A friend of mine has a standing offer that he will shell out $20 to anyone who will drink an entire gallon of milk and keep it down for a full hour. Having a penchant for taking up (and winning) ridiculous food-related dares, I gladly accepted and when about to start chugging when my friend pulled me aside.
“You can try it if you want, but it’s not possible to do,” he told me. “Your body will physically reject that much milk - and by ‘reject’ I mean ‘puke it out right and left’.”
But the thing was, he wasn’t sure WHY. And neither am I. So what’s the deal? Is it the lactose? The milkfat? The sheer quantity of liquid? (Having chugged close to a gallon of water in a few minutes once before, I doubt that’s it.)
Neither a search of Cecil’s columns, nor the SDMB archives, nor the Internet, has turned up anything more than an article on a fraternity fundraiser based on this premise that went terribly wrong:
Well, I don’t believe that drinking a gallon of milk is impossible at all, I have done a half with no trouble in my past and would think SOMETHING would have started to go wrong at that point.
Mind you, I am latose intolerant and will have to sit alone in a closet with my rear out a window due to what will happen after drinking it, but I hope it wont go that far.
It may not be just milk, it might be simply that amount of liquid; I have a personal story that might be relevant (or might not):
I was on a trip with my college marching band to a football game at St. Mary’s College (in Moraga, CA). We stopped before the game for lunch, which was mostly stuff bought at the supermarket. For a reason I can’t quite remember, I was looking for a the Tampico blue punch (stuff that looks like windshield washer fluid) that comes in a gallon milk jug, and intended to drink it all. Having failed to find that, I bought a gallon of artificial flavored green punch (propylene glycol - looking stuff). I drank half in the parking lot before boarding the bus. I finished the rest on the windy drive up to the college itself. When I arrived, I felt rather unwell, walked into the bathroom and proceeded to puke so hard the stuff came out my nose. As it was a rather hot day, I spent most of the game lying under the stands trying to rehydrate myself.
Of course, the scientific test is complicated by the fact that the road to Moraga is windy and bumpy, especially in an old MCI bus; I had reasons to be nervous about visiting St. Mary’s, and that green punch is probably far harder to swallow than milk.
All I can say is, don’t try this at home (or on a bumpy road.)
I’ve got some wild guesses (based lightly on facts):
The milk, containing lactose, enters your body. Your body creates the lactase enzymes to break it down. Your body says “Hey, I can’t create this much lactase at one time!” and rejects the milk. The reason I don’t think this is right is because you can eat dairy products with lactose in them (ice cream, cheese, etc.) at least as much as milk and not throw up.
Following up on the lactose idea, lactic acid causes cramps. Is it possible that cramping causes the muscles to spasm and force you to vomit? I’m not willing to experiment.
My third guess is that it relates to the pH of the milk. I am not sure what the pH level of milk is, but if the stomach acid cannot neutralize such a large amount of milk, then you have yourself a problem.
It seems like it would be possible under the right conditions. I guess it would also depend on how fast you had to drink it down.
When I was in high school a bunch of us saw the movie “Cool Hand Luke” (which tells you how long ago I went to high school) and were fascinated by the part where Luke eats 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour to win a bet. One of us was brave enough to try it, suitably modified to 25 hard-boiled eggs. (We knew Hollywood exagerates things slightly.) The attempt became quite a local event, with lots of high school students preferring to watch history in the making rather than doing their schoolwork. He made it to 23 with a minute or two left and threw them all up. (This thinned out the crowd considerably.)
He told us later that the first 17 were easy but then, he guessed, his stomach was physically full and it was very difficult to proceed. Not only physically difficult, but his brain was telling him not to be stupid, stop eating, you’re full!
I’m guessing, from this, that drinking half a gallon of milk is no proof that drinking a gallon would be easy. I’m also of the opinion that drinking a gallon of any liquid would be as difficult, not just milk, since I think it’s more of a physical problem than chemical.
I don’t know if twenty bucks would be enough to persuade me to attempt it, but there is certainly some sum of money that would seduce me into it. Start the bidding!
I found one old but similar thread that didn’t seem to have any sort of conclusive response. And the OP in that one was claiming that it was impossible to even FINISH a gallon of milk, whereas my friend’s asseration is that it’s not impossible to drink that much milk, but merely impossible to keep it from coming back up…
I guess I should’ve said I found nothing definitive in my searches.
As for whole vs. skim, I don’t recall whether that was specified or not.
I don’t know about the medical reasons behind it, but when someone called in and asked a local radio station here in Atlanta about it, they decided to determine the truth once and for all.
Radio station 99X ( http://www.99x.com ) invited three or four people to the radio station to a milk drinking contest. EVERY ONE OF THE CONTESTANTS GOT SICK AND VOMITED.
I suppose it could be a scam… after all, it was on radio. But, from what I heard (over and over again) it seemed real to me.
I have drank a half-gallon of milk without any problems before, and I drank almost two gallons of water before (it acted as a reverse enima, I was squirting mostly-clear water out my ass). I’m pretty sure I could down a gallon of milk, especially if I was given 30 minutes or so to do it in.
