Where did the cream in milk go?

whitegoods_engineer

When I were a lad in the sixties and seventies, the milkman used to deliver our milk in tallish bottles with a silver tinfoil lid.

I remember there always being a good inch and a bit of cream floating in the neck of the bottle.

Now this was NOT special milk, it was just the standard silver top ordinary milk.

On occasions my Mum would get more expensive Gold top which had a cream layer too but was about double the amount where the line between milk and cream was.

So my question is, where has this cream gone?

Have they stolen it so that they can sellit seperately but still charge us the same?

Probably not a bad thing if they have with all the fatties that are waddling around our supermarkets these days.

gordikin

The cream is still there...it's just that milk is now more universally homogenised.

bees**knees

These days milk is run through tiny tubes, usually when it is pasteurised. This makes the fat molecules become smaller and they disperse more evenly throughout the milk.This keeps the fat and liquid together and the creaming on the top of milk doesn’t occur.

Lost2

I used to love dipping my finger in the top of the milk
O happy days

Haffiana

Waitrose own label milks are not homogenised. The stuff we get delivered from the milkman is also unhomogenised, and still has a great big layer of cream at the top!

However you are absolutely right in general about the cream being removed. Most people do it themselves by buying skimmed or semi skimmed milk, although full fat milk is actually low fat by definition - it contains well under 5% fat. This has virtually no effect on most people's overall fat consumption, because the fat difference in real terms between full fat and semi-skimmed is only 2g per 100 ml, although due to clever advertising, no-one seems to realise this! It does benefit the milk companies enormously because they can use the removed fat for butter, cream and cheese.

In addition, full fat milk used to be standardised at 4%, and semi skimmed at 2%. This is getting lower and lower, with full fat often barely over 3%. Yes, it is being stolen by the milk companies - they standardise the milk by altering the fat content, and as above, the milk fat is extremely valuable.

cavework

Am I imagining this or was my Mum telling me a fib?
We used to have full fat milk delivered by our milkman in the 60's and sometimes the foil on top had holes on it.
Mum said the Blue Tits had been at it when it was on the door step?

bubbs

cavework wrote: »

Am I imagining this or was my Mum telling me a fib?
We used to have full fat milk delivered by our milkman in the 60's and sometimes the foil on top had holes on it.
Mum said the Blue Tits had been at it when it was on the door step?

Yes thats right, if the milk was left on the door dtep the tits often pecked them lol

Owain_Moneysaver

cavework wrote: »

Am I imagining this or was my Mum telling me a fib?
We used to have full fat milk delivered by our milkman in the 60's and sometimes the foil on top had holes on it.
Mum said the Blue Tits had been at it when it was on the door step?

Not a fib.

You used to be able to get little plastic caps for the bottles.

wikipedia
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Independent

SnowBelle_2

This reminds me of Primary school in the 70's.
We dreaded being told to get the milk in as it had usually been left outside for ages and the cream was thick on the top and sometimes pecked!
we used to have the little individual glass bottles with straws......I wonder if that's why I don't like milk now as the thought of warm creamy milk now makes me gag.
Come to think of it Health & Safety would have a fit now!

epsilondraconis

SnowBelle wrote: »

we used to have the little individual glass bottles with straws......I

Wow, that takes me back...

I used to look forward to having my milk at school in the glass bottle with the straw.

Our milk also used to be pecked at by the birds.

urchin

We have our milk delivered by the milkman (milkandmore.co.uk) and more often than not, the milk has the cream on the top (we have the organic full fat version). It's yummy!