Lil’ Milk
Product Details:38% Less fat than whole milk. Lil' Milk is ideal for: Lunch boxes, traveling, outdoor activities, everyday use. Lil' Milk combines the benefits of ultra pasteurized milk with aseptic processing and the convenience of a package that is specially designed to keep the milk fresh and pure without refrigeration for months.
When I saw it in the grocery aisle I thought for sure it must be some kind of powdered milk. After all it was on the non-refrigerated shelf. That theory quickly went out the window when I picked it up and shook it. Sure enough it was liquid. That set my little used scientific mind in motion. Maybe it’s some kind of “fake” milk I thought aloud. (Fake milk? Where did that come from brainiac? Well, I said it was little used) Scanning the ingredients only further confused me: Grade A UHT Reduced Fat Milk, Vitamin A Palmitate and Vitamin D3. HUH???
HMMM this deserves further research I announced to Heather Locklear as I retrieved my trusty camera (phone) from my jacket. She just rolled her eyes and asked for the umpteenth time “Just how long does it take to get tins at Dollar Tree and could we hurry up and leave”.
Lil’ Milk comes in 3 varieties; there is 2%, Whole and Chocolate. Each of them has different ingredients. For this examination we will look at the 2%. We already know what is in the Lil’ Milk 2%, so let’s compare that to Kemps – a popular refrigerated variety of milk. Kemps list Reduced Fat Milk, Vitamin A Palmitate and Vitamin D3 as it’s ingredients. (See chart below – what kind of study would this be without a chart?)
Lil’ Milk 2%
Grade A UHT Reduced Fat Milk
Vitamin A Palmitate
Vitamin D3
Kemps
Reduced Fat Milk
Vitamin A Palmitate
Vitamin D
From this chart (it was a fancy chart until I transferred it from Word then I lost the formatting, so just imagine the coolest chart you've ever seen - that was it) you can deduce that the one difference in the ingredients is Grade A UHT…HMMMM???? What I found (thanks to the wonderful internet - http://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheets/hgic3510.htm) is that UHT Milk is regular milk that is excessively processed in order to give it an extended shelf life. Read below:
UHT Milk: Ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk is regular fluid milk that is packed in an airtight, sterilized, cardboard container. The product is treated by flash sterilization at 290 °F (twice the temperature of normal pasteurization). This high temperature kills all bacteria or microorganisms. The milk is then packed into sterilized containers and is shelf-stable for six months. After six months, the flavor and color begin to change and the product thickens. It is still safe, but may not produce the desired effect in a recipe. Once the package of UHT milk is opened, it is treated like fresh fluid milk and used within several days.
Yeah, about that…while I’m not a fan of normal milk; I really am not a fan of this milk. It just doesn’t seem right. I was unable to find any information on the internet about any negative effects of UHT milk (PSSSST! I’ll let you in on a little secret; I kinda got bored with research once I found out how they were able to keep the milk on the shelf, so I really didn't look that hard for any cons of UHT Milk. You can if you want to. Just let me know what you find out.)
Until next time, this is BILL NYE, oops I mean Jacke signing out. (I apologize to you non-scientificy types – you probably won’t get that joke.)
No comments:
Post a Comment