9 ms·

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morn

by rupi 4y ago

Growing up in a village in India, we only ever bought raw milk because there was no packaged milk available. Everyone had a deal with a local farmer. Every morning or evening, we would walk over to the farmer's house, pick up our milk and bring it home. My family in India (and the whole village) still does that. And this is where the similarity ends. The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk to pasteurize it. Once boiled, it is allowed to cool down till a layer of fat forms on top. That is removed to make butter and ghee out of. Milk is then used and refrigerated. No one ever drank (or drinks) raw milk - not the farmers, not their workers, not the buyers. It boggles my mind that people are willing to take the risk by drinking raw milk.

29athrowaway 4y ago
Note that boiling is not the same as pasteurization. Pasteurization involves heating but doesn't require boiling. You can pasteurize by heating to 73 degrees C for 25 seconds. Boiling, in the case of milk, is heating it to its boiling point which is around 100.17 degrees C. Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization.
- smilespray 4y ago
  They were using heat to neutralize germs. No need to be pedantic.
  - 29athrowaway 4y ago
    Per cup (whole/pasteurized -> whole/boiled) - Calories: 152 -> 146 - Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g - Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g - Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV - Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV - Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV - Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      So boiling reduces the amount of calories? And carbs, and proteins? How can that be? In principle boiling could induce a lot of evaporation, so the milk would be more concentrated, and so it would have more calories per cup. But people don’t boil the milk so much as to materially reduce the amount of water in it.
      - monitron 4y ago
        I would guess that the heat chemically alters or breaks down (denatures might be the right term?) some of those macronutrients into molecules that can no longer provide caloric energy.
      - alasdair_ 4y ago
        “Calories” measures the amount of energy a human can extract from the food. Interestingly, if you cook.a steak (for examples le) it can gain calories, not lose them.
        VBprogrammer 4y ago
        Does it really? I thought it was a simple chemical test where you burn a set amount of it and check how much it heats a given amount of water.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        That's the old, less accurate way. By that measure, fiber tends to have quite a lot of calories, as it's a carbohydrate, but that is now known to be wrong - fiber passes through our digestive systems almost completely undigested, and yields almost 0 calories. Today, calorie counts are usually obtained by checking the protein, fat, sugar and fiber contents, and using known values for calorie/g of each. Those well-known values are ideally obtained either through human calorimetric studies, or through burning protein, fat, sugar directly.
        netizen-936824 4y ago
        Citation for the stake numbers? I can see it being possible, if cooking increases bioavailability
        alasdair_ 4y ago
        https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/why-cooking-counts/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/why-cooking-c... Is one.
    - teclordphrack2 4y ago
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      Do you have a source for this? Is this after deskimming the milk? Natural milk has about 3.3% of fat, but commercial milk usually has 3% or less (here you can buy 3%, 2%, 1.5%, 1% and 0% milk, and perhaps other values). Unless you remove the skim, it's difficult to imagine that some parts just disappear. > - Calories: 152 -> 146 Dubious: But it's easier to discuss proteins and carbs separately. > - Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g Possible?: Some proteins may denaturalize (like the white of the egg), but they are sill there. Proteins are weird, so I can't say it's impossible. > - Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g Dubious: Unless you are overheating the milk to make caramel, this is very strange, almost impossible. Carbs are composed of smaller sugar units and with heat they may split or for new bound, but they don't disappear unless it's very hot. > - Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV Impossible: I don't expect calcium to react with the container or to evaporate, so it's impossible that it goes away. The biological availability may change, but it's difficult to measure. > - Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV Possible: Some vitamins are sensible to heating, and heating them changes the molecular structure to make then unusable, so this is totally possible. I don't remember about vitamin D in particular. Anyway, many commercial milk has additional vitamin A and D. > - Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV Possible: Idem. Anyway, I but I never heard of milk with additional B12, and other foods are better sources of B12. - Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV Dubious: I don't expect potassium to evaporate. It may react with the container, but I doubt it. The biological availability may change a lot, because phosphorus is used to bind some molecules and they may split and the isolated phosphate may not be as useful.
- noobermin 4y ago
  It isn't, but it's better than drinking milk raw.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization. What does that mean?
  - vl 4y ago
    Some proteins break down and loose nutritional value.
    - andi999 4y ago
      Can you be more specific? Doesnt the body need to break down the proteins anyway to use the aminiacids? Which protein exactly looses nutritional value?
- Scaevolus 4y ago
  There's also low temperature pasteurization at 145F/62C for 30 minutes, which conveniently denatures lipase in breastmilk too.
vkhromov 4y ago
I drank raw cow and goat milk a lot during my childhood in rural Russia. The most tasteful milk was the freshly milked one which was still warm. We also never boiled the milk, it was fine to just store it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. TBH the boiled milk tasted unpleasant comparing to the raw one.
folli 4y ago
I think it's a modern western cultural thing that everything that's more 'natural', 'untreated', 'non-GMO'... is automatically considered more healthy, see also antivaxxers etc. Without any evidence of course.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mc32 4y ago
