You may have noticed that regular milk expires within a week or sooner, but organic milk lasts as long as a month. So what is it about organic milk that makes it last longer?

Actually, it has nothing to do with being organic. Milk producers simply use a different process to preserve the milk longer since organic products often have to travel further since it's not produced everywhere in the country.

Organic milk is “ultrapasteurized” using ultrahigh temperature (UHT) processing. The milk is heated to 280 degrees Fahrenheit for 2-4 seconds then quickly chilled. In regular pasteurization, milk is heated to 162 degrees for at least 15 seconds.

Ultrapasteurization kills all the bacteria in the milk while regular pasteurization only kills enough bacteria to keep you from getting sick from drinking it. Organic milk's total lack of bacteria makes it last much longer. So, why isn't all milk pasteurized with UHT processing? First of all, ultrapasteurization makes the taste of the milk sweeter by burning some of the sugars, and not all milk drinkers appreciate this different flavor. Secondly, UHT kills some of the vitamin content in the milk. Other than that, there are no indications that ultrapasteurization changes the nutritional content of the milk significantly.

So next time you're skeptical about buying organic milk because of the long shelf life, don't worry – it has nothing to do with being organic!

It's spring cleaning time! And it's also around the time when summer dieting fads begin to pop up. This year, consider a pantry detox by cleaning out all the junky, unhealthy, and expired foods from your pantry. Rethink your food storage and shopping habits. This month's newsletter is dedicated to giving you the dish on expiration dates, how to store your foods correctly, and how to prolong the shelf life of your food (without resorting to a laundry list of food preservatives).

You may be the adventurous type that gets a thrill by rebelliously eating a yogurt a week after its expiration date, but you may not be living as close to the edge as you think. On the other hand, you may be an expiration-date-conservative that sticks to the mantra, “when in doubt, throw it out.” This is a good guiding principle, but may encourage you to toss perfectly edible food and waste your money! It's time to brush up on your expiration date lingo and learn how to save your money.

• Expiration Date: The most helpful and important. If you haven’t used the item by this date, throw it away. Be sure to take into account factors like leaving perishable items un-refrigerated. Even an hour sitting out on the counter can make deli meat expire at least two days before the expiration date on the package.
• Sell-by or Pull-by date: This is mostly a date used to tell stores when to remove products from the shelves. If you are not planning on using an item within 1-2 days of this date, don’t buy it.
• Best-if-used by and Use-by date: Not a food safety date, but more of an indicator of freshness. After this date, the food's freshness, taste, and texture will deteriorate, but will still be safe and edible.
• Guaranteed Fresh: Often used for perishable baked goods. If the product no longer tastes fresh, take it back to the store!
• Pack Date: Date that the item was packed. Not a reliable indicator of freshness.

Now that you have the key words down, take a few minutes to look through your fridge, freezer, and pantry for expired (or extremely degraded) food items. Chances are pretty good that you’ll find a few things that are well past their prime.

There are three important things to remember for food storage…location, location, location! Where we store our food plays a big role in how long it takes to spoil.

• The door is one of the warmest spots in the fridge so avoid storing perishables on the door of the refrigerator. Instead, put your condiments there.
• Store herbs and spices in an airtight container in a cool, dry place and they'll last longer than you might expect. Whole spices can pack a punch for up to 4 years, ground spices for 2-3 years, and leafy herbs for 1-3 years, depending on the herb.
• Store food in clear (ideally glass) containers so you can see what's inside. You don't want a "black box" filled with mystery meat in the back of your fridge.
• Mark the label or put a sticker on the container to indicate when something was made/opened/thawed.

Now that your refrigerator looks like it did back in college (empty), let's go shopping!

• Pick up the perishable items on your shopping list last to extend their freshness.
• Keep in mind that the longer perishable groceries sit in your shopping cart, car, and counter, the quicker they spoil!
• If you pick up milk and keep it in your cart while you continue shopping (20 minutes), drive home (20 minutes), and leave it on the kitchen counter (5 minutes) before putting it away, that 45-minute period can cut the shelf life of the milk 2-4 days.
• If you leave deli meats on the counter for 1 hour, figure that they might expire 2 days sooner.
• Visit your local farmer's market! We recommend patients pick up produce here whenever possible because local produce requires much less travel time from the farm to your table. As soon as produce is harvested, its nutritional value begins to degrade.
• Avoid purchasing herbs or spices from bins. You might feel cool shopping from those fancy-looking bins with the fancy-looking scoops, but bins are an inviting environment for bugs and when spices are exposed to oxygen, they lose antioxidant qualities.

Recent concerns over the safety of plastic containers have freaked most of us out. Plastics manufacturers now assure us that hazardous chemicals like BPAs are no longer added to plastic containers. But can you trust them? What’s a girl (or guy) to do?

Bottom line: Sure, some plastic containers might be safe to use, but why risk it? Stick to what we already know is safe and readily available – glass. There are some great glass containers that come with lock-in plastic lids. From my experience, information in the world of science and nutrition comes and goes. The results of future studies are often anyone’s guess, so stick with what’s predictable and go glass.

Shopping for and storing oil can easily be flubbed by the average consumer, resulting in a loss of flavor and nutrients. Oil is especially sensitive and reactive to poor storage. A 2004 study in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry reported that even if oils are stored under perfect conditions, many of the oils' health properties were entirely lost after only 12 months. But keeping your oil healthy, flavorful, and safe is easy if you pay attention to these rules:

• Don't buy more oil than you will use in 6 months
• Buy oils that come in tinted glass – less exposure to light
• Pick the bottles from the back of the shelf – again, less exposure to light
• Store oil in a cool, dark place – less exposure…you get the idea!