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"In fact, for products like milk and flour, where fortification and enrichment have occurred for so long that they’ve become invisible, it would be almost irresponsible not to add synthetic vitamins."

How come most countries don't do it, then? At least in Germany I have never seen added stuff in milk or flour.

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Not just "irresponsible" but adding them in the UK is a legal requirement :

http://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/flour-and-ingredients/organic-flo...

Organic Plain White Flour 1kg

Ingredients:

wheat flour* (contains GLUTEN), statutory ingredients (calcium carbonate, iron, thiamine & niacin).

Do people in those countries typically eat whole wheat or "enriched" white flour? Fortification of white flour attempts to replace the nutrition that was stripped away by processing, with only partial success. Whole wheat is rarely fortified with anything since it doesn't need it.

We normally use "normal" white flour for many things like cakes and pasta and stuff. But we have maybe more "real" bread which is not made of white flour?

Germany definitely has high quality nutritious bread, that much I'm certain of.

(Disclaimer: not German, but Dutch. Our "normal" bread is weak and soft and spongy compared to German bread, even the whole wheat variety, which I eat almost exclusively because it's still more nutritious)

Lots of countries do do it, although you're right that Germany doesn't.

http://www.ffinetwork.org/regional_activity/europe.php

Here is the law for England & Wales; Northern Ireland, and Scotland.

http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/b...

Do they not add iodine in salt in Germany?

Yes, they do. I think that's the only one which is (normally) fortified.

Looking around, it sounds like they didn't:

The practice of putting iodine into food had been banned in West Germany since after World War II.

    http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/germanyiodine.htm

In Germany it has been estimated to cause a billion dollars in health care costs per year.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_deficiency#Deficiency

But, supposedly are in the middle of iodizing their salt.

Really I am surprised that the EU hasn't mandated it or some one in Germany hasn't taken the government to court.

That's just wrong. You sometimes see salt without iodine, but it's almost rare. Has been for as long as I can remember.

The key phrase is "where fortification and enrichment have occurred for so long that they’ve become invisible."

That is, if you suddenly stop doing it, you have a problem. In Germany, presumably, they are already finding other ways to get those vitamins.

As I read about the subject, it sounds like they didn't have a good source of those vitamins, as most of the land that makes up Germany is iodine deficient- so even foods supposed to be high in iodine, are not. So the way they found was to iodize their salt.

The information seems to be spotty though.

Same in Italy, but many people here buy fresh milk, and I guess the same is true in Germany. It lasts only 3/4 days but is only treated with light pasteurization that leaves most nutrients unaltered.

Few people buy fresh milk in Germany. Almost all milk in supermarkets is UHT, and fresh milk is typically only drinkable for a couple of days, and is frequently almost soured even when you buy it.

UK supermarkets on the other hand sell filtered milk (at a premium price). Filtered milk stays and tastes fresh for over a week.

Are you sure you mean UHT milk and not ESL milk?

In Austria, all supermarkets used to sell pasteurized fresh milk (last about a week). In the last few years, they started moving to ESL milk (lasts 3 weeks). UHT milk (lasts 6 months) is also available, but people usually don't buy that.

Really fresh unpasteurized milk is available only in some stores or directly from farmers (it's still somewhat common for people on the countryside to buy milk directly from farmers).

Here's my context: my girlfriend is German; I'm Irish, but currently live in the UK. So I've spent a fair amount of time in Germany (typically north of Hamburg, in Schleswig-Holstein) with my GF's family, and the typical milk bought was much closer to UHT than pasteurized in terms of flavour. But I don't know exactly what process it went through - looking at a translation of the exact carton description isn't enough.

I do know that to get pasteurized milk that tasted like I understand pasteurized milk to taste I had to look fairly hard in the supermarkets, and it was clearly a niche product. Unfortunately I don't speak German and my GF is currently in Germany, or I'd give you the key words of exactly what I had to look for.

I've had unpasteurized raw milk in Ireland when I've stayed with people with farms. But I prefer homogenized full-fat milk; with normal raw milk fresh from the cow, the cream rises to the top. I prefer it in the milk, giving it body.

PS: check out the table in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_processi... - it indicates 66% of milk consumed in Germany is UHT, vs 20% in Austria. Possibly there is regional variation too.

Thanks for the info. I had the impression that in Germany everybody was purchasing fresh milk because in Italy there is a pattern that as you move towards the north, people are more and more hardcore with fresh milk, and there are fresh milk "centrals" in most cities in the north with locally produced fresh milk. I expected the pattern to continue towards north.

UHT milk is sold here of course but mostly used as a "backup", to take a few home if you end without milk. Also micro-filtered milk is gaining in popularity for years at this point, but if I should judge the percentage of buyers from the amount of bottles I see in supermarkets, still far from fresh milk.

An important part of this is: fresh milk duration is 4 days max mostly for a matter of ancient regulation. With new productive chain milk gets a lot less contaminated with bacteria so usually lasts a lot more. Many people say that filtered milk is mostly about regulations than a huge difference in duration per se. What is true is that in filtered milk actually the fat is split from the rest of the milk and pasteurized at higher temperatures, and then re-added, so indeed the duration should be better, but not a lot better than fresh milk produced with a very good standards.

Finally, in certain parts of Sicily it is possible to purchase "raw" milk, not pasteurized at all, in automatic machines on the street (in the province of Ragusa, for example). They have a special permission because of an enhanced procedure that allows the milk to be not contained in the process.

It's definitely cultural, probably a combination of regulation and dairy industry history. In the Wikipedia article I link in another post this thread, Denmark just to the north consumes hardly any UHT, and Austria to the south-west consumes far less.

Micro-filtered milk lasts for a spooky long time. I've had it in tea and coffee a few days past its best before date, and it's still not soured - three weeks past purchase, IIRC.

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