12 ms·
Lawmakers Drink Raw Milk to Celebrate Legality, Become Immediately Sick (2016)
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- the__alchemist 5y agoWhy is this normal in Europe, but considered risky in the US?
- cosmodisk 5y agoIn which part of Europe is this normal? The last time I tried raw milk was probably 25-30 years ago and that was minutes after it got extracted from a cow. An average European doesn't even see a single cow for months, unless they live in rural areas.
- g42gregory 5y agoNot sure. Maybe tighter quality standards for milk production?
- hkt 5y agoMilk in Europe is pasteurised. The main difference is actually with cheese: making some types of cheese with pasteurised milk is impossible because the cultures in the milk confer flavour etc.
- lp0_on_fire 5y agoMostly because the FDA and USDA are overly cautious. Not a bad thing in most cases, IMO.
- ofrzeta 5y agoIt's not normal. In Germany you can get raw milk sometimes in organic shops under the name "Vorzugsmilch". This means the distributor or producer needs a special permit and has to observe stricter hygienic standards. This milk is specifically produced and controlled for raw consumption. You can get raw milk directly from a farmer sometimes but they are obliged to put up a note to cook the milk before consumption.
- jaclaz 5y agoIn Italy there are now "specially licensed" farmers that can legally sell raw milk (though they are very few), it is relatively recent, till until a few years ago it was prohibited (I believe starting from the late 1980's or 1990's). On the other hand I remember as a kid how we got fresh milk daily in a country village: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22223564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22223564
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
- ikiris 5y agoThe parent comment is a perfect example of the poor quality of content commonly on HN these days. Please do better.
- wbsss4412 5y agoBoth parties have their fair share of anti personal liberty per issues these days.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoOh yes. For Republicans, it's usually national security and crime that justifies anti-personal-liberty laws. The Republicans are not the party of liberty. Among senators, only Rand Paul, and Democrat Ron Wyden, voted against FOSTA for example: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1152/vote_115_2_00060.htm https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1... National security and suspicion of foreign nations is also why the restrictions Republicans support often relate to how people interact with non-Americans. This can be seen in Republican support for sanctions and tariffs. But I was commenting about raw milk and how the Democrats' philosophy on personal rights to consume commercial products relates to it.
- microtherion 5y agoIt's getting less common in Europe as well. Some of the tastiest soft cheeses are made from raw milk, but they also kill a number of people each year. It's the French answer to Fugu, if you will.
- seiferteric 5y ago> a bill that makes it legal to drink (but not sell) Woah it was illegal to drink! Even if you produced it from your own cow/goat etc? Personally I have no desired to drink raw milk, but I do hope raw milk cheese becomes more common/legal in the US.
- changoplatanero 5y agoI visited a friends parents out in the country once and they served us raw milk. “Isn’t that illegal?” I asked. They said that it’s illegal to sell it but that they pick it up at an unmanned stand where there is free milk and a jar where people can leave “donations”.
- seiferteric 5y agoI thought that's how it is here in CA as well, that's why I was surprised to see the article said otherwise in a state in the south no less. But maybe the article was mistaken.
- sbierwagen 5y ago>unmanned And unrefrigerated? I assume raw milk does not instantly spoil at room temperature, otherwise human history would look very different, but it can't last long in direct sunlight.
- tsimionescu 5y agoPeople didn't drink raw milk too much - cheese, butter, cream and other milk products that happen to kill commonly dangerous bacteria in the milk exist since antiquity if not earlier. Also, even contaminated milk isn't a guaranteed kill - just like civilization survived cities drinking their own sewage water, it can survive drinking spoiled milk. Many will die, but nowhere near enough to stop humanity in our tracks.
- sbierwagen 5y agoI can't edit it anymore and I'm tired of seeing this stupid comment in my history so I'm replying to myself say that obviously the milk would be in a cooler or icebox. I'm not sure why I thought a refrigerator was the only way to keep food cold.
