Being anti pasteurization is the one that really gets me. Like it’s just heating up the milk slightly for a brief period of time. It’s really simple and not scary science that’s easily misunderstood. Like what about heating up milk is dangerous?
The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that it’s a conspiracy theory of manufactured panic to send people down the right wing pipeline.
I think it’s partly leftover dribble from the inane Gaia “theory” that was so strong in hippie circles. Everything natural (like bacteria in milk) is good, and you know, gut bacteria, yogurt, 's all good, right?
Combine that with “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” beliefs that they don’t realize come from right wing nuts and you got a perfect diarrhea inducing cocktail that we all get to pay for with our taxes and our nerves.
It’s interesting to see how a lot of the hippie “natural is good” memes got a new, completely different segment of the population to live on.
*drivel
My personal theory:
First off, raw milk does taste noticably different than pasteurized and homogenized milk you find at the store.
Pasteurization: heating the milk triggers the unfolding of proteins (Denaturation). This is what kills the bacteria but can also change the flavor of the milk.
Homogenization. This process breaks up the fat into smaller segments so they stay in solution in the milk. The result is a less creamy flavor.
People instinctually associate flavor with nutritional value. They think that better flavored food = better for you. This sort-of works in tomatoes and a few other fruit/vegetables. However taste perception is a complex blend of genetics, environmental conditions, and psychology. So the results are inherently unpredictable and completely unreliable.
The unpasteurized crowd all fall for the 'it tastes better so it must be better". They then make all sorts of excuses to justify their instinct. " Big corporate milk is evil!!" Blah blah blah.
UHT has a very different taste to pasteurised milk, but is pasteurised to raw milk such a big difference?
It does taste different.l but it’s still milk.
I’ve grown up on a farm, and milk can even taste different from cow to cow, or at different times of the year if that changes their alimentation.
Raw milk also usually has a higher fat content than what most people buy.
Ours would average 4.5%.Different breeds also taste different, holsteins, ayrshires, jerseys, etc.
I’ve never been a big fan of milk, so I can’t into much details on flavor.
I personally wouldn’t procure raw milk from a farm I didn’t know very well.
I can’t taste the breed in market milk, but I could differentiate most cows just by taste of milk from my family’s farm. I can still tell the difference between brands and seasons.
Market milk tastes kinda devoid of personality. But it is still milk. Just that milk from hundreds of cows gets mixed together
The only time I ever liked plain milk was still warm out of the cow. These days, I just don’t drink milk except for a very rare (couple of times a year) chocolate milk or milkshake where I don’t taste the milk itself, really.
Breed and diet definitely impact milk flavor and fat percentage, but some types of pasteurization seem to as well.
This is not an endorsement to drink milk that has not been pasteurized.
Aside from that, particularly with regard to colostrum, some people think treating the milk can damage things. As mentioned, I’m not a milk drinker to begin with, but I have no idea if (a) there are any studies showing benefits or even effects of drinking colostrum, particularly as an adult and from something other than a human or (b) regardless of point a if there is even any study on heat damaging it. I watch a lot of farming/homesteading content and some people are really into this.
Many, but not all, of the anti -pasteurization people believe that there is an invisible “life force” in the milk that is killed by processing. This is an old idea, but this unfalsifiable and unprovable “life force” thinking undergirds a lot of pseudoscience. People believe in getting energy aligned and unblocked and so on, and believe that drinking milk with mysterious life force is more natural.
There’s a whole subset of idiots that believe that you need to expose yourself to harmful shit to have a strong immune system. (See: all the people licking toilets and crap during lockdown)
There’s some credible science to it, in the way that, an immunization is literally putting “harmful” stuff in you to train your immune system. This is known science that I should be able to mostly hand wave around since most people already know this. Immunizations are usually focusing on a key indicator, eg, for COVID, it’s the protein on the outside of the vital cell wall (all the spiky bits in the illustrations) or whatever… I’m no scientist. For other viruses and bacteria, it’s a deactivated version of the virus… It’s essentially “dead” for all intents and purposes. It just resembles the virus so closely that it effectively trains your immune system to recognize it.
