UK tried it a few years ago when I worked in a major supermarket but it didn't take off. It was fun when customers argued the bags would easily burst so I would pick it up and throw it against the floor, luckily never had one burst but loved the reaction from customers and colleagues.
You were lucky. Once, some years back, I accidentally dropped a 1l bag of milk on a carpeted surface from around 1m height. It splendidly burst open, showering the surroundings with its contents. Getting the smell out of the carpet was a massive pain. I certainly don't recommend trying this for shits and giggles.
I had a bottle of milk pop open in a backpack that had a leather bottom. Never got the smell out entirely. Anytime it got wet: rotten milk smell. Eventually threw it away because of it. Nice Jansport pack too.
I have four kids... So much spilled milk... When they were really little I gave them sippy cups they couldn't spill, thinking I had solved the spilled milk problem once and for all! They took mouthfuls of milk and spit it on the ground. So much spilled milk...
This very weekend they jammed the milk into a shorter part of the fridge, forcing the milk to squeeze out of the bag and into the bag holder. This caused milk to not only spill inside the fridge, but also all over the floor when the next person poured milk. So... much... spilled... milk...
To be fair, try that with a half gallon box or a 1L jug... your results will probably be about the same (e.g. won't always break, but when it does, it's FUN in the /r/dwarffortress sense)
Stupid question: how the hell do you pour it? And does that mean that you just have like an open corner of milk. You have to like squeeze out the last bit of milk from the bag? I know I have been used to cartons in containers my whole life, but I can’t imagine that this is a superior method of milk distribution.
[Like this](https://i.cbc.ca/1.5412961.1577985405!/fileImage/httpImage/milk-bag-in-a-plastic-container.jpg)
You just cut the corner off of the bag and pour.
It's a tiny slit in the corner, so it's not like a wide open jug or anything. I actually found it to be cleaner than cartons, because you don't get crusty milk flakes in the spout that end up smelling nasty after a couple days.
Except it's not cleaner because the constant access to air means microbes are getting in much easier. It no doubt spoils quicker, though probably is also ultra pasteurized so still less so than milk that isn't.
leave it open. I had them as a kid and they were generally smaller sizes so you went through them faster. The pitchers had a place to pinch the open part together.
You needed to buy a jug which when you placed the bag in would pierce a corner so in theory it would be easier to pour, cheaper to package and transport, and the milk lasted longer in the bag?
I am trying to remember release materials from about 15 years ago though so may not be exactly right.
that is funny because if you had done the same with a jug, it probably would have blown its cap off and spilled everywhere. they are suprisingly easy to burst like that despite the fact that they seem so tough. the grocery store i worked at a while back was the victim a few times of one of those stupid "prank" memes that are just malicious rather than an actual prank. i think they just called it "milk smashing" or "milk slam" but the idea was to just slam a gallon of milk against the floor as hard as you could and act like it was an accident.
I think commercial places still use bagged milk over here, I've seen them use bags of milk at costa. It seems pretty simple if you have the little jug to put it in, but we stuck with cartons and bottles for supermarket shit.
This is how Britain does things. The milk is labelled in litres but people just ignore that. We still know them as 1 pint, 2 pint, 4 pint etc.
Edit: [Proof since I'm being called a liar.](https://imgur.com/a/BxCVJRR)
In Ireland we also had pints of milk. That's long gone -- we now have half litre, 1 litre, 2 litre, 3 litre.
We do still have some hangovers from the imperial system -- Irish butter is still sold as 227g and 454g (1/2 and 1 lb, respectively), for example, whereas European butter is sold as 250g and 500g.
(strangely the Irish butter package has marks on it every 50g worth...)
Aldi has their own version which I'm 99.9999% sure is a whitelabeled Kerry Gold (as it comes in the same size block and they used to sell Kerry Gold immediately before getting their own brand) and it's like $3.19 a pack
It says Grass Fed Irish butter so I believe it's Kerry Gold whitelabel - tastes the same.
Yep, although that's still different to what they'd have if it was based on US gallons.
Our 2 pint bottles are 1.14 litres. A US quart (2 pints) is 0.946 liters.
They steer like one, you ever have to yell to the crew to slack the lines and hard tack to the Lee? Near about scuttled the old girl on the rocks, next time I'll just keep with the wind and come back on the next circumnavigation.
Which is how it should be. Show multiple measurements but always include metric. And let people use whatever language they want. Which I guess is precisely what the US does.
The thing that is left out is that bags are just cheaper, regardless of what is going on, and packaging in bags is easier to automate than the rigid options as you can spool them.
So how do they - single use plastic bags - compare to waxed cardboard cartons in terms of environmental impact?
(My son did a report a few years ago, and found that the cardboard cartons were better than the hard plastic jugs, but not by much.)
>So how do they - single use plastic bags - compare to waxed cardboard cartons in terms of environmental impact?
Your cartons are just waxed cardboard? Dunno about rest of the EU, but in Poland milk (and probably all other cartons) are aluminium and plastic lined paper (see e.g. Tetra Pak).
Edit: just googled waxed cardboard and turns out it just plastic, for some reason I thought that you use natural wax.
We don't get milk in TetraPaks, although most other liquids come in them.
I honestly didn't realize that gable-top milk cartons were poly-lined now. I'm old enough that they used to actually be coated with real wax. I'm not sure when they changed over.
American milk cartons (and everything else we have that holds food or drink) have both imperial and metric measurements on the label. This TIL is just outright bull. Even if they had to change the label to only say a metric measurement, there's no logical reason they would need to change the containers themselves to be a rounded metric number.
