Milk: ideal food for a lifetime

1998/05/01 Lorenzo, Arantza | Uranga, Ane Miren Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Dietetika/Elikagaiak

Milk is the first food of the human being, either of his mother or of another animal, adapted to the human being. Think about the capacity of milk, that the weight of the newborn baby is tripled in the first year with milk as a basic food, and that is essential to maintain the bone structure in our diet.

Although milk is very rich in ingredients, it is very perishable and different conservation techniques have been developed. At present we have several products derived from milk, some with a single ingredient of milk and others that come accompanied by typical dishes such as egg, sugar, rice, cream, chocolate... and always presented as dairy.

In this section and in the next section we will talk about milk and later dairy products.

Milk can reach the consumer with or without industrial treatment (although to a lesser extent). If you arrive by this last way you have to be very careful when boiling at home, since it is not enough that the milk rises once to remove all the pathogenic germs. It is essential to climb three times.

Milks that have undergone industrial treatment are offered in different ways: pasteurized, sterilized, condensed, powdered milk, rich in vitamins, etc.

As pasteurized milk and sterilization are the most consumed among us, we limit ourselves to them.

Before moving forward, we will clarify what is the homogenization of all milk in general. This process triggers the fat cells by minimizing the blood cells with the aim of not uniting them and avoiding the formation of cream.

To obtain pasteurized milk or known as daily milk, milk is heated to 72-73 °C for 15 seconds. Heat causes the pathogenic germs to be eliminated by maintaining their physico-chemical and nutritive characteristics with small variations. The closed hermetic fungus lasts seven days and once opened in the refrigerator 2-3 days. The pasteurized milk of a well-known Commercial House of the Basque Country has received the distinction of quality Label.

Finally, the temperatures used to obtain sterilized milk, type UHT, are much higher. 130-140ºC in two or five seconds. Although the date of stay is longer, reaching three months, from a nutritional point of view milk is not as rich as pasteurized.