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I'm glad they mention diet. I would imagine the 5 year difference could be explained simply by not smoking and not eating so much processed food.

by Lio 1y ago

paulnpace 1y ago
I'm surprised. Amish are known for drinking raw milk and making raw dairy, which is all basically pure poison.
- bruffen 1y ago
  Citation very much needed
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- infecto 1y ago
  Definitely not poison. Risk of bacterial infection? Yes. I don’t know the stats on what that risk is though and for all I know perhaps it starts getting closer to zero when it’s your own farm and you are the one handling the whole process. Please note I am not advocating for raw milk, I think it is not a wise decision but I also don’t believe it to be poison.
- christophilus 1y ago
  It’s the way humans consumed milk forever, though? Every infant consumes raw milk. Every milk-consuming culture on the planet did it until Pasteur. So… I’m not advocating raw milk consumption, but to call it poison is pure ignorance.
  - Bender 1y ago
    Every infant consumes raw milk From their mother. Human breast milk is very bitter and I'm sure protein wise very different than cow milk. I doubt scientists have really studied this. Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. As a visitor to this planet I find it strange. Milk has a lot of lactose and will have interesting affects on adults including but not limited to insulin resistance whereas babies are developing very fast and need simple quick energy.
    - graemep 1y ago
      > Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. Humans are not "supposed" to eat and drink most of what we do (maybe fruits are an exception). However, we have evolved to consume a lot of things - including, if we have the right genes, milk.
      - Bender 1y ago
        Yeah, no. It's not normal just because people have been doing this for a long time. It has sugar which makes people addicted to it and will argue until they are blue in the face to defend it just like drug addicts will defend their behavior until their last breath. Milk can cause just as much a fatter liver as beer. People can get all their calcium from green leafy vegetables. Raw milk will also contain IGG, IGB, IGA that humans can create on their own. Adding animal immunoglobulins is not well studied. Humans can create their own.
        Earw0rm 1y ago
        If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver.
        Bender 1y ago
        If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver. As many people do and get a fatty liver and ultimately Cirrhosis.
        graemep 1y ago
        According to this meta-analysis dairy reduces the risk of fatty liver: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9992538/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9992538/
      - Earw0rm 1y ago
        Most fruits are highly bred, nutrition wise they're very different from their wild-type predecessors. Many of which are outright inedible, or close to it. That said, we've coevolved with technology of one sort or another (the broadest definition, to include cooking, plant breeding, hunting with weapons, domestication and animal husbandry) ever since we began to master fire, a million years ago give or take.
  - HankStallone 1y ago
    It wasn't an issue until dairies started turning into factories to supply growing cities, with cows crowded inside and the manure concentrated in one place which encourages the growth of pathogens, and low-wage employees who weren't necessarily as careful about keeping the cows healthy and manure out of the milk as a traditional "dairy maid" might have been. So the industry had a choice: go back to keeping cows on pasture, which would mean the expense of transporting the milk further into the city from distant farms, or use the new technology of pasteurization to kill all life in the milk, good or bad. As always, industry went with the cheaper option. Which is fine; I wouldn't drink raw milk off the grocery shelf if I thought it came from a large factory dairy. Milk produced that way should be pasteurized. But it wasn't necessary to criminalize doing it the other way. That's just an industry trying to protect itself from competition. If your raw milk comes from cows on pasture, milked by people who make an effort to keep the cows healthy and the milk clean, there's nothing to worry about.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  The issue with raw milk is that over time it’s much more likely to grow bacteria if there is any interruption in the cold chain. Drinking it on the farm or close to when it’s very fresh isn’t super high risk. My family was in dairy and did it all of the time. Once it’s off the farm, all bets are off.
  - graemep 1y ago
    Its very tasty. I used to be able to buy raw milk from a local farm but its largely been killed off by regulation (in the UK). It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      > It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies. Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...
      - Spooky23 1y ago
        So, do you leave your burritos out for 3 hours so the listeria can grow? Online arguments about anything like this since COVID boil down to “if you don’t die, it’s ok”. An old or sick person can easily die from food poisoning. If you are hearty and hale, you’re going to feel like crap and get stuff like violent diarrhea.
        bluGill 1y ago
        most milk doesn't even have anything growing in it. If you take care in storage - refrigeration, clean containers, and use it fast you are probably safe. Probably is of course odds and so if everyone did it there would be deaths - but most people would never be sick
- xkbarkar 1y ago
  One of the few times I have used the downvote button in Hn for a comment. Its not a huge effort to at least try to add some source with such a claim, besides the comment does not even bring anything of value to the discussion.
TimorousBestie 1y ago
I don’t think any Amish group has a prohibition on smoking, though of course some communities probably frown on it.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
  It varies from community to community. There are some communities that don't care, and others that do definitely prohibit it.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    I bet that's about as effective as banning vaping in school. It's also quite common to hear of Amish coming to work on an Englishman's property, and they are very happy to take beer as payment, to be consumed on site...
    - 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
      Again, that varies from community to community. There are some communities where there is less religious fervor, and more just following tradition, and there are other communities that see their religious experience as the most important part of their identity. The stories you are referencing tend to come more from the communities that emphasize tradition over religious experience. Many people make the mistake of thinking of Amish as a single uniform blob, whereas in fact there are many very distinct subgroupings that don't have much to do with each other. In the state where I live, for example, there are at least 3 different distinct Amish groups (each with multiple communities, expanding at a very rapid rate), each of which does not necessarily consider the others to be true Amish, with the dividing lines primarily being this difference on or not tradition is prioritized over religious experience.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        I'm referring to communities that have banned smoking, specifically. I'm betting that's about as effective as banning vaping in school, mind you to kids who don't even have a job or a car and have mostly been educated from the beginning not to do it.
nucleardog 1y ago
A while back I got curious and tried to do a bit of digging on this. I looked into the Hutterites in Canada as a group that lives a somewhat similar lifestyle, but don't entirely eschew modern technology and have free access to healthcare (where-as the Amish largely self-fund as a community, and I'm not sure how much pressure that would put on _not_ using healthcare services). In that case, the only real causes of death that showed a substantial difference from the surrounding population were the rates of cancer, and mostly the lung cancer for men and cervical cancer for women. The study didn't directly attribute it, but that would be pretty directly explained by lower rates of smoking and a lower rate of STDs (since we now know that a huge driver of cervical cancer is HPV).
Brendinooo 1y ago
Given the date ranges, air pollution could have factored in as well, though I'm not sure "processed food" would have been as prevalent, especially for the earliest cohort (which had the most disparate outcome)
steviedotboston 1y ago
the amish diet is pretty unhealthy. lots of carbs, fats, pies, bacon, etc. if you had an amish diet with an "english" lifestyle you would definitely have health issues.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Compared to the standard surrounding American diet of highly processed carbs, fats, pies, bacon, etc. Diet obviously needs to be limited in throughput. I wouldn't recommend surviving on 10 pounds of nutraloaf, either.
hulitu 1y ago
And by working. Exercise, in moderation, is good for your heart.

