Sure, I have some recent unforgettable moments too, like the one with Wizard's sister in law showed me her milk cabinet filled to the brim with packaged milk. I naively asked her "Won't it all go bad? Why isn't it in the fridge?" As if I've never seen UHT treated milk before. *Sigh* It was becoming a fad as I left Pakistan in the fall of 2003 and we did prefer it over unpasteurized milk because our milk man kept trying to keep the traveling milk cool by melting ice blocks in the milk cans....ice blocks that had been sitting next to horses and their copious dung!
(Side bar: When we moved to Lahore from Karachi in the summer of 1997, my brother wondered why his hair was turning a slight shade of green by each evening. A kind cousin explained it was the dried horse dung hanging in the air over Mall Road.)
http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/hsingh2/articles/milk.research.pdf
To be honest, I'm not convinced that UHT treated milk is good for human consumption. I'm of the times when unpasteurized milk was boiled twice and cooled before drinking and that was that. We never got sick, and certainly were not lactose intolerant. I do remember the first few times we started drinking Haleeb Milk (Pakistan's UHT treated milk brand), yes, it caused a number of issues with too many bathroom trips afterwards. I never really connected the two.
All I know is, you can't make yogurt with UHT treated milk and that is cause for concern hahaha.
Edit: Since I started writing this post, I have discovered the existence of unpasteurized milk in Istanbul as well. I'm seriously contemplating switching us all back to that.
I'm curious to what my few readers think. Please share your experience with unpasteurized, pasteurized, and/or UHT treated milk.
I had to google what UHT was. I'd never heard of it before.
ReplyDeleteAll milk in tetra packs is apprently uht treated, even if it doesn't say so. UHT treated was introduced in USA long time ago but failed in the market because people didn't like the burnt taste that was a side effect of the high temps.
ReplyDeleteThe technology went back for quality control and came back with an improved flavor. The damage was done though. The arketing geniuses figured, if the tetra packs were kept in the refrigerated department, they still sold more units than if kept on shelves. So, even though the boxed brands are displayed in the refrigerated section, many don't need to be because they are still UHT treated.