Got Milk?

At first, I was a little disappointed in myself as I sat down to a dinner of cereal and milk. Nothing worth blogging about, right? Boy, how wrong I was. Recently, I've learned more than I want to about milk. You thought Skim, 1%,2% and whole were the only choices facing you in the grocery store? No way! There's pasteurized, ultra-pasteurized, organic, raw, milk with/without rBST (an artificial growth hormone), and the list goes on. Whew! It's a lot to even understand what the different options are, let alone to decide from among them (there is a lot of disagreement and debate in the field). Mapping the Mustache has a helpful glossary, although their own taste test is hardly scientific.

What all these articles don't say is that some of these other types of milk are EXPENSIVE! We're talking two to three times the cost of regular milk, and buying organic milk is not quite like buying organic rice or eggs. Milk doesn't last too long.

Or does it? We have recently made a small change in our milk buying practices that costs nothing, tastes better, and is likely saving big on our carbon footprint. What is this seemingly magical change? We check our milk cartons for a label that says UHT (the law requires UHT milk to be labeled as such), and if it has it, we don't buy that milk. Why is that? UHT means that the milk is ultra pastuerized, or heated briefly to 280 degrees, giving it a shelf life of 30-90 days. That means if you see milk with this label on it, it can sit in your grocery store for up to 3 months before its expiration date. The catch with UHT milk is that it can come from anywhere that is convenient for your local grocery store, and likely comes from much farther away than pasteurized milk.

Pasteurized milk, on the other hand, is heated to either 161 degrees for 15 seconds or 145 degrees for 30 minutes. (You can get this info from Cornell, although this is a word document you need to open). It has a shelf life of only 12-21 days, and thus is likely to come from nearer by if possible (such as in New England).

You also save on your carbon footprint because ultra-pasteurized milk needs to be stored and transported at no more than 38 degrees or it loses shelf life. Pasteurized milk can be stored and transported at up to 45 degrees (although the ideal is still lower). This difference in a few degrees in your milk truck adds up over time!

So look for the UHT, and if you see it, walk away! Unless you're one of those wealthy grad students who is already buying local organic milk from the grocery store. They often ultra-pasteurize their milk in order to help their bottom line as the market is still emerging. However, this grad student is on a budget, and so this hungry grad student is taking baby steps...baby steps away from the UHT.