6 ms·

There is no way the 6x yield increase per cow did not negatively affect the taste, nutrition, and quality of the milk. Indeed, most of the "milk" you buy in lar

There is no way the 6x yield increase per cow did not negatively affect the taste, nutrition, and quality of the milk. Indeed, most of the "milk" you buy in large industrial countries barely deserves the term - it's got no taste or subtle flavor. It's even worse regarding derived butters and cheeses. Yield is a great and easy thing to optimize becuase it's easy to measure. And if you increase yield at the expense of taste at suffiently slow rate, the change is impercetible to the customer. Happens slowly over decades so that a nice glass of milk is now like drinking dirty wash water. And a nice fat steak becomes ground up crickets and synthetics. Moral of the story. Get your own low efficiency cows.

WorkerBee28474 2y ago
I've had milk from a cow not bred for increased yield (Hereford). It was unremarkable.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  Yeah, I know it's a bit hyperbolic but high end milk and eggs seem like the Monster HDMI Cable of food goods. Some cow breeds have a high milk fat content and if you drink that un-homegenized you can tell, but once the milk fat is normalized I can't tell a difference. I can tell a much bigger difference between vat and HT pasteurization. Same with eggs, sure high omega three eggs have a yolk that is more orange but unless your doing a back to back comparison on a a very runny soft boil yolk you really can't tell a difference in flavor. If the egg is an ingredient the difference becomes completely undetectable. I think these types of "steps" removed products like eggs and milk have a much narrower band of quality than people think. These biologically manufactured products just don't seem to be as directly effected by inputs as the organisms themselves.
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    I buy "high end" eggs not because they're better for me, but because there were fewer or less toxic pesticides put into the environment to produce feed for it, and there's less chance the chicken spent its entire life in a cage so small it can barely move (or on the floor of a barn so packed that, again, it can barely move.) That's the straw-man people who attack organic food buyers with. "You silly libtard, buying organics because you think it's better for you!" Nope. It's only partially about my health. In the case of a lot of organic produce, it's more about my not wanting to support industry growers whose field workers are exposed to incredible levels of pesticides. There are exceptions. Canadian grain for example, which farmers drench in pesticides using them as a drying agent to reduce spoilage rates. They take advantage of reduced regulations around pesticide residue that was pushed through by lobbyists hired by Canadian grain producers. So, I will not buy any grain based products that aren't organic. I also won't buy non-organic spices or teas. Turns out that a lot of non-organic spices - like cinnamon - have very high levels of lead, but the organic versions have much less, or none: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/high-lead-levels-in-cinnamon-powders-and-spice-mixtures-a4542246475/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/hig... What is particularly scary: a producer who sells in bulk targeting the restaurant industry (Badia) was one of the higher levels tested. Anything made with central/south american fruit puree? Organic only. Why? Producers used to spike the weight of their shipments with lead in the bottom of the containers. The lead would then go through the processing machinery. Result? Huge numbers of latino kids getting extreme lead poisoning. I won't buy any central/south american produced candy period, because manufacturers like to print the labels with lead-containing inks among other problems, and they repeatedly test high for lead, have for decades, because those governments don't care or are being bribed: https://www.nmhealth.org/publication/view/help/2154/ https://www.nmhealth.org/publication/view/help/2154/
    - maxerickson 2y ago
      Organic farming uses larger amounts of less effective poisons. Modern poisons are highly targeted and require smaller amounts. Typically they target disruption of metabolic pathways that are specific to plants.
