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Anyone else noticed that it's gone down in quality recently? I noticed that the shelf life of it had gone up a few months ago (easily find bottles with a week to go now whereas it was a few days before) but I've now noticed the taste is poor and it all looks very watery. This goes for multiple suppliers, supermarket and independent, and across the various options of fat content.
My morning mugs of tea just aren't the same!
I’m not usually one for conspiracies, but this reeks of big farma sweeping stuff udder the carpet.
RM.
All of ours bought this morning at Tesco have dates of the 17th.
IME newsagent type milk doesn't last more than a few days - Don't think they run the fridges low enough. Maybe it's turning quickly
Supermarket stuff, no change for us and we're massive tea drinkers. Full fat if I'm allowed or semi-skimmed. Absolutely no pigeons milk (red cap)!
Good luck!
Drink black tea - and coffee
If you must have milk - goat's or find a farm shop selling locally bottled.
IME newsagent type milk doesn’t last more than a few days
Same. More than once I've had in-date unopened cheese that had gone mouldy also. I spoke to the local shop about it, they said it's been pretty common for them of late and they're looking for a different supplier.
I still shake full fat milk before pouring, out of habit despite it being homogenized these days. I have heard on a podcast that breaking up the fat can actually change it's flavour and not as healthy for you.
The milk from the farm shop on site is known as Cinderella Milk for it's propensity to turn to cheese at 00:01 of the day after use by.
Dairy cows are in barns during the winter and fed on silage rather than green grass which affects changes the taste.
Hygiene has also improved which increases shelf life.
Tin foil hat on....
For years as a nation we have been convinced that skimmed or semi skimmed milk is better for us than full fat. Thankfully many have now seen the light and full fat is making a massive come back. However..... processors were in fact able to effectively sell the milk twice by selling skimmed/semi skimmed and then selling the cream as cream or butter. You may have notice the price of butter has rocketed as cream has become far less available due to demand for full fat milk. So maybe processors have found some way to extract the fat from the milk to the absolute legal limit of what constitutes "full fat" when they never used to bother, or else they are buying in cheap powdered dairy fat from somewhere else and mixing it in to up the fat content after removing the prime cream for butter. I don't think they could add non-milk fats to the product and get away with selling it as whole milk (but I wouldn't put it past a processor to try something like that!)
I’m not usually one for conspiracies, but this reeks of big farma sweeping stuff udder the carpet.
RM.
Despite being dead for nearly 7 years, Roger Moore is on the money with this I reckon.
What I don't understand is why is pint of milk cheaper than a 500ml bottle of water? I was thirsty the other day and went to grab a bottle of water, €1.10, and saw a pint of milk was 80cent.
It’s down to what people are prepared to pay for it. People generally see water as a “lifestyle product“ that says something about who they are, so they are relatively insensitive to the ridiculous cost. Whereas milk is seen as just a basic commodity foodstuff to feed the family at the lowest cost.
I've bought milk rather than water too when out and needing a drink. In fact I did that on Friday when I went to London (couldn't take a bottle of water from home as I was going to a gig)
You know its got bad when you get a call to go in for a trial at Accrington Stanley.
You still drink cows milk? I've been drinking soya and oat milk for the last decade. It started off because it lasts so much longer but now it tastes way better than cows milk.
So maybe processors have found some way to extract the fat from the milk to the absolute legal limit of what constitutes “full fat”
From a tour of a muller site, the fat is removed from all mainstream milk, a carefully controlled amount is then re-added. the amount depends on whether you are manufacturing skimmed, semi, or full fat.
But at this time of year I would be looking at the cows diet rather than anything else.
As an aside, I watched as they swapped the Tesco cream pots to M&S, no break in flow, it's cream, you really are just paying for the package.
You know its got bad when you get a call to go in for a trial at Accrington Stanley.
Accrington Stanley? Who are they?
Local milk from the milkman is as good as ever. If I buy supermarket milk when I'm.on holiday or similar it is always disappointing in comparison.
Good to see an increasing number of milk bending machines for top quality cow juice when away from home
milk bending machines
At least autocorrect changed it to something pasteurised clean.
Accrington Stanley? Who are they?
Exactly!
