
You can get milk which is just pasteurised. It's called 低温殺菌牛乳 (teion sakkin gyunyu) but you have to pay a premium.
Personally I find the regular milk in Japan unpleasant enough that I basically stopped drinking milk after moving here.
Check out ロングライフ牛乳 on amazon or rakuten.
On the other hand I think I might have become lactose intolerant recently. Trying to stop drinking milk to see if it helps certain issues
There's one brand (named after Louis Pasteur) that treats their milk at 63 degrees for half an hour. It's more expensive and not widely available, but it tastes so much better.
The funny thing is that most of the UHT milk here is still only rated for a shelf life of 10 days. You have to pay extra for some sort of super-UHT variant that comes in smaller, thicker cartons if you want to keep it for a few months. Perhaps the rules were set when refrigerated distribution wasn't as widespread as it is now. Or maybe the major brands just prefer to use cheap, non-sterile containers. Either way, we're stuck with disgusting UHT milk that doesn't even last long, negating its only raison d'etre.
This article is discussing UHT, or Ultra High Temperature milk, which is a different process that produces a significantly different taste profile.
Personally, I prefer the taste of UHT. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Little me wanting to show off I wasn't as picky as my picky dad went with it. Tasted less nice, but it was okay. Then at some point as I grew up and realized what a hassle it is to get fresh (and heavy) groceries more than once a week, I just stopped drinking fresh.
It still tastes nicer, fresh, but I can't care enough to have the inconvenience of having to get it so frequently, especially now that I've moved out. Fifty days another comment spoke of, I have never seen.
Same with music: I borrowed expensive headphones once for a while, and any music I discovered with that sounded crap on my own earphones. The other way around was fine. Anecdotically my dad again spends thousands on that stuff and I'm perfectly fine with lesser quality for a much more reasonable price. I don't worry about breaking my €50 three year old wireless headphones that needed disassembling and soldering once already; I do worry about the ones my dad gifted to us (my girlfriend uses them) which are worth considerably more, and I don't like using them because I might (gasp) scratch it.
I lived the first 25 years of my life in the UK and drank pasteurised milk almost exclusively and found the taste of UHT to be lesser.
I then lived in Poland for two years and drank UHT only.
At first I disliked the taste of UHT but over time I grew accustomed to it.
I am still able to tell the difference between pasteurised and UHT, I just no longer mind.
I find that for many things in life where there are similar but not exact variants, one tends to prefer the variant one first tried despite both variants being potentially equivalent.
Pasteurised milk vs UHT is one example. Margerine vs butter is another (I was raised on margerine and disliked butter for years). Windows vs Linux desktops (again, I was raised on the former and initially disliked the latter despite both being generally logically equivalent).
I have since learned to be more accepting of the differences in variants of food and tech. This seems to make life easier for me.
I grew up with pasteurized milk. As an adult, I tried unpasteurized milk. The taste is different, was a bit weird at first. After a couple of glasses, I much preferred it over the kind I grew up with (it's just so much better), and it's all I drink now. Normal pasteurized milk tastes like low-fat now (i.e., it tastes like drinking water from a glass that had a little milk in it already).
So I don't think it's quite so simple that everyone always prefers what they grew up with. But you're right that we often need to get used to new kinds of food before we accept it.
If your milk is over 72 °C for 15 seconds or more then your pasteurizing it even if your starting with raw milk.
Of course our animal accommodations and milking practices were much cleaner than what one might find at commercial scale. But that's not a problem inherent in raw milk, but rather the same unsanitary conditions that plague the industry at large.
Take a pint of fresh-from-the-cow milk and a pint of your typical store-bought pasteurized milk and leave them open on the counter for 2 or 3 days at room temperature. The former will turn into a tart, pleasant smelling mix of curds and whey I'd be willing to taste and possibly consume while the latter will be a smelly, gag-inducing spoiled mess that will almost certainly make you ill.
I've witnessed this first-hand.
