Saturday, February 09, 2008

Milk - What's Happening?

I am no fan of cow juice, but inevitably there's always a little milk around the house. Lately I've noticed that it invariably goes off before its sell-by date. I'm pretty sure that, on some farming programme in the small hours, I heard a piece about this, saying that it's down to extremely high levels of white cells in the milk, which is in turn down to massive use of antibiotics on the unfortunate milch cows. I haven't been able to find any corroboration of this - does it make sense, or was I dreaming? And is it my milk alone that is turning prematurely?

7 comments:

  1. Could it be your fridge is set to low. Or have you changed to a full fat product, the low fat stuff will live for months. If anything on the cow front, it is less not more chemical products the farmers use. They nowadays, are under a regulatory grip which would put tears in a grown mans eye.

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  2. sell-by is not the same as use-by - a different clock starts once you've opened the bottle. you might try organic.

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  3. I have heard that butter is okay in tea - unsalted of course. rice milk has come a long way - historically, not food miles - if you want an alternative on your cornflakes. you have to...experiment!

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  4. It's not the fridge setting, and it seems worse with lower fat than full fat - and it's off before both dates. But,come to think, it doesn't usually happen with organic... Ian, have you actually tried butter in your tea???

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  5. It also depends how the milk is stored before it gets to the shop shelves. If I buy in our local newsagent, especially during the summer months, the milk often goes off before the use-by date. This is because, unlike the supermarkets, they don't ensure that the stuff stays at a constant cold temperature before they sell it to you. Where are you buying yours?

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  6. no, I only heard. the Mongols used yak butter - or would that be the Mongolians. but I first read about it in some novel, a west indian immigrant was spooning it into his tea in a London cafe - can't remember which book. I'm willing to experiment - I've just got into that south african rooibos. it's vaguely reminiscent of TCP. I had a lot of sore throats as a child owing to a tonsillectomy which may explain why I like the taste.

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  7. It's supermarket milk, Sophie, so that's not it. I reckon it's just curdling out of pique, in response to all the disobliging things I've said about milk - it knows when someone doesn't like it...

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