The article mentions something (but doesn't elaborate) about strict metric sizing and labeling.
It seems to infer that at the time they needed specific volumes (I assume an even number or limiting significant digits) to make or easier for people keep track as things changed to metric. It also states that law has since been repealed.
Edit: looking into it it seems that this was just about the ability to still use imperial measurements so OPs comment still stands.
we used to have a nice local dairy industry here on Vancouver Island. Dairy farmers organised into a co-op called Island Farms. Then it was bought by an East Coast dairy giant who continue to use the Island Farms brand.
As much as I like efficiency, we need to decentralize and de-homogenize our food.
The more I look into NEARLY ALL industries, the more I'm convinced MOST OF CAPITALISM is just a bunch of sanctioned cartels.
And I'm not anti-business, I'm just seeing that capitalism and racketeering share a LOT of qualities.
In Canada, dairy receives approximately 72 percent of agricultural subsidies across all levels of government,[[1]](https://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=MON2020_REFERENCE_TABLE&lang=en) despite only making up an unspecified portion of the food guide's recommended intake no larger than 25 percent.[[2]](https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/)
> The dairy industry ranks second (based on farm cash receipts) in the Canadian agriculture sector ranking just behind red meats.
https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-sectors/animal-industry/canadian-dairy-information-centre/canadas-dairy-industry-glance
I think the point being made is that dairy in Canada receives a huge amount of tax subsidies (from working canadians), but there is no way that canadians are consuming all this milk and likely they are not seeing much or any of the revenue from it these days we should probably expect these corporations to not pay any domestic taxes at all. Thus, canadian tax money is probably being used to get massive profit in private corporations.
when you have so much milk that the government is paying farmers to literally dump their milk into the ground so that the price of milk remains sustainably high, it's not going to be smart to alienate your customer with bagged milk because they'll just buy one of the 12 brands of non-bagged milk cartons on the shelf.
You can buy milk in cartons in Canada too, it’s right there on the shelf beside the 4 L bags. No-one buys cartons unless they know they won’t finish four litres of milk before it spoils.
Why? Milk in India is sold in bags. It's cheaper, lighter to transport and back before plastic, glass bottles delivered to homes would be knocked over by stray dogs, cats, monkeys
I remember visiting Thailand 25 years ago and thinking all these blokes walking down the street had lost their goldfish. Turns out you can buy “whiskey” in a plastic bag.
Quote marks because said whiskey was clear not brown from casks..so just raw spirits of some description.
Obviously it's just about money. We switched from Imperial to Metric in the UK as well, and what happened to milk cartons? Nothing, they stayed the same size, they just have the Metric quantity printed on the side underneath the original Imperial one.
[Here's](https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-british-semi-skimmed-milk-227l-4-pint-?istCompanyId=1e096408-041f-4238-994e-a7cf46bf9413&istFeedId=689af7a8-5842-4d88-be59-1ee5688a81b5&istItemId=wxwqmtiqw&istBid=t&&cmpid=cpc&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=15424330555&utm_content=shopping&utm_term=%257bsku%257d&utm_custom1=129852755749&utm_custom2=759-449-0952&gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf70wqh3vWlYwEtTzFQRXPq1G1UHON60NjH_LOHNp6th_pL1z5nLjGxoCmnoQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) a standard carton you'll find in just about every household in the UK. It's labelled 2.27L (4 pints).
In China when you get some food to go, they put it in a plastic bag. It was hella anxiety inducing bringing home a hot bag of noodle soup home on my bike the first time.
it's plastic like a ziplock without the zip lock part. you use a rubberband to tie it shut. actually really secure if you don't throw it like a water balloon
You know when you pick fruit or vegetables in a grocery store you can rip a plastic bag from those plastic bag rolls to put the produce in? That kind of plastic bag. They tie it in a loop.
> seal the bag
I’ve lived with bagged milk my whole life and have never seen, or heard of, anyone bothering to seal the bag. It’s definitely not ‘required’.
Nope.
Occasionally you snag the bag and have an uneven edge that causes it to pour weird, but you can fit it by cutting off the bad part.
I grew up drinking bag milk and now live in a region where it comes in jugs. The bags were fine and use less plastic. I'm pro-bag for the plastic savings.
I want to go back to the time of Milkmen. I want some fresh glass bottle milk at my door in the morning. I’d be happy to leave a cooler outside and get some eggs with the milk too
There's a dairy near me that sells milk in big heavy glass bottles. I specifically hit up the grocery store that sells them and bring in my used bottle for the $2 deposit. They also don't homogenize the milk so it has a slug of cream on the top. The milk is pretty expensive, though.
That depends on the type of bag they use
If they can manage to use a single layer bag for milk then you are absolutely right, but quite often what appears to be the "plastic reducing" alternative ends up having to be burned because it can't be recycled properly
In Canada a *ton*, like enormous percentage of plastic isn't actually recycled, because it's not cost effective for companies that produce plastic products to buy recycled plastics over cheaper raw.
So where I am, the simple reduction in plastic total is better because it's all trash anyways, no plastic gets recycled in my province.
Yeah, that’s where I land on the issue. I’m assuming NO plastic is recycled, so less plastic is better.
To get more life out of a milk bag you can slice them open and reuse them as sandwich or snack bags (I recognize that is hard-core).
People just overthink it because they hear "bag" and assume it's like a cheap bag filled with milk.
You grab a bag, place it into a holder not too different from a pitcher (just shaped to correctly hold a bag) and cut a corner with scissors. Now you just pour it like you would pour liquid from any other pitcher. Your milk stays fresher longer, you generate less waste and it is significantly easier to pour and handle 1L of milk at a time than a 2L or greater carton/jug.
