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Show Buttermilk Not Always a Safe Drink WITHIN recent years buttermilk nas attained great po ularity as a food and b6ver?e It is sold at soda fountains jeeupios a prom inent place on hotel and restaurant menus and has even Invaded the Baloons where It competes successfully with beer and other alcoholic drinks We are in fact consuming so much buttermilk that those who sell it are no longer able to depend for their supply upon the byproduct of buttermaklng What is served in a great many cases is not strictly speaking buttermilk at all but the fermented skim or separator rn.Uk which remains as a by product ot The cream trade This tastes exactly line the real th ng and has practically the same chemical properties Buttermilk is popular not merely because be-cause the public Uces the taste of it but because science tells us that the bacteria of the lactic acid which it contains bave a very beneficia effect upon our stomachs and intestines Lately however the question is being raised whtl er buttermilk is such an un mixed blessing as w e have long supposed. It has been found that the buttermilk ot commerce often does not contain p suf ficient proportion of lactic acid to destroy the germs of typhoid fever dlptherla, cholera and other diseases which may be present in mlk It is a so thought by some authorities that possibly the harm less ba teria present in buttermilk may in some way encourage tl e growth of any disease germs that may be found there Professor Helnemann of the University of Chicago who has been studying the subject declares that tbere Is less linger of infection in buttermi k that has been quickly soured His experiments show that the slower m lk sours tns greater the danger of disease germs 6ur vlving Although the chances of buttermilk be-com be-com ng a carrier of disease are small t is always a good plan to g ve preferenca to butterm lk wh ch 1 as been prepared from pasteurized milk |