- ravenstine 5y agoHonestly, I suspect this kind of thing happens as a result of a diet devoid of microbial life and non-denatured proteins. I used to get not full on sick, but pretty sick after eating raw or partially raw meat. You may think it's crazy, but I just continued doing it and eventually stopped getting diarrhea and cramps. David Blaine (I think) talked about a similar effect from when he practiced swallowing live frogs. He got sick initially (not gag reflex but something akin to food poisoning) but quickly built up a tolerance. Maybe these guys did get sick in some way that is beyond a reasonable risk tolerance. I don't know. I just think Americans in particular are weird about their food and simultaneously germophobic so they end up eating a certain kind of diet. Getting sick when eating food that isn't totally cooked may not necessarily mean danger but that the body isn't acclimated to the particular food.
- tebura 5y agoyet there is huge difference. Milk is still easy to digest than meat. You can't compare both. https://www.rawmilkinstitute.org/updates/letter-to-medical-professionals-about-raw-milk https://www.rawmilkinstitute.org/updates/letter-to-medical-p...
- DHPersonal 5y agoSensitivities do not always decrease with exposure, so I’m not sure if I’d advocate getting ill frequently with the expectation of improvement.
- audiometry 5y agoThat’s definitely true for me at least for chili peppers. In fact I think my reaction has worsened over time even after decreasing exposure to them. Such a pity—makes food taste so good.
- nomilk 5y agoAnother example is Fijian 'kava' (a root that is crushed and dried into a powder, then filtered into water and consumed as a drink). It has a reverse tolerance: those who consume it more frequently typically get more affected by it, and those who've had little before may not feel any effect.
- zanethomas 5y agoI drink raw milk whenever I can get it and have been doing so for decades. Have not gotten sick once. I believe most, if not all, dairy farmers selling raw milk are very careful.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoDefinitely not all, as the small, but regularly occurring incidences of sickness from raw milk.
- cersa8 5y agoSame. In the Netherlands it's not uncommon to find a raw milk dispensing machine at your local cow farm. You bring your own bottle, put one euro in the machine and out goes one litre of raw milk.
- Proven 5y ago
- tortasaur 5y ago> “There definitely shouldn’t be a law against allowing people to do what they want within the framework of the rule of law,” McGeehan told WSAZ. Well, technically true. Making operating within the law illegal would certainly be problematic.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- langsoul-com 5y agoEveryone should be free to drink raw milk if they please. Although selling it in supermarkets might be questionable, simply because not everyone knows raw milk can stomach issues.
- timbit42 5y agoI think this makes sense in countries without a public healthcare system but not in countries with one because everyone is paying for your illness. I feel the same about motorcycle helmets and seat belts.
- elhudy 5y agoI put raw cream in my coffee daily, but don’t have the balls to drink raw milk. That said, it makes fantastic yogurt. I don’t really understand the concept of illegal raw milk though. Why can’t people consume raw milk if they want? If anything, make it illegal to feed to children (except of course, raw breast milk!!)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- aunty_helen 5y agoI’m just catching up on this, can someone explain to me what happens if you drink raw milk? Edit: thanks for the answers everyone. My mum’s a dairy farmer and so was I during my high school weekends. My family’s been drinking raw milk for the past 20 or so years. So it’s interesting to know what scary stuff is out there lurking and that a debate has formed around something I had grown to normalize. Tb is obviously a big one and my family being near a native forest increased that risk. Honestly though, the only thing about drinking raw milk for me was you needed to shake it to mix the 2 inches of cream on top. So now I live somewhere I can’t even buy fresh milk, every time I get the milk out of the fridge it gets a habitual shake :s
- fmakunbound 5y ago“tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, Campylobacter, Listeria, Brucella, E. coli, Salmonella, and streptococcal infections” apparently.
- aunty_helen 5y agoSounds like a bad run through the Oregon Trail
- reducesuffering 5y agoNot without dysentery it isn’t
- 5y ago
- rmason 5y agoI've met multiple times with state legislators in Michigan about an open data bill a group of us are trying to get passed. The irony is hackers or state residents wouldn't be the biggest beneficiary's. It would be legislators and their staffs. It is simply astounding how often bad decisions by legislators aren't a reflection of their poor judgement but simply poor data. Lobbyists can often times lie without being called out on it. If legislators or their staffs can easily look something up in the browser it would be earth shattering. Sadly a majority of the legislators do not understand the value it would bring. It's the source of much frustration for us.