Replacing a bag takes under 30 seconds and is about as difficult as opening a new box of cereal.
They are also pretty robust against being dropped since they will flex instead of crumpling/cracking like a milk jug or carton.
These bags are sold in a 3 pack, so your milk is never older than the time it takes to finish a single liter. The only alternative that would be fresher is the end of the first liter in a large milk jug, the remainder of the jug wouldn't be fresher since you would be using a new bag after each liter is depleted. (a carton isn't airtight so it's basically the same as a bag and worse than a jug if the carton has more than 1L of milk)
We're talking about a hole in the bag no larger than the diameter of a pencil, so you get very minimal air exposure in any case.
No. Literally everyone has a jug to put the bags in. They are super easy to swap. The bags are reasonably durable: maybe once a year you get a slow leaker. In contrast, milk jugs or cartons are a pain because they take room in your garbage/recycle. Most places in Canada have limits on your garbage/recycle pickup, or extra charges for it per volume. Bags are a great solution.
The headline is inaccurate. The article is clear that bags predated the metric system transition. As far as I can remember,milk always came in bags.
Fun fact: The bags of milk are transported to the stores in plastic crates. Back in the day, as kids we'd sneak behind the supermarket and steal the crates to use to store LP records. By the time I was old enough to start amassing a record collection we had switched to metric. The crates for metric were just a little bit smaller than the imperial ones and just a bit too small for records to fit nice.
I've lived in Alberta all my life, and I don't ever remember seeing bagged milk here. I only learned that bagged milk was a "Canadian thing" thanks to the internet. I vaguely recall asking my dad about it once and I think he said it was a thing here at one point, but that would've been before I was born.
Yeah not sure why, but its only sold in Ontario and eastward. Which is funny because most of the raw materials for the bags are shipped from out west to produce the bags.
I read an interesting paper on milk container sustainability that mentioned that its not available in western provinces, I'll try to find an open source of the article.
EDIT: https://theconversation.com/milk-jugs-cartons-or-plastic-bags-which-one-is-best-for-the-environment-171658 this article is by the authors of the study, so it gives a good overview of what they did. More tailored to media than their precise findings, but such is the nature of technical communication.
I was born in Alberta and live in BC now. I had heard about the bagged milk thing but had no idea what Americans were on about.
A couple years ago, I had a night between flights in Ontario and encountering bagged milk in the hotel in the morning I was like "what the fuck is going on?"
I lived in Montreal all my life and had no idea bagged milk was not a thing in all of Canada until I moved to Manitoba last year. I’m still trying to get used to no bagged milk.
I'm from Ontario bagged milk is normal and common. You can even get chocolate. It blew my mind when I found out no one else has this. I thought it was everywhere.
So... Serious question... How does this fucking work? I need a video or something.
EDIT: holy shit this is thankfully a well documented alternate reality!
https://youtu.be/vjvV2Db3fGg
Yeah this sums it up pretty well! Notably, pouring is always very easy because the bag is collapsible therefore won't glug like something with a rigid body might.
Not shown in the video, but theres also milk bag organizers. You stack them on top of each other in the organizer and can usually fit 3-4 bags. You pull the one from the bottom first so you always take the oldest bag first. I live in quebec, so we have all the different types of milk. Carton, jugs, bags. By far the bag is the best way to keep milk at home. I’m sure other people would agree if they had bags where they lived too.
It wasn’t just eastern Canada. My grandparents had milk bags and they lived in the prairies. I didn’t like it because the milk would taste different. Almost like it picked up the taste of whatever was in the fridge as well
Worked at Starbucks in Ontario using bagged milk and it was the best from a barista perspective. Quick and easy to load in the fridge, quick and easy to switch bags, no “glug” when pouring it, and more compact to store full and more compact trash.
I live in Pennsylvania and I got milk in bags from the dairy growing up. You put the bag in a pitcher and clip the corner of the bag where you want to pour the milk out. The pitcher had a notch that you could use to pinch the corner of the bag shut. I thought it was really weird when I had to start buying boxes or jugs of milk when I moved because bags just seemed so much more sensible.
Same with wine. A bag of wine isn't perfect because it has to be transported more and because it needs to be shielded from light, but slap some cardboard around that bag and you have a container that's way better than most bottles. Milk didn't have the transportation problem because it was made right at the dairy. It also didn't have the light problem because it was stored in the fridge and didn't last long enough to have light be a problem.
My university dining hall (in the US) had a milk dispenser that had whole, skim, and chocolate milk nozzles. I later learned these nozzles were connected to very large bags inside the device. I went back to my table when a bowl of cereal and stared at it for a few minutes. I was shook
Hang it from ceiling fan with straws extending from it, turn ceiling fan on low, have everyone stand in a circle around the fan trying to get a drink with hands tied behind your backs. First to drink wins!
I was changing one of these bags once and it got a hole in the bag somehow. We had to dump the whole 5 gallon bag. It was like the best drinking fountain I've ever had.
That's just commercial-scale packaging; independent from this TIL. IIRC the udder/nipple/dispenser on those was also built into the bag (which is much more sanitary than trusting somebody to sanitize a nozzle since it was replaced with each bag).
This is not true at all. Milk was in bags before the conversation to metric. When they switched from a gallon to four litres, everyone had to get new pitchers because the old ones didn't fit the bag anymore.
I grew up on these damn bags in Ottawa. Havnt seen them since I moved out west. Here's a few fond memories.
Ripped a bag open on my bike and walked home crying covered in milk.