    - dmoy 2y ago
      > I also won't buy non-organic spices or teas. Turns out that a lot of non-organic spices - like cinnamon - have very high levels of lead, but the organic versions have much less, or none This is hit or miss depending on the substance. E.g. organic chocolate has more lead than non-organic chocolate, on average. The lead amount has more to do with the very specific place that a given crop is being grown, not so much to do with organic food or not. If you use organic farming practices on top of soil that's got a lot of lead in it, the resulting food thing will have more lead in it
      - dmoy 2y ago
        (in the case of spices, sometimes the lead is an additive, which is illegal regardless of whether it's organic)
    - hansvm 2y ago
      "Organic" as a concept has fallen victim to regulatory capture. If you douse your fields in copper compounds which aren't currently regulated as fungicides then you can keep your certification, no matter the quantity. Last I checked, ~80% of organic produce in the US had worse pesticide use than traditional farms (if you include things which aren't illegal yet, using rolling policy changes causing previous "organic" behaviors to be regulated as an indication of what the status quo is). As a related concept, "GMOs" (selectively adding desired genes to a crop) can't be organic, but radiation and chems to increase the mutation rate 100,000x and then select the winning crops is organic. I know you said health doesn't matter, but if you look at recent produce-induced health scares, the vast majority are e-coli from the fecal-oral route on your organic produce. Not to mention, something like 3-8% of organic produce _still_ has the pesticides that are explicitly banned for use in organic farming. The same kind of people who spike a shipment weight with lead will also bribe an inspector and use pesticides. There's a lot of money sloshing around when you can charge twice as much for your crops. That's not to say per se that you shouldn't buy organic food (when I'm purchasing from a large retailer, I do personally avoid it on principle, but that's a separate conversation), but don't let a particular buzzword short-circuit your critical thinking. You seem to be very aware of the kind of harm that can happen when you purchase products produced by megacorps in countries with low incomes and a culture of bribes. You, unfortunately, still need to apply that analysis to each product. The heuristic of "organic == good" doesn't apply in today's day and age.
  - doublepg23 2y ago
    I was inspired to perfect my French omelette skills over the summer and went out of my way to slowly improve each ingredient. * I can earnestly say Kerrygold (or Irish butter from ALDI) makes a real difference than regular butter. * I can say that kosher salt does help as well. * I found a difference with (fresh cracked) white pepper but I don't personally prefer it over black pepper. But most surprising to me (and what confirms your thesis) is I did not find a difference with the freshest of local eggs. I purposely went directly to a local farm with their own chickens, but nope- still the same as mass market eggs.
    - wincy 2y ago
      I've tried every expensive egg that Sprouts and Whole Foods sells and the only ones I've found to be notably different are the Happy Egg Co. Heritage Breed Eggs specifically. Sprouts is the only place I know of locally that sells them. They're blue and brown, the shells are extremely thick, often have feathers stuck on them, and they're $8 a dozen (and have been all through the shortages and everything, the price has never gone up or down). The yolks are so dark especially in the summer it's astonishing. Absolutely right on Kerrygold, in my experience. Nothing else I've bought has come close.
      - doublepg23 2y ago
        I will have to give those a shot, I've been working on perfecting my "over easy" fried egg flip.
      - rattray 2y ago
        I have found the same.
    - jghn 2y ago
      > I can earnestly say Kerrygold (or Irish butter from ALDI) makes a real difference than regular butter. Was it Irish butter specifically or the butterfat %age? And if the former, did you compare to Normandy AOP butter?
