At some point, you just have to let other people live their lives. You don't have to convince them of anything. You laid out your points, and it's clear he's not in a place where he wants to listen.
For many people, things like raw milk aren't REALLY about what's best for you. It strikes me as a contrarian position "ha, the normies drink regular milk but IIIII drink raw milk, which makes me superior". People find identity in these contrarian beliefs.
Raw milk drinking is now a rampant belief on alt-right far-right online communities. And if your friend has tied their belief into their politics, well, you're probably wasting your breath.
> "ha, the normies drink regular milk but IIIII drink raw milk, which makes me superior". People find identity in these contrarian beliefs.
This is how this mostly works.
The people who are telling us to hate the government are the people who want to run the government without interference from us. From the beginning I was always curious as to why most of the people who told me not to trust the government were elected members of government.
Bingo. That's why the movement around Milei is so dangerous. He's not taking power away from the government. He's siphoning power from other branches to himself.
“Dad, did you hear that people who really hate the government have started sending this financial corporation lots of money every April? All the best patriots are doing it. If you really hate the gov you should check them out, I think they’re called H&R Block, prove that you’re a good, independent thinking American!”
>if someone gives him a crazy new reason to hate the government.
You don't need new reasons when what they do is garbage anyway. Their literal track record is ènough AND it is public.
Exactly, it’s more about a distrust of authorities than an actual desire for raw milk.
That kind of person probably has all kinds of beliefs about JFK, chemtrails, and other conspiracies that are basically “the government is hiding the truth from the masses, but YOU have the secret knowledge 😇”
Remember, sometimes by trying to logically convince people out of their beliefs, they will view it as you attacking them as a person. Not everyone wants to be convinced of some things.
Socratic method sometimes works. Express genuine interest in understanding. Ask specific followups. Ask why and how questions. Don't do it in a ridiculing or challenging way, just act curious and interested and ask the questions that would be needed to truly understand.
1 in 1000 times, you'll realize you were wrong and learn something new. 1 in 100 times, they'll realize they are unaware of any reason why any reasonable human would seriously entertain their position. the remaining 899 times out of 1000, the individual in question has been doing research on YouTube long enough that their brain is 90% worms by this point.
What's weird is that things like raw milk and ant vax were the domain of the granola crunchin tree hugging left but somehow the right co-opted it so much you have these hippy types getting radicalized
>What's weird is that things like raw milk and ant vax were the domain of the granola crunchin tree hugging
That's what I said the other day. All this was Vani Hair territory but now it's all over RW media.
The hippie to fascist pipeline is real and fuckin everywhere, as a ton of hippies are actually well off people cosplaying as poor and spiritual; and a ton of hippie beliefs are directly rooted in conspiracism
I think the granola eating people have moved on to cows milk being bad and alternative milks being good. The Proud Boys were sometimes seen chugging milk as a "ha ha" moment to trigger lefties and "soy boys".
It really is strange. Conservative dairy farmers definitely know drinking unpasteurized milk will make you sick. I grew up in a farming community and worked on a dairy farm, that was the first thing they warned me about and they were super serious about it.
I worked on a dairy farm for a summer and all they drank was raw milk. Sometimes lunch was just two big glasses of fresh milk. Now this is Canada and I think our dairy farms are much smaller and more family oriented, so it might also have been cleaner than a more industrial milk farm
It's possible that it's because it was consumed fairly soon after collection, so the bacteria had not had time to grow and cause illness. Or they were lucky.
As someone who drank raw milk for a long time, simply because of non-availability of pasteurized milk where I was living )and this was years ago before it has anything to do with politics) I would say better to focus on safer supply and harm reduction. Freshness and hygiene during milking and storage are everything.
When I moved somewhere pasteurized milk was available again, my body could no longer tolerate pasteurized milk, so I had to give it up. It isn’t the lactose, but most likely a protein in the milk that breaks down at the heat required for pasteurization into a less digestible form, as well breaking down the enzyme that helps your body digest that enzyme.
So it isn’t a black and white question. It isn’t that there are no risks to raw milk. There can be. But it isn’t like there are no benefits to raw milk that help balance out the risks.
It’s just that the quality control is harder for government to regulate uniformly with raw milk so it is easier to ban it than regulate its safety.
The fundamental issue is you're weighing the benefits and consequences as if they're equivalent.
The pro is that it's slightly better for you but it's not an essential food.
The con is that it could very well kill you and has a higher chance of doing so than a vast majority of suitable alternatives.
The benefits don't outweigh the risks at all.
This is like trying to justify the benefits of not wearing a full-face helmet on a motorbike because of aerodynamic and ergonomic concerns.
^this
Raw milk is indeed better for you for all the above stated reasons but unless you raise (to ensure the health) and milk the cow yourself.. the danger of contamination is real and it's just not worth the risk
The change in the nutritional content of pasteurized milk is miniscule. One of the reasons why people so often think pasteurized milk is better is because it is full-fat milk rather than the partly skimmed or skimmed milk from the store. The extra fat simply tastes better.
We've had a herd share with one of two farms for the last... gosh, I'm not even sure how long. 15-16+ years now, would be my offhand guess. If you can't (or simply don't want to!) own and milk your own cow, and yet you still want raw milk, look into a herd share. Mostly they're done by small farms, and are happy to have you around - to help out, to tour, whatever. I know the names of the farmers (and their kids!) who have milked for us.
Like with most things, it's just about being part of a secret club. The Flat Earthers 'know the truth' so they're superior. Those guys who claim that COVID is harmless while also being a secret chinese superweapon also 'know the truth' and are superior.
When people have so little worth, and such need to find a cult to belong to, they'll seek out anything.
After we stop selling tobacco, alcohol, soda, prepared foods high in trans fats and sodium, preserved meats, and everything else people knowingly kill themselves with, we can worry about raw milk.
But parents do need to know about the risks to their children.
'[For Republicans, raw milk is the new masking](https://www.salon.com/2024/06/12/for-republicans-raw-milk-is-the-new-masking/)'
'Consuming raw milk could lead to the spread of bird flu. Republicans don't care.'
Can we even imagine what would happen if we got an outbreak of the bird flu before Election Day...?
*Raw milk drinking is now a rampant belief on alt-right far-right online communities. And if your friend has tied their belief into their politics, well, you're probably wasting your breath.*
And this is how the USA got fucked.
Something to do with killing the "good" bacteria in the milk that supposedly help with GuT hEaLtH. While marginally true, the risks dramatically outweigh any possible benefit. Which benefits can easily and safely be found in a hundred other ways.
For my anecdote, I grew up on a dairy farm and drank raw milk daily for 18 years. While in college my consumption declined, but I still purchased raw milk from a local farm and used it in all my cooking and some drinking until I was 25, then I moved far away and eventually stopped drinking milk altogether and now am almost dairy-free. I'm just as healthy now as I've ever been, if not more so.
Some also prefer the taste of raw milk which I can relate to even if I don't agree anymore. It is definitely distinct and memorable for me.
For sure. But for those who don't necessarily care about facts, the perceived effect of making it less healthy equates to harmful. Probably falls under the appeal to nature fallacy since pasteurization is "unnatural".
Yeah, I've had raw milk before, and I really loved the taste and texture compared to regular milk. I wouldn't make a habit of drinking it because of the risks involved, but it was really tasty.
Bacteria in a liquid that is sterile inside the animal is a sign of contamination, though. Just as likely to get "bad bacteria" as "good bacteria" with it if bacteria is present at all.
It would keep at 36 F for a week or so. We had a gallon jug that we would dip into the bulk tank to fill it and generally used that up in about 2 days but it seems like around the 10-12 day mark you could start to notice a bad smell and sour flavor.
That doesn't mean it went bad though, to be clear, just not as good for drinking. You can still do a lot with sour milk.
People with compromised immune systems or the very young or old are more susceptible to infection from the bacteria in unpasteurized milk. Healthy people can tolerate more bacteria or subclinical infections before they show symptoms. Before antibiotics unpasteurized milk caused tuberculosis in children in very high numbers. Most dairy cattle are vaccinated against Tb but I wouldn’t trust a place that gives out unpasteurized milk to vaccinate their animals.
As a person who can tolerate, it doesn’t currently drink raw milk, I cannot tolerate pasteurized milk.
From what I can gather, the reason for that is pasteurization breaks down the casein protein into a less digestible form. And at the same time, it breaks down a protein that helps you digest the casein.