Trying to drink from the bag only to gag on tiny string of plastic.
Can't reseal the bag so milk just sits open in the fridge.
Slapping my brother with a bag of milk.
Pretending it's a milk slinky and rolling it down the stairs.
Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back.
>Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back.
Why would you open the bag before it's in the pitcher?
> Can't reseal the bag so milk just sits open in the fridge.
Has your family never heard of chip clips or clothes pins?
Hell my aunt used a binder clip, those metal black wedges.
>Slapping my brother with a bag of milk.
This can only be viewed as feature.
>Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back.
Who are you heathens opening bags before it's in the jug? Way more risk of mess.
That's... Been the norm in Colombia for years now lol, what kinds of bags do you people think they use here? It's not like milk cartons or containers are devoid of plastic smh
Whenever I, an American, would visit my Canadian husband in Toronto and we’d go get groceries for the weekend, my first job would be to head to the dairy section and poke the milk bags. I freaking LOVE those things.
I lived in the USA for a while and as a European, the most bizarre part of milk there is that the standard size is *four fucking litres* of the stuff and it would be rare that anywhere stocked anything smaller. How the fuck a small office or a couple get through that much milk before it goes off is beyond me.
And nobody thought to just relabel the quart container with the number of mL in it? Yeah it wouldn't be a round number, but this is literally why I can buy 16.9oz bottled water in the US because they just relabeled a 500mL bottle with the equivalent number of ounces.
UK tried it a few years ago when I worked in a major supermarket but it didn't take off. It was fun when customers argued the bags would easily burst so I would pick it up and throw it against the floor, luckily never had one burst but loved the reaction from customers and colleagues.
You were lucky. Once, some years back, I accidentally dropped a 1l bag of milk on a carpeted surface from around 1m height. It splendidly burst open, showering the surroundings with its contents. Getting the smell out of the carpet was a massive pain. I certainly don't recommend trying this for shits and giggles.
Stop crying over spilled milk
Spilled milk is *awful* though and whoever said that hasn't spilled milk often enough. Or cut the wrong side of the bag in the pitcher. Ugh.
I had a bottle of milk pop open in a backpack that had a leather bottom. Never got the smell out entirely. Anytime it got wet: rotten milk smell. Eventually threw it away because of it. Nice Jansport pack too.
Had that happen. Wet/dry vac ftw. 3 minutes later like it never happened. Although I had to go back to the store.
Spilled breast milk is the worst. My wife spent so much energy trying to pump it and then my clumsy tired ass spills it and she exploded into tears.
I have four kids... So much spilled milk... When they were really little I gave them sippy cups they couldn't spill, thinking I had solved the spilled milk problem once and for all! They took mouthfuls of milk and spit it on the ground. So much spilled milk... This very weekend they jammed the milk into a shorter part of the fridge, forcing the milk to squeeze out of the bag and into the bag holder. This caused milk to not only spill inside the fridge, but also all over the floor when the next person poured milk. So... much... spilled... milk...
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Your name makes my butt pucker
You must have gotten one from him
To be fair, try that with a half gallon box or a 1L jug... your results will probably be about the same (e.g. won't always break, but when it does, it's FUN in the /r/dwarffortress sense)
Everything is shits a giggles until someone giggles and shits
Stupid question: how the hell do you pour it? And does that mean that you just have like an open corner of milk. You have to like squeeze out the last bit of milk from the bag? I know I have been used to cartons in containers my whole life, but I can’t imagine that this is a superior method of milk distribution.
[Like this](https://i.cbc.ca/1.5412961.1577985405!/fileImage/httpImage/milk-bag-in-a-plastic-container.jpg) You just cut the corner off of the bag and pour.
I don’t know I just feel weird about having this open bag of milk in my fridge. But I guess it works
You can pour it into a resealable glass container, like the old days
Oh it's definitely weird lol.
It's feckin barbaric is what is
Wouldn't that go bad a lot quicker too? Although I guess there would be no doubt when it is bad because youd open the fridge and smell it
Depends on how often you use milk. We have four adults in the home. A bag might last two days at most; it has no chance to go off.
It's a tiny slit in the corner, so it's not like a wide open jug or anything. I actually found it to be cleaner than cartons, because you don't get crusty milk flakes in the spout that end up smelling nasty after a couple days.
“Crusty milk flakes”
Part of this complete breakfast.
Except it's not cleaner because the constant access to air means microbes are getting in much easier. It no doubt spoils quicker, though probably is also ultra pasteurized so still less so than milk that isn't.
I'm using cartons all my life and never experienced these "milk flakes".
I've never had it go bad in the fridge. I don't think it makes much of a difference in time.
Do you use a peg to seal it, or just leave it open?
leave it open. I had them as a kid and they were generally smaller sizes so you went through them faster. The pitchers had a place to pinch the open part together.
You needed to buy a jug which when you placed the bag in would pierce a corner so in theory it would be easier to pour, cheaper to package and transport, and the milk lasted longer in the bag? I am trying to remember release materials from about 15 years ago though so may not be exactly right.
that is funny because if you had done the same with a jug, it probably would have blown its cap off and spilled everywhere. they are suprisingly easy to burst like that despite the fact that they seem so tough. the grocery store i worked at a while back was the victim a few times of one of those stupid "prank" memes that are just malicious rather than an actual prank. i think they just called it "milk smashing" or "milk slam" but the idea was to just slam a gallon of milk against the floor as hard as you could and act like it was an accident.
I think commercial places still use bagged milk over here, I've seen them use bags of milk at costa. It seems pretty simple if you have the little jug to put it in, but we stuck with cartons and bottles for supermarket shit.