I also prefer UHT. Sooo nice on cornflakes.
Milk is cheap because farmers get screwed by supermarkets, they have very little control over the price they get per litre. If you can buy directly from farmers you should and that goes for everything not just milk.
Also the idea that the taste will change because it's winter so the cows are being fed silage is incorrect. The majority of cows these days are kept inside all year round so will constantly be fed on silage + supplementary feed. The margins are so tight that herds have got bigger and bigger which makes it impractical to bring them in twice a day for milking, a lot also milk three times a day now. I grew up on a 'traditional' farm that most people would probably imagine when they think of farming. A small milk herd of around 40, a small flock of sheep, a small beef herd, a couple of pigs, a few chickens wandering around. Those days are long gone. Most milk herds now will be in the many hundreds, go big or go bust.
The milk cows you see out on the fields will be dry cows, that's the only time most will ever see grass.
I always buy UHT milk.
I prefer it to regular milk.
Drink black tea – and coffee
If you must have milk – goat’s or find a farm shop selling locally bottled.
Why?
I rarely drink coffee, but usually I have it black, unless it’s a Mocha, and I drink green tea or a specialty tea like Oolong without milk; that would be horrid! I just prefer ordinary tea with milk, I’m not going to change because home random sez I ought to.
UHT milk is disgusting! 😝 Like using margarine instead of butter, horrible plastic stuff.
I buy my milk from whichever shop I’m nearest when I need it, usually 2x2litr bottles and put one in the freezer box of the fridge, then take it out and thaw it when I’m close to using up a bottle.
And no, I haven’t noticed any issues with the milk I’ve been drinking for months.
thenorthwind - just to help you understand as your post up there ^^^ is a bag of grollocks.
Goat's milk is widely available.
Bottled milk - full fat but other (insipid) versions are available - from farm shops will, generally, come from dairy farms within 20/30 miles; has not been processed - other than minimally; has not been blended with milk from other dairy herds.
Also, as welshfarmer points put ^^^, there is little/no likelihood that the cream has been removed so you're getting real, proper milk.
Carry on deluding yourself.
Peak STW?
F me - multiple far better candidates on page 1.
Filtered milk has a much longer shelf life, think cravendale, other brands are available
Defintielty not the case here. I buy unhomogenised organic milk and yoghurt from an independent dairy and it lasts bloody ages, no sourness way past its date.
It's not cheap but it does taste good and mean farmers actually get paid properly.
Milky milky. loveley.
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Despite being dead for nearly 7 years, Roger Moore is on the money with this I reckon.
Roger Moo-re knows his milk puns.
I'm sticking with the dog milk. Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk.
I've seen it suggested, not for milk but in general, that pretty much across the board companies have seen brexit and covid as basically an adjustment of the quality and service they have to provide/ a lowering of the service we'll accept. Everyone knows prices go up fast and fall slow, it's the same thing. We all accepted that phone service got terrible during covid, we knew call centres and offices were disrupted. But since covid, because we'd got used to it, it frequently hasn't been brought back to the same levels. So frinstance loads of terrible chatbots got rolled out "temporarily" that are still in place, terms of service got dropped and never reinstated, wait times on average are longer (I saw my power company's response times, went from 10 minutes on average to 40 minutes on average! My bank knocked a load of turnarounds from 24 hours to 72 "in these difficult times", don't think a single one has returned to 24)
And how that applies for food, look at fruit. People say and I think they're right that there's less choice, shorter dates, way more damaged and spoiled stuff. Covid started it then after brexit we saw all those empty shelves again.I'm a creature of habit, I've bought the same types fruit and veg over and over from the same chains for 25 years, and I eat it faster now but more of it spoils uneaten or was already dodgy when I've got it home, it's teh first time I ever can remember feeling like it was getting routinely worse. Harder to buy a ripe pear or a crisp lettuc. Those bags of little oranges! Had a look in my local and literally half the bags had at least one moldy grey one in it. I mean, I'm also older and grumpier but it feels like when we returned to normal, normal had moved.
Conspiracy theory? Maybe but companies are cynical and smart and motivated to save pennies and they watch customers very carefully to see what motivates them, what puts them off, what makes sales and what doesn't, that's SOP. Why would they not take advantage of a fall in our expected standards, no different to taking advantage of a "temporary" price hike
we're on the dogs' milk. lasts longer than any other type of milk.