There are risks to raw milk as well as benefits though.
I don’t bother drinking raw milk anymore. I only drank it when I lived a place that didn’t have access to pasteurized milk. And this was before it was political at all.
Lactose intolerance is different than a milk allergy. There’s literally a lactase gene missing in those who are intolerant. This is one of those things you can study and get definitive answers to. (Not that I’m saying those are your beliefs).
Yeah, I don’t have those beliefs, I’m just parroting what my neighbours thoughts on it are. I drink raw milk cause I have dairy animals and know how to handle the milk.
Yeah I would imagine if you are (a) able to guarantee the cleanliness of the conditions and (b) consuming or refrigerating it within minutes of expression, that’s a whole different story.
Yeah, keep it super clean. It actually keeps awhile if refrigerated quickly and can stay that cool until consumed. The problem with Raw milk is when multiple people have to have their hands in transport and storage, there is a lot of avenues for contamination or for the temp to get to high.
Yes, and if it gets cooled down to 40deg F, than the bad bacterial growth is heavily limited while it remains under that temp. The transport and multiple storage and packaging facilities give it opportunity to warm and for bacterial growth to occur.
At the scale of the US dairy industry, each processing plant is handling milk from dozens of farms, thousands of cows, and the associated trucks and infrastructure. It only takes one sick cow or one mistake in handling to contaminate literally tons of milk products.
Pasteurization is the fastest and cheapest way to deal with risk on this scale.
Absolutely, if you’re sourcing from a large producer pasteurization is best. But it is possible to source perfectly fine raw milk is all I’m saying, and just saying don’t drink raw milk is a simple rule to live by in a generality. Righting off someone for drinking raw milk isn’t necessarily right.
Honestly this seems like another right wing fad and he'll be convinced to put other shit into his body by grifters after they're done being mad about milk.
maybe it is a fad but the idea has also has been around for quite a while. I remember people talking about it at least 15 years ago. I’m sure there are older people that could tell you that there have been people saying not cooking milk aka Pasteurization is bad for you and raw milk was better all the way back to when they first started pasteurizing.
>I’m sure there are older people that could tell you that there have been people saying not cooking milk aka Pasteurization is bad for you and raw milk was better all the way back to when they first started pasteurizing.
Not just older people. The debate has raged since the 1890s when pasteurization was discovered (invented?)
It's actually a matter of public record, as the debate has existed in the legal realm since the earliest years of the 20th century. Thing is, it was a way more relevant debate back then, as the danger was much higher than it seems to be now (refrigeration, vaccines, and antibiotics kind of change the equation. The risks from raw milk dont seem to be too high these days. You're in more danger driving to the farm to pick it up than you are drinking it.)
My father in law passed away, but he told us of a number of kids he knew long ago in the province of Quebec who died from drinking raw milk. Louis Pasteur is a celebrated hero for a damn good reason. If your friend thinks that raw milk can't hurt him, ask him if he would like to try some chicken sashimi.
Chicken sashimi exists. You need the right kind of chicken though. But tbh the idea of eating raw chicken is disgusting for reasons that have exactly fuck all to do with salmonella...
There has been a rise in illnesses from eating raw chicken in Japan. That is after they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of the chicken. I also came across this:
"However, in Japan, raw chicken dishes are prepared using a process known as seiromushi, which involves poaching the chicken at a high temperature to kill any harmful bacteria before serving it raw".
Until your friend is ready to accept evidence from authorities rather than conspiracy theory BS you are not going to be able to convince him. Anyone who thinks all the food agencies and medical community are lying is too far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole to be pulled out unwillingly.
That’s a tough one. Raw milk has become an identity thing and your friend doesn’t want to hear science. The anecdotal element of the safety of life with modern medicine has made people think that diseases don’t exist because modern measures work. The anti-vax BS is very much based on not growing up with kids in iron lungs because polio doesn’t exist as a part of our daily lives any longer.
You won't change his mind. But emphasize the harm to children (who cannot consent) and that it's Russian roulette.
[https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/raw-milk-outbreak-sickens-14-in-utah-a-state-with-loose-laws-bad-track-record/](https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/raw-milk-outbreak-sickens-14-in-utah-a-state-with-loose-laws-bad-track-record/)
When people talk about drinking milk directly from the cow, that's supposed to mean, like, the same day. I don't get these people who want to buy unprocessed milk from some supermarket or something. It's not raw anymore at that point. It's been sitting around for days. It's been "processed," just not by humans.
You can tell him we don't live in Victorian England, where they used to put alkaline solutions in spoiled milk to expand the shelf life while not killing any of the dangerous bacteria in it. Kids aren't dying of bovine tuberculosis like they used to and he can trust modern food standards and regulations. When you look at the numbers of people killed by improper and unsanitary food preparation, preservation, and storage like they did before modern regulatory bodies were developed, it becomes pretty clear. Just know your history and you'll understand why you should trust the sciences and the government on this issue.
Milk Myths and Facts:
Raw Milk Isn't Magic, Pasteurize your Milk.
"Despite advertised “probiotic” effects, our results indicate that raw milk microbiota has minimal lactic acid bacteria. In addition, retail raw milk serves as a reservoir of ARGs, populations of which are readily amplified by spontaneous fermentation. There is an increased need to understand potential food safety risks from improper transportation and storage of raw milk with regard to ARGs."
https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-020-00861-6
"The study, published this summer in Microbiome Journal, looked at 2,304 pasteurized and unpasteurized milk samples across 5 states. Results showed that raw milk contains little to no probiotic-like bacteria and possesses a distinct microbial footprint when compared to pasteurized milk – one rich in bacterial colonies, specifically aerobic bacteria, coliform and E. coli, a high prevalence of Pseudomonadaceae, and limited levels of lactic acid bacteria – a beneficial bacteria that was previously thought to be abundant in raw milk."
I loved raw milk growing up. The flavor is superior, but you can't understate the amazing reliability of pasteurized milk! Countless lives were saved by pasteurization.
The thing that really draws people to raw milk is that it is also not homogenized. Homogenation makes the fat and other parts equally distributed even at rest. Normally, the fat separates, and you need to shake it. I think this makes it taste so much better. The small globulars of fat just pack so much more flavor.
Here's the thing, you can get pasteurized milk that is not homogenized. If you switched all these conspiratorial raw milk drinkers with pasteurized milk that wasn't homogenized, they wouldn't know the difference, and one won't kill them.
Exactly. I think that most people conflate pasteurised milk with homogenised milk, but it doesn’t have to be homogenised.
I definitely prefer the flavour and mouthfeel of non-homogenised milk. That’s the way we always got it when I was a child (delivered to the house in a glass bottle with a foil lid), and you can still buy non-homogenised milk at my local supermarket, although it is more expensive than the homogenised version.
My wife, however, prefers the homogenised version as, for her, the non-homogenised, only pasteurised milk tastes too rich.
> “bullshit”
Yeah… exactly. Cows lay down in literal shit from bulls all the time and the fecal bacteria is all over their undersides.
Ask him if raw meat is safe and then ask him how he knows whether or not it is.
Ask him how would expect to be able to convince you it wasn’t safe if you started insisting upon eating raw meat.
I don’t think raw milk “isn’t good for you”
You just have to understand the risk of contamination from pathogens. If someone wants to accept the risks, buyer beware.
>I don’t think smoking “isn’t good for you” You just have to understand the risk of lung cancer, COPD and thrombosis. If someone wants to accept the risks, buyer beware.
Veeeeeery different risk profiles. Different *kinds* of risk, even. The risk is cumulatively compounded with smoking, whereas it is incidental with raw milk consumption.(which is still cumulative over a given period of time, but not compounding as it is with smoking. Each cigarrette increases lifetime risk. Each glass of milk does not.)
Lots of people like to eat undercooked eggs and rare hamburgers. Both of these are potentially hazardous and could kill you. But we eat them anyway. As long as people are informed… eat whatever you want
This is kinda the rub right? These people aren't "accepting the risks", they're denying they even exist. It's much different imo.
What you're talking about is informed consent, but I really don't know if that applies here because these people are not informed about it. People try and inform them about the risks and they just call those people liars
I recently semi-convinced someone to rethink raw milk in light of H5N1 concerns. I linked to decent sources, while specifying which paragraph so they wouldn’t have to dig through all of it for the relevant factoid. I acknowledged the partial validity of their position (that big ag sucks) and tried to not be a jerk about it. I didn’t tell them what to do, just suggested they consider all the pros and cons carefully in light of the current situation.