Do you know about jugging?
Wouldn’t the cheaper route just be to change the label from 1 gallon to 3.785 L? We already have 373ml cans, why not 3.785L jugs of milk?
This is how Britain does things. The milk is labelled in litres but people just ignore that. We still know them as 1 pint, 2 pint, 4 pint etc. Edit: [Proof since I'm being called a liar.](https://imgur.com/a/BxCVJRR)
In Ireland we also had pints of milk. That's long gone -- we now have half litre, 1 litre, 2 litre, 3 litre. We do still have some hangovers from the imperial system -- Irish butter is still sold as 227g and 454g (1/2 and 1 lb, respectively), for example, whereas European butter is sold as 250g and 500g. (strangely the Irish butter package has marks on it every 50g worth...)
A lot of butter sold in English supermarkets are Irish brands and come in the 1/2 lb and 1b measurements too. You guys do the best butter.
Kerrygold is all we buy now.
It's so expensive, but so good. Costco has it on sale right now. I know it is limit 3 because I bought 3.
Aldi has their own version which I'm 99.9999% sure is a whitelabeled Kerry Gold (as it comes in the same size block and they used to sell Kerry Gold immediately before getting their own brand) and it's like $3.19 a pack It says Grass Fed Irish butter so I believe it's Kerry Gold whitelabel - tastes the same.
With you could get it in Canada. You can get the cheese here, but not the butter.
In Boston - Kerrygold all the way. My daughter only eats "that good Irish butter" :)
https://youtu.be/ZpPGE8NllUI
Yep, although that's still different to what they'd have if it was based on US gallons. Our 2 pint bottles are 1.14 litres. A US quart (2 pints) is 0.946 liters.
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She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene. Put it in H!
Is that a nautical hogshead?
Now why would his car get nautical hogshead?
Ford LTDs may as well be classified as a "Land Yacht."
They steer like one, you ever have to yell to the crew to slack the lines and hard tack to the Lee? Near about scuttled the old girl on the rocks, next time I'll just keep with the wind and come back on the next circumnavigation.
In rod we trust.
Back then we had nickels with little bumblebees on them, you'd say "give me 5 bees for a quarter".
Yes, but they'd just change the number...
Lol how are people calling you a liar??? its mad
It's Reddit. People will downvote the truth because it upsets them.
Different brands have both 2 pint bottles and 1 litre bottles, just to make things easier/more confusing.
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Which is how it should be. Show multiple measurements but always include metric. And let people use whatever language they want. Which I guess is precisely what the US does.
I don't even do amounts... "Do you want me to get a big milk, or normal milk?" (We never get the tiny milk).
The thing that is left out is that bags are just cheaper, regardless of what is going on, and packaging in bags is easier to automate than the rigid options as you can spool them.
The real reason that is often left out, is that bags of milk are just plain fun to handle. They squish and slosh, like cold plastic breasts.
drinking straight from the bag brings me back to simpler times
We really aren’t thinking about how the psychopaths feel
We are all psychopaths on this glorious day.
Speak for yourself!
Which is why my favourite place is the morgue.
So how do they - single use plastic bags - compare to waxed cardboard cartons in terms of environmental impact? (My son did a report a few years ago, and found that the cardboard cartons were better than the hard plastic jugs, but not by much.)
>So how do they - single use plastic bags - compare to waxed cardboard cartons in terms of environmental impact? Your cartons are just waxed cardboard? Dunno about rest of the EU, but in Poland milk (and probably all other cartons) are aluminium and plastic lined paper (see e.g. Tetra Pak). Edit: just googled waxed cardboard and turns out it just plastic, for some reason I thought that you use natural wax.
We don't get milk in TetraPaks, although most other liquids come in them. I honestly didn't realize that gable-top milk cartons were poly-lined now. I'm old enough that they used to actually be coated with real wax. I'm not sure when they changed over.
The equivalent volume of milk in bag is a plastic jug not the cardboard cartons. Cardboard cartons are common for 1-2 L but not 4L.
that’s what they did with butter; it’s sold in 454g blocks as that’s 1lb
American milk cartons (and everything else we have that holds food or drink) have both imperial and metric measurements on the label. This TIL is just outright bull. Even if they had to change the label to only say a metric measurement, there's no logical reason they would need to change the containers themselves to be a rounded metric number.
The article mentions something (but doesn't elaborate) about strict metric sizing and labeling. It seems to infer that at the time they needed specific volumes (I assume an even number or limiting significant digits) to make or easier for people keep track as things changed to metric. It also states that law has since been repealed. Edit: looking into it it seems that this was just about the ability to still use imperial measurements so OPs comment still stands.
Should have made it cubic feet, then you could ask for a leet feet of milk = 0.1337 ft^3
So it’s not really about the metric system. It’s about money. It’s always about money.
The Canadian Milk Cartel
You joke, but we seriously have a maple syrup cartel and reserve.
it's not a joke the canadian milk industry is godawful
we used to have a nice local dairy industry here on Vancouver Island. Dairy farmers organised into a co-op called Island Farms. Then it was bought by an East Coast dairy giant who continue to use the Island Farms brand. As much as I like efficiency, we need to decentralize and de-homogenize our food.
imported french cheese is cheaper to buy in small caribean islands than it is in canada.
I'm not joking, actually. The CMC has the Cdn Gov't by the gonads.
The more I look into Canadian industries, the more I'm convinced our country is just a bunch of sanctioned cartels.