- tobylane 5y agoYou suggest a level of potential embarrassment that I don’t think would happen. Being wrong is hand waved away in an instant. I don’t think they share your motivations even if they understood. Good luck, I’d like to see it happen.
- Brian_K_White 5y agoThat's a great tactic you just implied. "If data were portable, you wouldn't have been manipulated into that embarassing mess last year."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- footlose_3815 5y ago[dead]
- mngnt 5y agoWhen I was a kid, we lived in a village in northeastern Slovakia. On the hill above the village there was a farm with a big herd of cows. And every morning at around 5, a tractor would bring a few dozen litres of milk down to a small shack just by our house. People were usually waiting in line already, in a room that stank of rancid milk, to get a liter or two. When we brought the milk home, we'd pour a cup and let it sit a few minutes, to let the cream to get to the top. You could see the line between milk and cream with your eye an scoop the cream with a spoon. We drank the cream, it could have been 20% by volume, we made cocoa with the milk and no one got sick that I remember. I believe it was because we were usted to it, an "untrained" person would get sick too. Then one year they put up a sign, saying the milk should only be used as animal feed and a few years back the laws changed again and there was no more selling and drinkig grey market raw milk, because someone decided for all the people that it's dangerous. I thing my distaste of regulations and prohibitions can be traced back to that time. Funny thing, I think I would get violenty sick if I tried raw milk again... The law is a self fulfilling prophecy.
- RC_ITR 5y agoIt’s amazing that in a supposedly science-driven forum, an entire set of comments can imply that pasteurization, one of humanity’s great accomplishments, is a folly. People die from drinking raw milk. It is genuinely a risky thing to do. Not everyone will die but enough that society should work hard to limit it as much as possible.
- oneepic 5y agoIt's just a forum. People share science AND personal stories.
- rtpg 5y ago“I did this and was fine. Therefore I think it is fine” is half of these stories. It is of course possible to say “I was fine but probably was lucky”, which is at least acknowledging that food science is a thing and probably closer to the truth than your singular personal experience. GP is pointing out that people take personal stories and turn them into some science-sounding conclusion. If the internet existed in the 18th century people would talk about how London didn’t have sanitation systems but loads of people survived so all this nonsense about sewage management is silly.
- bitwize 5y agoRaw milk is the vinyl (recording format) of milk. Vinyl that can give you salmonella. Still doesn't slow down its proponents from telling you how superior it is.
- pezezin 5y agoDon't forget about brucellosis too.
- Epiphany21 5y agoI'm sure both are as good as medium rare chicken.
- john61 5y agoWe make Kefir out of raw organic milk since years and never had any problem.
- tsimionescu 5y agoFermentation such as in kefir, yogurt, cheese and so on is another way of getting rid of the harmful bacteria in milk. It is not as direct or safe as pasteurization or boiling, but it is more than safe enough. It works by colonizing the milk with harmless bacteria/moulds which oucompete the harmful ones.
- jsnodlin 5y ago
- oneepic 5y agoOff-topic, but the article looks so much like an Onion piece. Especially the photo at the top which has a similar quality.
- rupi 5y agoGrowing 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.
- folli 5y agoI 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.
- mc32 5y agoFurther: 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 5y agoAnd 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 5y agoTechnically, at least vomit, really is a self protection mechanism of the body.
- jmole 5y agoAre baby calves coming down with Salmonella or E Coli poisoning all the time? It seems reasonable that the risk is not in consumption, but letting the raw milk sit around for any length of time. If anyone knows why, I would be curious to hear.
- noobermin 5y agoThat's probably why. People don't generally nurse cows to drink milk, it is put into containers where they will be exposed to the elements somewhat.
- heavyset_go 5y agoHave you seen the conditions that cattle are kept in on modern farms in the US? They're pumped full of antibiotics and some still die from the terrible conditions.
- metamet 5y ago> Are baby calves coming down with Salmonella or E Coli poisoning all the time? Yes, calves get neonatal salmonella infections. Cows also have a ruminant digestive system, which handles things a little differently than a human's.
- jazzyjackson 5y agoMilk is an ideal growth medium, every bacteria floating in the air loves to breed in the stuff, not least of which tuberculosis. A few hours old, maybe the concentrations are low. After a few days it becomes deadly.
