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Be careful throwing around the word quack. Among The “SkepDoc’s” oppositions to the Weston Price foundation’s website are these assertions: > [That weston pri

Be careful throwing around the word quack. Among The “SkepDoc’s” oppositions to the Weston Price foundation’s website are these assertions: > [That weston price offered] Advice not supported by good evidence, like using unrefined Celtic sea salt, cooking only in stainless steel, cast iron, glass, or good quality enamel, thinking positive thoughts, and practicing forgiveness. > Dangerous advice: drinking raw milk and avoiding pasteurization. They even hold an annual raw milk symposium. They also recommend frequent consumption of raw meat, raw fish, and raw shellfish. Dangerous? Unsupported? Once again someone arguing passionately for “science” but in actuality arguing for their world view, which in this case was shaped as a physician in the Navy.

cheese_goddess 4y ago
Yes, advising people to drink raw milk and avoid pasteurization is dangerous advice. Raw milk and dairy is a common source of food-borne illnesses. Pasteurisation is the main reason why consuming milk and dairy products at the scale we do doesn't cause thousands of deaths every year. Here: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety tl;dr raw milk and dairy is the main source of infection with Campylobacter, enterotoxic E. coli and Listeria. I could also add a few other typical zoonoses caused by raw milk and dairy, off the top of my head: bovine tuberculosis, Brucellocis, Q-Fever, Staphylococcus aureus, various Clostridia etc. I don't get it to be honest. Back in the day, people didn't know anything about microbes, so there was no reason for them not to drink milk raw. Today, we know a lot more. And yet, people keep following bizzarre nutrition fads that essentially seek to take us back to primitive times, when we didn't understand anything about microbes and disease, and didn't even know how to cook our food to make it safe to eat. It's like some kind of strange, self-destructive atavism, as if the discovery of fire itself never happened. It's incomprehensible and stupid and sad like a cult of Cthulhu.
- Baloo 4y ago
  But surely there would be a great difference between milk produced on an industrial farm vs a small village with a few dairy cows? In the same vein I wouldn't eat raw beef from a supermarket but high quality beef can be enjoyed as steak tartare without worry, same with sashimi...
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    > But surely there would be a great difference between milk produced on an industrial farm vs a small village with a few dairy cows? No. Come on, think. Why would it make any difference if the milk is from a small or big farm? Why do you think "a small village" is a less hospitable environment for pathogens than "an industrial farm"? Who do you think has more means to test the microbial load of their milk and decontaminate milking machines, animal areas etc? The large company or the small farmer? This is just one more time the naturalistic fallacy: it's natural, from a village, so it must be healthier! Well, it isn't. I don't know if you pay attention to dairy news items in the press. I do and every once in a while I find a news item about a batch of French raw milk cheeses being recalled because it was contaminated by some dangerous pathogen. This happens to small-scale dairies with a tiny production converting a few hundred liters of milk from their own farm-raised animals a day. Except, when it happens to French cheesemakers, because they know their shit, they perform routine tests on their products, and they won't let them reach the consumer and cause disease. But if you trust the "Real Milk" clowns, who happily claim that raw milk is 100% risk free and it never causes any trouble, then you're just flying blind.
- ramblenode 4y ago
  > Yes, advising people to drink raw milk and avoid pasteurization is dangerous advice. Pasteurization is useful for commerce because it allows milk to be transported greater distances and stored for longer. But raw milk is not inherently dangerous if consumed fresh. There is some evidence that pasteurization lowers/changes the nutrient content of the milk, which is unsurprising given how many constituents are present in milk and the temperatures at which proteins denature [0]. [0] https://www.realmilk.com/pasteurization-does-harm-real-milk/ https://www.realmilk.com/pasteurization-does-harm-real-milk/
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    > But raw milk is not inherently dangerous if consumed fresh. Categorically and emphatically: N o p e. Raw milk can be contaminated at the point of collection already. It doesn't matter if milk is fresh. Pathogenic bacteria contaminating raw milk can grow just fine in your gut and make you sick, they don't need to grow in the milk during transportation. In fact, transporation, in this day and age, is by refrigerated truck so it's a more hostile environment for many pathogens than your digestive tract. At larger scales there is simply a larger chance for contamination, but that is mainly because large dairies collect milk from multiple smaller producers, so their milk can be contaminated from multiple sources thus aggregating both the chance of contamination and the number of pathogens. But each individual small farmer can produce contaminated milk, no problem. If you have one animal, its milk can be contaminated and you can get ill from drinking it. If you want to drink raw milk, go ahead, but don't go into it making false assumptions about safety and don't spread misinformation that risks harming others' health on the internet, please. Edit: also, the "Real Milk" folks are fanatical, swivel-eye loons who don't give a shit about anyone's safety and only care about promoting their agenda of drinking raw milk. For some incomprehensible reason. No, pasteurisation doesn't damage milk. This is just rank bollocks of the lowest degree. If they cared about "evidence" and they were in for a scientific debate, as they like to pretend, they wouldn't be promoting their Campaign for Real Milk with as much zealotry as they do, because there is simply not nearly enough evidence to make a strong case. All the "evidence" that I've seen are studies by their members, or studies of others that they have grossly misrepresented, or often not even a study but a poster at a convention etc. These are textbook quacks. Stay away.

