SYNTHETIC MILK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19953, 23 May 1928, Page 13

SYNTHETIC MILK.

EXPERIMENTS IN ENGLAND* CONVERSION OF CELLULOSE.' "PEOPLE WANT THE REAL THING* A few years ago no one would even have dreamed that the cow would ever be in danger of becoming obsolete as the producer of the world's most valuable food - commodity. Y,et a cable message from London states that successful experiments, having as their aim the production of milk from grass without the aid of the cow, are being carried out in several districts. However, in the view of Auckland experts the substance would be as much akin to milk only as margarine is to butter. "We shall never be able to make milk artificially, but only some substance having many of the food constituents of milk that may be satisfactory from the point of view of food value," said one man pro* minent in the field of bacteriological research in New Zealand, and who also gained valuable experience in the field of bio-chemistry in England and elsewhere. "It would only be a simplified artificial milk," he added. "The gist of the whole matter is this—the problem of producing some substance resembling milk is really that of the discovery of a eheap and efficient bio-chemical method for the conversion o f cellulose into fermentable sugar." Grass contained cellulose. This biological conversion of cellulose into sugar presented many difficulties, and was the basis of the whole problem. In the popular imagination, milk was only one thing —a substance that came from the cow. The point was that if a substance were manufactured to resemble milk, it would not be cow's milk. It might be food similar in composition to milk but not by any means one which would correspond to it in physical and chemical structure. Milk was such a complex substance that an exact chemical reproduction of it was not to be considered. "I should take no notice of any statement that milk can be produced from grass without the aid of a cow," another authority said. "By milk, of course, I mean the substance the cow gives cs. For instance, grass contains no fat. If some substance resembling milk is manufactured, it would be a misnomer to call it milk. "I admit marvellous progress has been made in the synthetic production of foods, but we have a long, long way to go yet," he added. "It is quite conceivable that some apparatus mi£ht be devised which would carry out the work that is carried out in the body, but so far little advance has been made in producing Nature's products in Nature's way." "Artificial milk may come, but the people will still want the natural milk," a third expert said. "In London during the war people lined up in queues to buy a small portion of meat when next door was a large shop selling artificial meats. People the world over will always want the real thing."