Why is there no UHT milk in the US?

[ummmm........]

I wonder if maybe Americans drink more milk?

It would explain a lot . . .

 

[The Yankee]

Parmalat was what I was exposed to in high school, probably because not only was it cheap, but it could be stored for ages and ages. It always boggled my mind how we were given milk that either expired that day or the next. Still, I didn't care for the taste of the regular milk, except in cereal. The chocolate milk was...meh...but drinkable. I don't miss it, though.

I usually don't drink straight up milk, so when I do, it does seem odd to me...especially the lactose free kinds. Still, as I said, in cereal (or after cereal) or coffee or chocolate milk, I do fine. It must be the market in the US that there isn't much milk (though you could always get powdered milk) that is UHT.

 

[7ronin]

I'm sure its got something to do with money.

And politics.

 

[joycem10]

And politics.

Im sure you're right. I think it has to do with dairy subsidies and price regulations. The dairy industry is one of the most highly regulated and artifically supported in the US.

For example, a local store in my area offers a grocery perks program. The state recently forced it to stop crediting milk purchases to the perks plan. The reason was that offering the perks may put the milk under state mandated minimum prices.

 

[azzaman333]

Milk? There is milk? I guess you learn these things eventually.

 

[Cullyn]

When I lived in France, all the milk I bought was pasteurized using the UHT technique. UHT involves holding the milk at a temperature of 280 °F or 138 °C for at least two seconds. This allowed the milk to be stored unrefrigerated for up to three months, and stay perfectly good. Thus when I went shopping, I bought milk for three months, and that was it.
Here in the US, all the milk I've found is not UHT-pasteurized, but I guess HTST. HTST involves holding the milk at a temperature of 161.5 degrees Fahrenheit (or 72 degrees Celsius) for at least 15 seconds. This allows the milk to be stored refrigerated for up to two weeks.
Consequently, we have to buy milk all the time, in small quantity, and we have quite a few jugs that turned sour: this never happened in France.

My question is thus: why is there no UHT milk in the US, when it is so much more convenient and safe?

The wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization. It does not explain why the US does not use the UHT method.

I'd like to know also what's the norm in your country: UHT or HTST?

In ireland if you get served UHT your either on a train, plane or in a hotel room or in a really realy bad cafe..
UHT = Bad, Fresh Milk = Good (taste that is, IMHO)

 

[GoldEagle]

The vast majority of Americans can't see things beyond the 2 week range, they're too busy preparing for the always-immenant rapture.

I'd like some of that milk...but I'd think it doesn't taste as good. Why don't we just work on not injecting our cows with hormones? My kids'll probably end up entering puberty by age 7.

 

[Till]

I only use milk for breakfast (along with oatmeal), or if i am thristy and don't feel like drinking tap water. Milk and oatmeal isn't very delicious anyway and if i'm thirsty, i don't particulary care about the taste either.
So i exclusively buy UHT.

 

[Shylock]

Simple, Milk that keeps for a long time percludes frequent purchases.

The milk lobby is very strong here believe it or not. In fact it is illegal to buy fresh milk from some farmer. You have to go buy it at the store at whatever price the big milk producers charge. Nice scam huh?

 

[Masquerouge]

Simple, Milk that keeps for a long time percludes frequent purchases.

The milk lobby is very strong here believe it or not. In fact it is illegal to buy fresh milk from some farmer. You have to go buy it at the store at whatever price the big milk producers charge. Nice scam huh?

I don't think buying 1 gallon of milk every week or 8 gallons every 2 months for is going to matter much to the milk lobby. Their income will be the same.

 

[Urederra]

The milk lobby is very strong here believe it or not. In fact it is illegal to buy fresh milk from some farmer. You have to go buy it at the store at whatever price the big milk producers charge. Nice scam huh?

It could also be for health reasons. As I said previously in this thread. Pasteurization wasn't invented just because Pasteur thought that It was cool to heat milk a bit before selling it, It was invented to prevent the spread of epidemies, quite frequent not so long ago.

It was so successful that many people forgot about why it was invented in first place.

 

[ironduck]

Millions and millions, eh? Are you saying commercial cat food is healthier than the diet cats evolved on? Get back to me in twenty years, if your cat is still alive and mine isn't I'll stand corrected.

Huh? You tried to make the point that cooked food was somehow not healthy for cats (and I assume that should indicate that it was not healthy for humans either). You really want anecdotal evidence in the form of two cats? As I just said, millions and millions of house cats are doing just fine, reproducing over and over generation after generation. Let's deny that while we're ahead, eh? The article you quoted, however, did indeed speak straight up against that very fact - who cares about facts after all, right?

As for whether commercial cat food is healthy that's really besides the point, it's healthy enough that the cats are doing everything your article claims they cannot do on cooked food. And that's mostly on crap cooked food - just imagine how well they'll do on good cooked food!

Already seen it (and other "drivel" from beyondveg) and am not particularly impressed.

I linked to that article because it was on the very same page of the wikipedia article you linked to. It simply pointed out some extremely obvious flaws in the stuff you quoted. Whether you can see those flaws or not is your problem. It's similar to the creationists here who deny carbon dating is accurate because AnswersInGenesis.com cannot possibly say anything wrong.

