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Pasteurization
Appears in
Published 2010
First discovered by French chemist Louis Pasteur in the mid-1800s, pasteurization serves two main purposes: (1) to protect public health and (2) to increase the shelf life of the product. By quickly heating the milk and then cooling it, pasteurization kills harmful bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella. To further ensure food safety, the milk is dated at the time of pasteurization and is kept refrigerated from farm to store to the consumer’s refrigerator.
As successful as pasteurization is at making milk safe, it does have the negative effect of removing some bacteria and enzymes that are potentially (the debate rages on in the United States) beneficial to the digestive process. To help make up the losses incurred by pasteurization, producers add vitamins and minerals to their finished milk.