They sell cat milk in the supermarket... that's gotta be wrong on a number of levels.
I drink quite a lot of milk, can't say I've noticed any difference of late. Prefer filtered as lasts much longer. Hate non-homogenised stuff, no matter how much you shake it you still get blobs of cream and the rest of the milk is more watery as a result. Not a fan of UHT so keep an oat milk in the cupboard for emergencies.
I’m sticking with the dog milk
Are you sure that's milk?
It's not just milk, my wife commented that a few years ago we used to do a weekly shop - now we have to do 2 min per week as things just don't last. I have a suspicion it's Brexit related and the red tape delaying imports
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Mrs_oab used to work in a creamery as a lab technician.
After her experience there, we won't eat UHT or those wee pots you see at hotels and motorway services. 🤢🤢🤢
One of my childhood memories growing up on a farm was fresh milk without any treatment.
Can I also ask - who first discovered how to milk a cow? And what were they doing in the first place...
Maybe they're drinking too much milk?
I drink quite a lot of milk, can’t say I’ve noticed any difference of late.
Same here. Organic, delivered by a milkman. We did have a problem last year with it going off quickly, but it turned out our fridge was knackered and was only cooling to 8 degrees.
For those who missed the dog's milk reference,
I’ve been drinking soya and oat milk for the last decade. It started off because it lasts so much longer
"Lasts longer than any other milk, dog's milk. No bugger will drink it. Plus of course the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh."
What I don’t understand is why is pint of milk cheaper than a 500ml bottle of water? I was thirsty the other day and went to grab a bottle of water, €1.10, and saw a pint of milk was 80cent.
Should have checked the rapper first, it might only have been 50 Cent.
You're right though. It staggers me that people will piss and moan about the cost of petrol which has to be pulled out of the ground, refined and processed with gods know how many additives, piped halfway across the world before being put into tankers to be driven to forecourts... yet will cheerfully pay two quid for a 500ml bottle of something which has literally just fallen out of the sky for free.
While we're not vegan or anything, we moved on from dairy milk years ago for the environment. In the EU, milk can be up to a third of your carbon footprint. If you're finding dairy milk to be less good than it used to be, you could use that as a reason to at least try some of the alternatives. We found oat milk the best - it doesn't have a strong flavour like some of the others.
When you think about it, it's not an efficient way of getting a liquid to put on your cereal. Grow a field of silage/grain, then feed a big proportion of it to a cow, then get a small amount of milk from it. Or you could skip the cow step - reducing land use and carbon footprint easily.
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It’s not just milk, my wife commented that a few years ago we used to do a weekly shop – now we have to do 2 min per week as things just don’t last. I have a suspicion it’s Brexit related and the red tape delaying imports
Any salad leaves in a bag (i.e. anything other than an actual lettuce) seem to already have gone bitter by the time you buy it, and turns to brown mush on contact with air.
PITA as I'm veggie and the OH is a fussy eater so I'm stuck with trying to cook sacks of spinach in one go, might have to find a supermarket selling it in frozen cubes.
For a while I was on single cow milk. This was interesting as the taste varied depending on what was growing in the hedgerows at the time.
Remember with oat milk, almond milk etc you’re going with an ultra processed food. Not particularly good for you really.
Is it? I thought they basically just grind it up with water then squeeze it out, like coconut milk (not to be confused with coconut water). How much more processing is done, apart from pasteurising?
I think if you're the sort of person who's switching to oat milk, your diet is in general good enough to offset a bit of oats mixed in water and oil. And reducing your carbon footprint for everyone is way more important than your own health.
This article (which happens to use the same graphs I posted above, although I got mine direct from the source) summarises is all quite well.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24072187/is-oat-milk-bad-for-you-or-healthy-wrong-question
I stopped drinking milk ages ago as it seems to have turned on me and I can't stomach it any more.
Oh been a while since I've heard that. Could be a potential deathtrrrrrap!
Making your own oat milk is dead easy.
1 cup rolled oats
3-4 cups water (depending on the creaminess of the mylk you want)
Pinch of salt
1 date, pitted (optional)
Place all ingredients into blender. Blend on high for 1 min (no more otherwise it will be slimy).