  Further: see ‘raw water’. As far as I can tell it’s mostly high income earners who fall for these fads, outside of those stuck in the wilderness without treated water. It defies logic.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    And if your want to see full crazy, check https://old.reddit.com/r/RawMeat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RawMeat/ > Vomit, diarrhea, coughing, sneezing, sweating, are all ways that the body expels toxins.
    - RealityVoid 4y ago
      Technically, at least vomit, really is a self protection mechanism of the body.
      - Thiez 4y ago
        But the only 'toxins' it can get rid of are those you recently consumed, not the vague and unspecified toxins that the diet people claim build up in your body and must be purged.
    - mc32 4y ago
      It's taken us hundreds of thousands of years to achieve the benefits of civilization and to have people illogically throw all that out. It's mazing.
    - andi999 4y ago
paganel 4y ago
> The first thing my mom (and everyone else) did is to boil the milk to pasteurize it. Same here, in rural Romania (at least that's what my grandma was doing when me and my brother were kids). To be honest though, we (meaning me and my brother) did use to eat the foam-y thing that was present on top of the milk immediately after our grandma or grandpa had finished milking the cows. It was still worm, as it had just came out of the cows, so to speak. We never had any health-related issue about it.
- verve_rat 4y ago
  Which seems logical on the face of it. Calves drink fresh milk all the time, and they are mostly fine.
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    Yes, but that's udder to mouth. When humans milk cows, they use at the very least possibly dirty hands & pails, and if it's a modern dairy there's much more equipment along the way.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - verve_rat 4y ago
      I'm aware. I have milked cows before. I would imagine no one is milking by hand in western countries. It, quite literally, gets sucked out of the cows and into a vat. Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all. Not that I'm suggesting that raw milk is a good idea. I've drunk milk from the vat, and it is the cream content that gives it the different taste. But we invented civilisation for a reason. And if someone is milking into a bucket, stay the fuck away from that stone age shit.
      - cute_boi 4y ago
        Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all. This is a big assumption w/o any sort of evidence. However, this only applies if farmer are drinking milk themselves. Kinda reminds me of agricultural practice where farmer don't put pesticides on the food they eat, but they add a lot of pesticides that goes into sales for high income.
lrem 4y ago
I drank quite a bit of raw milk in my childhood. But it had to be fresh. I could walk up, glass in hand, to an uncle carrying today's yield to the storage room. I would get the most delicious milk ever. But if I was a couple minutes late, he'd tell me to go get some in the kitchen instead.
- SpaceInvader 4y ago
  I did the same thing several times, no issues as well. At first I was surprised that milk was warm, because I was used to refrigerated one.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    AOL, except more than "several". Much more than "several". The milk has to be stored in clean containers. If you're going to pasteurise the milk anyway, then milking into a tank will do, and you can clean the tank every few days. But if the milk is to be used raw, then you have to milk into a clean container each time.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
> willing to take the risk Lot of them tout it's heals, rather than causes heaps of issues (including type 1 diabetes) But at least in NZ they are tested daily or weekly, so the risk at least somewhat being minimised. I'm still perplexed that seemingly neutral national media prints articles glorifying it without listing risks. p.s. googling "homogenised milk" in NZ first result lands you to seemingly authoritative but completely fake website filled with claims of it being hazardous and causing cancer https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-homogenising-milk/ https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-h...
beebmam 4y ago
Isn't it normal for babies to drink raw milk in many cultures globally?
- _ZeD_ 4y ago
  you mean the mother's milk - when they are still breastfeed? otherwise... no. cow raw milk is the exceptional exception.
tpxl 4y ago
I drank raw milk for ages. Our neighbours were farmers and we'd get milk still warm from the cow. We'd drink what we wanted immediately, boil the rest for preservation and then put it in the fridge. It tasted amazing fresh compared to being boiled.
watwut 4y ago
People in our villages drunk raw milk regularly. I did too. You have to drink it fresh and keep high hygiene, but it is not something extraordinary at all.
mywacaday 4y ago
I'm in Ireland and have cousins who are dairy farmers. Whenever we went on holidays there were two types of milk in the fridge, bought pasteurised and homogenised milk and milk straight from the parlour. The milk from the parlour had a thick layer of cream on top and was amazing on cereal. I have also seen my cousin squirt milk straight from the cow like a water pistol into his mouth. We never got sick but the standards for cow welfare and milking parlour hygiene are very high. Milk is chilled immediately after milking in a stainless steel tank and that tank is sterilised every time the milk is collected.
wil421 4y ago
My Indian coworker swears she drank raw milk in India. To the point she was trying to source it here and only found some place that would sell it for “pets”. Not sure if she actually drank it raw or forgot about the boiling part. She claimed pasteurization was not good but after reading your post I’m almost 99% positive she was pasteurizing it herself.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
It’s a good thing anyway and I think we should encourage more libertarians to do it
mbar84 4y ago
Considering the climate in India, I imagine the situation is a bit different there than in western countries. I think raw milk can be safe to drink if it is cooled down immediately during the milking process and kept refrigerated all throughout until it is drunk only a few hours later. Personally though, I think it's natural only for calves and babies to drink milk (in particular of their own mother) and I wouldn't mind a bit if the practice went away.

