Ask Wendyl

Email wendylwantstoknow@ gmail. com with suggestions. Unfortunately, Wendyl cannot correspond with readers. permeate debate raged louder and longer than it did in our country, dairy farmers complained that by watering down the milk with permeate they were not selling as much milk.

Following a huge consumer outcry, most of Australia’s major milk brands decided to adhere to a selfimposed ban on adding permeate to milk.

Here in New Zealand the two dairy giants just kept on producing milk with permeate in it.

But in the past four years new milk producers have come into our supermarkets such as Lewis Road Creamery, who do not process their milk and do not add permeates.

I have no idea how well the alternative less- processed milks are selling but I know that I buy them and enjoy the taste which is similar to milk I drank as a child.

So last week, I just about drove off the road when I saw a billboard advertising this Meadow Fresh milk, which is permeate free.

Apparently Goodman Fielder has “listened to our consumers who are asking for less- processed products” and that “milk without added permeate actually retains a higher level of the naturally present protein” — which is the opposite of what Fonterra said four years ago.

So I think that perhaps the alternative, less- processed milks have been selling well. And indeed Goodman Fielder owns Puhoi Valley, which recently released organic, permeate- free milk.

Thankfully, for the consumer, Goodman Fielder is absorbing the cost of the new bottle this milk comes in and producing a less- processed No permeate added. Less processed milk. Better taste.