A gallon of milk in 30 minutes? Really depends on how large a person’s stomach can stretch in a short amount of time. A fluid gallon would take up considerable space. I think most largish people or people with largish stomach capacities and no milk related allergies (assume some correlation) could manage a gallon in 1/2 hour if they fasted for a bit. I drank a gallon of ice tea in 15 minutes +/- when I was dieting in college just to see if it could be done (yes). I went like a racehorse after 20 - 30 minutes and had trembling hands and a slightly elevated heatbeat for over an hour from the huge caffeine jolt.
You’ve started from false premises. This guy told you that you couldn’t drink that much milk, and now you’re wondering why…is it the lactose? The fat? The volume?
Reminds me of the story that you can balance an egg on its end on the equinox. The story is true. But you can also balance an egg on its end any other day. The point is that you have not established that you cannot drink that much milk, yet you are already asking why you cannot drink that much milk.
I would imagine that many people have stomachs large enough to handle this…especially growing teen-age boys. If you can chug a gallon of water, or pepsi, you can chug a gallon of milk.
If yer scared, try it with water first, before you take the challenge. If you can do it, drink the milk. I mean, after a day or two and you’re back to normal. You might puke, but it’s not because there is some magic thing about milk…you just happened to puke! Oh…if one person voimits, the smell is likely to make other people vomit, especially if they’ve engaged in extreme chugging. Yeesh, this is the straight dope message board, you’d think we’d use straight dope methods to solve these questions…namely chug and see what happens! Chug! Chug! Chug!
Speaking of your brain telling your stomach it’s full…
On a rugby bus trip back from Indianapolis my friend Pete and I were engaged in a White Castle Slider eat off. Now, I made it to 20 Sliders and he (after a nap) made it to 21, but I’ll be damned if I couldn’t force myself to eat one more burger. Something, be it brains, stomach, or bus driver, would not let me eat it. Just my two cents on the topic…
bob : )
I don’t know if it’s that simple Lemur. I have a friend who was pledging a frat and one of the fun frat things they had to do was exactly this - drink an entire gallon of milk. Nobody, let me repeat nobody was able to do it. They all puked it up. (Incidentally my friend, who absolutely hates milk, refused to try and thus was forced to sit in the bathtub where everyone else did the pukin’).
Anyway, what’s remarkable is not so much that they all puked, after all, while it was 100% of the milk drinking population in the instance, a small group of college kids does not solid evidence make, but that the fraternity knew that was what was going to happen, as if it was common knowledge.
I think that, while not impossible, there is something about milk that makes this feat highly improbable. But that’s just an educated guess. I’m afraid I’ve no facts to provide.
It can, and has, been done. Lacrosse initiation. No subsequent puking, even though I had to run a 1/3 mile or so after the first half gallon. I recomend consumption via the ‘funnel’ or ‘bong’ (depending on which coast you inhabit) method.
If you read my OP, you’d see that I already have (well, okay, i was a couple ounces short, but big frickin’ deal). And I kept it down with no problems, other than having to piss a LOT later on. So has at least one other poster to this thread, and he/she drank TWO gallons of water.
The point is, there’s apparently something special about milk in particular that causes the digestive systems of almost everyone to puke it right back out, when it’s consumed in that kind of quantity…and a fair amount of anecdotal evidence that has been posted in this thread to support that. It does appear to be something stronger, at least, than the power of suggestion or the sheer volume of liquid.
What we really need to do is an experiment: have a subject chug a gallon of water and try to keep it down for an hour one day, and then repeat with milk the next day. Volunteers?
Adult lactose tolerence is actually fairly well recognized as a genteic trait within population groups. Anthropologists use it to study lineages in pastoral societies where the diet is heavy on the moo (or neigh) juice. Mongolians, for example, can digest milk much more efficiently than most W Europeans. Apparently, as humans develop into adulthood, they lose some of the ability to produce the enzymes necessary to digest what was their staple food source in infancy.
Gimme a 150 lb newborn and a gallon of 2%, and I’ll take that bet.
My guess is that the pH of milk has something to do with it. Virtually all food that we eat is acidic to some degree. The only exception to this rule that I’ve heard of (excluding tap water) is milk. Milk is actually slightly basic. If you drink a gallon of milk, the pH of your stomach would be drastically upset. If I were to try the challenge, I’d consume something amphiprotic or highly acidic before/while/after drinking the milk.
I think the milk is just exacerbating another effect.
Many people in fact cannot chug a gallon of any liquid without vomiting. I know this because of summer camp (where else?). The whole point of the event was to get people to vomit, and out of a large number of adolescent boys, most vomited after one gallon of water (chugged, none of this 30 minutes BS). It was supposed to be two gallons, but the campe doctor intervened, saying that it was pretty much not humanly possible.
What exactly it is in milk that makes it worse, I dunno (though there seem to be some pretty good WAG above).
my WAG is that milk act like a buffering solution. this is normally overpowered by stomach acid and or acid foods, but 1 gal is too much. also the shear quantity also adds to it.