Like your choice of organic over non-organic I choose because of taste, my own research and common sense. If I read and pondered every nit-picking article on the internet (like the one from beyondveg) before making a decision I'd be too confused to even get out of bed in the morning.

Nitpicking is one thing, but the kind of articles you time and again have pointed to have been of highly dubious character and run counter to basic scientific knowledge. Of course you're free to make your own decisions, but you tend to put it out on this forum like it's truth, when in fact you're basing it on what is usually little more than frauds.

 

[Narz]

You are mistaken, I don't voutch for the absolute truth of ANY link I post, nor do I necessarily agree with every sentence in every article. Sometimes I don't even agree with the main conclusion. I just like to give people information to look at and decide for themselves that they might not see ordinarily.

I have no doubt that cats can survive on commercial cat food and humans can surive on just about anything. That says more to me about the strength of our digestive systems and life's will to survive. Just cause a plant can sprout up out of a sidewalk doesn't mean that sidewalks are an ideally place for them to grow.

By the way, just out of curiosity can you recall some of the other articles I've posted that you think are incredible (by it's literal definition)? The only example I can think of is the 9/11 conspiracy link I posted to. I never gave my vote of approval to that actually and tended to agree with what many of the skeptical posters said about it.

Cheers.

 

[Narz]

Hi IronDuck here's an article with 45 references, if you're bored you can try to dispute all of them (the last 44 anyway).

http://www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/articles/case_for_untreated_milk.shtml

 

[Shylock]

It could also be for health reasons. As I said previously in this thread. Pasteurization wasn't invented just because Pasteur thought that It was cool to heat milk a bit before selling it, It was invented to prevent the spread of epidemies, quite frequent not so long ago.

It was so successful that many people forgot about why it was invented in first place.

The market demands safe milk and I doubt the companies want to kill their customers and drive business.

The laws are protectionism, nothing more.

 

[EdwardTking]

Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
used to drink unpasteurised milk, and she lived to 102.

Unpasteurised milk is almost certainly better,
providing of course the cows are not infected
with TB or Small pox etc. Now small pox is
not a problem, but the risk of TB remains.

 

[Sidhe]

Simple, Milk that keeps for a long time percludes frequent purchases.

The milk lobby is very strong here believe it or not. In fact it is illegal to buy fresh milk from some farmer. You have to go buy it at the store at whatever price the big milk producers charge. Nice scam huh?

Fresh chilled milk from that mornings cows is lovely,pasteurisation removes the bugs and some of the flavour, I feel sorry for you.

UHT milk tastes like crap your missing nothing, seriously if the price of not drinking that s**t is spoilt milk, then I wont be crying over it

Award for todays worst pun goes to--->

 

[Archbob]

That's the thing. Come time for the big holidays we have to order a lot of milk, and if I remember correctly last year after Christmas I had to throw away almost 250 gallons of milk because they had passed the sell by date. Even though it is still good for another 7-10 days. Had we had that milk that lasts for 3 months, we would not have to throw it away. Since I also assume it was used in cooking, hence taste is less important.

You need more advanced forecasting methods to better equate supply with demand.

 

[ironduck]

Hi IronDuck here's an article with 45 references, if you're bored you can try to dispute all of them (the last 44 anyway).

http://www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/articles/case_for_untreated_milk.shtml

What do I need to dispute? I pointed out that your original post quoted a ridiculous, sensationalist piece of garbage that had no base in reality. Your link says the very same thing (only with more diplomatic language). Your original post had nothing valid to contribute, it painted an alarmist image of consuming cooked foods. You have since then retracted that statement as far as I can tell.

As for the points made in the above article - I'm only concerned with regular pasteurization and not UHT. It mentions a minor breakdown of certain nutrients with regular pasteurization which may well be possible - this is commonly the case when food is cooked; some nutrients are partially broken down, in most cases the overall nutritional value in cooked food is not changed to a degree that causes lack of nutrients in a normal, varied diet. In some cases cooking food is vital for its consumption by humans.

Your link also makes statements referring to allergic reactions, which go both directions depending on the type of allergy. It makes statements on suppresion of infections which is obvious when it comes to all newborns as they require antibodies from their mothers (or substitutes); whether this effect can truly be demonstrated in adults I'm not certain of (I did not read the reference article) - but hey, that would be great news, just another tool in the medical arsenal.

Finally it makes a bunch of statements regarding flavour (subjective) and risk of bacteria in untreated milk (obviously documented - sure, untreated milk is just fine if care is taken, pasteruized milk is simply safer from a bacterial perspective).

Whether people wish to drink pasteurized or non-pasteurized milk really is their choice, but to claim that pasteurized milk is somehow detrimental to one's health has no basis in any research I have seen and you have not provided any. Your first post was alarmist, and that's what I objected against.

And no, I don't recall what you stated precisely in prior threads (but they were health related, I didn't read any conspiracy theory stuff) - I do remember at one point you stated that milk was detrimental to one's health which is another unfounded statement. It is only detrimental if the person is allergic.

 

[MjM]

Simple, if it tastes worse, than thats why.