With all that being said, not all bacteria and viruses are something we can develop a natural immunity to, partly because some of them just kill us, partly because there’s something that is preventing it. Again I’m not a scientist.
Regardless, these idiots think that by exposing yourself to “natural” viruses and bacteria, you can strengthen your immune system. Bluntly, it’s possible to do that, and why the fuck would you want to do it that way? It’s literally a randomized version of a science we already have that’s tried, tested, and proven effective, called immunizations. With immunizations, you get all the benefits of surviving the horrors of some of the most nasty viruses and bacteria out there, without suffering through what those viruses and bacteria are going to do to you.
The whole thing is stupid.
If anyone argues about “good” bacteria, tell them to eat yogurt. FFS.
It’s just unscientific thinking. People think virus and bacteria are the only thing you have to worry about, but lots of the time it’s the bacteria producing toxins as part of their metabolism that’s dangerous to us. In other words, their shit is poison.
One of the reasons we don’t want some groups of bacteria growing on our foodstuff is because they turn stuff literally toxic to us, completely unrelated to immune responses. Same way some molds can be toxic while others are not. It’s not because the fungus starts growing inside your body and has an epic free for all with your immune system. Its byproducts are just toxic. Like some berries or some plants are toxic.
yeah, mycotoxins (ie: toxic byproducts from fungi/mold decomposing your food stuffs) don’t always get broken down during cooking. So, while cooking according to standard food safety specs may have killed the mold, their shit is still everywhere ready to fuck your shit up.
Not to mention that you have to survive an infection before it matters that you immune system learned to detect the infectious agent. Yes, the first inoculation techniques were literally just minor exposure to the infectious agent (eg: grinding smallpox scabs and blowing the resulting powder up the nose – wtf). While it technically worked, the mortality rate was still pretty damn high, just not quite as high as ya know getting smallpox the normal way, and thus really only used when a serious outbreak was occuring. We’ve gotten so much better at making vaccination safer and more effective, because we now know so much more about what is actually occuring biologically and know to use attenuated virus or just the benign protein coat alone to achieve results. Why would you ever want to go back to scab-snorting (or toilet licking, apparently, lol)?
Toilet licking is especially stupid because different part of our body deal differently with the same bacteria. For example bacteria that are beneficial in your colon are most likely very much detrimental anywhere else. Training your immune system against colon bacteria is beyond stupid. Wouldn’t be surprised if that could lead to all kinds of issues.
Hey, stop trying to be logical. These people don’t understand it, and that’s mean.
/s
There’s a whole subset of idiots that believe that you need to expose yourself to harmful shit to have a strong immune system.
And then they are anti-vaccine. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Ironic. Amirite?
If we just go with it and give them some cyanide, arsenic, and a rod of spent uranium to boost their immunity, it would be a self solving problem.
Eating a uranium rod would give them plenty of calories to last the rest of their life.
There was a king of ancient times who would microdose poison in order to become immune. To his defense, he lived in ancient times.
Say that to Styrian arsenic eaters. Cyanide and uranium though are fair. Though there was an “energy drink” with thorium once.
And there’s also the practice of mithridatism, but at least there is some evidence to support some of its instances.
Can we put them in a box and call shroedinger?
Some people are just defiant against reason and if someone they don’t like told them it’s safer or better that will assume the opposite conclusion then look for any terrible reason that agrees with their already accepted conclusion.
I don’t think it’s the heating up from milk that gets these people. It’s the mandate that it must be done.
Same with masks. They want the FrEeDoM to do whatever the fuck they want, even if it hurts someone else.
There is beneficial bacteria from what I hear, but of course the risk of harmful bacteria is leagues higher.
Raw milk that is carefully and intentionally produced for direct human consumption is a low-risk food with superb nutritional benefits.
While it’s tastier raw, though that’s subjective I suppose, no significant amount of nutrients are lost during pasteurization. Most minerals aren’t destroyed by that heat. Bacteria and most viri are destroyed however.
The vitamins lost by pasteurization aren’t that significant that it compares to the chance of contracting salmonella.