Pour through a cloth, mylk bag or old t-shirt; wringing out liquid (see **).
Pour mylk into a jar, writing the date of making (see note).
** Save the pulp to make energy type balls!
Is it? I thought they basically just grind it up with water then squeeze it out
While you can make it like my bet is that almost* all the commercial varieties will have ingredients that make them UPFs.
* I did go look and some do seem to not be awash with stabilisers and acidity regulators.
I tried oat milk for a few weeks and didn't really like it... Flavour or the relatively empty calories.
IIRC the almond monoculture in California resulting from the surge in almond milk drinking has been problematic for bee populations.
Here you go. Great headline!
https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybees-deaths-almonds-hives-aoe
Save the pulp to make energy type balls!
Does that work? We tried using the leftover coconut in a cake after making milk and it was vile - all the flavour's been squeezed out so you're left with dry tasteless wood shavings.
It was like eating cake made from recycled plasterboard.
When you think about it, it’s not an efficient way of getting a liquid to put on your cereal. Grow a field of silage/grain, then feed a big proportion of it to a cow, then get a small amount of milk from it.
I suspect that "milk" isn't the only product that we get from cows.
PITA as I’m veggie and the OH is a fussy eater so I’m stuck with trying to cook sacks of spinach in one go, might have to find a supermarket selling it in frozen cubes.
Freeze your own?
I've started doing this with fresh herbs. If all you're doing is slamming it in a soup them they freeze really well.
Remember with oat milk, almond milk etc you’re going with an ultra processed food. Not particularly good for you really.
Well,
a) "an ultra processed food," is it? and
b) "Not particularly good for you," isn't it?
Show us the science.
I'm deeply sceptical of this current fetish around demonising "processed" foods. Pretty much all food is processed. Chuck a fish on a griddle, that's a process. Sure, eating an orange is probably better than drinking orange juice, but that doesn't make juice inherently bad.
If breast milk squirted out of a cow to feed baby cows is better for humans to drink than plants soaked in water then let's see the data to back up that claim.
Don't want to derail this thread too much more but I switched to oat milk for breakfast cereals a couple of years ago but still put a splash of cow milk in a cup of tea - what alternatives do people recommend? Also white sauces etc is there anything that can replace cow milk in these?
Been drinking soya and oat milk for the last decade. It started off because it lasts so much longer but now it tastes way better than cows milk.
Same here, trialled avoiding Dairy for a year for gut issues...went to switch back to dairy and...I don't like it! Even a dash in tea/coffee seems to taint it, it just gives me a slightly sour tanginess taste. Cream, yogurt and ice cream are so so, I can eat a bit but don't enjoy as much as I used to. Thankfully cheese is still very moreish!
Oat milk being ultra processed? Perhaps, but milk isn't far off I'd have thought! Pasteurised, homogenised, removing and re-adding fat, it's not exactly unmessed with!
Also white sauces etc is there anything that can replace cow milk in these?
I tend to make white sauces with water and almond milk these days. Seems to work just fine.
Though for a cheese sauce I often now turn to cheese + some whatever milk is in the fridge + sodium tricitrate + sodium hexametaphosphate rather than making a roux and so forth. Delicious, melting cheesy sauce, perfect emulsification, and depending on the SHMP amount used it can then turn into a room-temperature-stable 'processed' cheese suitable for easy slicing, sandwiches, and burger-melts.
Filtered milk has a much longer shelf life, think Cravendale, other brands are available
Ych y fi! There's no way they've only filtered it, that alone couldn't make it so gag-wretchingly goorchh!
Show us the science.
I’m deeply sceptical of this current fetish around demonising “processed” foods.
Well go and read it then.
I drink a load of milk, mainly semi-skimmed (supermarket).
We very regularly pop to a local dairy either near home or one in Wales (Mostyn Dairy) where their milk is lightly pasturised - you still get the cream on top in the milkshake. We do notice the amount of cream varies depending on the time of year and wether the cows are out all summer (more cream) or in the sheds in the winter..
what alternatives do people recommend
Pea milk - Sproud
I find 'alternatives' just too strong/sweet.