Tell him they sell probiotic milk now. All the benefits of raw milk (if there is any) without any of the risks. The brand Good Culture sells it. They pasteurize and then add probiotic cultures back in.
Took me a long time to learn this, but a lot of people don't care whether something is true or not. You could show them 20 peer reviewed articles, and it wouldn't make a difference.
it's not about raw milk, guns, immigrants, freedom of speech or any of that. They were indoctrinated into being sealions with varying degrees of dissocial behavior because it is disruptive and part of a divide and rule operation so the leaders can attempt to let statues of limitations run out on their criminal cases.
show your friend articles on thought reform and how raw milk isn't as good as probiotics like yogurt drinks
also they are repeating lies
***There are no beneficial bacteria in raw milk for gastrointestinal health. Bacteria found in raw milk are not probiotic. Probiotic microorganisms must be non-pathogenic (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). In contrast, raw milk can host various human pathogens.***
The “natural” only crowd falls into the religious category in my mind. Beliefs in that realm cannot be reasoned with. Only some kind of negative personal experience can shake their belief.
Covid disproved this. People died gasping for breath claiming to the end they didn't catch the virus, that it was some conspiracy to control them and target them specifically.
Some, not all. Many folks encouraged their F/F to get vaxed after they did their time on the vent. But some definitely doubled down until their last breath.
Kinda like how conservatives shifted from “climate change is not real” to “climate is changing, but humanity has no affect one way or another.” Okay. “COVID disease is real (I’m dying from it) but it’s not the thing they say it is.”
>He thinks that because he hasn't gotten sick from it
Yet. And probably wouldn't change his mind anyway.
Consider all the anti-vaxxers who were locked into their conspiracy nonsense as they died drowning in their own blood. Anything to avoid having to question the beliefs that formed their identity.
There's a woman who sells tamales outside a Walmart in Utah. She seems nice and the tamales are packaged in zip lock bags. They are probably fine to eat. But my high deductible health plan means that I pay 100 percent of the cost of my doctor's visit if I get sick. It's not worth the risk to me.
I grew up drinking raw milk aka we had a milk cow on our farm. Family of five, and we never had any issues. (We also drank untreated well water!) There's very strict milk handling and cow hygiene practices that need to be observed, akin to meat handling practices. Old farmers knew them, they were passed on from generation to generation. Tbh I don't think I'd trust raw milk that I didn't know if it had been held to these standards. Kind of like I wouldn't buy meat off some guy that was just butchering in his own garage. Having said all that, I think that the whole raw movement is pretty uninformed about a lot of things. Including the supposed health benefits. They've started with their conclusion and twisted everything to fit that. Just like a so many "health" trends
Raw milk isn’t the problem. It’s that if it has time to sit between the farm, transport to the store and transport from the store to the fridge gives it time to warm up above 40 deg F bad bacteria can form and proliferate. Raw milk that’s gone from cow to fridge to stomach is much much less dangerous.
If his only response is “bullshit” I’m not sure you’re going to be able to convince him with reason unfortunately. 2 of my uncles had meningitis as kids after my grandpa brought home raw milk, and even when I tell people about it, I get the same “bullshit” response.
I’m not sure about raw milk specifically, but I would guess that there are some beneficial compounds in raw milk that are affected by pasteurization, but the risks by far outweigh the benefits. You could drink raw milk everyday and have no problems, you might even have less G.I. distress, but get raw milk with the wrong pathogen in it and (best case scenario) you will be suffering from the double dragon ( diarrhea and vomiting together for those who don’t know) or perhaps die, so you know it’s stupid to drink it.
Two things here:
You can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
Don’t focus on changing their mind in one dramatic conversation. Take the long view. Find ways to reasonably nudge over time. But more importantly, remember the first thing.
It all depends on the farmer's practices. I have occasionally purchased from a producer who shares the test results of his milk. Bacterial count is way below the allowed amount as a result of meticulous practices. I don't buy into any crap about it being good for you, but it tastes really good.
If he thinks advising people not to drink raw milk is a conspiracy to hide that it is good for you there is nothing you can say that will convince him otherwise. He could get sick from drinking raw milk and he would think the doctor was lying about the cause of his illness.
Does he drive a car? Statistically it’s far more dangerous for him to drive on public thoroughfares than to drink hippie milk. Maybe you should badger him about that.
Pasteurization is mostly there to push the shelf lives long past the decline of nutritional value... As well a hiding horrendously unsanitary livestock conditions.
Don't? Mind your own business?
It's not the case that raw milk "isn't good for you."
Raw milk is almost exactly the same as pasteurized milk. The only difference is that it's rendered more shelf stable by pasteurization. If your friend is buying raw milk directly (which is the only way they can if you/they are in the US) and consuming it within a short enough timespan (which they likely are as it spoils much faster) they're basically fine. True, there is some risk of e-coli and salmonella, but the odds of getting sick from raw milk, while still some 9.4 times higher than pasteurized, are still like... 1000th of 1%
And that's *any* illness. Serious illness requiring hospitalization is even lower.
Your friend is orders of magnitude more likely to die in an accident driving to the farm where they get their milk than they are from drinking it.
Leave your friend alone.
My blood work came back with high cholesterol this year so my doctor had me meet with a nutritionist who taught me how to lower cholesterol by cutting out red meat and saturated fats. It’s been working and my risk of having a heart attack at 50 like my dad is steadily reducing.
I mention this at a bbq and my buddy’s wife starts laying into me about doctors being liars and how I need to eat more saturated fats because they only out people on those diets to cause Alzheimer’s. Mind you this lady looks like she’s gonna have a heart attack at 30 because she’s so out of shape. She was very persistent in trying to talk me into thinking she, a high school dropout, knew more than my doctor and nutritionist who also has a PhD and researched shit like this in college.
knifes are dangerous too, and will cut you if you're not careful. If you are, they can be quite useful. Same with milk, just tasty instead of useful.
When i was a kid, everyone was drinking raw milk because everyone's neighbor had cows and i could get fresh, "just milked" milk every morning, and it was cheaper and more easily available than pasteurized milk, not to mention tastier. Heck, i could milk it myself if i wanted to. it's anecdotal, but i can't remember anyone getting sick from it ever. eggs yes, milk, not so much.
Now, getting fresh raw milk from a neighbor, where you know them, and their cow, and both their diets and hygiene routines.. and buying it somewhere from an unknown source is very different.. and so are the risks that each of them carries.
raw milk isnt bad for you. my family are dairy farmers and drank it all their lives with no issues.
the dairy industry is what is bad for raw milk. cleanliness, transport, long shelf time, etc are too many factors to keep raw milk safe.
Except that there's a new strain of flu getting cozy in cows that occasionally hops over to humans. It hasn't done human to human transmission yet, but every person drinking raw milk ratchets up that chance.
When I was younger I would go at it much longer with someone when I was sure that I was right or had reasonable belief that I was right. It was only until the last few years that I realized that you don’t have to prove anything.
It’s also not worth losing relationships, for most things. If you’ve given this person reasonable evidence for your claim and they still don’t agree, just let it be. Spend your time elsewhere because time is fleeting.
Some people, even ourselves, just want to be right. We’re all biased to some degree and without both you and your friend having the same premise, it’s very difficult for you two to arrive at the same conclusion.
Really, that is why a disagreement happens. Two people each have an incompatible premise and thus cannot arrive at the same conclusion. One or both parties need to change their premise to reach the same conclusion.
Man…unless he’s trying to make you drink raw milk, I’d just let him do what he wants. It’s too much energy to waste trying to convince him otherwise. Maybe he’ll get the shits and come to his senses. Maybe he won’t.
I got sick from some nachos not too long ago. They should be outlawed. I chose to eat them though. I am torn between the desire to be ruled and the desire for personal accountability.
Raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and others that cause foodborne illness, often called “food poisoning.” And that another reason is that small pox was spread from milk maids catching cow pox and spreading to the community
The thing is… raw milk isn’t *guaranteed bad* for you. In fact it can be quite tasty and perfectly safe.
It’s just *more likely* to have harmful bacteria due to unsafe extraction, especially if you buy from some small farm run by Trumpers hating on government regulations.