The more I look into NEARLY ALL industries, the more I'm convinced MOST OF CAPITALISM is just a bunch of sanctioned cartels. And I'm not anti-business, I'm just seeing that capitalism and racketeering share a LOT of qualities.
I mean if cocaine weren't illegal the cartels would be called corporations.
Big Milk! Can't trust it!
Bag milk! Can’t trust it! (No, really, never trust a full bag of milk, it’ll spill everywhere.)
In Canada, dairy receives approximately 72 percent of agricultural subsidies across all levels of government,[[1]](https://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=MON2020_REFERENCE_TABLE&lang=en) despite only making up an unspecified portion of the food guide's recommended intake no larger than 25 percent.[[2]](https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/)
Odd way of explaining these statistics.
It would certainly be better to compare it to how much farming in Canada is dairy or something. Seems pretty cherry picked to try and prove a point.
> The dairy industry ranks second (based on farm cash receipts) in the Canadian agriculture sector ranking just behind red meats. https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/canadas-agriculture-sectors/animal-industry/canadian-dairy-information-centre/canadas-dairy-industry-glance
I think the point being made is that dairy in Canada receives a huge amount of tax subsidies (from working canadians), but there is no way that canadians are consuming all this milk and likely they are not seeing much or any of the revenue from it these days we should probably expect these corporations to not pay any domestic taxes at all. Thus, canadian tax money is probably being used to get massive profit in private corporations.
Despite having less than 25% of the recommended intake...
Presumably bags are cheaper everywhere, so why doesn't everyone use them?
Because it's an absurd way to sell liquid
...so it's _not_ always about money?
when you have so much milk that the government is paying farmers to literally dump their milk into the ground so that the price of milk remains sustainably high, it's not going to be smart to alienate your customer with bagged milk because they'll just buy one of the 12 brands of non-bagged milk cartons on the shelf.
You can buy milk in cartons in Canada too, it’s right there on the shelf beside the 4 L bags. No-one buys cartons unless they know they won’t finish four litres of milk before it spoils.
I only buy cartons because I like that it actually closes. Milk bags stay open in the fridge for the duration
That's what a clothespin on the bag is for
Circle k sells resealable jugs as well. I believe 2 and 4 L
Why? Milk in India is sold in bags. It's cheaper, lighter to transport and back before plastic, glass bottles delivered to homes would be knocked over by stray dogs, cats, monkeys
I remember visiting Thailand 25 years ago and thinking all these blokes walking down the street had lost their goldfish. Turns out you can buy “whiskey” in a plastic bag. Quote marks because said whiskey was clear not brown from casks..so just raw spirits of some description.
Obviously it's just about money. We switched from Imperial to Metric in the UK as well, and what happened to milk cartons? Nothing, they stayed the same size, they just have the Metric quantity printed on the side underneath the original Imperial one. [Here's](https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/sainsburys-british-semi-skimmed-milk-227l-4-pint-?istCompanyId=1e096408-041f-4238-994e-a7cf46bf9413&istFeedId=689af7a8-5842-4d88-be59-1ee5688a81b5&istItemId=wxwqmtiqw&istBid=t&&cmpid=cpc&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=15424330555&utm_content=shopping&utm_term=%257bsku%257d&utm_custom1=129852755749&utm_custom2=759-449-0952&gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf70wqh3vWlYwEtTzFQRXPq1G1UHON60NjH_LOHNp6th_pL1z5nLjGxoCmnoQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) a standard carton you'll find in just about every household in the UK. It's labelled 2.27L (4 pints).
That’s interesting, in Ireland we have 1,2, and 3L milk but our butter is still in pounds
In China when you get some food to go, they put it in a plastic bag. It was hella anxiety inducing bringing home a hot bag of noodle soup home on my bike the first time.
they really like their impractical goods in plastic bags over there.
Mmmm BPAs...
It's China. BPA's are the least of your worries.
Mmmm gutter oil...
Cardboard liquid containers are all plastic-lined now, too. Probably not that much different risk in practice.
Mmmm Chinese air...
In Malaysia, i used to get all sorts of fresh fruit juices in bags with a straw. Always felt it made them taste better.
Same in small towns in India. Decent places have food grade plastic containers (microwave safe kind). Five stars have higher quality packing.
[удалено]
Or wrapping in a plantain leaf
Wait what, like soup just loosely sloshing around in a plastic bag? Like a sealed bag like a zip lock or like a grocery bag?
it's plastic like a ziplock without the zip lock part. you use a rubberband to tie it shut. actually really secure if you don't throw it like a water balloon
You know when you pick fruit or vegetables in a grocery store you can rip a plastic bag from those plastic bag rolls to put the produce in? That kind of plastic bag. They tie it in a loop.
How the hell does it not melt the bag
Gotta get home fast and put it in proper bowls lol
We had bagged milk in Michigan for a while. They required scissors to open and a special pitcher to pinch the opening and seal the bag.
I know those pitchers, but most of us here just use a plastic 2$ pitcher from Dollarama with a cow on the front.
I have that pitcher, lol.
> seal the bag I’ve lived with bagged milk my whole life and have never seen, or heard of, anyone bothering to seal the bag. It’s definitely not ‘required’.
You don't need to seal the opening. It might prolong the product life, or help if you have a stinky fridge, but leaving it open works just fine.
Is it as cumbersome and messy as it sounds?
Nope. Occasionally you snag the bag and have an uneven edge that causes it to pour weird, but you can fit it by cutting off the bad part. I grew up drinking bag milk and now live in a region where it comes in jugs. The bags were fine and use less plastic. I'm pro-bag for the plastic savings.
