[ramblenode]

Pasteurization is not a free lunch. You also destroy enzymes, vitamins, and all the beneficial bacteria. The enzymes help to digest the milk and the beneficial bacteria compete with pathogenic bacteria in the gut (the above links to peer-reviewed studies and is by a PhD in Nutritional Immunology).

Pasteurized milk prevents illness from contamination but it may not be as well tolerated by some people. Some children show greater skin-prick reactivity to treated milk over untreated milk [0][1], treated milk tends to have a lower threshold of provoking an allergic reaction [2], and heat treatment is shown to abolish the allergy-protective effects of milk [3]. Children who were exposed to raw milk tend to have better allergy tolerance as adults compared to those who consumed processed milk [3].

There are small farmers all over industrialized countries who have no problem drinking raw milk (most of them probably, because the machines are expensive). There are people in rural, non-industrialized Sub-Saharan Africa where non-Pasteurized milk is a staple. The key is that the milk is coming from mostly healthy cows and is drunk fresh. Here is a thought experiment: why do human infants tolerate raw human milk and calves tolerate raw cow milk despite having undeveloped immune systems? It's consumed fresh.

Edit:

> because there is simply not nearly enough evidence to make a strong case

I would also add that the burden of proof and Precautionary Principle cuts both ways. Pasteurization was standardized at a time in history before biochemistry, immunology, and modern nutritional studies. The assumption that the nutritional quality of milk (in vivo) is unaffected by flash heating is what needs to be demonstrated.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30945370/

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3284399/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29025431/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30439365/

[cheese_goddess]

> There are small farmers all over industrialized countries who have no problem drinking raw milk (most of them probably, because the machines are expensive).

I know this is threadomancy, two weeks later, but - how the hell would you know that?

If a farmer in Ghana gets the shitters for a week after drinking raw milk, how would you know? If their kid gets meningitis caused by Listeria and needs to have a hand amputated, or a foot, how would you know?

You wouldn't. But the WHO and a bunch of other health agencies around the world collect data on this sort of thing. And the sad truth that emerges is that the majority of food poisoning happens in non-industrialised, developing countries.

Got that? In countries were people don't have a food industry, where raw milk and dairy is all the dairy they can consume, and where everything is fresh, as fresh as fresh can be, that's where most of the food-borne diseases happen.

You wanna know why? Because modern standards of hygiene work, bitches. That's why. And that includes pasteurisation which is basically a method to scrub milk clean of pathogens.

[cheese_goddess]

Sorry but that stuff about enzymes, vitamins and "beneficial bacteria" is on the level of "it's got electrolytes". If I dug a bit I'm sure I'd find the "PhD in Nutritional Immunology" is one of the swivel-eyed loons, or funded by them.

> There are small farmers all over industrialized countries who have no problem drinking raw milk (most of them probably, because the machines are expensive). There are people in rural, non-industrialized Sub-Saharan Africa where non-Pasteurized milk is a staple. The key is that the milk is coming from mostly healthy cows and is drunk fresh. Here is a thought experiment: why do human infants tolerate raw human milk and calves tolerate raw cow milk despite having undeveloped immune systems? It's consumed fresh.

Yes, people around the world drink raw milk all the time. And they get food poisoning all the time. As the WHO link I posted above points out, raw milk and dairy is the main source of infection with Campylobacter, enterotoxic E. coli and Listeria. And a bunch of other pathogens besides, like Brucella, C. Burnetii, S. aureus, Salmonella etc.

Which, again, can contaminate fresh milk from healthy cows just fine.

Btw, you can consume raw milk that isn't fresh without trouble if it is clear of pathogenic bacteria. But you won't know that unless you can actually test its microbial load at the very least. It's not the freshness of the milk that matters, it's what's living inside it that can make you sick.

I don't understand why all this is so hard to understand. Again, atavism and return to nature. "If it's fresh, it's good".

Which brings me to your thought experiment: cows happily take a shit, step on it, smear it all over the grass and then eat the grass. Is that OK because it's fresh, what do you think?

P.S.

> Pasteurization was standardized at a time in history before biochemistry, immunology, and modern nutritional studies

Mnyeah, not really. Pasteurization kept being "standardized" well into the 1980's, when it was determined that C. burnetii (the most heat-tolerant of bacteria targeted by pasteurization) was not destroyed by heating milk to 61C for 30 minutes, as was until then standard practice targeted at Mycobacterium bovis, which was considered to be the most heat tolerant raw milk contaminant. As a result, modern practice of heating milk to 63C for 30 minutes or 72C for 15 seconds was established because it was found to destroy all individual cells of C. burnetii with good certainty. In fact there's a range of times and temperatures determined by experimentally verified heat death curves. All that is from 1986, in the International Dairy Federation Bulletin.

I wonder who told you that bit about "before biochemistry". The swivel-eye loons, I guess?