How to identify palm oil in milk? How to determine the presence of palm oil in milk at home?

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Today it is becoming more and more difficult to find natural food. Even in ordinary drinking milk, which, it would seem, does not even need to be replaced with anything, you can find skimmed milk powder and palm oil. At first glance, there is nothing wrong with this, because the taste does not suffer too much. Yes, indeed, but if you look deeper, it turns out that instead of a he althy drink, we get a completely ambiguous product. Today we will try to find ways to identify palm oil in milk, because the consumer needs to know what they are being sold.

What is palm oil?

This is a vegetable fat that is obtained from the fruit of the oil palm. And the oil that is squeezed out of the seeds of the same palm tree is called palm kernel oil. In Russia, it began to be used quite recently, howeverimmediately gained popularity among food manufacturers. But if we consider European countries, then here it has been widely used for many decades, this is due to its cheapness and availability, as well as resistance to oxidation, due to which the oil itself and products prepared with its addition are stored for a very long time.

Where can you find palm oil today?

Surprisingly, it's much easier to list products that don't have it. Below we will talk about how to identify palm oil in milk and other dairy products, but for now let's dwell a little more on what products it is most often found in. Basically it is the food industry. It is used to make waffles and biscuits, cakes and creams, it is on it that semi-finished products are fried, the famous hamburgers and popcorn are cooked. Palm oil is an obligatory component of processed cheeses and condensed milk, combined oils. Today it is added to cottage cheese, milk fat is replaced with it, in general, almost any modern recipe cannot do without palm oil.

Useful properties of this product

If this oil is so widely used throughout the world, then perhaps this is due to its high usefulness for the body? In fact, palm oil contains a large amount of carotenoids, that is, the strongest antioxidants that are very important for our body. However, they mainly affect the skin and hair, which with great successused among cosmetics manufacturers. This oil contains a huge amount of vitamin E, which fights aging. A lot of palm oil and unsaturated fats, oleic and linoleic acids. However, does such a value of the product justify its presence in almost every food product and how to determine palm oil in milk, cottage cheese and other he althy products that should be on our table every day?

Harm of palm oil

Surely you have already heard a lot about the fact that foods containing transgenic vegetable fats should be excluded from your diet. Scientists are sounding the alarm, proving that palm oil increases the level of cholesterol in the blood, the rapid development of atherosclerosis and causes various metabolic disorders within the body. And it's not even about the oil itself. In fact, it is much closer in its characteristics to animal fat than to vegetable fat. This is a very refractory fat, which, perhaps, benefits the body, but in minimal quantities. But the fact that only a lazy manufacturer does not add it to their products today leads to the fact that we absorb a huge amount of palm oil without knowing it.

That's why today we want to talk about how to identify palm oil in milk and other foods so you can know exactly what was on your table. Although often even a thorough home investigation cannot help you, because there are manyunscrupulous producers who seek to get as much of the final product as possible with minimal investment in the form of quality products and sell it under the brand name of natural.

If we talk about dairy products, then their choice should be approached especially carefully, because most often we take them for our children. Carefully study the packaging, in addition to using palm oil, unscrupulous manufacturers also dye milk white. Milk is most commonly produced by adding skimmed powder to water and then adding more fat. But the mixture turns gray. Then the addition of E-171 comes into play. Just a few drops, and the drink is again snow-white, but in fact you will drink paint.

Can I eat palm oil products?

In general, this product cannot be called harmful or dangerous, you can just as well put pork fat, butter and other products on the same list. However, no one forces you to eat them if you do not want to. Avoiding the use of palm oil is almost impossible. Almost all confectionery, cookies, sweets are solid palm oil. But if you can still refuse sweets, then dairy and sour-milk products are what are considered he althy foods and are recommended for daily consumption.

Nutritionists say that this fat is quite dangerous for the body if it enters it in large quantities. high melting point(39-40 degrees) leads to the fact that it is practically not processed by the body. It becomes a kind of plasticine, which accumulates on the walls of blood vessels, slagging the body and provokes weight gain. Indirectly, this product can cause the development of cardiovascular and oncological diseases. Therefore, it is worth thinking about eating only village milk, cottage cheese and sour cream, as well as baking buns for tea at home.