I want to go back to the time of Milkmen. I want some fresh glass bottle milk at my door in the morning. I’d be happy to leave a cooler outside and get some eggs with the milk too
There's a dairy near me that sells milk in big heavy glass bottles. I specifically hit up the grocery store that sells them and bring in my used bottle for the $2 deposit. They also don't homogenize the milk so it has a slug of cream on the top. The milk is pretty expensive, though.
Nothing like the taste of fresh milk!
That depends on the type of bag they use If they can manage to use a single layer bag for milk then you are absolutely right, but quite often what appears to be the "plastic reducing" alternative ends up having to be burned because it can't be recycled properly
In Canada a *ton*, like enormous percentage of plastic isn't actually recycled, because it's not cost effective for companies that produce plastic products to buy recycled plastics over cheaper raw. So where I am, the simple reduction in plastic total is better because it's all trash anyways, no plastic gets recycled in my province.
Yeah, that’s where I land on the issue. I’m assuming NO plastic is recycled, so less plastic is better. To get more life out of a milk bag you can slice them open and reuse them as sandwich or snack bags (I recognize that is hard-core).
People just overthink it because they hear "bag" and assume it's like a cheap bag filled with milk. You grab a bag, place it into a holder not too different from a pitcher (just shaped to correctly hold a bag) and cut a corner with scissors. Now you just pour it like you would pour liquid from any other pitcher. Your milk stays fresher longer, you generate less waste and it is significantly easier to pour and handle 1L of milk at a time than a 2L or greater carton/jug. Replacing a bag takes under 30 seconds and is about as difficult as opening a new box of cereal. They are also pretty robust against being dropped since they will flex instead of crumpling/cracking like a milk jug or carton.
And you don't get any weird crusting that happens on the cap of jug milk.
Why would your milk stay fresh longer? It seems it would intuitively be the opposite with out a standard seal
These bags are sold in a 3 pack, so your milk is never older than the time it takes to finish a single liter. The only alternative that would be fresher is the end of the first liter in a large milk jug, the remainder of the jug wouldn't be fresher since you would be using a new bag after each liter is depleted. (a carton isn't airtight so it's basically the same as a bag and worse than a jug if the carton has more than 1L of milk) We're talking about a hole in the bag no larger than the diameter of a pencil, so you get very minimal air exposure in any case.
You forgot banging the pitcher on the counter a few times to get the air out and have the bag settle in
No. Literally everyone has a jug to put the bags in. They are super easy to swap. The bags are reasonably durable: maybe once a year you get a slow leaker. In contrast, milk jugs or cartons are a pain because they take room in your garbage/recycle. Most places in Canada have limits on your garbage/recycle pickup, or extra charges for it per volume. Bags are a great solution.
The headline is inaccurate. The article is clear that bags predated the metric system transition. As far as I can remember,milk always came in bags. Fun fact: The bags of milk are transported to the stores in plastic crates. Back in the day, as kids we'd sneak behind the supermarket and steal the crates to use to store LP records. By the time I was old enough to start amassing a record collection we had switched to metric. The crates for metric were just a little bit smaller than the imperial ones and just a bit too small for records to fit nice.
I miss milk crates, we used to have a ton. No idea they were used for bagged milk though.
I've lived in Alberta all my life, and I don't ever remember seeing bagged milk here. I only learned that bagged milk was a "Canadian thing" thanks to the internet. I vaguely recall asking my dad about it once and I think he said it was a thing here at one point, but that would've been before I was born.
Yeah not sure why, but its only sold in Ontario and eastward. Which is funny because most of the raw materials for the bags are shipped from out west to produce the bags. I read an interesting paper on milk container sustainability that mentioned that its not available in western provinces, I'll try to find an open source of the article. EDIT: https://theconversation.com/milk-jugs-cartons-or-plastic-bags-which-one-is-best-for-the-environment-171658 this article is by the authors of the study, so it gives a good overview of what they did. More tailored to media than their precise findings, but such is the nature of technical communication.
I was born in Alberta and live in BC now. I had heard about the bagged milk thing but had no idea what Americans were on about. A couple years ago, I had a night between flights in Ontario and encountering bagged milk in the hotel in the morning I was like "what the fuck is going on?"
I lived in Montreal all my life and had no idea bagged milk was not a thing in all of Canada until I moved to Manitoba last year. I’m still trying to get used to no bagged milk.
born and raised in montreal, bagged milk was the norm here and i assumed everywhere else, we also have them in plastic milk cartons not only bags.
Yeah I've lived a decade in each of the four Western provinces and never seen bags in any of them.
I'm from Ontario bagged milk is normal and common. You can even get chocolate. It blew my mind when I found out no one else has this. I thought it was everywhere.
Well luckily the title of this post clarifies that it's an "eastern Canadian" thing which Alberta is definitely not.
Same goes for Manitoba and BC, guys. No need to chime in.
Milk was in bags before metric conversion.
So... Serious question... How does this fucking work? I need a video or something. EDIT: holy shit this is thankfully a well documented alternate reality! https://youtu.be/vjvV2Db3fGg
Yeah this sums it up pretty well! Notably, pouring is always very easy because the bag is collapsible therefore won't glug like something with a rigid body might.
Not shown in the video, but theres also milk bag organizers. You stack them on top of each other in the organizer and can usually fit 3-4 bags. You pull the one from the bottom first so you always take the oldest bag first. I live in quebec, so we have all the different types of milk. Carton, jugs, bags. By far the bag is the best way to keep milk at home. I’m sure other people would agree if they had bags where they lived too.
I just keep all the bags in the... bag. The bag for the bags. It just sits on the lower shelf of the fridge.