Can you even destroy minerals by heat? If there’s an element there it won’t go away. Though I guess the molecule could change and it could be less bioavailable.
Why am I being downvoted for stating something and providing a link to back up what I wrote? It’s not like I posted a bad link. In the previous link, it described how pre-pasteurized milk is categorically different from raw milk intended for direct human consumption. I think it’s interesting to note how preparation for pasteurization can affect the product.
Also this link shows that there are indeed many nutritional benefits not available from pasteurized milk.
I suspect you’re downvoted for stating false information. Even now it seems your supposed evidence is literally from suspicious (to say the least) source.
People following your advice expose themselves and their children to harm if follow your advice. Complaining about a downvote seems rather silly in that context.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890836/ I’ll quote from this link:
A number of different claims have been made about the possible health benefits that could hypothetically be derived from the consumption of raw milk. Recent scientific reviews by various international groups have concluded that there was no reliable scientific evidence to support any of these suggested health benefits.13–15
During pasteurization, there is no significant change in the nutritional quality of milk.16 Pasteurization does not cause any change in protein quality; minor levels (<7%) of denaturation of whey proteins have been reported due to pasteurization, but protein denaturation has no impact on protein nutritional quality. Pasteurization does not cause any change in the concentrations of minerals; minerals are very heat stable. Pasteurization may cause very minor losses (<10%) of vitamin C, folate (vitamin B9), vitamin B12, vitamin B6, and thiamine (vitamin B1). Of these vitamins, milk is an excellent source of only vitamin B12; milk has only low concentrations of most of the vitamins listed previously, which might show some minor losses on pasteurization. Pasteurization does not change the concentration of riboflavin (B2) (which is very heat stable) or fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A or E.15 Other factors like type of packaging material, light exposure, and storage time/temperature have much larger impacts on vitamin losses in milk. Feed (like pasture grazing) can greatly influence milk composition, and sometimes proponents of raw milk confuse feed-related changes in milk composition with those caused directly by pasteurization. Other milk-processing approaches, like ultra-pasteurization and ultra-high temperature, have only a minor impact on the nutritional quality of milk
Walk into any old graveyard and notice all the tiny little tombstones of children who died before the age of two. Before vaccines were in use.
Now notice how almost NONE of those tombstones are recent.
Smaller graves fit more efficiently into the cemetary, AND they stimulate the economy via the funeral industry, which Im heavily invested in!
- Some political ghoul, probably
Obviously they aren’t recent, it’s an old graveyard.
You know why nobody living in a town gets buried in its cemetery? Because they are living.
Look up an old newspaper from say 100-120 years ago and check out the obituaries.
SEWARD, Mark – Died at Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay, on the 2nd inst. [January 1891], Mark, youngest child of Thomas and Rosanna Seward, aged 4 years.
SEWARD, Peter – Died on the 10th inst., Peter, second youngest son of Robert and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years.
SEWARD – Died on the 14th inst., infant child of James and Mary A. Seward.
SEWARD, Richard – Died on the 15th inst., Richard, youngest son of Joseph and Louisa Seward, aged 4 years.
SEWARD, James – Died on the 19th inst., James, second youngest child of James and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years (Evening Telegram, January 29, 1891)
Or just walk through an old graveyard. There’s a pioneer cemetery near my old place with so many children’s graves. One family gravesite has the mother’s name, the father’s name, a couple of their kids, some young, some adults… and one is just titled ‘babies’.
Like, so many babies died for that mother and father they just put them all in one grave, not even names to remember them by…
Natural selection is also “going natural”
Where’s that tweet where an anti-vaxxer used the bubonic plague as an example of a disease that went away on its own.
my grandad used to buy fresh milk from a farmer around the corner - until he got salmonella from it and almost died
I saw one on Tiktok today, who worked those jobs before immigrants?
Slaves. Slaves worked those jobs. Then former slaves treated like slaves. Then immigrants. Literally right into the 1940s and then Mexican labor was imported.
