I've recently gotten into home cheesemaking, which once again brought up for me the seemingly endless issues around the topic of milk: do we really need it, where we get it, how are the animals treated...raw, pasteurized, homogenized, organic, rBST, with or without fat. The milk issue that came to my attention in this case is this: I learned that you can't make a decent cheese with milk that has been ultra-pasteurized (meaning milk that has been thermally processed at or above 280° F for at least 2 seconds). Why would one do this to milk? Because ultra-pasteurized (UP or also called UHT) milk spoils much more slowly, increasing shelf life -- as long 30-90 days when kept refrigerated and unopened.
So what's wrong with it? Well, from my perspective, it starts to resemble the same issues as with Twinkies...should something organic last for this long without spoiling? And from the cheesemaking perspective, it's a non-starter (in more ways than one): expert cheesemaker Ricki Carroll, author of "Home Cheese Making", considers UHT milk to be dead, describing that "the protein structure is damaged and the enzymes are destroyed" and urges us to lobby our grocery stores to provide alternatives. When I went looking for organic cow and goat's milk to begin my cheese-making projects, I was dismayed to find that at least half of the organic cow's milk and almost all of the goat's milk options available to me were ultra-pasteurized...and I am guessing the trend is towards more of this type of processing, not less.
I've not drawn a final conclusion on this topic -- beyond cheesemakers' concerns I have not found any definitive information on any nutritional difference between UP milk and pasteurized, but it does make me thing twice about the importance of milk for myself and my children -- it it's "dead" anyway, what's the difference between drinking it versus a glass of water and swallowing a calcium pill? Food (or in this case, drink) for thought.