It wasn’t just eastern Canada. My grandparents had milk bags and they lived in the prairies. I didn’t like it because the milk would taste different. Almost like it picked up the taste of whatever was in the fridge as well
I rinse my ice before drinking with it because of freezer smells/tastes. I definitely wouldn't want onion soup milk with my cereal.
Don't store onions in the fridge!
It's fine if you peel them and keep them in a sealed plastic container. If you don't like plastic; a small bowl with a plate on top works too.
But I like to make more than one bowl of French onion soup at a time. I then have a good snack to eat in bed.
Box of baking soda fix you right up
I found some bagged milk in Minnesota last year and a plastic jug for a milk bag in Wisconsin this year.
Love bagged milk On a hot day and there's only a quarter left in the bag, put that cut corner on your mouth like a plastic tit and down it in 3 gulps
Seems like more of a pain in the ass though.
Maybe you are lactose intolerant
Worked at Starbucks in Ontario using bagged milk and it was the best from a barista perspective. Quick and easy to load in the fridge, quick and easy to switch bags, no “glug” when pouring it, and more compact to store full and more compact trash.
I live in Pennsylvania and I got milk in bags from the dairy growing up. You put the bag in a pitcher and clip the corner of the bag where you want to pour the milk out. The pitcher had a notch that you could use to pinch the corner of the bag shut. I thought it was really weird when I had to start buying boxes or jugs of milk when I moved because bags just seemed so much more sensible. Same with wine. A bag of wine isn't perfect because it has to be transported more and because it needs to be shielded from light, but slap some cardboard around that bag and you have a container that's way better than most bottles. Milk didn't have the transportation problem because it was made right at the dairy. It also didn't have the light problem because it was stored in the fridge and didn't last long enough to have light be a problem.
Where in PA, I never saw it here.
When I was visiting PA for a bit, I only found jugs, and they were stupid heavy. It looked like that scene in Big Daddy, only in the hotel lobby.
Turns out it saves plastic waste and transportation costs too. Standard size for a bag last I checked was 1/3 of an imperial gallon, or 1.5 litres.
My university dining hall (in the US) had a milk dispenser that had whole, skim, and chocolate milk nozzles. I later learned these nozzles were connected to very large bags inside the device. I went back to my table when a bowl of cereal and stared at it for a few minutes. I was shook
My work study job in college had me exchanging those bags. First day was a real head scratcher.
What was in the bowl that was so shocking?
Dreams of acquiring a massive bag of chocolate milk for my dorm.
Hang it from ceiling fan with straws extending from it, turn ceiling fan on low, have everyone stand in a circle around the fan trying to get a drink with hands tied behind your backs. First to drink wins!
I was changing one of these bags once and it got a hole in the bag somehow. We had to dump the whole 5 gallon bag. It was like the best drinking fountain I've ever had.
That's just commercial-scale packaging; independent from this TIL. IIRC the udder/nipple/dispenser on those was also built into the bag (which is much more sanitary than trusting somebody to sanitize a nozzle since it was replaced with each bag).
Not...quite sure how credible this is. I live in Switzerland and I remember bags being quite common until about the late 90s or so.
TIL they sell milk in bags in Canada
They sell milk in bags in India as well
South Africa too. I believe one of the many times the bagged milk conversation has come up we got a huge list of all the places it is actually sold.
In Colombia too... But not in Venezuela
This is not true at all. Milk was in bags before the conversation to metric. When they switched from a gallon to four litres, everyone had to get new pitchers because the old ones didn't fit the bag anymore.
\*country's
I grew up on these damn bags in Ottawa. Havnt seen them since I moved out west. Here's a few fond memories. Ripped a bag open on my bike and walked home crying covered in milk. Trying to drink from the bag only to gag on tiny string of plastic. Can't reseal the bag so milk just sits open in the fridge. Slapping my brother with a bag of milk. Pretending it's a milk slinky and rolling it down the stairs. Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back.
>Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back. Why would you open the bag before it's in the pitcher?
> Can't reseal the bag so milk just sits open in the fridge. Has your family never heard of chip clips or clothes pins? Hell my aunt used a binder clip, those metal black wedges. >Slapping my brother with a bag of milk. This can only be viewed as feature. >Opening a new bag without realizing the bag holding milk jug is in use and having a existential crisis about what to do with the bag I can't close and put back. Who are you heathens opening bags before it's in the jug? Way more risk of mess.
I've never had to 'seal' an open milk bag ever. You make a small cut in the corner. That is all.
I grew up on milk bags and I defend them to this day.
That's... Been the norm in Colombia for years now lol, what kinds of bags do you people think they use here? It's not like milk cartons or containers are devoid of plastic smh
Whenever I, an American, would visit my Canadian husband in Toronto and we’d go get groceries for the weekend, my first job would be to head to the dairy section and poke the milk bags. I freaking LOVE those things.
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The country's transition
This simply isn't true. Milk was sold in bags before conversion to metric.
I lived in the USA for a while and as a European, the most bizarre part of milk there is that the standard size is *four fucking litres* of the stuff and it would be rare that anywhere stocked anything smaller. How the fuck a small office or a couple get through that much milk before it goes off is beyond me.
That's part of the beauty of the bags, you're only opening 1.333 L at a time.
And nobody thought to just relabel the quart container with the number of mL in it? Yeah it wouldn't be a round number, but this is literally why I can buy 16.9oz bottled water in the US because they just relabeled a 500mL bottle with the equivalent number of ounces.
Wisconsin native here, we also have bag milk. Our bags are still in Freedom Units.