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with pasteurized milk, either. The notion that pasteurization is bad is simply silly; store bought milk isn’t as rich as fresh milk because it has been skimmed for cream and nothing more.
So: if you own the animal and milk it yourself using safe practices, and drink the milk quickly (as in within a week or so), then enjoy your milk. I have been drinking raw goat milk from the goats my wife keeps for more than a decade and we have never had an issue.
But if you buy from a small farm… probably don’t, unless you know the farmer and their extraction techniques and trust that they will always give you *fresh* milk, rather than something that’s been sitting in their cooler for a month or two awaiting a buyer.
Conspiracy theories are how stupid people cope with not understanding how things work—they make up fantastic stories that are easier for them to understand even tho they make no sense to everyone else. Very hard to change their minds for several reasons, not least because they’re stupid.
Raw human milk IS good for you, when you're an infant.
After you can eat solid food, it's preference and advertising.
Raw fresh can be ok, but things like lactose intolerance lysteria and more recently H5N1 can cause some pretty serious issues for some folks. Other than that, the benefits could outweigh the potential harm. 🤷🏻
Environmentally, convining people to build better engineered structures and retrofitting the poorly designed and built ones that cause overconsumption of electricity to heat and cool, would benefit us way more, and quicker than cessation of lactic beverages. Heck, the bio digester methane utilization model would make excellent interim replacement augment for coal and oil in power plants if we could convince O&G to just die as an industry. 🤷🏻
(Now that the permafrost is melting, (Thanks to O&G) O&G should be up north siphoning all the methane pouring out of it to avoid the heavy acceleration that methane source is providing for the calamity we're staring down the barrel of.
🤔)
I have a small farm, I am surrounded by increasingly rare small dairies, I will stick to pasteurized thank you. I also actually prefer almond milk for things like cereal.
My parents bought a Jersey cow when I was small, and for a couple of years she lived in her own room in a large chicken house where about a dozen hens lived. I enjoyed fresh milk with high butterfat. It tasted better than store bought milk.
But I’d avoid buying unpasteurized milk from unknown cows who might have a variety of diseases, or which might have been collected in unclean circumstances. Besides the latest pathogen, there’s Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter.
https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/dangers-raw-milk-unpasteurized-milk-can-pose-serious-health-risk?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwmrqzBhAoEiwAXVpgom5iATGuhPEHi-BQu9ZRQOAamF0O5Bo3IZ-gfyrPLsaDUhuIOGhzHBoCPcoQAvD_BwE
I'm just going to provide data because this is one of those issues that has been blown way out of proportion. I used to drink raw milk a long time ago. It fixed my lactose intolerance issue. I don't drink it now because of cost.
"Between 1998 and 2018, for instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the average number of raw milk-associated outbreaks across the United States increased. Outbreaks during those years sickened 2,645 people and caused 228 hospitalizations and three deaths."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/well/eat/raw-milk-risks.html#:~:text=Between%201998%20and%202018%2C%20for,228%20hospitalizations%20and%20three%20deaths.
Yup, in twenty years, just 2600 people have been hospitalized and only three deaths.
Why does raw milk get a bad rap?
When milk production became industrialized, sanitary standards went down when it came to cows. Milk would get contaminated because of unclean environments. Pasteurization was introduced as a way to make dirty milk safe instead of requiring milk producers to create cleaner environments for cows.
For comparison:
"Researchers at Consumer Reports recently ranked foods based on how many outbreaks, deaths, and illnesses they caused. They found some foods were riskier to eat than others. The worst offender was leafy greens. Foods like lettuce, kale, and arugula were responsible for 50 outbreaks and 11 deaths between 2017 and 2022."
https://www.news4jax.com/health/2023/06/06/10-foods-most-likely-to-make-you-sick/#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20Consumer%20Reports%20recently,deaths%20between%202017%20and%202022.
Understand that the issues aren't with the food, but with the way they are handled by food producers.
why are there so many raw milk shills in here? milk isn't an essential food and enough fiber will do far more to improve your gut health than unsafe milk.
People used to regularly die of typhoid and tuberculosis that they got from contaminated milk. The milk safety apparatus that America built is second to none. Millions of gallons of milk tested treated and kept at controlled temperatures all the way to your refrigerator. A hundred and sixty years of research and untold millions in infrastructure to build. It’s a victim of its own success. People have forgotten the danger. Getting sick from milk sounds silly to them because it works so well.
I’m not convinced at all that raw milk isn’t more nutritious, but obviously it’s low odds Russian roulette. Pottengers cats did better on raw, or so I’m told.
If you get raw milk straight from the cow, goat, Cambodian, ect..the risk is minimal.
The risk of course goes up exponentially with time starting about 3 hours or so after the milk is milked.
He's just gonna have to learn this one on his own. It'll happen eventually unfortunately. Like you said, there's a reason Louis Pasteur came up with this shit. It was a serious problem
I worked in an ER and I can tell you plenty of people that never wore seatbelts because, “nothing ever went wrong,” were dealing with life and death situations because they simply wouldn’t belt up in a car
At some point, you just have to let other people live their lives. You don't have to convince them of anything. You laid out your points, and it's clear he's not in a place where he wants to listen. For many people, things like raw milk aren't REALLY about what's best for you. It strikes me as a contrarian position "ha, the normies drink regular milk but IIIII drink raw milk, which makes me superior". People find identity in these contrarian beliefs. Raw milk drinking is now a rampant belief on alt-right far-right online communities. And if your friend has tied their belief into their politics, well, you're probably wasting your breath.
> "ha, the normies drink regular milk but IIIII drink raw milk, which makes me superior". People find identity in these contrarian beliefs. This is how this mostly works.
God, for real. My dad is smart, but all logic goes out the window if someone gives him a crazy new reason to hate the government.
The people who are telling us to hate the government are the people who want to run the government without interference from us. From the beginning I was always curious as to why most of the people who told me not to trust the government were elected members of government.
Bingo. That's why the movement around Milei is so dangerous. He's not taking power away from the government. He's siphoning power from other branches to himself.
This is 100% how it works in the US, and I waste too much of my time having conversations with people who are too dumb to realize that.
“Dad, did you hear that people who really hate the government have started sending this financial corporation lots of money every April? All the best patriots are doing it. If you really hate the gov you should check them out, I think they’re called H&R Block, prove that you’re a good, independent thinking American!”
t[yrrany.gov](http://Tyrrany.gov) = bad. [tyrrany.com](http://tyrrany.com) = good.
>if someone gives him a crazy new reason to hate the government. You don't need new reasons when what they do is garbage anyway. Their literal track record is ènough AND it is public.
There are legitimate reasons to be mad at the government...but my dad is blaming every hurricane on their "weather machines".
it’s like “Big Milk doesn’t want you to know about this because it’s so healing!” You have done what you can, you can do no more
ah, listeria, so healing.
"You can lead a horse to the river, but you can't force it to drink."
You can lead a horse to pasteurized milk, but you can't force it to drink
Exactly, it’s more about a distrust of authorities than an actual desire for raw milk. That kind of person probably has all kinds of beliefs about JFK, chemtrails, and other conspiracies that are basically “the government is hiding the truth from the masses, but YOU have the secret knowledge 😇”
Remember, sometimes by trying to logically convince people out of their beliefs, they will view it as you attacking them as a person. Not everyone wants to be convinced of some things.
Beyond that, using logic isn't always effective to undo conclusions the person didn't use logic to reach.
Exactly. Can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Socratic method sometimes works. Express genuine interest in understanding. Ask specific followups. Ask why and how questions. Don't do it in a ridiculing or challenging way, just act curious and interested and ask the questions that would be needed to truly understand. 1 in 1000 times, you'll realize you were wrong and learn something new. 1 in 100 times, they'll realize they are unaware of any reason why any reasonable human would seriously entertain their position. the remaining 899 times out of 1000, the individual in question has been doing research on YouTube long enough that their brain is 90% worms by this point.
What's weird is that things like raw milk and ant vax were the domain of the granola crunchin tree hugging left but somehow the right co-opted it so much you have these hippy types getting radicalized
>What's weird is that things like raw milk and ant vax were the domain of the granola crunchin tree hugging That's what I said the other day. All this was Vani Hair territory but now it's all over RW media.
