How to check the naturalness of milk

US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — Milk is the source of many beneficial trace elements. However, many people doubt that the manufacture of a product beloved from childhood does not do without the addition of starch, soda, chalk or water. By laboratory means, it is possible to identify unwanted components without problems, but it will take a lot of time. The good news: you can easily check milk for naturalness at home. How? We will tell you now!

Check for chalk and soda

While you can find a sufficient amount of nutrients for the body in almost all types of milk, it can be assumed that sometimes chalk is added to it to increase the amount of calcium in the product. The true goal is pretty banal – the manufacturer hides the fact that the fat content of milk is much less than indicated on the package. Soda is intended to increase the shelf life of the product. It does not spoil the milky taste but is harmful to the stomach.

How to determine at home whether there is chalk and soda in milk:

1. Pour a small amount of product into a transparent container. Add a pinch of citric acid to the milk and pour a little vinegar. Rate the reaction. If bubbles began to appear on the surface (as in a bottle with a mineral water), chalk was mixed into the milk.

2. You can detect the presence of soda using litmus paper, known to us from school chemistry lessons. Dip the indicator in milk and analyze the color. Blue tint – milk contains soda. Red indicates aspirin in the product or milk stale. The hue of the paper remained unchanged – an indicator of freshness.

Quality check: diluted or whole milk

The cheapest way to increase the batch of the product, which is often not disdained, is the dilution of milk with whey or plain water.

There are three ways to recognize the catch:

1. Taste it. Everything is simple here: whole milk is more dense, it has a pronounced and rich taste. After diluted, a feeling appears that something is missing in the product.

2. Pipette a small amount of milk and drip onto the nail. The natural product includes a high content of proteins and fats, so the drop will not spread. If milk is in a hurry to “escape” from the nail, this is a bad sign. Most likely, the product was diluted or supplemented with chalk.

3. Pour 50 ml of milk and 100 ml of medical alcohol into a glass container (if not, you can replace it with vodka). Shake the liquid well for 1-2 minutes. If the product is undiluted, casein will precipitate and you will see characteristic white flakes. The later the reaction occurs, the more diluted the product. This life hack can only be used for cow’s milk, as there is no casein in goat’s.

Important! If you buy milk for bottling, be sure to boil it before use.

Starch Check

Unscrupulous manufacturers use starch to artificially thicken milk and visually make it more fat.

To detect starch iodine will help:

1. Pour a small amount of milk into a glass container.

2. Put a few drops of iodine into the product.

3. Observe the changes. If the milk has acquired a brownish-yellowish tint, the product is normal. Counterfeit will be painted in blue-violet shades.

There is another way to detect starch, which can be done even in the market. Pour some milk into a spoon and carefully heat it from below with a lighter. Starch makes liquids more viscous. If you notice that milk has a similar texture, this is fake.

Freshness Check

If you are not sure about the freshness of the product, it is better to conduct a small experiment. Pour 100 ml of product into a glass container and add a quarter teaspoon of baking soda to milk. The formation of small bubbles on the surface of the liquid will produce a stale product.

Palm Oil Check

Palm oil helps to improve the taste of milk and extend the shelf life of the product. Unfortunately, it is impossible to identify this component at home. This can only be done by laboratory analysis using gas chromatography. However, do not worry, palm oil is safe enough to consume.

Goat Milk Check

Goat milk is the second most popular milk after cow. The product has a brighter creamy taste. Goat milk is kept fresh longer, is easier to digest and is better tolerated by allergy sufferers and asthmatics.

Surprisingly, the product is faked even more often than cow’s milk. This is due to considerable demand, as well as low competition. The above verification methods can be used for goat milk. However, there are small nuances: the product is rarely diluted with water and does not add chalk or starch. Most often, goat’s milk is simply mixed with cow’s. Unfortunately, the mix can only be detected by laboratory means.

Is it possible to check the quality of store milk?

Manipulations with chalk, starch and dilution are mainly committed by small distributors selling milk from their own cows for bottling. It is not profitable for large enterprises to engage in such falsification, since expensive equipment can fail.

However, this does not mean that manufacturers do not produce counterfeit products. They just use other methods that are almost impossible to identify at home. For example, instead of normalized milk, reconstituted from dried milk is added, which is prohibited by the technical regulations of the Russian Federation.

Of course, home-made tests for naturalness cannot guarantee one hundred percent quality of milk. There are many more methods of falsifying a product than methods of determining them. Give preference only to trusted manufacturers, carefully study the composition and carefully monitor expiration dates. Cheese is another popular dairy product that they also love to fake.

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