Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Dairy Products

Perhaps it's just that I haven't actually bought dairy products prior to this year, but it seems like the shelf life has gotten longer.

I'm fond of breakfast cereal (Oat Flakes or Captain Crunch, but not the Captain Crunch Swirled Berries), baked potatoes, and the occasional taco. But the problem with all those foods is that they require either milk or sour cream and I never use up the milk or sour cream fast enough to avoid having half of it acquire a strange odor and some small degree of sentience.

However, Jaru bought some ultra-pasteurized milk just a bit ago and it had an expiration date like one month after purchase. I'd swear that it used to be that you were pushing your luck if you didn't drink the milk in the car on the way home. And I've got this sour cream that's refrigerated-aisle-legal until July 11.

Our local grocery chain (which has some weird almost-monopoly on San Antonio shopping) has this milk-like substance on sale called MooTopia. Actually, they say "it's real milk, only better." I'm a bit put off by the milk that HEB isn't quite willing to call milk -- but I also realise that's inconsistent of me given my general fondness for chemically and genetically engineered food products.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe it is "Soy Milk"?

Anonymous said...

Hi,

This is not a bash, but I work at the plant that makes "Mootopia."

(I found your post by happensance: a Google alert that I subscribe to)

You're correct to be skeptical of the marketing slogans (I sure am), but in the case of Mootopia, it basically is "real milk."

We run it through a filteration system and seperate the protien, fat, and minerals. Then we mix it up again to make a high-protien, low-fat, low lactose drink that still tastes good.

The only thing that doesn't make it 100% pure milk is an enzyme (a very expensive Japanese enzyme) that we add during the remixing process. Since I'm not an engineer, I can't exactly explain what it's for, but it helps all the parts stick back together again somehow.

I'm going to show this post to my bosses because I think they'll get a kick out of it.

All the best, and Happy Holidays.

cpa (real name with-held for employment reasons)

Steve Peterson said...

Sorry about the slow (ish) response but one problem with blogs is that once they get long it's hard to know when an older post has been commented to and I think my "recent comments" doo-hickey might have trouble with the archives.

No knock really intended on Mootopia! Obviously the marketing caught my attention. It's just that I already only resort to milk under conditions of duress and have an innate suspicion of anything that even looks like milk. So having something that looks like milk but isn't actually called milk triggers the tinfoil-hat-wearing side of me.

Thanks for dropping by and I'm sure my curiosity will overcome my paranoia sooner or later!