Aside from rice milk which after a while I think changed and would curdle in hot drinks.
Pea, as odd as it sounds is great, no overpowering flavour, not sweet, a nice richness but not too much and not watery
Well go and read it then.
No. Go and read "burden of proof."
Any claim presented without evidence can equally be dismissed without evidence. You don't need a deep scientific analysis and a cross-referenced spreadsheet to counter "the Earth is flat" with "no it's not."
There may well be merit to concerns about "ultra processed foods" and actually I have read a couple of studies. But you can't just go "nut milk is better than cow milk because Processing" without substantiating what you mean.
Jut for reference all milk that you buy in the supermarket / local costcutter etc etc is filtered. This goes for both plastic bottles / glass bottles and the random odd carton you find every now and again
Cravendale is not the only "filtered" milk.
Trust me I've changed / inspected the filter bags on a pasteurising plant many times.
The stuff in them is errrr.... interesting.
Mrs_oab used to work in a creamery as a lab technician. After her experience there, we won’t eat UHT
You used to drink UHT milk??!?
I was raised on Jersey milk, but strangely have never had Tory urges. (well - other than packing The Party onto the B Ark type ones). Admittedly we did dabble in taking the fat off to make butter so that's where I was exposed to the deadly Librul Joose.
It's all a big schitzengiggls to him, taking the P again. Horrible man.
I’ve never understood what is special about Cravendale. What is it selling? Why is it different?
Mrs_oab used to work in a creamery as a lab technician.
After her experience there, we won’t eat UHT or those wee pots you see at hotels and motorway services. 🤢🤢🤢
So did I, down in west Wales in the 90s. I can't remember if they did any UHT processing, but the ghee plant was interesting. I also later worked with butter and spreads, normal and processed cheeses, and have been in all sorts of food factories and slaughterhouses. There's nothing I won't eat or drink, other than sprouts and that's because they are disgusting 😀
it wasn't St Ivel down Milford Haven way, was it? My uncle worked there in the 90's. I think he tripled his cheese intake while he was there...
I’ve never understood what is special about Cravendale. What is it selling? Why is it different?
According to Wikipedia:
"undergoes a filtration process to remove bacteria before pasteurization" so it lasts a bit longer than pasturised millk.
I suspect that “milk” isn’t the only product that we get from cows.
How dairy say that?
I think it's the main one from dairy cows. We've gone pretty much dairy free in our house, though I did buy some feta over the weekend.
It's not just the carbon/methane footprint which is immense, and the fact cows've ruined a great mtb blast down to Bolton Abbey to cite just one, it's also the nature of the industry,
When I was a kid I remember staying on a farm in the white peak with uncle george and aunty margaret, and there was a half door barn and a cow mooing very loud with its head stuck out into the farm yard. I was told she was mooing for her calf who'd just gone to market (and thence I assume to live in comfort on some other farm. But probably not.) And she'd stop in a few days. Didn't bother me particularly at the time or now, But that's a mammal like us grieving away with the mammal part of its brain and that's built into the industry. Just seems crueller than killing an animal for meat, using it as an ambulent milk factory. Hey ho. phase it out fully. As soon as we've learned to synthesise stilton in the lab.
reeksy
Full MemberIIRC the almond monoculture in California resulting from the surge in almond milk drinking has been problematic for bee populations.
Not only that, it's a water catastrophe- literally growing water-intensive crops in a desert, often with flood irrigation, fed by a river that's "in deficit" which is a funny way of saying "we take more out of it than goes in", as if it's the river's fault.
It's properly bizarre, basically they screwed up the maths on the colorado river and catchment schemes right at day one, over a hundred years ago, and they've known it's wrong for at least 50 years, but they keep acting like the numbers work because they're written into legal agreements and contracts and that's way more important than whether or not the water exists. And then, when it dries up they say "it's a megadrought" or "it's because of swimming pools and golfcourses and smelt" when agriculture alone takes more water than is sustainable, you could stop every other drain on the river and it'd still dry up. And when it does, everyone will sue each other and the courts will rule that the people who've paid for water must have it even though there isn't any.
I drink quite a lot of milk, can’t say I’ve noticed any difference of latte
FTFY