Are You Really Lactose Intolerant?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Whats the Shelf Life of your Milk? and Why?

If you choose not to drink milk, be it cow, goat or other, you may still find this blog post useful.  I don’t buy a lot of milk, since I don’t use it that much, and it goes bad too quick.  But I was in the store the other day, and I saw a carton of milk with a date on it I thought was a misprint.  As I kept looking, I saw more and more cartons with this incredibly distant future date that just didn’t seem right.  So I asked, and was told the date was correct.  How is this possible?  I wanted to know, so I found out.  

Did you know some milk has a shelf life of 6-9 months?  Until opened that is, then the life drops to 3-5 weeks.  How is this possible?  I know that milk in the store has been pasteurized, and some of it homogenized, but why does some last longer than others?

At first, it seemed to me that only organic milk had this longevity, but in my research I found that only about 80% of organic milk has the longer shelf life.  But why! Well, the answer is HOW the milk is pasteurized.  As you know, to qualify as “organic” the cow is not given antibiotics nor hormones, but organic milk is no different that regular milk when it comes to shelf life.  The difference in shelf life is how the milk is pasteurized.  I found three methods of pasteurization, but only one of them creates a long shelf life milk, and that’s called UHT treated.

The most common type of pasteurization is HTST or High Temperature, Short Time where the milk is heated to 160 degrees F for about 15 seconds.  Alternatively, you could use LTLT or Low Temperature, Long Time where milk is heated to 145 degrees F for about 30 minutes.  However there is a third option, UHT treatment.  UHT stands for Ultrahigh Temperature.  It is where the milk is heated to 280 degrees for about 3 seconds.

By now you’re probably asking (or maybe screaming – but I’ll get to that too) how does this affect the milk to create a longer shelf life.  Well, for one, normal pasteurization kills nearly all the harmful bacteria in milk, making it safe to drink.  UHT processed milk kills ALL the bacteria in milk which also allows it to be stored longer.  However, this high temperature treatment also destroys some of the vitamin content in milk, although in my research it is reported that it is not a significant amount.  UHT treatment also affects some of the proteins found in milk too, which makes UHT milk unusable for making cheese.  People who have tested UHT milk along side of normally processed milk claim it has a sweeter taste as well.  This is due to the high heat causing some of the sugars to caramelize.  Once treated, the milk can be stored on a shelf, unrefrigerated for several months.

So what’s the down side of UHT  Pasteurization? 

Well, other than not being able to use the milk for cheese, the caramelization process can also give the milk a burnt flavor.  Also, the proteins and whey in milk unfold, exposing their juicy insides but producing “extreme cooked flavor”.  Some of you may remember that back in the early 1990’s, non-refrigerated milk hit the shelves here in the US with very little support.  We seem to think milk has to be kept cold and many people thought that the milk was chemically treated and undrinkable.  But most people that actually tried it, found the milk to have a bad flavor.  Of course, this wasn’t due to any chemicals added to the milk, it was due to the UTH processing.  But manufacturers got creative and started putting this milk in the dairy isle of your grocer and many were none the wiser.

But UHT treated milk may also have flavanoid enhancers (particularly epicatechin) to mask these undesirable tastes.  So, now the milk lasts longer, and has added chemicals to help mask this cooked flavor.  But there’s got to be something else, right?  There just may be.  In my research I found that some agree that these broken proteins may not be digestible.  Additionally, if these flattened out proteins are being taken into the blood, your immune system sees them as potential invaders and starts to fend them off.  However that is a big “IF”.  Now, all this considered, could this be the reason why some people who are tested to be lactose intolerant are not, however every time they drink milk or eat ice cream they feel sick or have diarrhea, this may actually be the body rejecting the casein (milk protein) as it’s been cooked and damaged?

Now all this considered, does that mean that raw milk is better for you?  I know what your saying, isn’t all milk raw?  Well, yes, but in the milk world no, since the milk you find in your local store has been ‘cooked’ via pasteurization.  Raw milk is basically milk directly from the udder with all the thick fatty goodness still in it.  There is a very real, very heated debate over raw milk versus pasteurized milk.  But lets look at the facts.  Milk has been know to carry germs and diseases which are killed by pasteurization.  However, it is said that if the cow is properly cared for, checked regularly for these things, and fed a proper diet, then germs and bacteria are not passed in the milk.  Ok, well that being said, is raw milk better for you health wise?  Well, there is a lot of talk on this subject, but I have yet to find any non-biased independent research on it to state one way or the other.  But then again, there is no scientific evidence that milk, in either form, is good for you, and in fact, I’ve found some nutritionist and doctors that claim we do not need to and should not drink milk from any animal at all.  Cheese, sure, but not milk. But that’s for another blog night.

So what’s the bottom line then? 

Well, as with all things, you need to make your own choice.  If you choose to drink milk, I recommend you try all of them and decide for yourself which one you like better.  To me, it doesn’t seem to matter.  If you can trust that milk farmer to make sure his cows are disease and germ free, and use a completely sterile environment in which to extract the milk, and you want to drink it, I see no reason why you can’t drink raw milk.  My friend uses UHT organic milk because he doesn’t drink milk, and uses it rarely in cooking and likes the longer shelf life.  But you just may like your skim, or whole milk from the local store just because you like it.  Or you may not drink milk at all because you feel we don’t need animal milk since we are human, or other reasons.  But now you know the difference, and you can make that educated decision.

Thanks for reading.

P.s. For those of you who are Lactose intolerant or have allergies, I would recommend  trying a good Probiotic. Most good ones contain the necessary enzymes for digesting diary products among other foods, This is a good Probiotic that I use my self: Garden of Life Brand, Primal Defense . If you have Allergies you should read my post on getting rid of allergies.