[rupi]

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morning or evening, we would walk over to the farmer's house, pick up our milk and bring it home. My family in India (and the whole village) still does that.

And this is where the similarity ends.

The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk to pasteurize it. Once boiled, it is allowed to cool down till a layer of fat forms on top. That is removed to make butter and ghee out of. Milk is then used and refrigerated.

No one ever drank (or drinks) raw milk - not the farmers, not their workers, not the buyers. It boggles my mind that people are willing to take the risk by drinking raw milk.

[lrem]

I drank quite a bit of raw milk in my childhood. But it had to be fresh. I could walk up, glass in hand, to an uncle carrying today's yield to the storage room. I would get the most delicious milk ever. But if I was a couple minutes late, he'd tell me to go get some in the kitchen instead.

[SpaceInvader]

I did the same thing several times, no issues as well. At first I was surprised that milk was warm, because I was used to refrigerated one.

[Arnt]

AOL, except more than "several". Much more than "several".

The milk has to be stored in clean containers. If you're going to pasteurise the milk anyway, then milking into a tank will do, and you can clean the tank every few days. But if the milk is to be used raw, then you have to milk into a clean container each time.

[paganel]

> The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk to pasteurize it.

Same here, in rural Romania (at least that's what my grandma was doing when me and my brother were kids). To be honest though, we (meaning me and my brother) did use to eat the foam-y thing that was present on top of the milk immediately after our grandma or grandpa had finished milking the cows. It was still worm, as it had just came out of the cows, so to speak. We never had any health-related issue about it.

[verve_rat]

Which seems logical on the face of it. Calves drink fresh milk all the time, and they are mostly fine.

[dzhiurgis]

Calves inherit some antibodies by birth (which I also wonder what sort of antibodies one gets from raw animal milk)

[dmurray]

Dogs drink from dirty puddles all the time, and they are mostly fine.

[verve_rat]

I think we are agreeing here. I was pointing out that baby cows don't immediately die after drinking from their mothers teat, so the same would probably hold for humans.

[blagie]

There's a difference between:

1) Drinking raw milk from the same cow every day

2) Drinking raw milk from a different cow every day (e.g. from a small market)

3) Drinking raw milk from hundreds of random farms mixed together (e.g. as might be processed)

If a cow has a 1% chance of carrying a disease, #1 means you have a 1% chance of getting sick. #3 means you have approximately a 100% chance of getting sick. #2 means you have an estimated time of 3-6 months to get sick, depending on the size of the pool of cows.

Personally, I believe these are the sorts of risks people ought to be able to accept, but only with full knowledge and transparency both about where the milk came from, and of associated risks.

[John23832]

I don't think you are. The point being made is that just because some other animal can do some action, does not mean that the same action is ok for humans.

There are animals in the Amazon that can eat poison dart frogs... I doubt you want to try that.

[cassianoleal]

It does hold for humans. I believe something close to 100% of baby humans drink from their mothers's teats.

That doesn't necessarily mean drinking from another species is safe.

[thematrixturtle]

Yes, but that's udder to mouth. When humans milk cows, they use at the very least possibly dirty hands & pails, and if it's a modern dairy there's much more equipment along the way.

[verve_rat]

I'm aware. I have milked cows before. I would imagine no one is milking by hand in western countries. It, quite literally, gets sucked out of the cows and into a vat. Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all.

Not that I'm suggesting that raw milk is a good idea. I've drunk milk from the vat, and it is the cream content that gives it the different taste. But we invented civilisation for a reason.

And if someone is milking into a bucket, stay the fuck away from that stone age shit.

[cute_boi]

Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all.

This is a big assumption w/o any sort of evidence. However, this only applies if farmer are drinking milk themselves. Kinda reminds me of agricultural practice where farmer don't put pesticides on the food they eat, but they add a lot of pesticides that goes into sales for high income.

[verve_rat]

I can only speak to the NZ dairy industry but, milk is tested... a lot. If if doesn't meet standards set by the dairy company then the farmer doesn't get paid. Even worse, if bad milk causes milk from other farms to get dumped (milk from many farms in one milk tanker) then the dairy company can fine them for that too.

