The daily milk run, and what is actually in the packet

A2, farm milk and packet milk — what the difference is really worth

Puducherry has a co-operative milk union, Ponlait, that supplies the town institutionally. Its packet milk is pasteurised, standardised, cheap, available everywhere and completely fine. If the honest answer for your household is "the packet is fine", take the packet and spend the difference on vegetables — we will deliver it at the printed rate and not try to talk you out of it.

The case for farm milk is narrower than the marketing around it suggests. What you are actually buying is unhomogenised milk from a named herd, delivered within a few hours of milking, which behaves differently in the kitchen: it separates a cream line at the top, it sets a firmer curd, and it makes better paneer and ghee. The A2 question — the beta-casein variant produced by indigenous breeds — is a real biochemical distinction and a contested health claim, and we are not going to pretend the science is settled. We sell A2 farm milk at ₹82 a litre because a meaningful number of Puducherry households want it and the small dairies in the Villianur belt produce it well, not because we think packet milk is dangerous.

The one thing worth being firm about: unhomogenised farm milk is a one-day product in this climate. It arrives between 7 and 8 am and it should be boiled the same morning. A dairy that tells you its raw farm milk keeps three days is either refrigerating it hard or overstating.

Eggs: three tiers, and what the words on the tray mean

Egg labelling in India is close to unregulated at the retail end, so here is exactly what our three lines are.

Free-range, ₹120 a dozen. Birds with genuine outdoor access on bioregion and Villianur-belt smallholdings, in flocks small enough that we have counted them. Shells vary in size and colour because the birds vary. This is the tier where the price gap is real and where a household that cares should spend.

Farm brown, ₹96. Small-farm eggs from birds kept in sheds with outdoor runs but higher stocking density than the free-range line. Better than a commercial tray, not the same thing as free-range, and priced in between rather than sold as the top tier with a different photograph.

Table eggs, ₹78. Ordinary commercial layer-farm eggs. We carry them because plenty of households want a dozen eggs at the ordinary price and there is nothing wrong with that. They are never described as farm eggs on an invoice.

All three keep about two weeks unrefrigerated in a Puducherry kitchen and longer in a fridge. Eggs do not need to be washed before storage — the bloom on the shell is doing useful work — and a cracked egg in a tray should be used the same day or discarded.