Milk is a highly nutrition-filled food. It contains major nutrients needed by the body for good health such as fats, carbohydrates, proteins, minerals and essential vitamins. People enjoy drinking milk in its natural form and also use it to make a wide range of food products including cream, butter, yogurt, cheese and ice cream. Milk intake is beneficial to humans especially to infants since newborn babies lack the ability to chew large masses of food that can provide them good nutrition. Though there are other sources for essential nutrient, milk intake is still a practical way to maintain one’s proper nutrition. There have been numerous forms of milk. Powdered milk includes this sea of milk products. It is often used in baking and always made available in places where fresh milk is not visible. Nowadays, numerous brands of commercial powdered milk are rapidly being produced and advertised on televisions, radios, billboards and other forms of advertisements. Parents buy various brands of powdered milk for their children so that they will stay healthy always. Yet, the consumers need to be assured that these milk brands are pure enough and can sustain the nutritional needs of our body. As part of these consumers, we, the researchers, developed a study which can determine the percentage purity of powdered milk through the process of titration. Specifically, it aims to determine the lactose content of this commercial milk through basing the percentage purities of the milk by the CODEX standards of lactose content. Lactose is used since it is the only sugar naturally present in milk. According to Microsoft Encarta 2006, lactose is a carbohydrate that is broken down by the body to supply energy. We used ten brands of commercial powdered milk in our research study and these are Alacta, Alaska, Anchor, Bonakid, Bearbrand, Promil, UCare123, Nido, and Nestogen. We did several titration tests before we gathered the needed information. The time of experimentation alone took us three and a half months to finish. After analyzing the findings, results and conclusions of the study, we found out that Alacta has the highest lactose content among the five brands of infant’s milk while Bearbrand has the highest lactose content among the five family’s milk. Most of all, we successfully concluded that all ten milk brands in our research study are above the average CODEX standards for lactose content. We recommend to the milk consumers that they buy milk brands with high lactose content and these milk brands are those on our research study. It is advisable to buy any of the ten brands since all commercial powdered milk in the study have higher lactose content than the normal standard which is at least sixty-one percent. Specifically, our research study is only applicable to non-diabetic individuals and lactose-tolerant people.
FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT
Strangely but true, we didn’t have any problems concerning laboratory equipments but rather than time management because we must titrate the milk solutions at a given specific time. We let the milk solutions curdle for two days before we can titrate them in order to determine the lactic acid content of the milks. Then we use the CODEX standards as basis for determining the lactose content of each brand of milk. We also had financial difficulties due to the high prices of commercial powdered milk and laboratory materials. I hate to admit it but having a research study before graduation means a lot of stressful days and totally-shocked bankruptcy but it is worth all the hardships when you finish it and you will feel proud of what you have done. I humbly salute to myself and to my entire batch mates for we surpassed one of our stressful and hardest experiences in life.
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