Raw milk is loaded with beneficial bacteria that can be naturally culture itself to various ends, more often then not out-competing environmental bad bacterial. Pasteurized milk, devoid of most bacteria to start, will (most often) be overrun by bacteria that will make people ill. I does not surprise me that our "normal" milk is a non-trivial vector of food-borne illness.
Importantly, people are more likely to die from food that looks good but can kill them than they are to eat food that looks and tastes nasty.
For the record, I don't live in the US, and here they don't pump cattle full of antibacterials. I buy my raw milk at the grocery store, it's legal and vetted by the health authorities.
Also, yes, it is addictive levels of goodness. :)
Interestingly, the pasteurized milk available here in Spain tastes way less like UK pasteurized milk than the UHT stuff. Also curdles after like 3 days of being opened. I guess there are various processes for both pasteurized and UHT.
That said if I had to transform milk so it lasted months, I'd be doing cheese.
And for what it's worth, UHT chocolate milk is downright better
here in Switzerland, we have the choice between the two and having drunk both, I can assure you that I'm firmly in the pasteurised-tastes-better camp.
However, the huge convenience of not producing a smelly mess within days after purchase of UHT milk makes me still buy UHT if I don't know that I'm going to be certain to use the milk within one or two days.
I do not understand, under refrigeration it should last quite a bit longer than a few days. I wonder what the differences world wide with regards to pasteurization and additives to such are.
for practical reasons i prefer UHT milk, much easier to store and keep in fridge only 1-2 boxes you are going to drink
I shop at Stew Leonard's most of the time (locations in NY and CT). The milk I buy there is organic and lasts a hell of a long time compared to the milk I frequently see in other supermarkets. The current record I've seen is a gallon of milk with an expiration date 63 days from the day I saw it. I'd say the median is maybe...50 ish days (I shop on Sundays, when I think they've likely restocked).
I regularly buy three gallons at a time, and to this day I find it to be the most fun and humorous part of shopping at the grocery store. This milk has literally never gone bad for me and it tastes delicious.
After reading this article, I'm really interested in knowing whether or not it's heat-treated! I have always assumed it lasts so long because Stew Leonard's owns their own farms relatively close to the grocery stores.
Wait, what? Are you not refrigerating your milk? This is unusual.
As for expiry dates, I don't recall them ever being that long, but I don't think I've ever looked because I just do a smell test and just trust everything on the shelf is fresh.
Since then I only drink that really fresh milk, milked in the same day. The first 4 cm of the bottle are just cream. Is incredibly tasty and you can make any kind of cheese or Yoghurt with it - you need the right bacteria, of course.
Another interesting bit: I used to cook it and then drink it. Not doing this anymore. Some people say is not healthy, but I can really see the cows from where is coming. There is no place where it might be contaminated. And also it resists about a week in the fridge, after that it transforms into a nice refreshing fermented milk drink.
I never buy UHT milk and try buying fresh, locally produced milk whenever I can find it. I never buy low fat milk either.
The difference in taste between fresh milk and these replacements is actually huge. I also don't get people buying the low fat variety either. If you're concerned about fat or cholesterol, it's better to drink less, high-quality milk, instead of milk-like liquids enriched with powdered milk, pork fat and dyes (the exact composition of these replacements varies by country, but it's always processed to the point that you can no longer classify it as being milk).
It isn't for lack of trying, and there are differences. Lactose-free milk is better than normal. Low-fat milk tastes better than whole milk, yet skim milk tastes like I put water in a glass that had milk in it without rinsing. For me, there is no real concern about the calories - I use cream occasionally in cooking, after all, and use butter.
Ask the people. I'm one of them. It tastes nicer.
Or straight out of the bottle, I'm not fussed.
Yeah, I live alone, why do you ask?
Salted cod, cured meats, pickels, dried beans, dried oats, pasta, rice, beef jerky, cheese... We have been using preservation methods since ancient times, which do not have any adverse effect in terms of nutrition.
In terms of taste, in many a case, the method used to preserve can enhance the taste and create a different (but not inferior) kind of food than the original.