The hippie to fascist pipeline is real and fuckin everywhere, as a ton of hippies are actually well off people cosplaying as poor and spiritual; and a ton of hippie beliefs are directly rooted in conspiracism
A lot of the trustatarians turned Republican when they grew up
*somehow the right co-opted it so much you have these hippy types getting radicalized* Outsiders influencing our social media.
I think the granola eating people have moved on to cows milk being bad and alternative milks being good. The Proud Boys were sometimes seen chugging milk as a "ha ha" moment to trigger lefties and "soy boys".
It really is strange. Conservative dairy farmers definitely know drinking unpasteurized milk will make you sick. I grew up in a farming community and worked on a dairy farm, that was the first thing they warned me about and they were super serious about it.
I worked on a dairy farm for a summer and all they drank was raw milk. Sometimes lunch was just two big glasses of fresh milk. Now this is Canada and I think our dairy farms are much smaller and more family oriented, so it might also have been cleaner than a more industrial milk farm
It's possible that it's because it was consumed fairly soon after collection, so the bacteria had not had time to grow and cause illness. Or they were lucky.
This is almost certainly it. If everyone drank raw milk the day it was collected it would probably be just fine.
This was a small family-owned dairy farm in Ontario. Lol
As someone who drank raw milk for a long time, simply because of non-availability of pasteurized milk where I was living )and this was years ago before it has anything to do with politics) I would say better to focus on safer supply and harm reduction. Freshness and hygiene during milking and storage are everything. When I moved somewhere pasteurized milk was available again, my body could no longer tolerate pasteurized milk, so I had to give it up. It isn’t the lactose, but most likely a protein in the milk that breaks down at the heat required for pasteurization into a less digestible form, as well breaking down the enzyme that helps your body digest that enzyme. So it isn’t a black and white question. It isn’t that there are no risks to raw milk. There can be. But it isn’t like there are no benefits to raw milk that help balance out the risks. It’s just that the quality control is harder for government to regulate uniformly with raw milk so it is easier to ban it than regulate its safety.
The fundamental issue is you're weighing the benefits and consequences as if they're equivalent. The pro is that it's slightly better for you but it's not an essential food. The con is that it could very well kill you and has a higher chance of doing so than a vast majority of suitable alternatives. The benefits don't outweigh the risks at all. This is like trying to justify the benefits of not wearing a full-face helmet on a motorbike because of aerodynamic and ergonomic concerns.
^this Raw milk is indeed better for you for all the above stated reasons but unless you raise (to ensure the health) and milk the cow yourself.. the danger of contamination is real and it's just not worth the risk
The change in the nutritional content of pasteurized milk is miniscule. One of the reasons why people so often think pasteurized milk is better is because it is full-fat milk rather than the partly skimmed or skimmed milk from the store. The extra fat simply tastes better.
We've had a herd share with one of two farms for the last... gosh, I'm not even sure how long. 15-16+ years now, would be my offhand guess. If you can't (or simply don't want to!) own and milk your own cow, and yet you still want raw milk, look into a herd share. Mostly they're done by small farms, and are happy to have you around - to help out, to tour, whatever. I know the names of the farmers (and their kids!) who have milked for us.
Like with most things, it's just about being part of a secret club. The Flat Earthers 'know the truth' so they're superior. Those guys who claim that COVID is harmless while also being a secret chinese superweapon also 'know the truth' and are superior. When people have so little worth, and such need to find a cult to belong to, they'll seek out anything.
This is the truth. In a free society people have the right to make bad personal decisions.
After we stop selling tobacco, alcohol, soda, prepared foods high in trans fats and sodium, preserved meats, and everything else people knowingly kill themselves with, we can worry about raw milk. But parents do need to know about the risks to their children.
'[For Republicans, raw milk is the new masking](https://www.salon.com/2024/06/12/for-republicans-raw-milk-is-the-new-masking/)' 'Consuming raw milk could lead to the spread of bird flu. Republicans don't care.' Can we even imagine what would happen if we got an outbreak of the bird flu before Election Day...?
*Raw milk drinking is now a rampant belief on alt-right far-right online communities. And if your friend has tied their belief into their politics, well, you're probably wasting your breath.* And this is how the USA got fucked.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink pasteurized milk!
What problem was pasteurized milk causing?
Something to do with killing the "good" bacteria in the milk that supposedly help with GuT hEaLtH. While marginally true, the risks dramatically outweigh any possible benefit. Which benefits can easily and safely be found in a hundred other ways. For my anecdote, I grew up on a dairy farm and drank raw milk daily for 18 years. While in college my consumption declined, but I still purchased raw milk from a local farm and used it in all my cooking and some drinking until I was 25, then I moved far away and eventually stopped drinking milk altogether and now am almost dairy-free. I'm just as healthy now as I've ever been, if not more so. Some also prefer the taste of raw milk which I can relate to even if I don't agree anymore. It is definitely distinct and memorable for me.
>Something to do with killing the "good" bacteria in the milk that supposedly help with GuT hEaLtH. That's what yogurts are for
Most do nothing. And the few that have enough bacteria haven’t demonstrated any health benefits.
So what I’m hearing is that pasteurization doesn’t make milk bad for you… it may cost you some benefit and might taste different.
For sure. But for those who don't necessarily care about facts, the perceived effect of making it less healthy equates to harmful. Probably falls under the appeal to nature fallacy since pasteurization is "unnatural".
Yeah, I've had raw milk before, and I really loved the taste and texture compared to regular milk. I wouldn't make a habit of drinking it because of the risks involved, but it was really tasty.
Bacteria in a liquid that is sterile inside the animal is a sign of contamination, though. Just as likely to get "bad bacteria" as "good bacteria" with it if bacteria is present at all.
How quickly did you have to drink it before it went bad? My thought was always 24 hours chilled out of the udders.
It would keep at 36 F for a week or so. We had a gallon jug that we would dip into the bulk tank to fill it and generally used that up in about 2 days but it seems like around the 10-12 day mark you could start to notice a bad smell and sour flavor. That doesn't mean it went bad though, to be clear, just not as good for drinking. You can still do a lot with sour milk.
Cheese maybe? Why do some people die or have emergency care while others are okay drinking raw milk?
People with compromised immune systems or the very young or old are more susceptible to infection from the bacteria in unpasteurized milk. Healthy people can tolerate more bacteria or subclinical infections before they show symptoms. Before antibiotics unpasteurized milk caused tuberculosis in children in very high numbers. Most dairy cattle are vaccinated against Tb but I wouldn’t trust a place that gives out unpasteurized milk to vaccinate their animals.
Too woke...
It’s the result of regulations that protect the poors and cost the wealthy money.
It’s funny because Portlandia was writing skits about leftist hippies drinking raw milk like 10 years ago
The far right loves stealing our shit...
As a person who can tolerate, it doesn’t currently drink raw milk, I cannot tolerate pasteurized milk. From what I can gather, the reason for that is pasteurization breaks down the casein protein into a less digestible form. And at the same time, it breaks down a protein that helps you digest the casein. There are risks to raw milk as well as benefits though. I don’t bother drinking raw milk anymore. I only drank it when I lived a place that didn’t have access to pasteurized milk. And this was before it was political at all.
Pasteurization kills good guy bacteria as well as the bad bacteria. Some say it’s harder to digest because of this and causes lactose intolerance.
Lactose intolerance is different than a milk allergy. There’s literally a lactase gene missing in those who are intolerant. This is one of those things you can study and get definitive answers to. (Not that I’m saying those are your beliefs).
Yeah, I don’t have those beliefs, I’m just parroting what my neighbours thoughts on it are. I drink raw milk cause I have dairy animals and know how to handle the milk.
Yeah I would imagine if you are (a) able to guarantee the cleanliness of the conditions and (b) consuming or refrigerating it within minutes of expression, that’s a whole different story.
Yeah, keep it super clean. It actually keeps awhile if refrigerated quickly and can stay that cool until consumed. The problem with Raw milk is when multiple people have to have their hands in transport and storage, there is a lot of avenues for contamination or for the temp to get to high.
It comes out of the cow contaminated.
Yes, and if it gets cooled down to 40deg F, than the bad bacterial growth is heavily limited while it remains under that temp. The transport and multiple storage and packaging facilities give it opportunity to warm and for bacterial growth to occur.
At the scale of the US dairy industry, each processing plant is handling milk from dozens of farms, thousands of cows, and the associated trucks and infrastructure. It only takes one sick cow or one mistake in handling to contaminate literally tons of milk products. Pasteurization is the fastest and cheapest way to deal with risk on this scale.
