French Milk

[mamabear2b]

OK, this may sound really ignorant so I apologise now

We are going to France in two weeks and someone told me they generally drink UHT milk rather that fresh milk, is it true?

I've got a 15 month old and he's funny about drinking milk at the best of times, if it is true should I start getting him used to UHT before we go?

dd had french supermarket milk at 12 months.

i had the opposite problem. my dad, who lives there, said they tend to drink milk unpasteurised from the cow in next door's garden.

we just went to normal supermarche and got milk from the fridge. would assume not uht as not on a shelf iyswim.

There's plenty of fresh milk available. There's more UHT sold than would normally be the case in the UK, but it doesn't mean you can't get fresh non-UHT milk.

Cheers guys,

Felt a bit of a pratt asking and didn't think the whole country drank uht but you know how it is when something starts to niggle?!

Off to start the wonderful "holiday list" and root around the attic finding bags!

Full fat Fresh milk is in the supermarket in 1 Litre bottles. Its the stuff with the red top I think. The one with the blue top is semi skimmed and if you can find it the green topped stuff is skimmed

UHT does tend to be the more popular option, but you can get 'lait frais' from the fridge area of the supermarket (some places we have stayed have seemed to run out of this really early, but in recent years its been much easier to get).

We despise UHT too - though as a toddler, ds wasn't bothered (dds were).

As above, it is possible to get "lait frais", but it has still been heat treated to make it last longer, so although not strictly "UHT" it does have that odd smell (I went shopping on Monday and bought semi skimmed "bio" (organic) milk with a use-by date of 18 July! However, if you have a "monoprix" nearby they do a "lait-frais, demi-ecreme" in their gourmet range (picture of violets on the bottle) which is delicious (and I'm not keen on milk either!) it has no smell at all and is really nice and milky...it says on the bottle "la pasteurisation a ete remplace par un passage a travers des filtres tres fins" - so instead of heat treatment they have some filtering technique which keeps it fresh instead...it's very popular in our house anyway and worth a trip to Monoprix imo

He'll probably like the UHT as it might seem sweeter.
In Spain, we managed to find proper milk, but it still smelt like UHT.

It is harder to get fresh milk in French supermarkets, and they run out quickly. (Probably especially quickly where there are lots of Brit tourists!)

My DC always used to complain that it tasted different as well. Don't know if this was really true or if it was a ruse to get out of drinking milk.

I have very rarely had problems getting fresh milk in French supermarkets - though smaller grocers' shops often only have UHT.