As the former slaves’ descendants were increasingly shoehorned into the new industrial prison complex
Primitive forms of innoculation, antiseptic, and pasteurizing go back centuries if not millennia. The very idea of the small pox vaccine came out of the recognition that cow pox mitigated the risk of contagion. Milk maids were (unwittingly) vaccinating themselves for some time.
And pasteurization is just cooking your food. Hell, the whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat, and brewing beer came down to the benefits of sterilization.
These aren’t even new ideas, per say. They’re advances in technique, understanding of consequence, and means of distribution.
the whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat,
It’s to start the break down of food. We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.
Brewing beer is entirely different though.
It’s to start the break down of food.
That too. But killing parasites in meat and fish is another big benefit.
We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.
To a degree. But we also just died more often to infection and disease. Cooking reduced mortality rates, which spurred a larger population, whose members transmitted the knowledge of how and what to cook before eating.
I mean our evolution really kicked off so to speak from outsourcing our digestion. That meant more calories could go to the brain. That’s the aspect I’m focused on.
Well… if you want to get really into anthropology, there’s an argument that outsourcing our digestion (via early agriculture) actually made us a lot weaker and dumber. It was social pressure (often explicit enslavement) that forced people into the agricultural lifestyle. But that a booming population powered by cheap, reliable agriculture allowed multitudes to outperform by volume what exceptionally smart and strong but scarce individuals achieved in small tribes.
More advanced forms of sterilization became necessary as populations hit certain critical levels of risk for pathogens and other hygiene problems. And so modern techniques, like vaccination and pasteurization, are really just extensions of this ten-thousand year trend towards urbanization that require health and safety precautions as a condition of our dense population centers.
This wasn’t just biological evolution. Our ability to process, transmit, and record information made our species heavily dependent on these technological techniques and the passing down of the instructions to perform them. The health risks are now bound up in our ability to maintain a working, useful library of information and to perform the rituals necessary to keep our food and water sufficiently sterile.
Agriculture is different than cooking.
Try eating raw grain.
We were cooking wayyyyyyyyyyy before agriculture.
Pasteurization is even below what most would consider as cooking temperature. It’s getting your food really hot for a while but not boiling. It’s kind of like edging but in cooking.
love your username lmao
ask any old-timer about polio, and why we don’t worry about it as much now.
Well, maybe not any old-timer…a lot have fallen into that conspiracy black hole
Remember the fucking plague? It’s making a comeback!
“farewell” and “last date ever”, they always say. As soon as the money runs out… BAM! Time for another tour.
We are the plague.
And then, John was a zombie.
Right, like uhh you know the average life span for a healthy male used to be 25 years right? Did you think that was for no reason? Smfh.
Did you think 90 years passed and suddenly the life span tripled?
The idiocy
Edit: to make sure some of the responses aren’t misunderstanding my point - medicine.
Scientific advances. Technology, research, people knowing how to literally wash their fucking hands added years to the lifespan.
And yes it has tripled in some cases. 18th century France the life expectancy was twenty four years old.
This increase to what we see today is LARGELY due to medical care and sanitation alone.
It’s all over the board back then, in fact, because of sanitation. Diseases would.come and go and life expentencies would sink like a tanker because sanitation was non existent.
So yes I exaggerated the time span, obviously, but I wasn’t kidding about the tripling part - if a bit vaguely.
25, that is quite a historical extreme, isn’t it?
In the wild, average live span was around 40 to 50 years. There’s even studies about the evolutional reasons why we live longer than other primates/why we are the only hominide with grandparents.
Sure, it is an extreme. As in my edit I stated: this is due to sanitation. It is all over the board throughout the 15th-18th century world because pandemics/diseases/epidemics came and went and sanitation was so low and medicine was so bad that people dropped like flies, and thus did the life expentency average.
In particular, my “25 year l.e.” example was about 18th century France.
25 was a shortened life span due to agriculture. We live longer than cave men now, but it hasn’t tripled.
It was an average largely brought down by childhood mortality. If you made it to ten you’d probably see thirty, if you made it to 25 you’d probably see 50ish.
