I no longer drink much milk, but I’d like to have it available for cooking. And if you need half a cup for a recipe, you have the choice of going out and buying a specific small container, or buying an overly large container and seeing most of it go to waste. My point is that ultra-pasteurization is common in other countries and would allow me to purchase a quart and have it on the shelf for up to six months. I travel a lot, and I’m tired of throwing away half of what I buy.
True. Inasmuch as you have the right to call someone a moron because they intake unnecessary fat from whole milk and assume risks associated with obesity that skim milk doesn’t give you. Fat-free milk is perfectly safe to drink and considering the option to avoid milkfat is readily available, it would be idiotic to drink the whole stuff. No?
In any case, obesity is a much more significant health problem than rabies, and even food-borne pathogens.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you call whole milk drinkers idiots, but if you do, prepare to get shutdown just as quickly.
Oh and you left out the bacterium that is not killed during the pasteurization process and is suspected of contributing to Crohn’s Disease. So while pasteurization reduces risk, it doesn’t entirely eliminate the risk of bacterial exposure.
I think part of the reason why is isn’t legal in some states is that while you may know the risks and have decided that they are acceptable, the person sitting next to you on the bus who picked up E.Coli from your unwashed hands on the handrail (who might be a pregnant woman or an immunocompromised person) did not choose the risks.
It’s a public health issue, not a just a personal freedom.
Nope. Fat is necessary to our diet, and one of the great things about living in the land of plenty is that we get to choose where we get our fat. I drink skim milk and rice milk, so I don’t get much fat from there… and that lets me get my fat from bacon. A vegetarian, on the other hand, might welcome the extra fat content in milk; getting all of your fat from avocados has got to get old.
Oh well, I guess if it’s not 100% safe I might as well skip milk altogether, stick my finger in a cow pie and suck on it every morning until I die of the shits. Or… wait, what the hell is your point?
If you’re talking about UHT milk, you can find it in the baking aisle at your local supermarket. At least that’s where my local supermarket stocks it. IIRC, it’s sold under the Parmalat brand name.
I think the whole “gimme my raw milk, dammit!” stems from the notion that the less food is processed, the better it is. Unfortunately, most Americans (and I would argue most first-worlders in general) are so far removed from the source of our food that we have almost no control over the conditions under which it’s raised. Thanks to science, we now know how to eliminate or at least reduce the possibility of food poisoning; we cook our meat, scrub our vegetables, treat our water, and pasteurize our milk. Of course, the risk of food poisoning can’t be completely eliminated; witness the occasional outbreaks of food-borne disease. But it can be reduced to relatively trivial levels.
Until a system of inspection and certification can be developed and implemented, I think raw milk should be banned from general sale. But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that it’s superior to pasteurized milk, because it’s not. And as long as there is a significant chance that I’ll get sick from drinking raw milk, I’ll stick to pasteurized, thanks.
Robin
I’m old enough to have had conversations about all manner of things from people born in the late 1800s- early 1900s, when many people had their own cows or if not drank the local milk,none pasteurised.
One of my friends born 1910 had a child die from “bad milk”. A great uncle said some of his siblings might have been sick from it. Anecdotally, no epidemics.
A current hot issue around here,as many of the local farmers have customers wanting it , and some of them don’t have the state licence to sell but are anyway.All Amish,btw. The state hasn’t produced any compelling numbers of related deaths,but will incarcerate offenders,much as they do midwives lacking medical degrees.
I hadn't got the impression that the SDMB had a meme re:your Pitting;seemed more like some expressing opinions. I could be less apt to contract illness in a barn than a hospital though no doubt some disagree.Excellent!
No, not “just like.” If you consume candy and sweets in abundance, you are LIKELY to go into insulin shock. The same is not true of people who drink raw milk. Raw milk, especially from a reputable source, presents a small but real risk. Eating abundant sweets as a diabetic presents a huge risk.
If you chose to do so, knowing the risks, would I call you an idiot? Of course not: the term simply wouldn’t apply. I might call you suicidal, but that’s different.
Absolutely–except that the only “but it hasn’t happened yet!” in this thread applies to rabies, which is surely not what you’re talking about, having dropped that point. Nobody is saying “but it hasn’t happened yet!”; instead, some people are saying they’re aware of the risks, but they appreciate the taste of raw milk sufficiently that they will accept those risks in order to have that taste.
:dubious:
Who did you call disingenuous?
Daniel
My understanding is that some folks believe there are health benefits from drinking raw milk and that it’s less allergenic. I’m not sure of their exact reasons, although raw milk would possibly contain live bovine cells such as their white blood cells and perhaps that’s the reason.
The USDA has had very active, all-encompassing regulations to eliminate TB and Brucellosis from the US cattle herd. The risks of getting those diseases from cows is very, very rare.
Forget rabies - cattle are herbivores, which means that even when they are almost dead of rabies they have such a low amount of virus in their system that they couldn’t give you rabies if they bit you. Forget the scenario of a farmer going into a stall with a bellowing, extremely neurologic cow flopping around and milking her then selling the milk.
This is a completely different story from some carnivores, particularly critters like skunks - they can be highly infectious without showing signs for many weeks.
This is what I’d be worried about in terms of drinking raw milk - Salmonella and toxoplasmosis. If you’re pregnant or an infant - listeriosis.
Toxoplasmosis is the kitty -litter parasite but it’s everywhere.
Also, health services put out lists of every known or potential pathogen - not those they think are at all likely to occur.
Few things scare me more these days than the surprising ubiquity of neo-Ludditeism in American society. There’s this general feeling of SCIENCE BAD that seems to be more and more common, and that bodes very ill for our future, IMHO.
