Anything for science… Not the milk though; I’m lactose intolerant.
However, even with an earache that’s making chewing very painful, I ate a thick slice of bread in 52 seconds with no problem.
This website does not constitute proof. All they say is that it “cannot be done” and give no reasons why not.
Personally, drinking a gallon of milk in that time period sounds easy. I know I’ve had half a gallon in a much smaller time period (15 minutes, maybe?). I love milk and drink a gallon a day regularly. Maybe I’ll check it out and see what I can do. Maybe not.
…ummm… I’ve done it… And I didn’t get sick.
I was answering a challenge when I did it but it had nothing to do with milk. It had to do with this spicy bread a friend had made. He said we couldn’t finish eating the loaf so another friend and I decided to prove him wrong. I figured drinking milk would keep the spicy-ness from getting too unbearable on my tongue. I hadn’t even thought about the supposed impossiblity of drinking that much milk. But by time we had finished the loaf I had finished a whole gallon of milk.
Could it have been that eating bread at the same time soaked up some of the milk in my stomach?
and now for a slight curdle-related hijack:
There’s a drink known by the wonderful monkier of “Gorilla Snot”. It’s really two drinks-- a shot of port wine, held in the mouth and not swallowed, followed by a shot of Irish Cream. I have not done this, but I’ve been told the sudden metamorphosis that occurs when the two liquids mix in one’s mouth is quite memorable
Anyone wanna try? It’s for science, folks!
Some adult humans can’t dissolve lactose too well or at all. Some, as I understand, can. The matter-antimatter anihillation that some of the earlier posts seem to posit when milk meets stomach seem perhaps misleading. I have no doubt that, for many people, trying this with milk or anything else wouldn’t agree with their constitution.
Not vomiting the milk is generally a condition of the bet (if the challenger has any sense). It is possible to drink the gallon, and it is possible to keep it down. I’ve done it (it’s nothing you’d put on your resume if not true). It took about 44 minutes, and toward the end, I was going slower than strictly necessary. As B Pants suggests, I think liking milk, and being used to swilling a quart or two on a regular basis, helps a lot. Limiting the boss to 30 minutes would be a pretty hardcore variant. But I’m still not willing to say no one can physically do so.
It just occurred to me that if this is one of the reasons that it’s so difficult to keep from throwing the milk up after you drink it (i.e. that your body is overwhelmed with its attempts to digest the lactose), then would the challenge be easier with Lactaid? Lactaid, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, is a brand of milk that has the lactose already broken down into simple sugars, and it’s marketed towards people who are lactose intolerant.
[blatant hijack]
A while back, one of the radio stations in Columbus, OH (CD101, for those who wonder) had a “perform your own stunt” contest for a pair of concert tickets. I don’t even know what people were doing, but this one guy comes up with seven soft tacos from Taco Bell and claims that he’ll eat them in three minutes. He downs the last one at three minutes and fifteen seconds, and is sent away with no tickets.
About an hour later, he shows up with two gallons of milk, and claims that he’ll drink them in twenty minutes. The DJ is impressed. At about ten minutes (!) he’s done with the first gallon, and starts in on the second. At the fifteen minute mark, he puts down the milk, and (judging from the DJ’s comments) isn’t looking so good. And then he lost it.
Judging from the sound (which they claimed was unretouched), he puked all over everything within five feet of him with enough force to knock over a small child. The dude was sick.
[/blatant hijack]
Wonderful story, ultrafilter. snrk I wonder if they made the guy pay for their ruined equipment.
Thank you for being a datapoint in favor of bacterial enzymes, B. Pants! Your E. coli are clearly well equipped due to your lactose imbibing habits. All the best to them. (And to you, too, of course.) Please consider trying the experiment for the sake of science. Best to Huerta and Huerta’s bacteria as well, if the implication of “liking milk helps” means Huerta also drinks a lot of milk. And if that’s not the case, I am truly impressed.
I dunno about the bread theory, Tom. Do you also drink a lot of milk? Or eat a lot of yogurt or ice cream or something? Food in the stomach does inhibit the absorbtion of liquids, so maybe slowing the pace at which the lactose enters your digestive tract gives the bacteria time to cope (they are pretty fast at adapting). Interesting, if so.
Somebody needs to try this with Lactaid to test Jadis’ theory. Or soy milk. I am not volunteering. I don’t even wanna watch. But I will be fascinated to read the results.
Several years ago I worked with a man who was 6’4" and weighed 385lbs, he was known simply as “Big B.” He used to down a gallon of milk in about 20-30 minutes on a nightly basis. This was before the big “milk-challenge” craze so I never took much notice but he never complained and he definately never got sick or threw up. This CAN be done. I’ve often wondered if he knows about the milk challenge, I’m sure he could make quite a bit of money at parties. I bet he could do 2 gallons in an hour easily.
I drink a lot of milk, i’ll have to try this sometime.