      - 2y ago
why_only_15 2y ago
those cows probably still exist right? you can still get milk from them. Do they taste better?
- gavindean90 2y ago
  Yes, but because of the way that the milk industry is shaped in the US it’s exceedingly hard to get and many people are afraid of it.
  - gr3ml1n 2y ago
    You're conflating some sort of heritage cow breed with raw milk. It's being intentionally misleading.
    - gavindean90 2y ago
      I was because I can’t imagine somehow finding a heritage cow breed pasteurization group here in the US.
  - why_only_15 2y ago
    What is this typically called? Are you referring to raw milk? I think this is a different thing.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Raw milk isn’t inherently more flavorful than pasteurized. It’s by necessity consumed sooner which enhances the flavor profile vs milk that’s spent weeks going through the typical logistics chain before you buy it. But, the safety concerns are significant and you could also get pasteurized milk that isn’t particularly old.
      - rmosolgo 2y ago
        I've been drinking raw milk almost exclusively for about 5 years (and milking my own cows for the last 1.5 years). Whenever I get store-bought milk, I'm hit by the "cooked" flavor of it. I assume it's the pasteurization that makes the difference because I've also scalded milk on the stove -- same taste.
Retric 2y ago
Milk from lower yield cows doesn’t inherently taste different, there’s a wider range of breeds but you can get identical tasting milk from low yield cows. There’s several other ways milk tends to be worse but the primary issue is simply age. It can be a long time between when a cow is milked and when you’re adding milk to your morning cereal. Which then requires various compromises in the final product.
rmosolgo 2y ago
> low efficiency cows Interestingly, the "alternative" breeds I'm familiar with are marketed as _high_ efficiency because they produce milk on very little input (all or mostly grass; very little corn and soy). For example: https://licnz.com/products-services/lic-cow-breeds/ https://licnz.com/products-services/lic-cow-breeds/
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>Indeed, most of the "milk" you buy in large industrial countries barely deserves the term - it's got no taste or subtle flavor. Not only true for milk, but for virtually any food: vegetables, eggs, meat etc.
- voidfunc 2y ago
  Most people just don't care. Food is energy and it needs to be cheap. Worrying about taste is a privileged concern. It's for most people, "good enough".
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    That's why I garden for flavour. I'd die if I depended on it for calories.
- Maxion 2y ago
  Taste is one thing, the nutrient content also differs. In dairy and meat the fatty acid profile is different based on the animals feed and breed, in vegetables it depends on the plants growing conditions and variety. Modern varieties optimize for simple KPIs, but lack nutrients. A modern grocery store tomate will have the same amount of nutrients as a smaller older variety, but since the older variety is smaller you will end up eating more tomatoes and have a more nutritious diet.
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    >Taste is one thing, the nutrient content also differs. Also the water content. The highly 'productive' varieties/methods have a lot more water compared to the traditionally grow varieties/methods.
calmbonsai 2y ago
I grew up with a family garden and a father who bow-hunted, fished, and worked at various levels of "industrialization" in food industry throughout his career. As a kid, I thought _everyone_ had chest-freezers of trotters, bluegill, crappie, and venison in the basement. ;) There's simply no other way to get that many calories out to the masses and we've had multiple generations of "masses" raised on artificial consistency and engineered taste. Ignorance is bliss. Fresh food is also bliss. "Really good noodles" "Which is why chicken tastes like everything" "A single cell protein combined with vitamins and minerals" For many sound reasons, we're living in a blue-pill world, but try to take the red-pill whenever you get the chance. It's worth it.

