At work, I choose to flavour my coffee a small plastic container labelled thusly:
If this is a Real® dairy product, how can it last with no refrigeration? At the office they sit in a bowl on the shelf outside of the refrigerator. Will I one day open a package to find a curdled mess, or are there mysterious polysyllabic ingredients added to preserve freshness?
The key is the letters UHT, for Ultra High Temperature Pasteurization. Note that once you open it, you need to refrigerate it.
Thank you very much 3waygeek. Where else but the SD would I get an answer in < 10 minutes?
For the curious, I will add that How Stuff Works says that the HT in UHT is approx. 141 °C (aka 285 °F)
same thing with the parmalot milk that you buy unrefrigerated. it’s great for hiking.
I had a big box of discarded, date-expired mini-moos. After several months they all developed a hunk of thick solid resembling cream cheese. They didn’t taste sour or anything. Perhaps the cream was separating from the remaining milk? Trying to change into butter? It tasted OK but looked pretty bad in coffee, therefore I suspect that the expiration date is based on the look of that curd thing, rather than any kind of bio-growth.
Your creamer may not have come from a cow. I have Carnation creamers in my office, and the list of ingredients includes such non-dairy products as cottonseed oil, soybean oil, and sugar.
Guy: these are real half-and-halfs, I believe. They’re talking the little single-serving creamers that you get in diners, not Carnation and its ilk of non-dairy creamers. Bleah.
We have them in our office here at work. Everyone was wondering how they worked. Now I will be a smart ass and go inform the masses as if I knew all along.
Mini-Moos don’t sound conceptually much different than unrefrigerated cans of evaporated or condensed milk – just on a smaller scale.
No, Mini-Moos and other UHT products (such as Parmalat milk) are processed in a manner different from evaporated or condensed milk.
Evaporated or condensed milk is “cooked” to remove some of its water. It is also sweetened in most cases. Canned milk was the first practical preserved milk that could be shipped and stored without refrigeration. UHT products are simply ultra-pastuerized using a much higher temprature that sterilizes the milk. Conventional pasteurization uses a lower temprature and does not kill all the organisms that may be lurking in the milk.
If you want to be a pedantic smartass and inform the masses, be sure to mention that it was obvious all along. Everyone knows that pasteurization references Louis Pasteur’s famous experiment. At the time many people believed that life occurred through “spontaneous generation”, thus a glass of milk growing mold or a cowflop producing maggots was caused by the “vital essence”. Pasteur had a special bit of glassware blown, a vial with a long, thin, twisting neck that would supposedly admit this essence, yet was convoluted enough that it was difficult for extant bacteria to be wafted in on the air. The agar that was in the glass was boiled, and then set aside to be observed. Nothing grew, since bacteria could not make their way inside, and thus was “spontaneous generation” disproved.
Yes, I’m always willing to help a fellow smartass.
restarting a really old thread, but i want opinions. so this morning i noticed that mini moos is NOT all cream. it has some other funky stuff in it. ( Ingredients: Half & Half, Sodium Citrate, DATEM, Tetra Sodium Pyrophosphate, and Carrageenan.)
of course there are studies that say some of these things are bad for humans. that said, do you think mini moos is still a better choice than powdered creamer. (INGREDIENTS: CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, VEGETABLE OIL (PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED COCONUT OR PALM KERNEL, HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN), SODIUM CASEINATE (A MILK DERIVATIVE)**, AND LESS THAN 2% OF DIPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE (MODERATES COFFEE ACIDITY), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES (PREVENTS OIL SEPARATION), SODIUM ALUMINOSILICATE, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, ANNATTO COLOR.)
The dose makes the poison. There are “studies” that show that pretty much everything is bad for you (and a lot more information that purports to be “studies” but is just internet people making stuff up). That said, the science is pretty solid that partially hydrogenated anything (trans fats) are fairly far up the ‘bad for you’ scale, so I’d stick with the Mini Moos.