What Is Pasteurization?

- Definition & Common Uses

This lesson will discuss pasteurization, Louis Pasteur, and mastitis. We'll focus in on how pasteurization works,
what it's used on, and why it's important to your health.

Shopping For Food

One of the things I love to do is shop around for delicious food. The other day, I was standing in the
checkout line at the grocery store and saw that the lady in front of me had bought an interesting
concoction of food. She had a gallon of milk, some cheese, butter, eggs, and honey. It seemed to
me that she was probably going to make some kind of delicious cake with most of those
ingredients.

Pasteurization
What all of the items in the lady's basket had in common wasn't just their impending use in some
kind of dessert, but the fact that all of them had been pasteurized. Pasteurization is the process of
heating, and then rapidly cooling, liquids or food in order to kill microbes that may expedite their
spoilage or cause disease. The French scientist who invented the process of pasteurization was
Louis Pasteur. Unsurprisingly, his last name, Pasteur, is what gives this process, pasteurization, its
name.

In any case, after something is heated during the process of pasteurization, it must be rapidly
cooled thereafter. I'll explain why that is the case in just a second. But, before I do that, you must
realize that pasteurization is not sterilization. Sterilization is when you get rid of all living
microorganisms on an inanimate object. Pasteurization is not sterilization because it doesn't
destroy every single organism in whatever food or liquid is being heated, namely, pasteurization
does not destroy bacterial spores. These spores are basically really hardy forms of bacteria that
must be super-heated to be destroyed. The heating process of pasteurization does not get hot
enough to destroy these spores, but does get hot enough, for long enough, to get rid of disease
causing microbes.

Now, if rapid cooling doesn't occur after heating during pasteurization of something like milk, then
heat-loving bacteria will use the increased temperature to their advantage and multiply like crazy.
However, if we cool down the milk fast enough, we'll slow down the growth of any remaining
microbes just enough so they don't cause us any signi cant harm.
So, in a nutshell, we heat up the milk to get rid of heat sensitive microbes, and then cool it down
really quickly thereafter to make sure that the heat-loving bacteria don't use the warm milk to their
advantage and do not multiply in numbers large enough to cause us any harm. This process of
minimizing the number of microbes in our food not only helps to prevent life-threatening diseases,
but also decreases the number of microbes that would spoil our food, thereby wasting our money
on short-lasting sustenance, such as milk, butter, and so on.

Raw Milk
However, the money-saving bene ts of pasteurization are secondary compared to the lifesaving
bene ts it really imparts. With this in mind, I must touch on the recently popular topic of drinking
raw milk. This is milk that has not been pasteurized. Proponents of drinking raw milk claim that
there's no point to pasteurization, since it doesn't get rid of all microbes anyways, and that
pasteurization also destroys bene cial nutrients. There are two important points to make here with
respect to those claims.

The rst thing you should be aware of is that most of the nutrients in milk that are bene cial to
humans survive pasteurization. Secondly, take it from me, a veterinarian, that you'll be exposing
yourself to some serious harm if you drink unpasteurized milk. The cattle that provide you with this
milk often walk around in their own lth. Their udders hang low to the ground. Because of this, the
teats that are milked may themselves contain very dangerous bacteria that may contaminate the
milk you're going to drink. Furthermore, cattle can get a condition called mastitis, which is the
in ammation of the udder that is caused by an infection; an infection that is sometimes caused by
bacteria that can be lethal to human beings.

Finally, consider the fact that untold numbers of people died from consuming contaminated
products, including milk, prior to the invention of pasteurization. And today, almost 80% of food-
borne outbreaks associated with milk or milk products, such as cheese, occur when raw milk is
used or consumed. These outbreaks have resulted in human fatalities.

Lesson Summary
To avoid these fatalities, pasteurization, the process of heating and then rapidly cooling liquids or
food in order to kill microbes that may expedite their spoilage or cause disease, is used on a lot of
the food we eat or beverages we consume. The French scientist who invented the process of
pasteurization was Louis Pasteur. Unsurprisingly, his last name, Pasteur, is what gives this
process, pasteurization, its name. One of the reasons why pasteurizing raw milk is so important is
because cattle can get a condition called mastitis, which is the in ammation of the udder that is
caused by an infection; an infection that is sometimes caused by bacteria that can be lethal to
human beings.

Learning Outcomes
Students should be able to complete the following tasks after viewing this lesson:

De ne pasteurization

Discuss why pasteurization is used on certain food products