- TacticalMalice 5y agoMilk is not necessarily sterile upon lactation only to be contaminated later. Pathogens such as Brucella and TB are shed in the milk itself.
- Animats 5y agoRaw milk was an issue in California in the 1990s. AltaDena Dairy wanted to sell raw milk. With enough testing, and no cheating, it can work. Usually. But the state finally mandated pasteurization. The "all natural" crowd supported them.
- _trampeltier 5y agoWhen I was a kid, we had got our milk direct from the farmer (early 80s, Switzerland). It was our kids job, to go to there and get 2 or 3 liter milk several times a week. I'm not sure, if my mom cooked allways all the milk, I guess I have to ask her. But sometimes I drank, still warm, fresh milk on the way home. I don't think I ever had trouble because of it.
- ciconia 5y agoFWIW we have been drinking raw milk for years and have never had any problems. We buy it from the neighboring farm once a week, it holds just fine in the fridge. We make yogurt out of it, eat it with cereals, make milk shakes, and cook with it. Anything left after a week will go to the house animals. It tastes great, has double the fat content (Jersey cows), we also use non pasteurized butter coming from the same farm.
- voakbasda 5y agoI milk my own herd of dairy cows and goats. I drink the milk raw, and it is far superior to pasteurized milk both in taste and purity. Raw milk is nearly perfectly sterile when it comes out of a freshly cleaned teat. After that, virtually every microorganism wants to grow in it. The equipment must be handled and cleaned with precision and diligence. Any contamination provides a seed that will grow uncontrollably. I test every batch of milk that I will consume, using both coliform and aerobic plates. This required a non-trivial investment in minor lab equipment, but it is the only way that I feel safe. The tests have caught mistakes that we did not even know we made, but they also give a high degree of confidence that the milk is pure. In contrast, commercially pasteurized milk assumes that the milk is contaminated. As such, the regulations actually allow the tests that I run to show unsafe levels of pathogenic organisms. Sure, the heat kills them, but it does not remove them from the milk. All of their proteins are still there and will be consumed. I used to get sick from drinking store bought milk, and I believe it was due to the literal shit that they allow to enter into the process.
- unmole 5y ago> far superior to pasteurized milk both in taste and purity. How does pasteurisation make the milk less pure? > Sure, the heat kills them, but it does not remove them from the milk. All of their proteins are still there and will be consumed. So? > I used to get sick from drinking store bought milk, and I believe it was due to the literal shit that they allow to enter into the process. Loads of people also believe that MSG gives them headaches. I find your theory equally implausible. This sort of perception of superiority is very common among people who make a fuss about natural, organic or raw foods. Considering that rest of population does just fine, maybe adjust your priors a bit.
- manquer 5y agopasteurisation and heating in general breaks down some molecules in the milk that makes it less "pure" and alters the taste you can feel.
- dcx 5y agoI feel that this use of the imperative mood and the brusque, flippant dismissal of OP’s rare and interesting experiences are not just unjustified but do HN a disservice. If you have enough encounters with the medical system, you quickly learn that human bodies are actually insanely high variance and ridiculously poorly understood. The knowledge frontier is wide but super shallow. Gut bacteria. Epigenetics. Rare mutations. Differences in tolerances and sensitivities. WEIRD. Interactions of multiple conditions. OP is sharing work that obviously requires a baseline of high intelligence, plus his empirical observations. Writing this off as all just being in his head seems insulting in context. I also want to point out that of course dead bacteria can harm you! Would you eat pasteurized feces, or month old raw meat? Bacteria excrete waste products which are known to be toxic to humans, e.g. cereulide. Plus heat resistant endospores, e.g. botulism. And FYI there are a ton of known bioactive plus heat sensitive organic compounds in food. Please adjust your own priors a bit towards open-mindedness and intellectual humility - people here are as smart as you are. Shutting others down like this discourages them from sharing frontier knowledge with us.