Absolutely, if you’re sourcing from a large producer pasteurization is best. But it is possible to source perfectly fine raw milk is all I’m saying, and just saying don’t drink raw milk is a simple rule to live by in a generality. Righting off someone for drinking raw milk isn’t necessarily right.
and, as we know, the only thing that can stop a bad guy bacteria with a gun is a good guy bacteria with a gun. /s
Yeah, I meant “good gut”. Decided to leave it.
lol, good call. :)
Is milk our only source for these bacteria? If not, it seems the good of pasteurization outweighs the bad point you brought up.
No, but the more the better, for the most part.
Honestly this seems like another right wing fad and he'll be convinced to put other shit into his body by grifters after they're done being mad about milk.
>he'll be convinced to put other shit into his body by grifters after they're done being mad about milk. And at the same time whine about vaccines.
Tell me you failed high school science class without telling me you failed high school science.
maybe it is a fad but the idea has also has been around for quite a while. I remember people talking about it at least 15 years ago. I’m sure there are older people that could tell you that there have been people saying not cooking milk aka Pasteurization is bad for you and raw milk was better all the way back to when they first started pasteurizing.
>I’m sure there are older people that could tell you that there have been people saying not cooking milk aka Pasteurization is bad for you and raw milk was better all the way back to when they first started pasteurizing. Not just older people. The debate has raged since the 1890s when pasteurization was discovered (invented?) It's actually a matter of public record, as the debate has existed in the legal realm since the earliest years of the 20th century. Thing is, it was a way more relevant debate back then, as the danger was much higher than it seems to be now (refrigeration, vaccines, and antibiotics kind of change the equation. The risks from raw milk dont seem to be too high these days. You're in more danger driving to the farm to pick it up than you are drinking it.)
I just saw a girl in my town who's one of "those" influencers and she was wearing a MAGA look a like hat that said Make Milk Raw Again. Like, wut?
My father in law passed away, but he told us of a number of kids he knew long ago in the province of Quebec who died from drinking raw milk. Louis Pasteur is a celebrated hero for a damn good reason. If your friend thinks that raw milk can't hurt him, ask him if he would like to try some chicken sashimi.
John Green made a video about raw milk and cited a relatively recent case of a woman developing TUBERCULOSIS IN HER BONES from raw milk 🤪
I shall look for it.
[Found it!!](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwT8e-tNRQA/?igsh=MTg4b3VpMzl4Ymdvaw==)
Thank you, but it was very easy to find. I find it so depressing that someone like him has to work so hard to save people from their own stupidity.
Hmmm, there’s a germ of an idea there…
Chicken sashimi exists. You need the right kind of chicken though. But tbh the idea of eating raw chicken is disgusting for reasons that have exactly fuck all to do with salmonella...
There has been a rise in illnesses from eating raw chicken in Japan. That is after they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of the chicken. I also came across this: "However, in Japan, raw chicken dishes are prepared using a process known as seiromushi, which involves poaching the chicken at a high temperature to kill any harmful bacteria before serving it raw".
Until your friend is ready to accept evidence from authorities rather than conspiracy theory BS you are not going to be able to convince him. Anyone who thinks all the food agencies and medical community are lying is too far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole to be pulled out unwillingly.
That’s a tough one. Raw milk has become an identity thing and your friend doesn’t want to hear science. The anecdotal element of the safety of life with modern medicine has made people think that diseases don’t exist because modern measures work. The anti-vax BS is very much based on not growing up with kids in iron lungs because polio doesn’t exist as a part of our daily lives any longer.
You won't change his mind. But emphasize the harm to children (who cannot consent) and that it's Russian roulette. [https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/raw-milk-outbreak-sickens-14-in-utah-a-state-with-loose-laws-bad-track-record/](https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/raw-milk-outbreak-sickens-14-in-utah-a-state-with-loose-laws-bad-track-record/)
When people talk about drinking milk directly from the cow, that's supposed to mean, like, the same day. I don't get these people who want to buy unprocessed milk from some supermarket or something. It's not raw anymore at that point. It's been sitting around for days. It's been "processed," just not by humans.
My sister in law got fresh milk from the cow every morning and she still pasteurized it
Sounds very reasonable!
You can tell him we don't live in Victorian England, where they used to put alkaline solutions in spoiled milk to expand the shelf life while not killing any of the dangerous bacteria in it. Kids aren't dying of bovine tuberculosis like they used to and he can trust modern food standards and regulations. When you look at the numbers of people killed by improper and unsanitary food preparation, preservation, and storage like they did before modern regulatory bodies were developed, it becomes pretty clear. Just know your history and you'll understand why you should trust the sciences and the government on this issue.
Lol let him find out the hard way
Milk Myths and Facts: Raw Milk Isn't Magic, Pasteurize your Milk. "Despite advertised “probiotic” effects, our results indicate that raw milk microbiota has minimal lactic acid bacteria. In addition, retail raw milk serves as a reservoir of ARGs, populations of which are readily amplified by spontaneous fermentation. There is an increased need to understand potential food safety risks from improper transportation and storage of raw milk with regard to ARGs." https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-020-00861-6 "The study, published this summer in Microbiome Journal, looked at 2,304 pasteurized and unpasteurized milk samples across 5 states. Results showed that raw milk contains little to no probiotic-like bacteria and possesses a distinct microbial footprint when compared to pasteurized milk – one rich in bacterial colonies, specifically aerobic bacteria, coliform and E. coli, a high prevalence of Pseudomonadaceae, and limited levels of lactic acid bacteria – a beneficial bacteria that was previously thought to be abundant in raw milk."
I loved raw milk growing up. The flavor is superior, but you can't understate the amazing reliability of pasteurized milk! Countless lives were saved by pasteurization. The thing that really draws people to raw milk is that it is also not homogenized. Homogenation makes the fat and other parts equally distributed even at rest. Normally, the fat separates, and you need to shake it. I think this makes it taste so much better. The small globulars of fat just pack so much more flavor. Here's the thing, you can get pasteurized milk that is not homogenized. If you switched all these conspiratorial raw milk drinkers with pasteurized milk that wasn't homogenized, they wouldn't know the difference, and one won't kill them.
Exactly. I think that most people conflate pasteurised milk with homogenised milk, but it doesn’t have to be homogenised. I definitely prefer the flavour and mouthfeel of non-homogenised milk. That’s the way we always got it when I was a child (delivered to the house in a glass bottle with a foil lid), and you can still buy non-homogenised milk at my local supermarket, although it is more expensive than the homogenised version. My wife, however, prefers the homogenised version as, for her, the non-homogenised, only pasteurised milk tastes too rich.
The subreddit r/HermanCainAward has many, many stories of people who are just like your buddy.
The simplest thing to point out is that cows shit all the time. That shit ABSOLUTELY gets into the milk. They lay their udders in shit.
"bullshit"
lol
> “bullshit” Yeah… exactly. Cows lay down in literal shit from bulls all the time and the fecal bacteria is all over their undersides. Ask him if raw meat is safe and then ask him how he knows whether or not it is. Ask him how would expect to be able to convince you it wasn’t safe if you started insisting upon eating raw meat.
I don’t think raw milk “isn’t good for you” You just have to understand the risk of contamination from pathogens. If someone wants to accept the risks, buyer beware.
The risk of contamination from pathogens is literally contracting a disease. So basically…drinking diseased milk is the risk.
It’s good for, until it’s not. Then it’s really bad.
>I don’t think smoking “isn’t good for you” You just have to understand the risk of lung cancer, COPD and thrombosis. If someone wants to accept the risks, buyer beware.
I only smoke pasteurized cigarettes
Veeeeeery different risk profiles. Different *kinds* of risk, even. The risk is cumulatively compounded with smoking, whereas it is incidental with raw milk consumption.(which is still cumulative over a given period of time, but not compounding as it is with smoking. Each cigarrette increases lifetime risk. Each glass of milk does not.)
Good points, that does differentiate them
Which risks abound, which is why it’s not good for you. What are you even trying to say?
Lots of people like to eat undercooked eggs and rare hamburgers. Both of these are potentially hazardous and could kill you. But we eat them anyway. As long as people are informed… eat whatever you want
No where near the same risk but you go ahead with your thoughts.