cheese_goddess 4y ago

Yes, advising people to drink raw milk and avoid pasteurization is dangerous advice. Raw milk and dairy is a common source of food-borne illnesses. Pasteurisation is the main reason why consuming milk and dairy products at the scale we do doesn't cause thousands of deaths every year. Here: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/food-safety tl;dr raw milk and dairy is the main source of infection with Campylobacter, enterotoxic E. coli and Listeria. I could also add a few other typical zoonoses caused by raw milk and dairy, off the top of my head: bovine tuberculosis, Brucellocis, Q-Fever, Staphylococcus aureus, various Clostridia etc. I don't get it to be honest. Back in the day, people didn't know anything about microbes, so there was no reason for them not to drink milk raw. Today, we know a lot more. And yet, people keep following bizzarre nutrition fads that essentially seek to take us back to primitive times, when we didn't understand anything about microbes and disease, and didn't even know how to cook our food to make it safe to eat. It's like some kind of strange, self-destructive atavism, as if the discovery of fire itself never happened. It's incomprehensible and stupid and sad like a cult of Cthulhu.

Baloo 4y ago
But surely there would be a great difference between milk produced on an industrial farm vs a small village with a few dairy cows? In the same vein I wouldn't eat raw beef from a supermarket but high quality beef can be enjoyed as steak tartare without worry, same with sashimi...
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  > But surely there would be a great difference between milk produced on an industrial farm vs a small village with a few dairy cows? No. Come on, think. Why would it make any difference if the milk is from a small or big farm? Why do you think "a small village" is a less hospitable environment for pathogens than "an industrial farm"? Who do you think has more means to test the microbial load of their milk and decontaminate milking machines, animal areas etc? The large company or the small farmer? This is just one more time the naturalistic fallacy: it's natural, from a village, so it must be healthier! Well, it isn't. I don't know if you pay attention to dairy news items in the press. I do and every once in a while I find a news item about a batch of French raw milk cheeses being recalled because it was contaminated by some dangerous pathogen. This happens to small-scale dairies with a tiny production converting a few hundred liters of milk from their own farm-raised animals a day. Except, when it happens to French cheesemakers, because they know their shit, they perform routine tests on their products, and they won't let them reach the consumer and cause disease. But if you trust the "Real Milk" clowns, who happily claim that raw milk is 100% risk free and it never causes any trouble, then you're just flying blind.
ramblenode 4y ago
> Yes, advising people to drink raw milk and avoid pasteurization is dangerous advice. Pasteurization is useful for commerce because it allows milk to be transported greater distances and stored for longer. But raw milk is not inherently dangerous if consumed fresh. There is some evidence that pasteurization lowers/changes the nutrient content of the milk, which is unsurprising given how many constituents are present in milk and the temperatures at which proteins denature [0]. [0] https://www.realmilk.com/pasteurization-does-harm-real-milk/ https://www.realmilk.com/pasteurization-does-harm-real-milk/
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  > But raw milk is not inherently dangerous if consumed fresh. Categorically and emphatically: N o p e. Raw milk can be contaminated at the point of collection already. It doesn't matter if milk is fresh. Pathogenic bacteria contaminating raw milk can grow just fine in your gut and make you sick, they don't need to grow in the milk during transportation. In fact, transporation, in this day and age, is by refrigerated truck so it's a more hostile environment for many pathogens than your digestive tract. At larger scales there is simply a larger chance for contamination, but that is mainly because large dairies collect milk from multiple smaller producers, so their milk can be contaminated from multiple sources thus aggregating both the chance of contamination and the number of pathogens. But each individual small farmer can produce contaminated milk, no problem. If you have one animal, its milk can be contaminated and you can get ill from drinking it. If you want to drink raw milk, go ahead, but don't go into it making false assumptions about safety and don't spread misinformation that risks harming others' health on the internet, please. Edit: also, the "Real Milk" folks are fanatical, swivel-eye loons who don't give a shit about anyone's safety and only care about promoting their agenda of drinking raw milk. For some incomprehensible reason. No, pasteurisation doesn't damage milk. This is just rank bollocks of the lowest degree. If they cared about "evidence" and they were in for a scientific debate, as they like to pretend, they wouldn't be promoting their Campaign for Real Milk with as much zealotry as they do, because there is simply not nearly enough evidence to make a strong case. All the "evidence" that I've seen are studies by their members, or studies of others that they have grossly misrepresented, or often not even a study but a poster at a convention etc. These are textbook quacks. Stay away.