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Food Values and Adulterations: Skim

Skim milk is often regarded on the farm as having little food value.

It may be purchased in cities at a very low rate, usually about 2 or 3 cents a quart. Yet even after the bulk of the butter fat has been removed from milk by skimming, the solid nutrients make up nearly onetenth of its entire weight and it affords one of the cheapest sources of proteid generally available. A lunch or meal of bread and skim milk is very nutritious in proportion to its cost and convenience. Eight ounces of bread eaten with a pint of skim milk will furnish very nearly onethird of the proteid required for a day's nutriment at a cost of 5 cents.

As compared with the ordinary mixed diet of meat and potatoes, bread and skim milk make a better balanced and equally wholesome ration.

Many housewives hesitate to remove the cream from whole milk in the belief that they are thus robbing members of their family, and especially growing children, of a necessary kind of nutriment. But this is not the case. The fuel value of the FOOD VALUES AND ADULTERATIONS butter fat removed in cream can be supplied in the ordinary diet more cheaply by the use of butter, meat, sweets and other carbohydrates. And the skim milk is rich in carbohydrates and proteid. Many families in moderate circumstances who are in the habit of drinking whole milk and buying cream, would be quite as well off if the top of the milk for 2 or 3 inches were poured into the cream pitcher. And there would be marked saving in the cost of cream. a Growing children will ordinarily drink freely of skim milk, if it is available, and nothing could be more wholesome for them. But since the older members of the family may not take kindly to skim milk as a food, it is an excellent plan to use it freely in cookery. Skim milk should be preferred to water for making bread and all other recipes for which it is available.

Milk soups furnish an excellent means of increasing the food value of a meal or using up superfluous milk. Milk may be mixed with stock made from meat, or used as a basis of vegetable purées, such as bean, pea, potato, corn and celery soups, or tomato bisque and the like. Oyster stew made of milk owes its food value to the milk more than to the oysters.

Milk "white" or "cream" sauces are also very useful. They are nutritious and are a convenient and economical way of using up left-overs. Numerous recipes found elsewhere in this volume for puddings, desserts, blancmange, ice cream and junket, illustrate the many ways in which surplus milk may be used up in the ordinary mixed diet. Among ordinary byproducts of milk may be mentioned -junket, cottage cheese, butter milk, whey, sour milk or clabber, and koumiss. All of these may profitably be employed to give variety.