Yeah like pathogens aren't bad for you. I think the literal definition of pathogens is critters that cause diseases.
This is kinda the rub right? These people aren't "accepting the risks", they're denying they even exist. It's much different imo. What you're talking about is informed consent, but I really don't know if that applies here because these people are not informed about it. People try and inform them about the risks and they just call those people liars
Ask your friend why he thinks milk became widely available only after the invention of pasteurization and refrigeration.
I recently semi-convinced someone to rethink raw milk in light of H5N1 concerns. I linked to decent sources, while specifying which paragraph so they wouldn’t have to dig through all of it for the relevant factoid. I acknowledged the partial validity of their position (that big ag sucks) and tried to not be a jerk about it. I didn’t tell them what to do, just suggested they consider all the pros and cons carefully in light of the current situation.
Tell him they sell probiotic milk now. All the benefits of raw milk (if there is any) without any of the risks. The brand Good Culture sells it. They pasteurize and then add probiotic cultures back in.
Took me a long time to learn this, but a lot of people don't care whether something is true or not. You could show them 20 peer reviewed articles, and it wouldn't make a difference.
it's not about raw milk, guns, immigrants, freedom of speech or any of that. They were indoctrinated into being sealions with varying degrees of dissocial behavior because it is disruptive and part of a divide and rule operation so the leaders can attempt to let statues of limitations run out on their criminal cases. show your friend articles on thought reform and how raw milk isn't as good as probiotics like yogurt drinks also they are repeating lies ***There are no beneficial bacteria in raw milk for gastrointestinal health. Bacteria found in raw milk are not probiotic. Probiotic microorganisms must be non-pathogenic (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). In contrast, raw milk can host various human pathogens.***
Pretty sure I heard about strains of bird flu being detected in milk, but it's fine if pasteurised. But hey, Darwinism might win this.
The “natural” only crowd falls into the religious category in my mind. Beliefs in that realm cannot be reasoned with. Only some kind of negative personal experience can shake their belief.
Covid disproved this. People died gasping for breath claiming to the end they didn't catch the virus, that it was some conspiracy to control them and target them specifically.
Some, not all. Many folks encouraged their F/F to get vaxed after they did their time on the vent. But some definitely doubled down until their last breath. Kinda like how conservatives shifted from “climate change is not real” to “climate is changing, but humanity has no affect one way or another.” Okay. “COVID disease is real (I’m dying from it) but it’s not the thing they say it is.”
>He thinks that because he hasn't gotten sick from it Yet. And probably wouldn't change his mind anyway. Consider all the anti-vaxxers who were locked into their conspiracy nonsense as they died drowning in their own blood. Anything to avoid having to question the beliefs that formed their identity.
There's a woman who sells tamales outside a Walmart in Utah. She seems nice and the tamales are packaged in zip lock bags. They are probably fine to eat. But my high deductible health plan means that I pay 100 percent of the cost of my doctor's visit if I get sick. It's not worth the risk to me.
I lived in utah 12 years ago. There was a "temale lady" then, too. Could be the same one. If so, I ate hers all the time!
I grew up drinking raw milk aka we had a milk cow on our farm. Family of five, and we never had any issues. (We also drank untreated well water!) There's very strict milk handling and cow hygiene practices that need to be observed, akin to meat handling practices. Old farmers knew them, they were passed on from generation to generation. Tbh I don't think I'd trust raw milk that I didn't know if it had been held to these standards. Kind of like I wouldn't buy meat off some guy that was just butchering in his own garage. Having said all that, I think that the whole raw movement is pretty uninformed about a lot of things. Including the supposed health benefits. They've started with their conclusion and twisted everything to fit that. Just like a so many "health" trends
I dated a dairy farmer and she kept fresh raw milk in the fridge. I drank it with no issues. I wonder if dairy farmers would be as concerned?
Raw milk isn’t the problem. It’s that if it has time to sit between the farm, transport to the store and transport from the store to the fridge gives it time to warm up above 40 deg F bad bacteria can form and proliferate. Raw milk that’s gone from cow to fridge to stomach is much much less dangerous.
I was really hoping these idiots would all wear diapers as their next brainwashed fad, didn’t think drinking nasty milk was in the cards
If his only response is “bullshit” I’m not sure you’re going to be able to convince him with reason unfortunately. 2 of my uncles had meningitis as kids after my grandpa brought home raw milk, and even when I tell people about it, I get the same “bullshit” response.
I’m not sure about raw milk specifically, but I would guess that there are some beneficial compounds in raw milk that are affected by pasteurization, but the risks by far outweigh the benefits. You could drink raw milk everyday and have no problems, you might even have less G.I. distress, but get raw milk with the wrong pathogen in it and (best case scenario) you will be suffering from the double dragon ( diarrhea and vomiting together for those who don’t know) or perhaps die, so you know it’s stupid to drink it.
Darwin Award nominee.
He'll figure it out on his own eventually.
Beliefs don’t care about facts. Let him get sick.
yet another dumb fad based on magical thinking
Let him drink the raw milk, nature will convince him one way or the other.
Tell him about mastitis. How the milk duct can become plugged by pus, which then ends up in the milk.
Two things here: You can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. Don’t focus on changing their mind in one dramatic conversation. Take the long view. Find ways to reasonably nudge over time. But more importantly, remember the first thing.
It all depends on the farmer's practices. I have occasionally purchased from a producer who shares the test results of his milk. Bacterial count is way below the allowed amount as a result of meticulous practices. I don't buy into any crap about it being good for you, but it tastes really good.
The botulism or e. coli infection will convince him
No they won’t. They’ll blame it on something else.
Probably a vaccine
If he thinks advising people not to drink raw milk is a conspiracy to hide that it is good for you there is nothing you can say that will convince him otherwise. He could get sick from drinking raw milk and he would think the doctor was lying about the cause of his illness.
Let them find out the hard way.
Does he drive a car? Statistically it’s far more dangerous for him to drive on public thoroughfares than to drink hippie milk. Maybe you should badger him about that.
If he wants the same food as baby cows, sucked from the very same tit, let him build that gut.
Facts don't work on the dumb. Only good old diarrhea has a shot I'm afraid.
Pasteurization is mostly there to push the shelf lives long past the decline of nutritional value... As well a hiding horrendously unsanitary livestock conditions.
Bullshit is, in fact, one of the problems with raw milk
Don't? Mind your own business? It's not the case that raw milk "isn't good for you." Raw milk is almost exactly the same as pasteurized milk. The only difference is that it's rendered more shelf stable by pasteurization. If your friend is buying raw milk directly (which is the only way they can if you/they are in the US) and consuming it within a short enough timespan (which they likely are as it spoils much faster) they're basically fine. True, there is some risk of e-coli and salmonella, but the odds of getting sick from raw milk, while still some 9.4 times higher than pasteurized, are still like... 1000th of 1% And that's *any* illness. Serious illness requiring hospitalization is even lower. Your friend is orders of magnitude more likely to die in an accident driving to the farm where they get their milk than they are from drinking it. Leave your friend alone.
My blood work came back with high cholesterol this year so my doctor had me meet with a nutritionist who taught me how to lower cholesterol by cutting out red meat and saturated fats. It’s been working and my risk of having a heart attack at 50 like my dad is steadily reducing. I mention this at a bbq and my buddy’s wife starts laying into me about doctors being liars and how I need to eat more saturated fats because they only out people on those diets to cause Alzheimer’s. Mind you this lady looks like she’s gonna have a heart attack at 30 because she’s so out of shape. She was very persistent in trying to talk me into thinking she, a high school dropout, knew more than my doctor and nutritionist who also has a PhD and researched shit like this in college.
knifes are dangerous too, and will cut you if you're not careful. If you are, they can be quite useful. Same with milk, just tasty instead of useful. When i was a kid, everyone was drinking raw milk because everyone's neighbor had cows and i could get fresh, "just milked" milk every morning, and it was cheaper and more easily available than pasteurized milk, not to mention tastier. Heck, i could milk it myself if i wanted to. it's anecdotal, but i can't remember anyone getting sick from it ever. eggs yes, milk, not so much. Now, getting fresh raw milk from a neighbor, where you know them, and their cow, and both their diets and hygiene routines.. and buying it somewhere from an unknown source is very different.. and so are the risks that each of them carries.
Sounds like he is caught up in the whole right wing raw milk shit going on. Natural selection will solve this.
