Whose welfare guarantees your indulgence in food?
— The "fresh ban" postponed again and again; sweeteners have side effects
Stop trusting our food without a second thought. November 1st was supposed to be the implementation date for the milk "fresh ban", but it has been postponed for the third time until next year's New Year's Day, and whether it will ultimately be implemented remains a mystery. Although the repeated postponement of the "fresh ban" is merely a game of power between the standard setters, enterprises, and industries, at least we now understand that the "fresh" milk we drink every day, after undergoing ultra-high temperature sterilization, has lost its "fresh" meaning, and some are even reconstituted milk. There are many similar instances of "seeing things through a mist" in life, making people question whether all those various items labeled as "good for (reducing) our bodies" or "pleasing our taste buds" are truly our "indulgences."
The original freshness of milk made no sense
As early as the end of 2004, the "General Rules for Prepackaged Food Labelling" and the "Implementation Guide for National Standard of Food Labelling" stipulated: there is no such thing as "fresh" in processed foods, and the word "fresh" is prohibited on the labels of all heated foods. In other words, whether it is ambient temperature milk or pasteurized milk, both will bid farewell to the "fresh" label; beverages marked with "fresh" (such as fruit juice) will also face this fate.
In the "General Rules" issued by the National Standardization Committee, relevant experts adopted the interpretation of food labelling from Part 101 of the U.S. Federal Regulations, which sparked controversy over the definition of "fresh milk." Specifically, it emphasized that the standard term for "fresh milk" should be "raw milk," internationally known as "original milk." The meaning of raw is that it undergoes no processing whatsoever—it is only the milk freshly squeezed from cows that can be called fresh milk. The "General Rules" analyzed that once raw milk undergoes any kind of processing, including heat processing, pasteurization, sterilization, etc., it loses its "raw" meaning, as some vitamins may be damaged due to oxidation-reduction reactions. Undoubtedly, this regulation directly targets pasteurized milk, which proudly carries the "fresh milk" banner. For the ultra-high temperature sterilized milk commonly seen in the market, marked as "pure fresh milk," the "General Rules" considers it misleading. The article analyzes that if no additives are added to the raw milk and it only undergoes ultra-high temperature sterilization or secondary sterilization, it can be called pure milk. Clearly, ultra-high temperature sterilized milk has also been reminded not to play word games with the "fresh" label in the future.