- danuker 5y ago> Raw milk is not pasteurized, or heated up to a temperature of 140 degrees F for 20 minutes, a process that kills off bacteria that can cause foodborne illness, including Salmonella, listeria, and E. coli. This paragraph is worthy of an ambiguity contest. 1. "not pasteurized" might mean "heated up to a ..." 2. the process can cause foodborne illness
- snovv_crash 5y agoPeople here are confusing pasteurisation with homogenisation. Pasteurised milk can still have the cream on top. What changes that is that usually the big dairies want to sell the cream separately, so first they skim it off, and then they homogenise the milk by vigorously shaking it until the internal structures all break down and it stays perfectly mixed. Personally, I'm very happy to drink pasteurised milk. But I'd love it if normal supermarket milk wasn't homogenised. Getting a bit of cream at the beginning of every bottle of milk is such a treat.
- earleybird 5y agoA common pattern in the "I get my raw milk from <src> and I'm fine" appears to be that it is a nearby source, it is perhaps only a few hours old (no shelf life requirement) and the source is not at scale (a few cows perhaps). My dad grew up on a homestead where they had a few milk cows and raw milk was just how it was. Their health depended on the quality of care the gave their animals. Pasteurization is a basic requirement for scale and shelf life. Things will go wrong when you have a herd of 80 head, a half dozen hands running the milking machines and the milk ends up on the shelf for a couple of days. (maybe fewer hands now with automation). To bring it back to IT, think of it as cattle vs pets.
- lupire 5y agoWhy are small forms less error prone, on a per unit basis?
- earleybird 5y agoThe biological activities (health of the animals and the diseases they are exposed to) are no different from small to large. It is easier to monitor and manage the health of the family cow than a large herd. Mind you, automation these days goes a long ways to mitigating that complexity. Still, having a large herd in close quarters (twice a day they're all coming in to be milked) means exposure risks go up exponentially. The same issues come up in meat production. See antibiotics employed to keep large herds healthy - where healthy is a low bar meaning 'not sick'.
- guntars 5y agoReading these comments, if the world ended and the people here were left with a cow, half would starve to death and the other half would get sick. It’s just crazy to me that what was common knowledge a few generations ago is just gone. Yes, milk breeds bacteria like crazy. It’s exponential growth too so it’s bound to go bad and when it does, it happens quickly. But if you had to drink fresh milk that was still warm, you’d be fine. Mostly. On a related note, have you noticed how every cuisine is based on a) what is available locally and b) the best way to preserve it?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mjburgess 5y agoThe issue is how trivial it is to make it safe; and how people will avoid this trivial step for the sake of some essentially religious notion about human action upon nature violating its "sacred" condition. The underlying view is very much "the world was made Good, and we are Bad". The world is as much poisonous, grow up.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoI agree with your sentiment for the most part. However, I've heard plenty of times from people that lived on dairy farms that that milk straight from the cow tastes noticeably better. As someone who has never had that experience, I don't think it's that out there for me to want to try it, especially if the chances of getting sick are low enough.
- oblio 5y agoYes, it tastes better. No, it's not worth the risk. It's ok as a hobby thing when you go visit a farm, it's most likely not ok at industrial production scales.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 5y ago
- ycombigator 5y agoI've drunk fresh raw milk. In my singular, ancedotal experience, nothing happened. Onviously that means everything is fine, and we should all be drinking it, all day every day.
- butler14 5y agoIn the UK, we have vending machine at a local farm that sells raw, unpasteurised milk. They need to meet various common sense hygiene standards and conduct regular testing of their herd to continue doing so, along with an explicit health warning on each bottle. It’s delicious. A good rule of thumb is, if you’re going to drink raw milk at all regularly, ‘know the cow’ it’s coming from. Mad cow disease more or less wiped out the selling of raw milk for decades. But it is slowly gaining traction in this past 10 years or so, albeit in a very niche way.
- tsimionescu 5y agoMad cow disease, if it can be transmitted from milk (not sure, though I assume it probably can), will be transmitted at the exact same rate through raw, pasteurized, boiled, and even burnt milk. Destroying prions requires much higher temperatures than can be achieved through boiling.
- Kerrick 5y agoI sell raw milk directly to consumers from my small farm. Selling pasteurized milk is heavily regulated in Missouri, but selling raw milk is both legal and much easier. I also only sell to customers willing to sign a waiver, and every jar/bottle of raw milk I sell includes a link to the CDC’s raw milk web page and instructions on how to pasteurize. I even own a 3-gallon pasteurization and I pasteurize my own milk before I drink it, make cheese/yogurt, or use it other for non-cooking purposes because safety is health. Of course I skip pasteurization when using it for cooking (e.g. biscuits and gravy) because it’ll reach kill pathogen temps as part of that process anyways.
