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No one\u2019s crying over expired milk this time.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Organizing, preparing, and managing school lunches is serious business. With hundreds of children\u2019s health and safety on the line, schools are under the gun to make sure everything is safe and on the level. In fact, it\u2019s even a custom in Japanese schools for the principal to eat lunch first<\/a> to make sure it\u2019s safe for everyone else.<\/p>\n Still, quality issues can always find a way to slip through the cracks by human error or plain bad luck. Such an incident occurred at a junior high school in Amagasaki City, Hyogo Prefecture, but in a seemingly miraculous fashion resulted in no health issues or even mild discomfort for those involved.<\/p>\n \u25bc <\/span>It appears no one was lactose intolerant either.<\/p>\n On 5 September, the school served 200-milliliter (7-ounce) cartons of milk as a part of the usual lunch program. However, like a game of creamy Russian roulette, hidden among the scores of cartons were two with an expiry date of 27 July, one best before 29 March, and two dating way back to 4 February<\/strong>, almost seven months old to the date.<\/p>\n The milk was consumed by both students and faculty members, but as of 9 September, when the mistake was announced, there were no reported negative health effects of drinking the old milk<\/strong>. In fact, according to the faculty members who drank it, it didn\u2019t taste any different from regular milk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The accident occurred when expired milk was being cleaned out of a refrigerator intended for faculty and staff. Apparently, some of those cartons had gotten mixed up with the fresh cartons set to be distributed the same day.<\/p>\n Readers of the news online were understandably shocked by the outcome of milk that, under normal circumstances, should have been biohazardous by such a point.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?! No health problems?!\u201d<\/em> There\u2019s a rather simple explanation as to why everyone was OK and even satisfied with the old milk, as well as why everyone else is confused by this. Milk treated by ultra-high temperature (UHT) sterilization is commonly sold in Asia and Europe, often under names like \u201cshelf-stable milk\u201d or \u201clong-life milk,\u201d because it can be kept unopened for quite a long time at room temperature.<\/p>\n Japan is no exception, and, in fact, over 90 percent of the milk sold here is UHT-sterilized.<\/strong> However, most people aren\u2019t aware of this because almost none of it is marketed as shelf-stable milk in Japan at all.<\/strong> Under the belief that Japanese consumers prefer freshness over processing, UHT milk is sold exactly as if it were regularly pasteurized milk, which requires refrigeration at all times.<\/p>\n Because of this, when checking most cartons in Japan, you probably won\u2019t see any indication at all that it has a long shelf life. The trick is to look at the label and find something like 130\u21032\u79d2\u9593, which means it was sterilized at 130 degrees Celsius (266 degrees Fahrenheit) for two seconds.<\/strong> If it\u2019s anything over 120 degrees, you\u2019re probably looking at UHT-sterilized milk. For comparison\u2019s sake, regular North American milk is usually pasteurized at around 75 degrees for 15 seconds.<\/p>\n The final comment above was on the right track in that when selling UHT-sterilized milk, companies will put \u2018best before\u2019 dates in the relatively near future, similar to pasteurized milk, to perpetuate the image of freshness for consumers<\/strong>. This isn\u2019t technically fraudulent since a best before date, or \u201cshomi kigen<\/em>\u201d in Japanese, is not a safety limit but a period in which the manufacturer will guarantee quality<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite its longer-than-labeled life, even UHT has its limits, and seven months is likely pushing it. In this particular case, however, the milk was aided by being kept in a fridge that clearly wasn\u2019t being used often, where it could remain at a constantly low temperature in a closed environment. As a result, they got milk that was more or less as good as the day they bought it.<\/p>\n Now that you know the milk you\u2019re drinking in Japan is probably way more durable than it lets on to be, a very important thing to note is not all milk in Japan is UHT-sterilized, so be sure to check the label carefully before getting loosey-goosey with it for your own safety.<\/p>\n Source: Sun TV News<\/a>, Hachima Kiko<\/a>, Kokokara<\/a><\/em> No one\u2019s crying over expired milk this time. Organizing, preparing, and managing school lunches is serious business. With hundreds of children\u2019s health and safety on the line, schools are under…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/TSU92_shizukugaturanarumilk_TP_V4.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u201cAmazing! I can\u2019t believe they kept milk around for 7 months and there were no problems!\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cIt tasted like regular milk\u2026 Whaaaaa?!\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI used to work in a school lunch program, and this is why they shouldn\u2019t give leftovers to staff.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI ate some unopened yogurt one month past the date and ended up in bed for a week.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cSeriously?! After seven months, it must have tasted a little off.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI wonder if they\u2019re just trying to downplay it.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cIf it\u2019s a \u2018best before\u2019 date, that\u2019s fine, but if it\u2019s a \u2018use by\u2019 date, then it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/Photo-2025-09-10-12-02-01.jpg?w=640\")
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\nFeatured image: \u00a9 SoraNews24
\nInsert image: Pakutaso<\/a>, \u00a9 SoraNews24<\/em>
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