Milk

I bought a bottle of unhomogenized (whole) milk from Whole Foods the other day.  I actually didn't know what unhomogenized means but the milk looked farm fresh, so I bought it.  As you would expect with fresh milk, there is a layer of cream sitting on top.  The instruction on the bottle says to "shake it, baby!" so that the cream layer is mixed in with the milk.  It did taste different than the usual whole milk that I normally get from a supermarket.  It has that kind of funky/organic kind of taste - but I like it.  I've been thinking that I'll only get unhomogenized milk from now on.

So what is unhomogenized milk?  I googled it that night and what I found was pretty interesting.  Homogenization is a process by which fresh milk (with the cream layer on top) is put through a machine in order to break the cream layer into tiny particles.  The cream particles are then mixed back into the milk in order to make whole milk (I think that 2% of the cream is mixed back in if they're making 2% milk but I have to look it up again to be sure).  They do this because research has found that consumers find the cream layer unappetizing.  Homogenization is not to be confused with Pasteurization though.  Unlike pasteurization, homogenization doesn't kill bacteria or extend the shelf life of milk.  All it does is break down the cream layer and mix it back in.

Here's the interesting part. It turns out that those cream particles that are mixed back into milk are so small that they can now be absorbed into the blood stream.  This causes high cholesterol.  Can you imagine?  This won't happen with unhomogenized milk because the particles of the cream layer are too big to get into the blood stream.  Who would have thought?  More reasons to buy unhomogenized milk!