Pluses of palm oil for producers

Of course, no one would use this product so widely if it was not justified from an economic point of view. In addition to the low price, this product has a number of serious advantages. It significantly increases the shelf life of products, which is extremely beneficial for confectionery manufacturers. And second, palm oil improves the taste of finished products. It develops addiction, because of this it is so difficult to give up fast food, ordinary food seems tasteless. Manufacturers use these properties, and they do not always indicate the exact composition on the packaging. However, there are ways to determine the presence of palm oil in milk at home. Let's break them down.

Attention to the label

Sometimes the composition of the product is given to us in a veiled form, the manufacturer expects that a person will not scrutinize the composition. That is what often happens. And since it is quite difficult to determine the presence of palm oil in milk at home, the consumerusually relies on the honesty of the manufacturer. However, you need to study the composition. Start with a title. If the package contains a dairy product, a cocktail product, and similar derivatives, then it is unlikely that you have natural milk. This also applies to other products. All definitions in the form of “cheese”, “cottage cheese”, “condensed milk” indicate that you have a mass that is 95% palm oil. The low cost should also arouse suspicion. Natural milk of proven brands is usually an order of magnitude more expensive than others. Finally, the expiration date - the higher it is, the more likely it is that you have a product containing palm oil. If the composition says "contains vegetable fats", then this is it.

Detailed study

Compared to all other products, palm oil is not as common in milk. We’ll talk more about how to determine a fake now, but such production is usually not justified due to technological difficulties. This applies to kefir and ryazhenka. Where it is more profitable to establish the production of palm butter, cheese or ice cream, this is where the benefit will be obvious. However, it is also found in milk, so let's identify a surrogate.

Since it is impossible to determine the presence of palm oil in milk offhand, open the package and pour the contents into a glass. Real milk, even with a low percentage of fat, should not be blue. Leave the glass in the refrigerator for an hour. The appearance of a layer of cream on the surface is the best indicatorquality product. Now take out the glass and leave it warm. If the next day the milk has not deteriorated, or has acquired an unpleasant taste, but has not changed at all in appearance, then you have milk with palm oil. How to determine its presence in other dairy products, we will talk a little lower, we still have a lot of interesting things ahead of us.

There is one more thing you need to pay attention to. This is the expiration date indicated on the package. Only by this date can we already conclude whether there is palm oil in milk. How to determine the expiration date, we will tell you. Natural milk is stored for no more than three days, so if the date shows 10 or more days, it contains vegetable fat.

Butter or spread

Today, this is a rather expensive product, and each of us wants to buy high-quality oil that will benefit the body. Speaking about how to identify milk from palm oil, we have already mentioned that the cheaper the product, the more likely it is that it contains vegetable fat. This also works for oil. However, you have already brought the purchase home. Cut off a piece and heat to 37 degrees (you can just put it in your palm). The natural product will melt completely, and a white film will remain on the surface. But if it contains palm oil, you will have to wait a very long time and still have hard pieces.

Now taste a piece of butter. Real butter melts quickly, has a creamy taste. In palm oil, teeth get stuck, it slowly melts in the mouth, forming"paraffin" film. Leaving the oil in the room, you will see that it will soon become soft, while the pseudo-product will remain solid. As you can see, identifying palm oil in milk is even more difficult than in its derivatives.

Cheese or cheese product

Probably the first product that led the public to the fact that they began to feed us fake. More recently, all outlets began to burst with cheap cheeses, which seemed to be no different from ordinary ones. If you do not have any packaging left, you will have to investigate. Cut off a piece and put it in the room. If the cheese has thickened and “sweated”, then this is a palm product. Processed cheeses with vegetable additives have a sugary creamy taste, and if left in the room, they quickly dry out and crack. And of course, you can use the same method that we talked about when we talked about how to determine palm oil in milk at home. That is, study the packaging: if the composition contains vegetable fat (especially if it is in the first place), then this is a cheese product.

Palm ice cream

Previously, delicious sweets were made exclusively from natural milk. Today the situation has changed, a huge amount of ice cream made from powdered milk and palm oil has appeared on the market. And that's exactly what kids love. First of all, when choosing a quality product, pay attention to trademarks with the GOST icon. If the ice cream has already been bought, then take a piece in your hands and rub it in your palms. If athere is a feeling of a film, which means that there are additives in the composition. If time permits, leave the ice cream on the table. The dairy product becomes soft, but keeps its shape, and its vegetable counterpart melts for a long time and turns into a clear liquid.