HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 22, 23 December 1944, Page 7

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

KEEP IT DARK. (By the Department of Health.) Sunlight doesn't do milk any good. So if your morning milk is left lying at the gate or at the back door, witn the bottles getting the full glare of the sunshine, it would be a good idea to do something about it. One of tho problems about marketing pasteurised and bottled milk is to protect it from sunlight. Recently a school reported that there was an unpleasant flavour about the school milk. A check was made at the production end and at the pasteurisation plant. The milk was satisfactory in quality and correctly pasteurised, it was found. It had no flavour as it left the factory, but it definitely had one when the children came to drink it. A check at the school showed that the milk stood in crates at the school gates, exposed to the sun and light lor some hours before it was taken inside. Tho effect of light on milk is to oxidise some of the milk serum constituents. A burnt flavour results from the action of sunlight. Try it yourself. Put a bottle of milk in the sunshine for a couple of hours and compare the flavour with another, bottle left in the dark or in a cool place. A bad flavour is only one result of exposing milk to the sun. Milk loses vitamin C steadily as it is exposed —even indirect light in a room causes loss. Milk may be only a small source of this vitamin, but you want to keep it there. Keep your morning milk out of the sun and out of tno light, whether inside or outside the house. BrieHy, keep it cool and keep it dark.