The white stuff

When I was a kid there were only four kinds of milk - nonfat, 1%, 2%, and whole.  If you wanted to get fancy, you could buy goat milk or soy milk, but that was about it.  

Over the years, milk has gotten fancier.  There is lactose free milk, vitamin fortified milk, and the list goes on.

It shouldn't surprise me that it is the same here in Japan.  Milk isn't just milk.  This recently came to my attention when a friend commented that she asked her husband to bring home milk so she could make yogurt.  Instead of bringing milk, he brought her "milk beverage" and her yogurt was an epic failure.

We don't drink milk.  In fact, we rarely have it in the house.  But I do make copious quantities of yogurt.  When I first started to make my own yogurt, my husband found organic milk for me to use.  Although I can only find it at one store in town, I dutifully buy that particular milk.

So, when she told me about the "milk beverage" I had to ask for a definition.  It turns out you can buy: 

• whole milk (gyunu), 
• lowfat milk (teishibounyu), 
• nonfat milk (mushibounyu),
• processed milk (kakonyu) meaning other ingredients such as butter or cream have been added to the milk, and
• milk beverage (nyuinryo) that have other non-dairy ingredients added to the milk

Processed milk (with cows), milk beverage, whole milk (orange)

This is another product that may seem easy to decipher, but you might not be buying what you wanted if you don't know the nitty gritty!

Many of the milk beverages are fortified milk, with calcium and iron added to it.  This sounds fine, just don't cook with it (for example, a cream sauce or yogurt) because it will not come out like you think it will!

If you really want to get whole milk, there is a trick.  On the top of whole milk cartons, there is a notch.  This is actually for visually impaired people to be able to quickly and easily determine if the milk is whole or not.  But I think it is useful for people who can't read Japanese labels!