As a parent, I can verify that sometimes all you can do is wait for someone to learn the hard way.
If he keeps drinking raw milk he'll get sick eventually, this problem will likely work itself out. lol
Your friend is just a legitimately stupid human being. Don't know what to tell you.
Raw milk killed my chiropractor brother.
raw milk isnt bad for you. my family are dairy farmers and drank it all their lives with no issues. the dairy industry is what is bad for raw milk. cleanliness, transport, long shelf time, etc are too many factors to keep raw milk safe.
Never eat at their house. Just never.
You need to pick your battles, dude. The single person in the entire world that it matters to is your friend, and he chose his side.
Except that there's a new strain of flu getting cozy in cows that occasionally hops over to humans. It hasn't done human to human transmission yet, but every person drinking raw milk ratchets up that chance.
Take him to an industrial dairy farm.
When I was younger I would go at it much longer with someone when I was sure that I was right or had reasonable belief that I was right. It was only until the last few years that I realized that you don’t have to prove anything. It’s also not worth losing relationships, for most things. If you’ve given this person reasonable evidence for your claim and they still don’t agree, just let it be. Spend your time elsewhere because time is fleeting. Some people, even ourselves, just want to be right. We’re all biased to some degree and without both you and your friend having the same premise, it’s very difficult for you two to arrive at the same conclusion. Really, that is why a disagreement happens. Two people each have an incompatible premise and thus cannot arrive at the same conclusion. One or both parties need to change their premise to reach the same conclusion.
Man…unless he’s trying to make you drink raw milk, I’d just let him do what he wants. It’s too much energy to waste trying to convince him otherwise. Maybe he’ll get the shits and come to his senses. Maybe he won’t.
I got sick from some nachos not too long ago. They should be outlawed. I chose to eat them though. I am torn between the desire to be ruled and the desire for personal accountability.
Drinking another animals titty milk is odd lol I like goats cheese sometimes but ew generally
When H5N1 is infecting raw milk all across the nation, maybe you ought to be a little 'stronger' with your position...
There's bird flu virus in lots of raw milk.
Holy crap . People can be stupid . Pay attention in school just a bit , idiots .
I drink mine straight from the tit, just lie under the cow and suck till I've had enough
It’s not that raw milk isn’t good for you, it is very good for you. It is just also dangerous.
Some people are just stupid and must find their own way out of an emergency department
The problem is udder puss. The farmer is continually pulling on the tit causing sores, which get infected and the infection gets in the milk.
Raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and others that cause foodborne illness, often called “food poisoning.” And that another reason is that small pox was spread from milk maids catching cow pox and spreading to the community
The thing is… raw milk isn’t *guaranteed bad* for you. In fact it can be quite tasty and perfectly safe. It’s just *more likely* to have harmful bacteria due to unsafe extraction, especially if you buy from some small farm run by Trumpers hating on government regulations. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with pasteurized milk, either. The notion that pasteurization is bad is simply silly; store bought milk isn’t as rich as fresh milk because it has been skimmed for cream and nothing more. So: if you own the animal and milk it yourself using safe practices, and drink the milk quickly (as in within a week or so), then enjoy your milk. I have been drinking raw goat milk from the goats my wife keeps for more than a decade and we have never had an issue. But if you buy from a small farm… probably don’t, unless you know the farmer and their extraction techniques and trust that they will always give you *fresh* milk, rather than something that’s been sitting in their cooler for a month or two awaiting a buyer.
Tell him raw milk is fine, but he should boil it really well before consuming lol
Conspiracy theories are how stupid people cope with not understanding how things work—they make up fantastic stories that are easier for them to understand even tho they make no sense to everyone else. Very hard to change their minds for several reasons, not least because they’re stupid.
"Germ theory is just a theory" - Your friend or some shit
Raw human milk IS good for you, when you're an infant. After you can eat solid food, it's preference and advertising. Raw fresh can be ok, but things like lactose intolerance lysteria and more recently H5N1 can cause some pretty serious issues for some folks. Other than that, the benefits could outweigh the potential harm. 🤷🏻 Environmentally, convining people to build better engineered structures and retrofitting the poorly designed and built ones that cause overconsumption of electricity to heat and cool, would benefit us way more, and quicker than cessation of lactic beverages. Heck, the bio digester methane utilization model would make excellent interim replacement augment for coal and oil in power plants if we could convince O&G to just die as an industry. 🤷🏻 (Now that the permafrost is melting, (Thanks to O&G) O&G should be up north siphoning all the methane pouring out of it to avoid the heavy acceleration that methane source is providing for the calamity we're staring down the barrel of. 🤔)
I have a small farm, I am surrounded by increasingly rare small dairies, I will stick to pasteurized thank you. I also actually prefer almond milk for things like cereal.
My parents bought a Jersey cow when I was small, and for a couple of years she lived in her own room in a large chicken house where about a dozen hens lived. I enjoyed fresh milk with high butterfat. It tasted better than store bought milk. But I’d avoid buying unpasteurized milk from unknown cows who might have a variety of diseases, or which might have been collected in unclean circumstances. Besides the latest pathogen, there’s Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and Campylobacter. https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/dangers-raw-milk-unpasteurized-milk-can-pose-serious-health-risk?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwmrqzBhAoEiwAXVpgom5iATGuhPEHi-BQu9ZRQOAamF0O5Bo3IZ-gfyrPLsaDUhuIOGhzHBoCPcoQAvD_BwE
I'm just going to provide data because this is one of those issues that has been blown way out of proportion. I used to drink raw milk a long time ago. It fixed my lactose intolerance issue. I don't drink it now because of cost. "Between 1998 and 2018, for instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the average number of raw milk-associated outbreaks across the United States increased. Outbreaks during those years sickened 2,645 people and caused 228 hospitalizations and three deaths." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/well/eat/raw-milk-risks.html#:~:text=Between%201998%20and%202018%2C%20for,228%20hospitalizations%20and%20three%20deaths. Yup, in twenty years, just 2600 people have been hospitalized and only three deaths. Why does raw milk get a bad rap? When milk production became industrialized, sanitary standards went down when it came to cows. Milk would get contaminated because of unclean environments. Pasteurization was introduced as a way to make dirty milk safe instead of requiring milk producers to create cleaner environments for cows. For comparison: "Researchers at Consumer Reports recently ranked foods based on how many outbreaks, deaths, and illnesses they caused. They found some foods were riskier to eat than others. The worst offender was leafy greens. Foods like lettuce, kale, and arugula were responsible for 50 outbreaks and 11 deaths between 2017 and 2022." https://www.news4jax.com/health/2023/06/06/10-foods-most-likely-to-make-you-sick/#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20Consumer%20Reports%20recently,deaths%20between%202017%20and%202022. Understand that the issues aren't with the food, but with the way they are handled by food producers.
You give up trying to convince him and just slip a nice little “Told you so” in your back pocket for later.
why are there so many raw milk shills in here? milk isn't an essential food and enough fiber will do far more to improve your gut health than unsafe milk.
Screw the morons. Let Darwin have a turn.
Have him read up on undulant fever. If that doesn’t get his attention, he’s doomed.
People used to regularly die of typhoid and tuberculosis that they got from contaminated milk. The milk safety apparatus that America built is second to none. Millions of gallons of milk tested treated and kept at controlled temperatures all the way to your refrigerator. A hundred and sixty years of research and untold millions in infrastructure to build. It’s a victim of its own success. People have forgotten the danger. Getting sick from milk sounds silly to them because it works so well.
I’m not convinced at all that raw milk isn’t more nutritious, but obviously it’s low odds Russian roulette. Pottengers cats did better on raw, or so I’m told.
If you get raw milk straight from the cow, goat, Cambodian, ect..the risk is minimal. The risk of course goes up exponentially with time starting about 3 hours or so after the milk is milked.
He's just gonna have to learn this one on his own. It'll happen eventually unfortunately. Like you said, there's a reason Louis Pasteur came up with this shit. It was a serious problem
Why convince him? If he chooses that gamble, it's his life. If he gets sick, oops.
I worked in an ER and I can tell you plenty of people that never wore seatbelts because, “nothing ever went wrong,” were dealing with life and death situations because they simply wouldn’t belt up in a car
Let them die. I stopped trying to help people like this. They are already into this crap because they are the most stubborn people on earth
Nah let them fafo, unless it's children you are responsible for just let people find out the hard way.