Farms are businesses and the dairy industry is an industry. Food safety is taken seriously, at least where I live.

[tpxl]

I drank raw milk for ages. Our neighbours were farmers and we'd get milk still warm from the cow. We'd drink what we wanted immediately, boil the rest for preservation and then put it in the fridge. It tasted amazing fresh compared to being boiled.

[mywacaday]

I'm in Ireland and have cousins who are dairy farmers. Whenever we went on holidays there were two types of milk in the fridge, bought pasteurised and homogenised milk and milk straight from the parlour. The milk from the parlour had a thick layer of cream on top and was amazing on cereal. I have also seen my cousin squirt milk straight from the cow like a water pistol into his mouth. We never got sick but the standards for cow welfare and milking parlour hygiene are very high. Milk is chilled immediately after milking in a stainless steel tank and that tank is sterilised every time the milk is collected.

[29athrowaway]

Note that boiling is not the same as pasteurization.

Pasteurization involves heating but doesn't require boiling. You can pasteurize by heating to 73 degrees C for 25 seconds.

Boiling, in the case of milk, is heating it to its boiling point which is around 100.17 degrees C.

Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization.

[smilespray]

They were using heat to neutralize germs. No need to be pedantic.

[29athrowaway]

Per cup (whole/pasteurized -> whole/boiled)

- Calories: 152 -> 146

- Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g

- Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g

- Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV

- Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV

- Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV

- Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV

[gus_massa]

Do you have a source for this? Is this after deskimming the milk? Natural milk has about 3.3% of fat, but commercial milk usually has 3% or less (here you can buy 3%, 2%, 1.5%, 1% and 0% milk, and perhaps other values).

Unless you remove the skim, it's difficult to imagine that some parts just disappear.

> - Calories: 152 -> 146

Dubious: But it's easier to discuss proteins and carbs separately.

> - Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g

Possible?: Some proteins may denaturalize (like the white of the egg), but they are sill there. Proteins are weird, so I can't say it's impossible.

> - Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g

Dubious: Unless you are overheating the milk to make caramel, this is very strange, almost impossible. Carbs are composed of smaller sugar units and with heat they may split or for new bound, but they don't disappear unless it's very hot.

> - Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV

Impossible: I don't expect calcium to react with the container or to evaporate, so it's impossible that it goes away. The biological availability may change, but it's difficult to measure.

> - Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV

Possible: Some vitamins are sensible to heating, and heating them changes the molecular structure to make then unusable, so this is totally possible. I don't remember about vitamin D in particular. Anyway, many commercial milk has additional vitamin A and D.

> - Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV

Possible: Idem. Anyway, I but I never heard of milk with additional B12, and other foods are better sources of B12.

- Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV

Dubious: I don't expect potassium to evaporate. It may react with the container, but I doubt it. The biological availability may change a lot, because phosphorus is used to bind some molecules and they may split and the isolated phosphate may not be as useful.

[credit_guy]

So boiling reduces the amount of calories? And carbs, and proteins? How can that be?

In principle boiling could induce a lot of evaporation, so the milk would be more concentrated, and so it would have more calories per cup. But people don’t boil the milk so much as to materially reduce the amount of water in it.

[monitron]

I would guess that the heat chemically alters or breaks down (denatures might be the right term?) some of those macronutrients into molecules that can no longer provide caloric energy.

[alasdair_]

“Calories” measures the amount of energy a human can extract from the food. Interestingly, if you cook.a steak (for examples le) it can gain calories, not lose them.

[VBprogrammer]

Does it really? I thought it was a simple chemical test where you burn a set amount of it and check how much it heats a given amount of water.

[netizen-936824]

Citation for the stake numbers? I can see it being possible, if cooking increases bioavailability

[manquer]

The chemical breakdown of bonds also generates thermal energy, so the milk emits black-body radiation slightly more than input heat alone accounts for.

[Scaevolus]

There's also low temperature pasteurization at 145F/62C for 30 minutes, which conveniently denatures lipase in breastmilk too.