WorkerBee28474 2y ago

I've had milk from a cow not bred for increased yield (Hereford). It was unremarkable.

fellowniusmonk 2y ago
Yeah, I know it's a bit hyperbolic but high end milk and eggs seem like the Monster HDMI Cable of food goods. Some cow breeds have a high milk fat content and if you drink that un-homegenized you can tell, but once the milk fat is normalized I can't tell a difference. I can tell a much bigger difference between vat and HT pasteurization. Same with eggs, sure high omega three eggs have a yolk that is more orange but unless your doing a back to back comparison on a a very runny soft boil yolk you really can't tell a difference in flavor. If the egg is an ingredient the difference becomes completely undetectable. I think these types of "steps" removed products like eggs and milk have a much narrower band of quality than people think. These biologically manufactured products just don't seem to be as directly effected by inputs as the organisms themselves.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  I buy "high end" eggs not because they're better for me, but because there were fewer or less toxic pesticides put into the environment to produce feed for it, and there's less chance the chicken spent its entire life in a cage so small it can barely move (or on the floor of a barn so packed that, again, it can barely move.) That's the straw-man people who attack organic food buyers with. "You silly libtard, buying organics because you think it's better for you!" Nope. It's only partially about my health. In the case of a lot of organic produce, it's more about my not wanting to support industry growers whose field workers are exposed to incredible levels of pesticides. There are exceptions. Canadian grain for example, which farmers drench in pesticides using them as a drying agent to reduce spoilage rates. They take advantage of reduced regulations around pesticide residue that was pushed through by lobbyists hired by Canadian grain producers. So, I will not buy any grain based products that aren't organic. I also won't buy non-organic spices or teas. Turns out that a lot of non-organic spices - like cinnamon - have very high levels of lead, but the organic versions have much less, or none: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/high-lead-levels-in-cinnamon-powders-and-spice-mixtures-a4542246475/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/hig... What is particularly scary: a producer who sells in bulk targeting the restaurant industry (Badia) was one of the higher levels tested. Anything made with central/south american fruit puree? Organic only. Why? Producers used to spike the weight of their shipments with lead in the bottom of the containers. The lead would then go through the processing machinery. Result? Huge numbers of latino kids getting extreme lead poisoning. I won't buy any central/south american produced candy period, because manufacturers like to print the labels with lead-containing inks among other problems, and they repeatedly test high for lead, have for decades, because those governments don't care or are being bribed: https://www.nmhealth.org/publication/view/help/2154/ https://www.nmhealth.org/publication/view/help/2154/
  - maxerickson 2y ago
    Organic farming uses larger amounts of less effective poisons. Modern poisons are highly targeted and require smaller amounts. Typically they target disruption of metabolic pathways that are specific to plants.
  - dmoy 2y ago
    > I also won't buy non-organic spices or teas. Turns out that a lot of non-organic spices - like cinnamon - have very high levels of lead, but the organic versions have much less, or none This is hit or miss depending on the substance. E.g. organic chocolate has more lead than non-organic chocolate, on average. The lead amount has more to do with the very specific place that a given crop is being grown, not so much to do with organic food or not. If you use organic farming practices on top of soil that's got a lot of lead in it, the resulting food thing will have more lead in it
    - dmoy 2y ago
      (in the case of spices, sometimes the lead is an additive, which is illegal regardless of whether it's organic)
  - hansvm 2y ago
    "Organic" as a concept has fallen victim to regulatory capture. If you douse your fields in copper compounds which aren't currently regulated as fungicides then you can keep your certification, no matter the quantity. Last I checked, ~80% of organic produce in the US had worse pesticide use than traditional farms (if you include things which aren't illegal yet, using rolling policy changes causing previous "organic" behaviors to be regulated as an indication of what the status quo is). As a related concept, "GMOs" (selectively adding desired genes to a crop) can't be organic, but radiation and chems to increase the mutation rate 100,000x and then select the winning crops is organic. I know you said health doesn't matter, but if you look at recent produce-induced health scares, the vast majority are e-coli from the fecal-oral route on your organic produce. Not to mention, something like 3-8% of organic produce _still_ has the pesticides that are explicitly banned for use in organic farming. The same kind of people who spike a shipment weight with lead will also bribe an inspector and use pesticides. There's a lot of money sloshing around when you can charge twice as much for your crops. That's not to say per se that you shouldn't buy organic food (when I'm purchasing from a large retailer, I do personally avoid it on principle, but that's a separate conversation), but don't let a particular buzzword short-circuit your critical thinking. You seem to be very aware of the kind of harm that can happen when you purchase products produced by megacorps in countries with low incomes and a culture of bribes. You, unfortunately, still need to apply that analysis to each product. The heuristic of "organic == good" doesn't apply in today's day and age.
- doublepg23 2y ago
  I was inspired to perfect my French omelette skills over the summer and went out of my way to slowly improve each ingredient. * I can earnestly say Kerrygold (or Irish butter from ALDI) makes a real difference than regular butter. * I can say that kosher salt does help as well. * I found a difference with (fresh cracked) white pepper but I don't personally prefer it over black pepper. But most surprising to me (and what confirms your thesis) is I did not find a difference with the freshest of local eggs. I purposely went directly to a local farm with their own chickens, but nope- still the same as mass market eggs.
  - wincy 2y ago
    I've tried every expensive egg that Sprouts and Whole Foods sells and the only ones I've found to be notably different are the Happy Egg Co. Heritage Breed Eggs specifically. Sprouts is the only place I know of locally that sells them. They're blue and brown, the shells are extremely thick, often have feathers stuck on them, and they're $8 a dozen (and have been all through the shortages and everything, the price has never gone up or down). The yolks are so dark especially in the summer it's astonishing. Absolutely right on Kerrygold, in my experience. Nothing else I've bought has come close.
    - doublepg23 2y ago
      I will have to give those a shot, I've been working on perfecting my "over easy" fried egg flip.
    - rattray 2y ago
      I have found the same.
  - jghn 2y ago
    > I can earnestly say Kerrygold (or Irish butter from ALDI) makes a real difference than regular butter. Was it Irish butter specifically or the butterfat %age? And if the former, did you compare to Normandy AOP butter?
    - 2y ago

