When I made pudding using raw milk, my dessert separated and looked and smelled unappetizing. What happened?
There are two major processes that differentiate raw milk and pasteurized milk. Most milk undergoes a heat treatment, known as pasteurization, which kills bacteria, and homogenization, which distributes the fat evenly among the product. Pasteurization destroys a small number of milk enzymes but most of the natural enzymes in milk survive this process. However, the enzymes that are naturally present in milk are bovine enzymes which our bodies don’t use. Enzymes in the food that we eat and drink are broken down in our digestive tract; human bodies rely on human enzymes to digest and metabolize food and to regulate body processes. Milk secreted from the udder of a healthy cow contains some bacteria. These bacteria produce enzymes, which are proteins that speed up the rate of chemical reactions. The enzymes that negatively affect products made from milk are those that bring about undesirable changes in proteins (proteases) and fat (lipases). Some bacterial enzymes can be inactivated by the
