Not many people know that milk is a seasonal product. Since spring, milk yield increases, all summer they are at a high level and almost completely decrease by winter. In winter, it is almost impossible to find “real”, “live” or “raw”, as the technologists say, milk on store shelves. Instead, there are bags on the shelves with an incomprehensible inscription "normalized milk".
Milk that has undergone technological processing is called normalized. So it is processed mainly for sale in stores. Such a procedure does not allow milk to turn sour for a long time, so that the product can stand for a long time on the shelves, and then in the refrigerators of customers.
Milk processing methods
The goal of milk producers for the subsequent sale of this product in stores is not to let it sour for as long as possible. There are many ways to process milk to achieve this effect. One of the cheapest and most common is sterilization. In this case, the natural product is brought to a boil many times.
Normalized milk with the required fat content is obtained from raw whole milk.
Also, pasteurization is used as a technological processing of milk. This method is more expensive compared to the first, but it is softer. At the same time, natural milk is kept for about half an hour at a temperature of 65-70 °.
When milk is normalized, it is brought to the required percentage of fat content by mixing this product either with milk of a different fat content, or with skimmed milk, or with cream. You can also bring this product to the required fat level by separating it - in other words, processing milk in a separator.
The powder product tastes slightly sweet, reminiscent of milk powder.
There is another way to normalize milk, in which it is restored. This is a product made from powder. In this case, the manufacturer simply mixes powdered milk with water, after which he pours the resulting mixture into packages and sends it to store shelves. But only if you cannot distinguish the taste of powdered milk from natural milk, then you will not know which milk was sold to you.
Why milk is normalized
Natural milk producers run the risk of exposing themselves to extra costs, because such a product quickly deteriorates. Normalizing milk (if it is not obtained from powder) is perhaps the most successful way to process it, since most of the nutrients are retained. Normalization also disinfects natural milk.
As a rule, the buyer does not know which product he has purchased - made from powdered milk or natural. But when buying, you should pay attention to the shelf life, because normalized milk made from a natural product has a rather short shelf life, while milk made from dry powder, on the contrary, is long!