I used to make a bet w/ people that if I could burn a hole through a dollar bill wraped around their wrist w/ a cigarette, I’d give them $20-$50; I’d bet them a dollar of theirs to it. I lost once, and the guy had to go to the hospital for the burn, it was pretty disgusting and had to be surgically removed or something.
In my youth (well, my younger youth … still in my youth by any reasonable measure) we had a similar, amusingly disgusting variant:
1 shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream
1 shot of Rose’s Lime Juice
Drink both (but do not swallow) in short order. Then … thrash your head about forcefully to maximize curdling. Smile at your cohorts to show off the chunks of greenish-brown crud stuck in your teeth. Then find something to rinse with.
Name? The “cement mixer”.
I was being imprecise before. I meant give me a medical cite that milk curdling in the stomach has any effect whatsoever on its digestibility, which is the subject at hand. It doesn’t, but the fact that milk curdles in cows’ stomachs in the presence of rennet – probably coupled with an imperfect understanding of lactose intolerance – has lead to all sorts of misinformation over the years. Don’t drink milk because it curdles in the stomach is an old wife’s tale, dire warning division. The point is not that milk curdles in the stomach, but that this implies that it is any less digestible or has any less value for doing so.
And to prove that curdled milk is perfectly digestible, note that we eat curdled milk all the time, in the form of the curds that are the basis of cheesemaking. Milk in any form is perfectly digestible by the stomach.
And lactose has nothing to do with it. Lactose is ignored by the stomach. Nothing involved with lactose digestion takes place in the stomach. The lactase enzyme is manufactured in the small intestine.
It’s true that most of the world’s adults are lactose intolerant, but most adults of northern and western European heritage – and that would include most people in the U.S. – are not. Even so, many if not most people with lactose intolerance can handle small amounts of milk perfectly well.
Here’s another physiological fact: foods with solid content leave the stomach less quickly than plain liquids. This is one reason why people with lactose intolerance are told to drink milk with meals. The extra solids contents slows the release of lactose into the intestines, giving what lactase exists there more time to deal with it, and digest more of it, leading to fewer symptoms.
This is probably the core of the issue. Whole milk has a solids content of around 10%, if memory serves. (Skim milk is 3-4% lower, of course.) For this reason, milk may stay in the stomach longer than would an equivalent volume of water, creating a greater challenge for the stomach to contain it.
The question is whether there is anything special about the solids content of milk that sets it off from any other liquid with an equivalent solids content. I don’t know of anything. Nobody here has given any examples, either.
People who want to experiment may want to see if they can down more skim milk than whole milk.
But dinking a gallon of milk is just an issue of volume, nothing more.
My GF is a nurse who’s getting her Biomedical degree, and she says you’re incorrect.
(she’s quoting her book over the phone to me, that’s as close as I can get to a cite!)
Lactose is broken down by Lactase, an enzyme produced in the small intestine.
Think about what you said. I happen to be Lactose Intolerant. My doctor tells me that I don’t produce the enzyme that breaks down Lactose. If what you said is true, then does that mean that I don’t have the same bacteria in my body as everybody else? Why would bacteria not like certain people?
Your girlfriend is absolutely right, Metalhead. I misunderstood something my bio teacher said. I believe I’m right about how it functions in the bacteria, but the bacteria are not the only thing functioning in us.
Thanks for straightening me out before the midterm. 
Thanks, I get brownie points when I tell her how smart she is. I need all the help I can get. I really should quit dating girls with brains, strippers were much easier to talk to.
Lactose is digested by lactase in the small intestine.
But. When undigested lactose reaches the colon, it will be set upon by the bacteria that naturally live there. Some bacteria will ferment lactose, producing large amounts of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, leading to the classic LI symptoms of gas, cramps, and flatulence.
Other bacteria actually produce their own lactase, and therefore digest the lactose. I don’t believe E. coli is one of these. Scientific evidence seems split between the lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus and * Acidophilus* and a different group, the Bacteroides. The lactic acid bacteria are fairly easy to come by. They are found in yogurts with live and active cultures and are also available in pill form. Many people find that their LI symptoms can be reduced to near nothingness by using these, which evidently replace the existing colonic flora.
Sorry for continuing the hijack.
Mea culpa. Even though I CAN eat a slice of bread in under 60 seconds, I have to confess I was taken aback by how difficult it is. I thought it would be a snap.
Continuing with the bread hijack, I just ate a slice of bread that was roughly the size of 2 slices of wonderbread in about 50 seconds. While I’d say it was difficult, it was much easier than trying to eat 6 Saltines in the same amount of time.
I can’t try the milk, but maybe I could try a gallon of soy milk later, and see if it has any ill effects (or if the difficulty lies in the lactose).
[sup]And now I have a vicious case of the hiccups. All in the name of science, eh?[/sup]
Just did it myself. I probably cheated as it was only a medium slice, but it took 45 seconds. The last 10 seconds I went slow to avoid the hiccups that Joyfulgirl is currently enjoying.
And thanks Exapno. I’m going to look for those pills. Got anything to help with onions? 
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Y’all are much more accomplished eaters than me and my friends!
Daniel
who really did think it was hard