I don't see why modern methods should have an adverse effect, when done right.
I agree that low-fat (skimmed) milk should be avoided: the fat in whole milk is important as it makes you feel full. Fat free and low fat products encourage over-eating [2][3].
[1]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956713512...
[2]: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/538238/4/revi...
[3]: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00394-012-0418-1
She pointed me towards the milk aisle, and I was amazed that none of it was refrigerated. Sure, you can buy fresh milk in Germany, but it seems that UHT is considered more the "standard".
I have to say, I preferred the taste to either American or Japanese milk, and fell in love with the convenience of being able to keep a case of the stuff in my pantry.
I am also surprised that the wiki article linked elsewhere gives 66+% UHT consumption in Germany. They might be lumping together refrigerated Extended Shelf Life milk with 2-4 weeks shelve life (heated more than pasteurized milk and also usually filtered, but less so than UHT) and UHT milk in that statistic, but those are not really comparable in taste (and storage, obviously) at all.
ESL milk last for 2-3 weeks in the fridge, but it has not been heated to the same degree as UHT milk. Therefore it still tastes better, but not the same as pasteurized milk.
ADDED: Sounds as if there's something called micro-filtered milk that I've never heard of in the US. It's certainly not a standard item.
I find the taste to be almost, but not quite, entirely unlike milk. Particularly when used to make a flat white coffee.
I would put up with a long walk to a shop everyday to not have to taste UHT milk :)
Also, regular pasteurized milk is very cheap in Australia already. As low as $1/Lt in a supermarket as the result of some dubious market practices [0].
[0] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-30/dairy-farmers-milk-pri...
http://www.dairyaustralia.com.au/Markets-and-statistics/Prod...
If it only lasted days your refrigerator is failing and needs replacing.
It's likely that in the UK, we do 'just enough' to make it safe. Wouldn't want to ruin a cup of tea, would we?
I wonder if our distribution chain across the pound is faster.
Perhaps 3 weeks would indeed be stretching it, but (with the proviso that I'm going entirely by my gut here, nothing scientific) 10 days feels pretty usual.
Traditionally, "milk floats" (a vehicle) would be driven by "milkmen", doing early -morning deliveries of milk in glass bottles, and they would collect the previous day's empty bottles at the same time. Wiki page has photo examples of what milk floats look like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
This service is actually still available in some places. For example, I just checked my postcode with https://www.milkandmore.co.uk and they told me my milkman's name and that he delivers on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. But when I was a kid, say 20 years ago, we'd get it delivered Monday to Saturday, and seeing milkmen doing their rounds was incredibly common, with many customers everywhere. Now it's a bit of a quirky thing you don't see or hear much of, mainly because most people decided that the inconvenience of picking up from a shop was outweighed by the flexibility it offered.
The adjacent town to where I live did have a dairy farm that delivered until fairly recently but I'm not sure they do any longer. I imagine there are still milkmen in some places but I'm not aware of any.
The rise of the ever-present supermarket that carried everything for a lower price was the final nail in the coffin there.
It used to be dominant in the US, too, and is still available in some places, so I don't think this is in any way indicative of a unique position in British culture.
What you want to get is micro-filtered milk. Cravendale is the main supplier I know of, but some of the supermarkets' own brand have micro-filtered versions, with markup.
Micro-filtered milk will last a few weeks, up to a month, without curdling.
Then I tried some lactose free chocolate milk, with no sugar added. I think this was the first time I've actually enjoyed milk. I still do not drink milk often, but now I will actually drink it.
I left it outside the fridge, not realising that you can only do that with UHT.
I love milk and since moving to California I haven't been able to find anything nearly as good as what we had in Boston. There was this brand High Lawn Farms that had tangibly better milk. You could even notice the difference when used in small amounts in tea/coffee, which is probably why every single local coffee shop used it. Someone should figure out what they are doing differently.
The availability of raw milk varies by state and is often only available for purchase on the farm that produces it or otherwise outside of normal retail channels.
UHT is available here but for most people it's emergency use only.
