5 ms·

It’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 f

by RC_ITR 5y ago

It’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 ago
It'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.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I'm seeing "it was fine for me", nobody recommending that raw milk is a good and healthy choice...
    - rtpg 5y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809457 Heavy implication that the rules don’t make sense https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809207 Making some argument that our bodies could handle it if we had more bacteria https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809218 Literal “I was fine so it’s fine” Lots of “is this just factory farming being an issue” comments which are at least in good faith and usually questions, though! So people are trying to get more details It’s not every comment but lots of it.
chii 5y ago
I think instead of straight prohibit, raw milk should be purchasable if the buyer understands the dangers, and knows how to treat their own usage so that it's safe - for example, they boil it themselves. There's plenty of things that are dangerous and can kill you, but we don't and shouldn't prohibit it all. Instead, society should aim to educate, and also put in warning labels etc.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Genuinely curious: why would you want to pasteurize your own milk? I get the “homemade cake” reasoning for desserts but I see very little benefit to pasteurizing milk yourself.
  - ngngngng 5y ago
    I don't care if it's pasteurized by me or someone else, I just don't want it homogenized. It's more fun that way.
  - deserted 5y ago
    You can pasteurize it yourself with very little extra effort when making espresso drinks, since you need to heat the milk with a steam wand anyway. The flavor and especially foam of a cappuccino are slightly better when made with self-pasteurized-while steaming raw milk vs equivalent non raw Jersey milk in my at home blind taste tests.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Note: it's not a blind test of you've tasted one of them before but not the other.
      - deserted 5y ago
        That's a good point.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  If you understand the danger then is a hospital still required to treat you? That’s private benefit and socialized risk. If you’re going to be taking communal resources then you should need to uphold some community standards.
onionisafruit 5y ago
Are you calling hacker news a science-driven forum? It was created by venture capitalists for venture capitalists and their employees. I don’t mean this in a negative way. HN is what it is and I love it. But don’t confuse it with a scientific journal.
- lupire 5y ago
  HN is a forum for people who are even smarter than scientists. It's the most rational, as seen by how much money users make, or will soon.
novok 5y ago
I don't think people are saying it's a folly, but that it does taste better and have better nutrition, if you can get it at it's absolutely freshest. Pasteurization is for when you cannot, which is the case for most. Also pasteurization was invented in the mid 1800s, while mass market electric refrigeration was invented in in the early 1900s. Before that it was a bunch of awkward ice boxes, and not used much.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Pasteurization is for when you cannot, which is the case for most. Fresh milk from a dirty udder, or from an infected cow, or sitting in a bucket that has traces of yesterday's milk, is not safe to drink. Pasteurization (or boiling or fermentation and other preservation methods before that) are all ways to make pretty sure that the milk is safe to drink, regardless of freshness.
zuminator 5y ago
I'm not going to advocate in favor of drinking raw milk. But on the other hand, there are a lot of smug responses here totally discounting the experiences of the rural-dwelling commenters who have apparently been drinking milk raw safely for years. "It's risky." Absolutely. On the other hand, the entire reason many adult humans are lactose tolerant to begin with is that humans have been drinking cows milk for thousands of years. Milk pasteurization has been around for less than 200 of them. Clearly raw milk consumption was safe enough for humans to evolve a mutation permitting us to chug even more of it. So maybe let's not be so quick to jeer at the people here who report they have been doing it with no ill effects. Especially since most of them don't appear to be proselytizing, just relaying their personal experience. I agree there's no need for anyone to drink milk raw in the 21st century, and that it is always going to have some inherent risk compared with drinking pasteurized milk. The same can be said for many uncooked foodstuffs that we consume, and other enjoyable but non-risk-free activities we undertake.
- iamacyborg 5y ago
  Was drinking milk a significant part of human diets or did they consume milk processed in a variety of ways? ie cheese, yoghurt, rancid butter (in North African cuisine), etc.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  You're discounting the stories of all the people in those communities who dies of TB. It's indicative of the similar problem of vaccine hesitance - everyone remembers their grandparents living, and not the 2-3 great uncles/aunts who died before they bore children. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....
watwut 5y ago
I think that what you do here is fallacy. And very typical one for HN, where you ignore details and extrapolate original statement to mean something else. OP did not said pasteurizarion is folly. You do it to preserve milk for longer term. Which something entirely different then drinking milk right after it was taken out of cow.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Uh, I think you're the uninformed one here. People catch TB from milk that comes from a cow that also has TB, regardless of how 'fresh' the milk is. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te.... EDIT: This is exactly the problem that I am trying to point out. You (likely an otherwise very educated person) assume that pasteurization is intended to preserve milk because that is the (unscientific) tone of these comments, when in fact that is very far from the reason (you can preserve unpasteurized milk as yogurt/cheese, we've known how to do that for centuries, but it will still potentially give you TB).
lupire 5y ago
Almost none of the comments show awareness of the difference between fresh raw milk and week old rotten raw milk, a distinction that by design does not exist in pasteurized milk. Also, some commenters ignore the relevant distinction between pasteurization and homogenization and fat separation.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Just to make a very important distinction here: Bacteria like TB do not need a significant time out of the udder to infect a human with TB. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....