I'm glad they mention diet. I would imagine the 5 year difference could be explained simply by not smoking and not eating so much processed food.

by Lio 1y ago

I'm glad they mention diet. I would imagine the 5 year difference could be explained simply by not smoking and not eating so much processed food.

paulnpace 1y ago

I'm surprised. Amish are known for drinking raw milk and making raw dairy, which is all basically pure poison.

bruffen 1y ago
Citation very much needed
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
infecto 1y ago
Definitely not poison. Risk of bacterial infection? Yes. I don’t know the stats on what that risk is though and for all I know perhaps it starts getting closer to zero when it’s your own farm and you are the one handling the whole process. Please note I am not advocating for raw milk, I think it is not a wise decision but I also don’t believe it to be poison.
christophilus 1y ago
It’s the way humans consumed milk forever, though? Every infant consumes raw milk. Every milk-consuming culture on the planet did it until Pasteur. So… I’m not advocating raw milk consumption, but to call it poison is pure ignorance.
- Bender 1y ago
  Every infant consumes raw milk From their mother. Human breast milk is very bitter and I'm sure protein wise very different than cow milk. I doubt scientists have really studied this. Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. As a visitor to this planet I find it strange. Milk has a lot of lactose and will have interesting affects on adults including but not limited to insulin resistance whereas babies are developing very fast and need simple quick energy.
  - graemep 1y ago
    > Humans are not supposed to be drinking bovine milk. Humans are not "supposed" to eat and drink most of what we do (maybe fruits are an exception). However, we have evolved to consume a lot of things - including, if we have the right genes, milk.
    - Bender 1y ago
      Yeah, no. It's not normal just because people have been doing this for a long time. It has sugar which makes people addicted to it and will argue until they are blue in the face to defend it just like drug addicts will defend their behavior until their last breath. Milk can cause just as much a fatter liver as beer. People can get all their calcium from green leafy vegetables. Raw milk will also contain IGG, IGB, IGA that humans can create on their own. Adding animal immunoglobulins is not well studied. Humans can create their own.
      - Earw0rm 1y ago
        If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver.
        Bender 1y ago
        If you're drinking milk in the quantities many guys drink beer, it's going to fatten a lot more than just your liver. As many people do and get a fatty liver and ultimately Cirrhosis.
        graemep 1y ago
        According to this meta-analysis dairy reduces the risk of fatty liver: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9992538/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9992538/
    - Earw0rm 1y ago
      Most fruits are highly bred, nutrition wise they're very different from their wild-type predecessors. Many of which are outright inedible, or close to it. That said, we've coevolved with technology of one sort or another (the broadest definition, to include cooking, plant breeding, hunting with weapons, domestication and animal husbandry) ever since we began to master fire, a million years ago give or take.
- HankStallone 1y ago
  It wasn't an issue until dairies started turning into factories to supply growing cities, with cows crowded inside and the manure concentrated in one place which encourages the growth of pathogens, and low-wage employees who weren't necessarily as careful about keeping the cows healthy and manure out of the milk as a traditional "dairy maid" might have been. So the industry had a choice: go back to keeping cows on pasture, which would mean the expense of transporting the milk further into the city from distant farms, or use the new technology of pasteurization to kill all life in the milk, good or bad. As always, industry went with the cheaper option. Which is fine; I wouldn't drink raw milk off the grocery shelf if I thought it came from a large factory dairy. Milk produced that way should be pasteurized. But it wasn't necessary to criminalize doing it the other way. That's just an industry trying to protect itself from competition. If your raw milk comes from cows on pasture, milked by people who make an effort to keep the cows healthy and the milk clean, there's nothing to worry about.
Spooky23 1y ago
The issue with raw milk is that over time it’s much more likely to grow bacteria if there is any interruption in the cold chain. Drinking it on the farm or close to when it’s very fresh isn’t super high risk. My family was in dairy and did it all of the time. Once it’s off the farm, all bets are off.
