You may not have realized that Europeans actually buy and store their milk outside of the fridge. The reason is a simple one: Europeans rely on a completely different pasteurization method. Canadian and American milk manufacturers utilize high-temperature, short-time pasteurization.
Milk being stored at room temperature.
French bottles of milk can be stored at room temperature for weeks and still be good to drink. Once you open the bottle though, it needs to be refrigerated and drank within a few days. That's because French milk is pasteurized at an ultra high temperature.
Ask for a glass of milk in an American home, and your host will likely pull an ice-cold gallon out of the fridge. But if you do the same in a European country, you'll probably receive a room-temperature glass. What gives? Believe it or not, most of the world doesn't refrigerate milk.
The reason for this is due to milk pasteurization methods. “Milk is pasteurized through a process called ultra high temperature (UHT) in Europe, which kills the bacteria and can lead to a longer shelf life product without refrigeration,” explains Natalie Alibrandi, a UK-based food scientist and CEO of Nali Consulting.
However, in many European nations, UHT milk is the norm. This milk is heated to double the temperature – 140C – for a mere three seconds. The high heat does its work almost instantly, killing all bacteria and most of the bacterial spores that can stand up to lesser temperatures.
You may not have realized that Europeans actually buy and store their milk outside of the fridge. The reason is a simple one: Europeans rely on a completely different pasteurization method. Canadian and American milk manufacturers utilize high-temperature, short-time pasteurization.
Originally Answered: Why does milk in England taste different? Taste different to where! The milk in the UK is overwhelmingly sold fresh, where as elsewhere it is often sold as 'long-life' milk which does not have to be refrigerated. This is 'ultra heat treated' before being put into the container to kill the bacteria.
However, a genetic trait called lactase persistence has evolved multiple times over the last 10,000 years and spread in various milk-drinking populations in Europe, central and southern Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Today, around one third of adults in the world are lactase persistent.”
Just 5,000 years ago, even though it was a part of their diet, virtually no adult humans could properly digest milk. But in the blink of an evolutionary eye northern Europeans began inheriting a genetic mutation that enabled them to do so.
New Zealand's grass-fed cows produce some of the world's best quality milk. The quality of the milk cows produce is directly related to their diet and environment. So it's no wonder that New Zealand's pasture-fed cows, feasting on our lush green grass, produce some of the best milk in the world.
In Europe, farms vaccinate chickens against salmonella. That means the cuticle is still intact when eggs are sold. Refrigerating eggs with the cuticle intact could actually cause mildew to grow. Which could cause… you guessed it salmonella contamination.
In fact, Mental Floss reports that in Europe and other parts of the world, supermarkets don't even refrigerate milk, stocking it at room temperature alongside other shelf-stable items.
Most of the milk consumed in France, Belgium, and Spain, for example, is UHT, or ultra-high temperature milk. This means it doesn't need to be refrigerated. But in the United States, pasteurized milk must be refrigerated, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
The fact that it keeps without refrigeration is also practical in a warmer climate and it reduces distribution costs and waste. UHT milk in France is marked as keeping for three months unopened, although it is actually usable for six to nine months.
China, despite a growing interest in milk, is again near the very bottom, just above North Korea and Indonesia, where people basically don't drink milk. One last interesting tidbit is how milk consumption varies by age in a way soda and fruit juice consumption does not.
Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized to kill harmful bacteria. Raw milk can be contaminated with harmful germs that can make you very sick. In fact, raw milk is one of the riskiest foods. People who get sick from raw milk might have many days of diarrhea, stomach cramping, and vomiting.
The country with the highest per capita consumption of fluid milk in 2022 was Belarus. The average person in Belarus consumed about 114.9 kilograms of milk in that year. Ukraine came in second with approximately 113.27 kilograms of fluid milk per person.
If you're of African descent, it explains the evolutionary journey behind your lactase-related mutations pretty well. In the arid environments of Africa, milk is a key source of liquid when water is scarce, so the evolutionary advantage of lactase persistence is clear.
Up to 90 percent of South Asians may be lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance, which is due to the inability to digest milk sugars, is a common disorder caused by a deficiency of the lactase enzyme in the digestive system. Lactose intolerance is three times more common in South Asians than in other populations.
It is thought that Asian populations have decreased amounts of lactase in adulthood compared to Caucasian populations, especially those of northern European descent.
Milk in the United States, unless marked otherwise, is treated with either rBST or rBGH, which are artificial hormones that stimulate milk production. The FDA says there is no difference in the milk produced by cows treated with the hormone, but countries like Canada and those in the European Union ban it.
The answer is that in the 17th and 18th centuries the china cups tea was served in were so delicate they would crack from the heat of the tea. Milk was added to cool the liquid and stop the cups from cracking. This is why, even today, many English people add milk to their cups BEFORE adding the tea!
Although the recipe and ingredients for our chocolates are always controlled to tight recipe standards, on occasions ingredients are sourced from different areas, and milk particularly can taste differently when bought from different areas of the country.
Raw drinking milk and cream has historically been recognised as a high risk to public health as it was linked to a high number of food poisoning outbreaks, mainly Salmonella, Campylobacter and E. Coli O157 infection, and 12 potentially associated deaths in Scotland.