why_only_15 2y ago

those cows probably still exist right? you can still get milk from them. Do they taste better?

gavindean90 2y ago
Yes, but because of the way that the milk industry is shaped in the US it’s exceedingly hard to get and many people are afraid of it.
- gr3ml1n 2y ago
  You're conflating some sort of heritage cow breed with raw milk. It's being intentionally misleading.
  - gavindean90 2y ago
    I was because I can’t imagine somehow finding a heritage cow breed pasteurization group here in the US.
- why_only_15 2y ago
  What is this typically called? Are you referring to raw milk? I think this is a different thing.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Raw milk isn’t inherently more flavorful than pasteurized. It’s by necessity consumed sooner which enhances the flavor profile vs milk that’s spent weeks going through the typical logistics chain before you buy it. But, the safety concerns are significant and you could also get pasteurized milk that isn’t particularly old.
    - rmosolgo 2y ago
      I've been drinking raw milk almost exclusively for about 5 years (and milking my own cows for the last 1.5 years). Whenever I get store-bought milk, I'm hit by the "cooked" flavor of it. I assume it's the pasteurization that makes the difference because I've also scalded milk on the stove -- same taste.

Retric 2y ago

Milk from lower yield cows doesn’t inherently taste different, there’s a wider range of breeds but you can get identical tasting milk from low yield cows. There’s several other ways milk tends to be worse but the primary issue is simply age. It can be a long time between when a cow is milked and when you’re adding milk to your morning cereal. Which then requires various compromises in the final product.

rmosolgo 2y ago

> low efficiency cows Interestingly, the "alternative" breeds I'm familiar with are marketed as _high_ efficiency because they produce milk on very little input (all or mostly grass; very little corn and soy). For example: https://licnz.com/products-services/lic-cow-breeds/ https://licnz.com/products-services/lic-cow-breeds/

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

>Indeed, most of the "milk" you buy in large industrial countries barely deserves the term - it's got no taste or subtle flavor. Not only true for milk, but for virtually any food: vegetables, eggs, meat etc.

voidfunc 2y ago
Most people just don't care. Food is energy and it needs to be cheap. Worrying about taste is a privileged concern. It's for most people, "good enough".
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  That's why I garden for flavour. I'd die if I depended on it for calories.
Maxion 2y ago
Taste is one thing, the nutrient content also differs. In dairy and meat the fatty acid profile is different based on the animals feed and breed, in vegetables it depends on the plants growing conditions and variety. Modern varieties optimize for simple KPIs, but lack nutrients. A modern grocery store tomate will have the same amount of nutrients as a smaller older variety, but since the older variety is smaller you will end up eating more tomatoes and have a more nutritious diet.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  >Taste is one thing, the nutrient content also differs. Also the water content. The highly 'productive' varieties/methods have a lot more water compared to the traditionally grow varieties/methods.

calmbonsai 2y ago

I grew up with a family garden and a father who bow-hunted, fished, and worked at various levels of "industrialization" in food industry throughout his career. As a kid, I thought _everyone_ had chest-freezers of trotters, bluegill, crappie, and venison in the basement. ;) There's simply no other way to get that many calories out to the masses and we've had multiple generations of "masses" raised on artificial consistency and engineered taste. Ignorance is bliss. Fresh food is also bliss. "Really good noodles" "Which is why chicken tastes like everything" "A single cell protein combined with vitamins and minerals" For many sound reasons, we're living in a blue-pill world, but try to take the red-pill whenever you get the chance. It's worth it.