Dairy Product

Information and facts about Nutrition.

Dairy products are generally defined as foodstuffs produced from milk. A production plant for such processing is called a dairy. Raw milk for processing generally comes from cows, but occasionally from other mammals such as goats, sheep, water buffalo, yaks, or horses.

Dairy farmThere are more than 30 main products made from milk with a number of sub-products in each category. Dairy products include:

Milk, after optional homogenization, pasteurization, in several grades after standardization of the fat level
Cream, the fat skimmed off the top of milk or separated by machine-centrifuges
Sour cream, cream that has been fermented by the bacteria Streptococcus lactis and Leuconostoc citrovorum
Crème fraîche, slightly fermented cream
Cultured buttermilk, fermented concentrated (water removed) milk using the same bacteria as sour cream
Milk powder (or powdered milk), produced by removing the water from milk
Whole milk & buttermilk
Skim milk
Cream
High milk-fat & nutritional powders (for infant formulas)
Cultured and confectionary powders

Condensed milk, milk which has been concentrated by evaporation, often with sugar added for longer life in an opened can
Evaporated milk, (less concentrated than condensed) milk without added sugar
Khoa
Infant formula, dried milk powder with specific additives for feeding human infants
Butter, mostly milk fat, produced by churning cream
Buttermilk, the liquid left over after producing butter from cream, often dried as stock food
Butter cream?
Ghee, clarified butter, by gentle heating of butter and removal of the solid matter
Anhydrous milkfat
Cheese, produced by coagulating milk, separating from whey and letting it ripen, generally with bacteria and sometimes also with certain molds
Curds, the soft curdled part of milk (or skim milk) used to make cheese (or casein)
Whey, the liquid drained from curds and used for further processing or as a stock food
Cottage cheese
Cream cheese, produced by the addition of cream to milk and then curdled to form a rich curd or cheese made from skim milk with cream added to the curd
Fromage frais
Casein
Caseinates
Milk protein concentrates and isonates
Whey protein concentrates and isonates
Hydrolysates
Mineral concentrates
Yogurt, milk fermented by Streptococcus thermophiles and either Lactobacillus acidophilus or Lactobacillus bulgaricus
Ayran
Lassi
Gelato, slowly frozen milk and water
Ice cream, slowly frozen cream and emulsifying additives
Ice milk
Frozen custard
Frozen yogurt, yogurt with emulsifiers that is frozen
Other
Kumiss/Airag
Viili
Kephir
Filmjölk
Piimä
Got Milk? is an international organization supporting dairy products, especially milk.

History
Most dairy products were developed in Europe; the people of that continent have traditionally been the most aggressive in terms of exploiting cattle as a primary food source.

Dairy products were exported to the rest of the world during the imperialism phase of human history. They are now universally popular, despite the fact that the majority of the human species cannot consume them in adulthood without embarassing side effects. See lactose intolerance.

Eggs as dairy?
Most dictionaries define "dairy" in terms of milk products, which would naturally exclude eggs. What's more, the etymology of "dairy" does not seem to have any particular connection to eggs. Nonetheless, popular usage sometimes counts eggs as dairy products; the Open Directory Project, for example, at one point took cooking eggs as a subcategory of cooking dairy products.

Grocery stores in North America often stock eggs very near to "real" dairy products, such that one can often find cartons of eggs sitting under a sign saying "dairy". This could conceivably be either a cause or an effect (or both) of the conception of eggs as dairy products.

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