- blfr 5y agoI have been drinking raw milk from one of these machines[1] and various grey market sources for years, routinely order steak tartare or make it at home, almost always with a raw egg yolk, not to mention raw fish, and never had an issue. There is a risk to everything but I've noticed online that Americans tend to focus on food safety a lot, keep their eggs in the coolers, freeze, pasteurize, and homogenize everything while eating a diet of reheated garbage and breaking new grounds in obesity. The systemic risk from being overweight, type 2 diabetes, and eating quarter of your calories in HFCS is much higher than acute risk of eating untreated food. And it's usually hard to miss that the milk tastes off anyway. [1] https://www.tuwroclaw.com/pliki/duze_zdjecia/wiadomosci/mlekomat_big.jpg https://www.tuwroclaw.com/pliki/duze_zdjecia/wiadomosci/mlek...
- smcl 5y ago> keep their eggs in the coolers This is down to a very specific thing that happens in the USA and doesn't tend to happen here. If you wash an egg (because it has feathers or looks a little "dirty") you remove a sort of protective membrane[0] on the shell's surface which leaves it open to infection. To prevent this you need to refridgerate the eggs. That said, we do refridgerate eggs in the EU. Every supermarket I've seen in UK and Czech Republic does this, and everyone I know puts their eggs in the fridge when they take them home. It may not be necessary, but we do it nonetheless. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why-the-u-s-chills-its-eggs-and-most-of-the-world-doesnt https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh... edit: I am now remembering some shops that do have them outside of the refridgerator :D
- scandox 5y agoThe Enduring Chill by Flannery O'Connor immortalized this error. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enduring_Chill https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enduring_Chill
- simulate-me 5y agoI like drinking raw milk. It has a sweet grassy taste compared to store-bought milk. My wife grew up on a farm and it was common to drink the fresh milk while still warm. One thing that was eye-opening to me about unhomogenized milk is that you can skim the fat and make butter. I’m sure everyone knows that, but what might be less well known is how much butter you can get. A gallon of milk makes one, maybe two tablespoons. That’s it! I’m sure industrial butter making is more efficient, but I always think about how much milk goes into a stick of butter now.
- PolygonSheep 5y agoI wonder if it's something your body has to get used to? Raw milk has been rare in America for quite a while and I doubt these lawmakers grew up on it. Certainly people drank it for thousands of years and if it was something that had a very high chance of making you sick every time then the practice of drinking fresh milk would have been abandoned pretty quickly and drinking milk would be about as common as eating raw chicken. People aren't dumb: the Inuit knew to leave polar bear liver well alone and the Mesoamericans knew corn had to be nixtamalized. Another example would be how cassava has to be washed and soaked in a particular process. There are many examples I can think of. Even if the actual mechanism behind these things wasn't understood until modern times people across the world still figured out "you must not eat this part" and "you must do X, Y, and Z before you can eat this" for a lot of toxic or potentially toxic foods. I'm no expert on foodborne pathogens but it just doesn't make sense to me that people would drink something that would almost certainly make them sick. It seems to me it would be more like, say, eating eggs over easy: it's a risk to be sure but you'll probably be fine if they're fresh and the chicken was healthy.
- BTCOG 5y agoWhat kind of agenda is being pushed for this SIX year old low quality stub news article about milk to be pushed to the front page? Drink raw milk, or don't.
- hispanic 5y agoI've been drinking raw milk for a little more than a year now. Before then, I had never had a lick of it. In fact, I hadn't drank any milk before that point for years. I haven't experienced any issues. I feel very fortunate that I'm close enough to the Pennsylvania (USA) state line to buy it. I use a lot of it to make fermented milk kefir, which I then add to store-bought heavy cream to make crème fraîche. Prior to introducing raw milk (and the downstream products) into my diet, I was eating a lot of avocados. But, I wanted to move toward eating more seasonal, local, and ancestral foods. My ancestry is Polish/German. I think this may partly explain why it works well for my system. When I told a buddy of mine about this change, he asked me why all milk isn't raw. I said "Well, according to the CDC, drinking it will kill you."