[noobermin]

It isn't, but it's better than drinking milk raw.

[credit_guy]

> Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization.

What does that mean?

[vl]

Some proteins break down and loose nutritional value.

[andi999]

Can you be more specific? Doesnt the body need to break down the proteins anyway to use the aminiacids? Which protein exactly looses nutritional value?

[folli]

I think it's a modern western cultural thing that everything that's more 'natural', 'untreated', 'non-GMO'... is automatically considered more healthy, see also antivaxxers etc.

Without any evidence of course.

[RealityVoid]

It's like it stems from some sort of self-hatred, as if we have this belief deep down that we are wrong or corrupted and whatever we are not MUST be good.

These naturalistic fallacies are certainly a strange, ilogical thing, but one at the core belief of _many_ people. I wonder if it's a western thing though and if we don't find it in other cultures as well.

[bawolff]

I can understand the logical leap that people took to get there:

Most processed food in western diets are unhealthy for you. Usually because the processing basically means very high in sugar, and relatively low nutritionally. It doesn't take much to go from that data point to a rule of thumb "natural = good".

Especially if you combine it with a mistrust of large corporations that you believe prioritize profits over ethics (not exactly a huge leap) - where you think that the stuff they make is bad, but "natural" things they didn't have a hand in cant be corrupted by them.

Real life is much more complex than that, but i can see the chain of logic people use.

[yongjik]

It's not really a western thing, it's just that "natural" stuff is much more expensive to produce in a modern industrial world, so --- naturally --- it's perceived as higher quality.

Centuries ago sugar was extremely expensive in Korea. Kings would use it as a medicine when they were sick.

[7952]

You can't base every decision you make on well researched science though. Everyone develops their own heuristics to make decisions. I think naturalness is just one of those. And within a limited set of choices it is probably a pretty good heuristic.

[qwertox]

I'm not really sure if it's that. If you look at the ingredient list of most of the products you buy, there's a ton of things in there which can cause allergies or other problems, if you consume too much of them.

It's ok to want something in its most natural form, but you have to make sure that the body is designed to deal with it. Like, don't eat raw potatoes or drink raw milk.

[lupire]

Naturalism is like Luddism and Conservativism. It is a preference for ideas that have been proven by survival over a long time, over new ideas that have less testing. Of course the principle can be misapplied.

[mc32]

Further: see ‘raw water’. As far as I can tell it’s mostly high income earners who fall for these fads, outside of those stuck in the wilderness without treated water.

It defies logic.

[viraptor]

And if your want to see full crazy, check https://old.reddit.com/r/RawMeat/

> Vomit, diarrhea, coughing, sneezing, sweating, are all ways that the body expels toxins.

[tsimionescu]

That's not even close to full crazy. In Romania there was a somewhat famous lifestly guru who advocates for this type of all natural lifestyle, in an all-vegan variant (Olivia Steer). She was asked by a follower who wanted to get pregnant but was no longer menstruating after following her advice whether she should change her diet or try some medication.

The response was along the lines of "No, no, no! The fact that you're no longer menstruating is proof that you are now rid of toxins! Menses are simply the body eliminating toxins. Just keep trying to conceive, and try some <herbal tea> if you're still having trouble".

To be clear, this is coming from a 30 year old woman with two children of her own...

[mc32]

It's taken us hundreds of thousands of years to achieve the benefits of civilization and to have people illogically throw all that out. It's mazing.

[RealityVoid]

Technically, at least vomit, really is a self protection mechanism of the body.

[Thiez]

But the only 'toxins' it can get rid of are those you recently consumed, not the vague and unspecified toxins that the diet people claim build up in your body and must be purged.

[andi999]

What is wrong with raw meat? Here you can buy raw minced pork for direct consumption (on bread rolls) almost everywhere. Why should ppl get sick from that?

[b112]

Raw pork meat is not fine, as pork can have many worms, and other things, humans can catch.

Cooking kills these things.

People eat raw eggs in North America, but that's safe because of antibiotics in chicken feed. Salmonella can kill.

