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Rapidly heating milk for less than a second can eliminate most of the bacteria left behind after the pasteurization process and extend the shelf life of cold milk by several weeks:
Bruce Applegate, Purdue associate professor in the Department of Food Science, and collaborators from Purdue and the University of Tennessee published their findings in the journal SpringerPlus, where they show that increasing the temperature of milk by 10 degrees for less than a second eliminates more than 99 percent of the bacteria left behind after pasteurization. "It's an add-on to pasteurization, but it can add shelf life of up to five, six or seven weeks to cold milk," Applegate said.
[...] The low-temperature, short-time (LTST) method in the Purdue study sprayed tiny droplets of pasteurized milk, which was inoculated with Lactobacillus and Pseudomonas bacteria, through a heated, pressurized chamber, rapidly raising and lowering their temperatures about 10 degrees Celsius but still below the 70-degree Celsius threshold needed for pasteurization. The treatment lowered bacterial levels below detection limits, and extended shelf life to up to 63 days. "With the treatment, you're taking out almost everything," Applegate said. "Whatever does survive is at such a low level that it takes much longer for it to multiply to a point at which it damages the quality of the milk."
The LTST chamber technology was developed by Millisecond Technologies, a New-York-based company. Sensory tests compared pasteurized milk with milk that had been pasteurized and run through MST's process. Panelists did not detect differences in color, aroma, taste or aftertaste between the products.
The effect of a novel low temperature-short time (LTST) process to extend the shelf-life of fluid milk (open, DOI: 10.1186/s40064-016-2250-1)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 06 2016, @09:48PM
UHT never has been very common in the US. All those years ago when I was in the Navy, we commonly bought UHT when in Europe. We never bought it in the US. I don't believe I've ever seen it in any US grocery. Google shopping says that Staples and Quills has it, $43 bucks for 12 quarts. Staples? Office products? WTF?
Other listings want me to jump through hoops with my ad blockers and script blockers, it's unclear whether those are UHT or not.
Jet is listed among the results, $3.80 per gallon, but it's unavailable in my area. Looks like regular pasteurized homogenized vitamin D milk to me.
As I recall, I didn't especially like the flavor of Parmalat and similar products, but the taste wasn't really objectionable. It was much better than powdered milk, of course. The longer the ship had been without dairy products, the better Parmalat tasted. Of course, the same was true of cheeses, ice cream, yogurt, etc.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 09 2016, @10:02PM
It's used almost exclusively for organic milk in the US -- from what I've heard it's because they need the longer shelf life as organic milk tends to get shipped greater distances. I've only ever seen one organic brand that wasn't UHT (the store brand at Wegman's). Never seen a non-organic UHT bottle though...
Never used to buy it, but I'm starting to lately. Still not a fan of the taste of it, but I don't drink milk so much these days so I care more about the shelf life. Used to down a gallon in under a week, now a quart of UHT might spoil before I finish it!
This tech sounds like the best of both, so that's...not a big deal really, but kinda nice I guess. It'll be kinda interesting if the way this combines with the shipping issues means we end up with conventional milk that lasts longer than organic. Of course you could do that today with UHT, but nobody does...