by RC_ITR 5y ago

oneepic 5y ago

It'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.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I'm seeing "it was fine for me", nobody recommending that raw milk is a good and healthy choice...
  - rtpg 5y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809457 Heavy implication that the rules don’t make sense https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809207 Making some argument that our bodies could handle it if we had more bacteria https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30809218 Literal “I was fine so it’s fine” Lots of “is this just factory farming being an issue” comments which are at least in good faith and usually questions, though! So people are trying to get more details It’s not every comment but lots of it.

chii 5y ago

I think instead of straight prohibit, raw milk should be purchasable if the buyer understands the dangers, and knows how to treat their own usage so that it's safe - for example, they boil it themselves. There's plenty of things that are dangerous and can kill you, but we don't and shouldn't prohibit it all. Instead, society should aim to educate, and also put in warning labels etc.

saagarjha 5y ago
Genuinely curious: why would you want to pasteurize your own milk? I get the “homemade cake” reasoning for desserts but I see very little benefit to pasteurizing milk yourself.
- ngngngng 5y ago
  I don't care if it's pasteurized by me or someone else, I just don't want it homogenized. It's more fun that way.
- deserted 5y ago
  You can pasteurize it yourself with very little extra effort when making espresso drinks, since you need to heat the milk with a steam wand anyway. The flavor and especially foam of a cappuccino are slightly better when made with self-pasteurized-while steaming raw milk vs equivalent non raw Jersey milk in my at home blind taste tests.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Note: it's not a blind test of you've tasted one of them before but not the other.
    - deserted 5y ago
      That's a good point.
idontwantthis 5y ago
If you understand the danger then is a hospital still required to treat you? That’s private benefit and socialized risk. If you’re going to be taking communal resources then you should need to uphold some community standards.

onionisafruit 5y ago

Are you calling hacker news a science-driven forum? It was created by venture capitalists for venture capitalists and their employees. I don’t mean this in a negative way. HN is what it is and I love it. But don’t confuse it with a scientific journal.

lupire 5y ago
HN is a forum for people who are even smarter than scientists. It's the most rational, as seen by how much money users make, or will soon.

novok 5y ago

I don't think people are saying it's a folly, but that it does taste better and have better nutrition, if you can get it at it's absolutely freshest. Pasteurization is for when you cannot, which is the case for most. Also pasteurization was invented in the mid 1800s, while mass market electric refrigeration was invented in in the early 1900s. Before that it was a bunch of awkward ice boxes, and not used much.

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Pasteurization is for when you cannot, which is the case for most. Fresh milk from a dirty udder, or from an infected cow, or sitting in a bucket that has traces of yesterday's milk, is not safe to drink. Pasteurization (or boiling or fermentation and other preservation methods before that) are all ways to make pretty sure that the milk is safe to drink, regardless of freshness.

zuminator 5y ago

I'm not going to advocate in favor of drinking raw milk. But on the other hand, there are a lot of smug responses here totally discounting the experiences of the rural-dwelling commenters who have apparently been drinking milk raw safely for years. "It's risky." Absolutely. On the other hand, the entire reason many adult humans are lactose tolerant to begin with is that humans have been drinking cows milk for thousands of years. Milk pasteurization has been around for less than 200 of them. Clearly raw milk consumption was safe enough for humans to evolve a mutation permitting us to chug even more of it. So maybe let's not be so quick to jeer at the people here who report they have been doing it with no ill effects. Especially since most of them don't appear to be proselytizing, just relaying their personal experience. I agree there's no need for anyone to drink milk raw in the 21st century, and that it is always going to have some inherent risk compared with drinking pasteurized milk. The same can be said for many uncooked foodstuffs that we consume, and other enjoyable but non-risk-free activities we undertake.

iamacyborg 5y ago
Was drinking milk a significant part of human diets or did they consume milk processed in a variety of ways? ie cheese, yoghurt, rancid butter (in North African cuisine), etc.
RC_ITR 5y ago
You're discounting the stories of all the people in those communities who dies of TB. It's indicative of the similar problem of vaccine hesitance - everyone remembers their grandparents living, and not the 2-3 great uncles/aunts who died before they bore children. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....

watwut 5y ago

I think that what you do here is fallacy. And very typical one for HN, where you ignore details and extrapolate original statement to mean something else. OP did not said pasteurizarion is folly. You do it to preserve milk for longer term. Which something entirely different then drinking milk right after it was taken out of cow.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Uh, I think you're the uninformed one here. People catch TB from milk that comes from a cow that also has TB, regardless of how 'fresh' the milk is. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te.... EDIT: This is exactly the problem that I am trying to point out. You (likely an otherwise very educated person) assume that pasteurization is intended to preserve milk because that is the (unscientific) tone of these comments, when in fact that is very far from the reason (you can preserve unpasteurized milk as yogurt/cheese, we've known how to do that for centuries, but it will still potentially give you TB).

lupire 5y ago

Almost none of the comments show awareness of the difference between fresh raw milk and week old rotten raw milk, a distinction that by design does not exist in pasteurized milk. Also, some commenters ignore the relevant distinction between pasteurization and homogenization and fat separation.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Just to make a very important distinction here: Bacteria like TB do not need a significant time out of the udder to infect a human with TB. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:text=tuberculosis%20complex%2C%20is%20a%20pathogen,human%20TB%20caused%20by%20M https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a4.htm#:~:te....