The Permeate Hits the Fan

I was first alerted to the gathering storm about permeate by my friend Louisa. She is an American who has lived most of her life in France, but she is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a hippy. As such she is interested in matters of nutrition and the evils of modern food processing, and sent me an article about a substance which, at that stage, hardly anyone had heard of, but the first rumblings of a controversy were starting in Australia and the global nutrition emailing lists.

Raw milk, unpasturised cream and Ste-Maure-de-Touraine
fromage de chevre from my laitiere.

I have long had reservations about fat reduced and homogenised milk, as I believe there is evidence to suggest that there are issues with the smaller size of homogenised fat globules in milk. This means that instead of big fat globules that mostly get passed straight through your digestive system, it seems that the fat from homogenised milk may be easier to absorb. Conversely, to absorb the calcium from milk the fat content has to be right, and reduced fat milk doesn't contain enough fat to allow you to benefit from the calcium.

The sort of thing most people here buy - UHT
and referred to in our house as 'emergency milk'.

Milk from the farm is routinely deconstructed by the milk processing plants and reconstructed to create standardised products. The milk is filtered through finer and finer mesh to first extract the fat, then the protein and finally, the sugars and water (or permeate). Until recently the permeate was a waste product, sold off as animal feed to pig producers. But in Australia it has been permitted to include up to 16% permeate in milk without noting it on the label. The view is that it is a natural component of the milk so there isn't a problem. However, the end result has a higher water and sugar content than milk would naturally - it's just a bulking agent, and a way of discreetly dumping waste. Probably it makes no difference to the average consumer, but I wonder how many lactose intolerants the higher dose of milk sugar has created. The irony now is that several Australian milk processors are trumpeting their plan to produce permeate free milk - but it will be more expensive (presumably because of the requirement to dispose of the permeate in some other way).

Luckily, here in France, I have access to raw whole unhomogenised milk that is delivered to me twice a week by the farmer herself. We don't consume huge amounts of milk - about 3 litres a week. Until I mentioned this consumption level to various friends and family, I thought this was quite a lot of milk, but I am astounded by how much milk the tea drinking Brits get through! Still, I imagine we consume more milk than French couples of our age. We have milk in a cup of coffee and some cereal most days, and regular doses of homemade custard. Lots of French people think of milk solely as something you make riz au lait (rice pudding) with, and would feel distinctly queasy at the thought of drinking it, even in coffee. That's why French households habitually buy UHT milk - the slightly caramelised taste is perfect for puddings, and it just becomes a store cupboard ingredient, like cans of tomatoes (and in French homes, instant mashed potato flakes, but that's another story).

My laitiere (milk woman) tells me that she has less and less demand for the raw milk, but she isn't planning to cease offering it. The few French people who buy it are mainly elderly and don't shop much at supermarkets so they don't have access to the UHT milk. Their solution is to buy the raw milk and immediately boil it. We, on the other hand, recklessly, and with no regard for the myriad of possible diseases and bacteria, consume it straight from the plastic bag.

Susan