Beef is safer, which is why you only need char the outside to be safe.

[xythobuz]

In Germany eating raw minced pork is a specialty called "Mett". There are high safety standards and it is only allowed to be sold on the day of production, with care taken not to interrupt cooling, for example. It is generally considered very safe. Source: am German, eating it often.

[SapporoChris]

Salmonella outbreaks in USA are fairly commonly reported by the CDC. I was able to quickly find three listings for salmonella in eggs.

July 26, 2018 https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/braenderup-04-18/index.html

November 9, 2016 https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/oranienburg-10-16/index.html

December 2, 2010 https://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/2010/shell-eggs-12-2-10.html

Regarding ground beef https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/ehsnet/plain_language/restauran...

Grilling various meats https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/bbq-iq.html

Both of these go far beyond just char the outside to be safe.

[tpush]

Every single pig in Germany is checked for trichinosis upon slaughter, and the meat meant for raw consumption can only be sold the same day, with an unbroken cooling chain. This makes Mett completely safe to eat, as a lot of Germans do very regularly (me too!).

But obviously only eating raw meat doesn't sound very appetizing or nutritionally healthy.

[jamiek88]

That’s all they eat. Just raw meat.

[andi999]

I agree. I had a look at the reddit, yes there is something wrong with them.

[rightbyte]

If you eat "natural" (I dislike the term) food you have a chance of cutting away additive sugar that the manufacturer add way too much of in most ready made products.

I.e. you get better food for an indirect reason.

Like if you make your own müsli you might not add sugar, which the companies add to increase sales, and have more of the expensive nuts, that they cut down in share to increase margins since noone notices the difference between 2.3% expensive nuts and 2.2% until there is almost no left ...

[ithkuil]

Yes, it often also boils down to giving it just a bit more of "care" (time, money) when producing and consuming.

This extends to other related topics as well. For example I had a colleague who went vegan and this meant she actually started to cook and care about the meals. This opened up a whole new dimension to life. I guess much depends also on where you happen the live and/or be brought up, and how strong the food culture is.

[DantesKite]

I would put GMO's in a completely different risk category to all the others, because of the tail risk involved and something to consider thoughtfully before introducing into an environment.

https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pp2.pdf

[dzhiurgis]

> willing to take the risk

Lot of them tout it's heals, rather than causes heaps of issues (including type 1 diabetes)

But at least in NZ they are tested daily or weekly, so the risk at least somewhat being minimised.

I'm still perplexed that seemingly neutral national media prints articles glorifying it without listing risks.

p.s. googling "homogenised milk" in NZ first result lands you to seemingly authoritative but completely fake website filled with claims of it being hazardous and causing cancer https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-h...

[mbar84]

Considering the climate in India, I imagine the situation is a bit different there than in western countries. I think raw milk can be safe to drink if it is cooled down immediately during the milking process and kept refrigerated all throughout until it is drunk only a few hours later. Personally though, I think it's natural only for calves and babies to drink milk (in particular of their own mother) and I wouldn't mind a bit if the practice went away.

[vkhromov]

I drank raw cow and goat milk a lot during my childhood in rural Russia. The most tasteful milk was the freshly milked one which was still warm.

We also never boiled the milk, it was fine to just store it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. TBH the boiled milk tasted unpleasant comparing to the raw one.

[wil421]

My Indian coworker swears she drank raw milk in India. To the point she was trying to source it here and only found some place that would sell it for “pets”. Not sure if she actually drank it raw or forgot about the boiling part. She claimed pasteurization was not good but after reading your post I’m almost 99% positive she was pasteurizing it herself.

[beebmam]

Isn't it normal for babies to drink raw milk in many cultures globally?

[_ZeD_]

you mean the mother's milk - when they are still breastfeed? otherwise... no. cow raw milk is the exceptional exception.

[watwut]

People in our villages drunk raw milk regularly. I did too. You have to drink it fresh and keep high hygiene, but it is not something extraordinary at all.

[lnxg33k1]

It’s a good thing anyway and I think we should encourage more libertarians to do it