FACTS ABOUT MILK | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1897

FACTS ABOUT MILK.

MILK is apparently a whitish, opaque liquid. In reality it consists of a clear, transparent fluid, containing many minute globules of various sizes.

The fluid part is called the milk serum, and consists of water and a number of dissolved solids.

Suspended in the serum are little globules of pure fat, which are semi-solid, and form with the serum a mixture called an emulsion.

The solid constituents present in the serum in largest quantities are sugar and casein, albumen and mineral matter in small quantities, and also a little fibrin, resembling the fibrin of the blood.

There is more sugar in milk than any other solid component.

Milk sugar can be separated and brought into solid form, and resembles powdered white sugar. Its chief use is medicinal.

It is the sugar which undergoes the greatest change when milk becomes sour.

Fat globules of different size are found in the milk of any cow, but with certain breeds the size is uniformly larger than with other breeds.

The milk of Jersey and Guernsey cows has globules of the largest form, which explains why the cream rises so rapidly on it.

One hundred pounds of good milk contain 87 pounds of water, 4 of fat, 5 of milk sugar, 3.3 of casein and albumen, and .7 of mineral matter or salts.

The proportion of fat varies more in milk than any other constituent; the larger the proportion of fat the richer the milk.

In most States and many large cities the standard of milk is maintained by law, which requires three or three and a half per cent. of other solids.

It is the solid matter in the milk that gives it its value.

In well-regulated dairies each cow is milked about ten months a year; the remainder of the year she is said to be “dry.”

The souring of milk is due to the presence of bacteria.

Milk from healthy cows is a naturally pure article, but it may be contaminated after milking, with germs of typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and tuberculosis, and these diseases have been thus transmitted to man.

Odors and peculiar flavors are due to bacterial action or to the volatile oils of some foods; onions, turnips, cabbage, and certain weeds, as garlic and wormwood, give characteristic odors and tastes to milk.—Public Health Journal.