For the record, my degree is in microbiology, and I’d never drink unpasteurized milk.
Other than the small amount that is sometimes used in cooking, I haven’t consumed any milk since the early 80’s when I was a teenage. That said, I would only drink pasteurized milk if I did. It not an issue that I’d really ever thought much about before so this has been an interesting read.
I can’t let this go though.
I’ve been to Europe a few times, mostly Western Europe, and I don’t think that the culture is all that different. Also, there are like 750 million people there compared to just over 300 million in the U.S.
In some ways, I agree with you: it’s pretty bad when people assume that science is a poor tool for discerning what’s going on in the world.
However, it’s not the only tool around for making decisions. When advocates of science treat it as though it is, then folks who haven’t thought carefully about the subject sometimes respond angrily by rejecting science.
If you like the idea of science being a major tool for making decisions–as I do–then it’s wise to give respect to other tools, such as senses of aesthetics.
Daniel
Oh yes, absolutely, “OM NOM NOM TASTES GOOD OM NOM” should outweigh scientific notions of bacterial growth and so forth.
…There, I’ve given respect to a tool. I hope that is satisfactory.
It’s funny then that even the U.S. Dairy Council recommends restricting milk intake to three cups (three 8 oz glasses) of* lowfat* or fat-free milk per day in combination with other dietary guidelines in line with recommended daily allowances. Whole milk generally has 4% milkfat, lowfat and fat-free (skim) has 2% and >1%, respectively. The only reason to drink whole/homogenized is purely aesthetic: it provides the creamier mouthfeel and flavor that most people prefer. The higher fat content of whole milk, despite the fact that we need some fat in our diet, is not a health benefit; rather, it’s generally additive to the fat in our diets consumed in other foods.
Therefore, drinking skim milk with your bacon is a wiser choice. (Though, not necessarily for an obese individual, who should probably avoid the bacon altogether and stick with the skim milk.)
The point is that the “safety” of anything is subjective inasmuch as individuals deem acceptable risk differently. Driving on the highway isn’t 100% safe either, but you don’t avoid that, do you? However, a look at the high casualties of modern transportation will tell you that this significant risk has been deemed acceptable by all but the extremely risk-averse and phobic.
Point is: to each his own.
See, that’s the sort of stupid shit that makes people who don’t think clearly show antipathy toward science.
Unless you’re the sort of neurotic who bases ALL eating decisions on the latest nutritional knowledge, then you DO balance aesthetics and science every day. Do you avoid grilled meats because of carcinogens? Are you slavishly devoted to avoiding trans fats in all forms? Do you stick to exactly one glass of red wine every single day? Do you periodically fast?
Or do you sometimes say, “OM NOM NOM TASTES GOOD OM NOM,” even though you know that, scientifically speaking, what you’re eating carries a greater risk than the scientifically optimal diet?
Daniel
I was a medical laboratory technologist, and I’d never drink unpasteurized milk or cross-contaminate my kitchen while cooking raw meat. I used to spend down time in the lab reading old case studies of bacterial infections; I have developed a healthy respect for bacteria and viruses and go out of my way to try to avoid them.
I kinda wish that North Americans would get out of the habit of shaking hands, too. People are afraid to have their kids vaccinated against horrible, disfiguring, fatal diseases, but they’ll shake any unwashed hand that comes along.
Okay, fine, I was just scoring some cheap points off you. Sorry about that. But really, any further debate on this point mostly comes down to the fact that my tolerance for risky food-eating is lower than yours when it comes to drinking raw milk. And that a lot of people who feel similarly to you are basing their opinion on ignorance and/or faulty information. E.g., that “knowing the name of the cow” magically makes it safer to drink that cow’s milk. Or - and this is something I’ve seen a lot on a certain other natural living message board - that because something is “natural and unaltered” then it is magically healthier than something that has been processed to, say, remove bacteria.
See, that’s totally fine (note that although I don’t drink raw milk, it’s not the inherent risks that keep me from doing so). My tolerance for risky behavior is lower than a lot of people’s in many areas: I don’t tolerate the risk of eating trans fats, for example, although I don’t obsess over it. I just don’t think people who do eat trans fats are morons.
Well, “knowing the name of the cow” does suggest a familiarity with the particular dairy from which the milk comes–and as the OP itself suggests, part of the problem with raw milk is a lack of certification. You can’t rely on an FDA grade A rating to tell you the dairy is using sanitary procedures in areas other than pasteurization. That means you have to make your own judgment. If you know the name of the cow, you may also know that the farmer isn’t washing his hands in the milk, for example.
That’s what I took drdeth’s comment to suggest, anyway: knowing the name of the cow was just shorthand for knowing how the dairy operates, not some sort of Wizard-of-Earthsea name magic.
And the idea that something natural is more healthful than something processed is one of those ideas that seems anti-science to me, as well. I agree with you that that’s an annoying idea. At the same time, I think that there are a lot of times that food is processed beyond the point of health. It’s just that I use science, don’t fight science, to make that argument.
Daniel
Just a comment regarding this:
Not quite true - there are for example regular outbreaks of listeriosis, which among other things leads to miscarriage and/or fetal brain damage. Pregnant women are strongly discouraged from eating anything unpasteurized.
ETA: That’s Scandinavia. Not sure what the health authorities recommend elsewhere, but I’d guess it’s the same.
This is so damn stupid. 2 deaths in 7 years and you are all freaking out about the risk of drinking unpasteurized milk. I’d bet dollars to donuts that more people died in that timespan driving to buy their raw milk than from drinking it.
Do the people that are so concerned about their food refuse to travel to poor or even semi-poor countries?