- graemep 1y ago
  Its very tasty. I used to be able to buy raw milk from a local farm but its largely been killed off by regulation (in the UK). It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    > It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies. Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      So, do you leave your burritos out for 3 hours so the listeria can grow? Online arguments about anything like this since COVID boil down to “if you don’t die, it’s ok”. An old or sick person can easily die from food poisoning. If you are hearty and hale, you’re going to feel like crap and get stuff like violent diarrhea.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        most milk doesn't even have anything growing in it. If you take care in storage - refrigeration, clean containers, and use it fast you are probably safe. Probably is of course odds and so if everyone did it there would be deaths - but most people would never be sick
xkbarkar 1y ago
One of the few times I have used the downvote button in Hn for a comment. Its not a huge effort to at least try to add some source with such a claim, besides the comment does not even bring anything of value to the discussion.

TimorousBestie 1y ago

I don’t think any Amish group has a prohibition on smoking, though of course some communities probably frown on it.

9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
It varies from community to community. There are some communities that don't care, and others that do definitely prohibit it.
- mothballed 1y ago
  I bet that's about as effective as banning vaping in school. It's also quite common to hear of Amish coming to work on an Englishman's property, and they are very happy to take beer as payment, to be consumed on site...
  - 9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
    Again, that varies from community to community. There are some communities where there is less religious fervor, and more just following tradition, and there are other communities that see their religious experience as the most important part of their identity. The stories you are referencing tend to come more from the communities that emphasize tradition over religious experience. Many people make the mistake of thinking of Amish as a single uniform blob, whereas in fact there are many very distinct subgroupings that don't have much to do with each other. In the state where I live, for example, there are at least 3 different distinct Amish groups (each with multiple communities, expanding at a very rapid rate), each of which does not necessarily consider the others to be true Amish, with the dividing lines primarily being this difference on or not tradition is prioritized over religious experience.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      I'm referring to communities that have banned smoking, specifically. I'm betting that's about as effective as banning vaping in school, mind you to kids who don't even have a job or a car and have mostly been educated from the beginning not to do it.

nucleardog 1y ago

A while back I got curious and tried to do a bit of digging on this. I looked into the Hutterites in Canada as a group that lives a somewhat similar lifestyle, but don't entirely eschew modern technology and have free access to healthcare (where-as the Amish largely self-fund as a community, and I'm not sure how much pressure that would put on _not_ using healthcare services). In that case, the only real causes of death that showed a substantial difference from the surrounding population were the rates of cancer, and mostly the lung cancer for men and cervical cancer for women. The study didn't directly attribute it, but that would be pretty directly explained by lower rates of smoking and a lower rate of STDs (since we now know that a huge driver of cervical cancer is HPV).

Brendinooo 1y ago

Given the date ranges, air pollution could have factored in as well, though I'm not sure "processed food" would have been as prevalent, especially for the earliest cohort (which had the most disparate outcome)

steviedotboston 1y ago

the amish diet is pretty unhealthy. lots of carbs, fats, pies, bacon, etc. if you had an amish diet with an "english" lifestyle you would definitely have health issues.

IAmBroom 1y ago
Compared to the standard surrounding American diet of highly processed carbs, fats, pies, bacon, etc. Diet obviously needs to be limited in throughput. I wouldn't recommend surviving on 10 pounds of nutraloaf, either.

hulitu 1y ago

And by working. Exercise, in moderation, is good for your heart.