So happy about adult lactose tolerance genes and how I've got them.
I do get excellent results making yoghurt with UHT milk. It's also a simpler process as there is no need to heat the milk first before adding the starter.
Or human milk?
Or some kind of adult-biased version of human milk?
Oh wait, yeah. Soylent, Huel, Mana, 100%Food etc. etc. etc. are effectively "artificial milk for adult humans", at least in their liquid forms rather than the ones who sell packaged meal bars as well.
What I'm really excited for is when milk is being produced in vats with a combination of cow gut bacteria and grass - in theory a mechanical cow's stomach could produce milk that was indistinguishable in taste from real milk but cheaper, cruelty free, cleaner, etc.
Are you serious about this? 2 liters is 30 USD? I'm not sure if you're joking or being serious.
However, Walmart Canada has 1L "value brand" orange juice for as low as $1. So don't assume the price is the same everywhere. And also consider that OJ prices fluctuate daily on the commodities exchange (as much as 19% just in the past 3 months) and there are many tiers of OJ, from concentrate at as low as $1 per liter, to as much as $10 for super-premium brands.
Keep in mind that these prices are for very small, very remote towns where everything is flown in (or driven over the ice in winter), not downtown Montreal or Anchorage.
I remember reading that some years ago and wondering if it was like condensed milk (which would probably be pretty awful on Captain Crunch cereal). Now, I think the cereal might be the key thing to hide the flavor of UHT milk.
However micro filtered milk become common in the last years. It lasts one or two weeks and tastes as pasteurized. It's the one I buy.
The advantage of UHT is that it doesn't need a refrigerator so it's what I buy on vacation, when I don't have a fridge or where I don't trust the fridges of the sellers.
They claim that they've got a cold-filtration process which is what allows for their milk to last so long. Doesn't sound the same as the UHT discussed in the article, I'd be curious to know what they exactly do. (https://fairlife.com/our-process/)
I don't find it as good as non-UHT milk, but it's definitely worth the convenience of always having milk when I need it.
Also, are there any other downsides to UHT besides taste? Are more nutrients lost?
It seems like this is a low-hanging startup that might actually benefit from Trump's America.
I've always bought fresh milk on the assumption that it was healthier and purer than the long life stuff, especially because the long life milk tastes a tad sweeter and creamier to me (so it must be bad for me, right?)
On the bottle the stuff I buy say it's good for 7 days in the fridge after opening. Experience so far bears this out, whereas normal milk manages about 4 for me.
It's entirely possible my fridge sucks, but I have checked the temperature and the milk comes out of the fridge at about 2C, so...
I'm not keen on soy but use coconut milk. Others I know prefer almond milk or oat milk. Probably took about 3 weeks to get used to but now I definitely prefer it.
There's also milk made with casein protein and all the goodies from original cow milk, but without the cows.
Also has a fairly long shelf life.
http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)00966-2/fullt...
Good thing we've got science to reinforce our claims.
Not to mention the fact that you're drinking milk from a lactating female filled with animal estrogen yet you worry about plant estrogen.
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/co...
I'm not even sure if you've read the source you've given as it states the same.
Not to mention that most soy humans consume is non-GMO (which excludes practically everything from Argentina and Brazil), and that soy is grown in China, and for example in suprisingly large quantities in Serbia. So it's not even necessary to cut rainforests.
What goes to feeding animals is mostly what remains after extracting the (more expensive) products destined to human consumption.
Besides, Brazilian animal agriculture does not use much soy. It would even shrink in area if it started using more.
I mean, you literally linked to an article that says
>Therefore, most of the world’s soybeans are consumed indirectly by humans through products like meat (chicken, pork and beef), dairy, eggs and farmed fish. People also directly consume soybeans in tofu, soy sauce, meat substitutes and other soy products... Limiting consumption of animal-based food products, particularly meat, is one thing people can do to help end this devastating trend.
to advocate for not switching to a plant based alternative.
What are you... a baby cow?
This piece was likely inspired by the milk lobby... sales must be sagging.