by rupi 4y ago

29athrowaway 4y ago

Note that boiling is not the same as pasteurization. Pasteurization involves heating but doesn't require boiling. You can pasteurize by heating to 73 degrees C for 25 seconds. Boiling, in the case of milk, is heating it to its boiling point which is around 100.17 degrees C. Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization.

smilespray 4y ago
They were using heat to neutralize germs. No need to be pedantic.
- 29athrowaway 4y ago
  Per cup (whole/pasteurized -> whole/boiled) - Calories: 152 -> 146 - Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g - Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g - Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV - Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV - Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV - Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    So boiling reduces the amount of calories? And carbs, and proteins? How can that be? In principle boiling could induce a lot of evaporation, so the milk would be more concentrated, and so it would have more calories per cup. But people don’t boil the milk so much as to materially reduce the amount of water in it.
    - monitron 4y ago
      I would guess that the heat chemically alters or breaks down (denatures might be the right term?) some of those macronutrients into molecules that can no longer provide caloric energy.
    - alasdair_ 4y ago
      “Calories” measures the amount of energy a human can extract from the food. Interestingly, if you cook.a steak (for examples le) it can gain calories, not lose them.
      - VBprogrammer 4y ago
        Does it really? I thought it was a simple chemical test where you burn a set amount of it and check how much it heats a given amount of water.
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        That's the old, less accurate way. By that measure, fiber tends to have quite a lot of calories, as it's a carbohydrate, but that is now known to be wrong - fiber passes through our digestive systems almost completely undigested, and yields almost 0 calories. Today, calorie counts are usually obtained by checking the protein, fat, sugar and fiber contents, and using known values for calorie/g of each. Those well-known values are ideally obtained either through human calorimetric studies, or through burning protein, fat, sugar directly.
      - netizen-936824 4y ago
        Citation for the stake numbers? I can see it being possible, if cooking increases bioavailability
        alasdair_ 4y ago
        https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/why-cooking-counts/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/11/why-cooking-c... Is one.
  - teclordphrack2 4y ago
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    Do you have a source for this? Is this after deskimming the milk? Natural milk has about 3.3% of fat, but commercial milk usually has 3% or less (here you can buy 3%, 2%, 1.5%, 1% and 0% milk, and perhaps other values). Unless you remove the skim, it's difficult to imagine that some parts just disappear. > - Calories: 152 -> 146 Dubious: But it's easier to discuss proteins and carbs separately. > - Protein: 8.14 g -> 8 g Possible?: Some proteins may denaturalize (like the white of the egg), but they are sill there. Proteins are weird, so I can't say it's impossible. > - Carbs: 12 g -> 11.4 g Dubious: Unless you are overheating the milk to make caramel, this is very strange, almost impossible. Carbs are composed of smaller sugar units and with heat they may split or for new bound, but they don't disappear unless it's very hot. > - Calcium: 28% DV -> 23% DV Impossible: I don't expect calcium to react with the container or to evaporate, so it's impossible that it goes away. The biological availability may change, but it's difficult to measure. > - Vitamin D: 24% DV -> 13% DV Possible: Some vitamins are sensible to heating, and heating them changes the molecular structure to make then unusable, so this is totally possible. I don't remember about vitamin D in particular. Anyway, many commercial milk has additional vitamin A and D. > - Vitamin B12: 18% DV -> 13% DV Possible: Idem. Anyway, I but I never heard of milk with additional B12, and other foods are better sources of B12. - Phosphorus: 22% DV -> 20% DV Dubious: I don't expect potassium to evaporate. It may react with the container, but I doubt it. The biological availability may change a lot, because phosphorus is used to bind some molecules and they may split and the isolated phosphate may not be as useful.
noobermin 4y ago
It isn't, but it's better than drinking milk raw.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
credit_guy 4y ago
> Boiling has a higher impact in the nutritional value of milk than pasteurization. What does that mean?
- vl 4y ago
  Some proteins break down and loose nutritional value.
  - andi999 4y ago
    Can you be more specific? Doesnt the body need to break down the proteins anyway to use the aminiacids? Which protein exactly looses nutritional value?
Scaevolus 4y ago
There's also low temperature pasteurization at 145F/62C for 30 minutes, which conveniently denatures lipase in breastmilk too.

