5 ms·

As an aside, why is that every time I've been to the USA I cannot seem to just buy fresh whole milk? I always seem to find these massive containers, full of en

• joshuapants 13y ago
  Plenty of whole milk around me from a variety of dairies. Probably depends on where you were geographically and which stores in particular you went to
  • maxerickson 13y ago
    A large percentage of U.S. milk has vitamin D added.
• VLM 13y ago
  "full of enriched this" Before vitamin D fortification which began around the 1st great depression (1930s not 2007), bone deformities due to lack of vitamin D were the norm. Pro-fortification propaganda claims 90%+, anti-fortification propaganda glosses over it only being about half, and relatively minor. So the truth is probably in between. Its very much like salt. If you know how and where you look you can buy nearly pure NaCl in a store (look in the canning aisle...) but anti-caking Mg salts and iodine are added. After that, gross levels of iodine deficiency were rare. Or the TLDR is unless you're taking the proper supplements, you're better off not drinking "untouched except by pasteurization" milk. In some states its illegal to sell raw milk or in some states illegal to sell unfortified milk so if you really want to, you have a long evening with google to research which nanny state vs free state to visit and shop. This is aside from the obvious issue that unless you're a baby cow, perhaps you're an adult human, you really haven't evolved to drink cow milk as an adult human so you almost certainly should not do so, at least not on a regular basis. Human milk would be much healthier balance of nutrients for a human to drink for obvious reasons, although culturally would be considered creepy, and your innards are way too old to be drinking milk anyway if you're posting to HN. Maybe you could industrially adulterate cow milk to make it nutritionally similar to human milk, that would be much healthier and not as culturally creepy as the real stuff.
  • db48x 13y ago
    The difference is not that great. The biggest difference is in the antibodies; most of the cow antibodies aren't going to help you since you can't catch the disease they protect against anyway. The only adults who should specifically avoid milk are the ones without the lactase mutation, since they cannot digest the lactose in it. This applies to human milk as well.
    • dec0dedab0de 13y ago
      I would say that all adults should not be drinking human milk.
      • Dylan16807 13y ago
        Which way do you mean that sentence? * The statement that 'all adults should' is false. * For any and every adult X, X should not.
        • dec0dedab0de 13y ago
          I just meant the idea of an adult drinking a glass of human milk weirds me out a bit. I didn't think it was ambiguous.
          • Dylan16807 13y ago
            Well there's a big gap between 'weird' and 'no one should ever do this'.
      • buro9 13y ago
        But the milk of a different species is OK? The thought might repulse, but human milk at least contains things a child human needs and that other humans can benefit from. Milk is strange... best not to think about it too much. Best also not to visualise it, which is kinda the problem with human milk.
        • 13y ago
• yoodenvranx 13y ago
  As a German who lived near Minneapolis and Salt Lake City for a year this is exactly the same problem which I had. I _love_ milk, but it was near impossible to find good tasty milk. There was a deli shop which sometimes sold some milk which was ok, but the rest did taste different/worse than the milk which you can buy in Germany. What I also missed was cheese, bread, brötchen, croissants, ... But on the other hand, almost everything related to meat, BBQ and burger was much more awesome than in Germany.
  • aestra 13y ago
    >but the rest did taste different/worse than the milk which you can buy in Germany I think this might be the difference in how the cows are raised and how often they are milked, perhaps. And their diet. In the US we go for quantity over quality. I don't know about milk but I know that for eggs it makes a HUGE difference. When I lived in Europe they only sold eggs that were higher quality. The yolks were bright orange and the taste was amazing. In the US most of the eggs have pale yellow yolks because of the chickens' diet being mostly corn soy instead of natural grass or whatever chickens eat and they are raised in stressful conditions. The taste is diluted. I mostly buy my eggs straight from the farm here in the US. I can see the chickens when I go, they are wandering around on open pasture. The eggs are like the ones from Europe. In the grocery store buying the ones labelled "free range" gives you similar eggs.
    • cowpewter 13y ago
      Probably both this and homogenization. Homogenized milk doesn't taste as good as non-homogenized, in part because homogenized milk is often made of older batches blended into new. Depending on the store, sometimes it's hard to find non-homogenized milk.
• aestra 13y ago
  Because we found out the cause of rickets, and there was an initiative to prevent it. I believe milk was probably chosen because calcium aids in vitamin D absorption and most Americans see milk as a dietary staple. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/6/1710S.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/6/1710S.full Most circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D originates from exposure to sunlight; nevertheless, many factors can impair this process, necessitating periodic reliance on dietary sources to maintain adequate serum concentrations. The US and Canadian populations are largely dependent on fortified foods and dietary supplements to meet these needs, because foods naturally rich in vitamin D are limited. Fluid milk and breakfast cereals are the predominant vehicles for vitamin D in the United States, whereas Canada fortifies fluid milk and margarine. Reports of a high prevalence of hypovitaminosis D and its association with increased risks of chronic diseases have raised concerns regarding the adequacy of current intake levels and the safest and most effective way to increase vitamin D intake in the general population and in vulnerable groups. The usual daily intakes of vitamin D from food alone and from food and supplements combined, as estimated from the US third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988-1994, show median values above the adequate intake of 5 μg/d for children 6-11 y of age; however, median intakes are generally below the adequate intake for female subjects > 12 y of age and men > 50 y. In Canada, there are no national survey data for estimation of intake. Cross-sectional studies suggest that current US/Canadian fortification practices are not effective in preventing hypovitaminosis D, particularly among vulnerable populations during the winter, whereas supplement use shows more promise. Recent prospective intervention studies with higher vitamin D concentrations provided evidence of safety and efficacy for fortification of specific foods and use of supplements. We also found out about folic acid and how important it is for women to have enough right before she becomes pregnant and in the first couple days/weeks of the developing embryo. This would be before she knows she is pregnant. An adequate supply of folic acid prevents protect against a number of congenital malformations, including neural tube defects which are severe abnormalities of the central nervous system like spina bifida and anencephaly. They result in malformations of the spine, skull, and brain. So we decided to fortify our grain products in an attempt to prevent this. The fortification is mandatory since 1998. http://189.28.128.100/nutricao/docs/ferro/impact_folic_acid_tube_defects.pdf http://189.28.128.100/nutricao/docs/ferro/impact_folic_acid_... Conclusions: A 19% reduction in NTD birth prevalence occurred following folic acid fortification of the US food supply. However, factors other than fortification may have contributed to this decline.