vkhromov 4y ago

I drank raw cow and goat milk a lot during my childhood in rural Russia. The most tasteful milk was the freshly milked one which was still warm. We also never boiled the milk, it was fine to just store it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. TBH the boiled milk tasted unpleasant comparing to the raw one.

folli 4y ago

I think it's a modern western cultural thing that everything that's more 'natural', 'untreated', 'non-GMO'... is automatically considered more healthy, see also antivaxxers etc. Without any evidence of course.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mc32 4y ago
Further: see ‘raw water’. As far as I can tell it’s mostly high income earners who fall for these fads, outside of those stuck in the wilderness without treated water. It defies logic.
- viraptor 4y ago
  And if your want to see full crazy, check https://old.reddit.com/r/RawMeat/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RawMeat/ > Vomit, diarrhea, coughing, sneezing, sweating, are all ways that the body expels toxins.
  - RealityVoid 4y ago
    Technically, at least vomit, really is a self protection mechanism of the body.
    - Thiez 4y ago
      But the only 'toxins' it can get rid of are those you recently consumed, not the vague and unspecified toxins that the diet people claim build up in your body and must be purged.
  - mc32 4y ago
    It's taken us hundreds of thousands of years to achieve the benefits of civilization and to have people illogically throw all that out. It's mazing.
  - andi999 4y ago

paganel 4y ago

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

verve_rat 4y ago
Which seems logical on the face of it. Calves drink fresh milk all the time, and they are mostly fine.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Yes, but that's udder to mouth. When humans milk cows, they use at the very least possibly dirty hands & pails, and if it's a modern dairy there's much more equipment along the way.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - verve_rat 4y ago
    I'm aware. I have milked cows before. I would imagine no one is milking by hand in western countries. It, quite literally, gets sucked out of the cows and into a vat. Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all. Not that I'm suggesting that raw milk is a good idea. I've drunk milk from the vat, and it is the cream content that gives it the different taste. But we invented civilisation for a reason. And if someone is milking into a bucket, stay the fuck away from that stone age shit.
    - cute_boi 4y ago
      Farmers generally take good care of the milk and clean all the equipment, it is their income after all. This is a big assumption w/o any sort of evidence. However, this only applies if farmer are drinking milk themselves. Kinda reminds me of agricultural practice where farmer don't put pesticides on the food they eat, but they add a lot of pesticides that goes into sales for high income.

lrem 4y ago

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

SpaceInvader 4y ago
I did the same thing several times, no issues as well. At first I was surprised that milk was warm, because I was used to refrigerated one.
- Arnt 4y ago
  AOL, except more than "several". Much more than "several". The milk has to be stored in clean containers. If you're going to pasteurise the milk anyway, then milking into a tank will do, and you can clean the tank every few days. But if the milk is to be used raw, then you have to milk into a clean container each time.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

> willing to take the risk Lot of them tout it's heals, rather than causes heaps of issues (including type 1 diabetes) But at least in NZ they are tested daily or weekly, so the risk at least somewhat being minimised. I'm still perplexed that seemingly neutral national media prints articles glorifying it without listing risks. p.s. googling "homogenised milk" in NZ first result lands you to seemingly authoritative but completely fake website filled with claims of it being hazardous and causing cancer https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-homogenising-milk/ https://homogenisation.org/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-h...

beebmam 4y ago

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

_ZeD_ 4y ago
you mean the mother's milk - when they are still breastfeed? otherwise... no. cow raw milk is the exceptional exception.

tpxl 4y ago

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

watwut 4y ago

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

mywacaday 4y ago

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

wil421 4y ago

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

lnxg33k1 4y ago

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

mbar84 4y ago

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