This (at least I think) exactly. There were so many deaths at birth/during childhood from things that are easily fixed now. I’ve also seen some places say if you made it to the teens, you’re pretty likely to hit 50ish.
Are the other time periods not counting that?
No they are, that is why we have an average lifespan of around 75 now.
So then why does it matter that the average was brought down by higher child mortality? We’re just comparing average life spans, not adding conditions, right?
Yeah, only (almost) doubled. Why the downvotes, you’re right.
I think everybody else was inferring a healthy 25 year old man, not life expectancy from birth (counting children).
Or their idea of “natural” is 18th century France.
No? Medical care and sanitation. Unless youre speaking of a specific event in time. But yes it has tripled in the 25yo cases? Avg life span now is in the 70s.
I’m speaking of natural humans, not humans during the 18th century. And I’m counting children.
Nearly doubling is still very good! In case this needs to be said, I’m on team science, not team antivax.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by natural humans - are there artificial ones?? 🤔
As in the way humans lived for most of the time we’ve been humans.
I see yeah, before all the crazy diseases borne of overpopulation etc.
Looks like diphtheria is back on the menu boys
Malaria has killed a quarter of all humans who ever lived.
Obviously we need to abandon our tools for fighting disease.
Indeed. Only death will cure what ails our society. /s
Go climate catastrophy!
Make Papa Nurgle proud!
If you want to be all natural, get off the internet.
Stop eating modern vegetables and fruits.
Return to monke.
No modern grains: find the original wild versions of wheat, corn, and rice and only process and eat those.
Haha. Good point. Also good luck with anyone being able to do that.
It’s been optimized over 100s (1000s probably) of years. It’s definitely better because of it.
Just in case - I did not mean you, just the people who spew such shit.
Like my mother. Jesus, I had to explain a lot to her for her to stop saying that stuff near me.
“Going natural” is a shitty euphemism for anti-vax. Call it what it is.
Those make sense to me, but I’ll be honest with you, where I struggle is with the idea of sunscreen. How did our ancestors live outside constantly without any sunscreen but if I’m outside for more than 2 hours in the summer without it I come home looking like a burnt lobster?
I’m sure the answer is that I’m ignorant, or the “natural causes” of yesteryear were really just undiagnosed skin cancer or something, but I have to admit it does seem like a real negative adaptation here from the viewpoint of my uneducated mind.
We need sunscreen becuase we’re indoors 8 and months of the year, then run out naked to sunbathe.
If we were outside more and naturally built up a tan it really wouldn’t be that much of an issue for most people.
I mean I definitely see your point, but as I understand it even field workers are encouraged to use sunscreen and farmers and others who spend a lot of time outdoors are at greater risk of long-term damage, not lesser, despite this supposed acclimation.
Back in the day it was normal to die of skin cancer at 30. These days, we prefer to avoid it.
Source? This is my point, that I think we lack evidence for that claim.
Sunscreen was invented in 1946, it looks like. Our ability to diagnose cancer has come a long, long way since then. So it would likely be difficult or impossible to answer this question, since 50 year old data about skin cancer incidence will be lower than modern level simply due to diagnostic advances.
copied from a similar question
It’s all relative. Sunscreen itself has carcinogens. It’s kind of like blood pressure medication. It’s easy and works. But obviously exercising and eating better would be better.
Same with the sun. Gradual exposure and not baking deliberately in the sun would be better, but sunscreen is easier.
At the end of the day we’re extremely well adapted to the sun for the most part, within reason.
I’ll say that I think if the situation was truly as simple and non-nuanced as you describe, I wouldn’t have any reason to be confused or uncertain on the topic.
But as stated, since even those who adhere to best practices seem to be at higher risk with compound exposure, I think your claim of simple acclimation is a little lacking. I think there is truth in what you say, but far from the whole truth and it is what is missing which eludes me as well.
Old school sun block was mostly zinc oxide in paste form, so not really cancerous
You have to remember that people generally wore long sleeve clothing and hats. They did not expose much skin to the sun historically
That’s a great question! We didn’t really need sunscreen in prehistoric time because we adapted to the environments that we lived in and we didn’t migrate to new environments as quickly as we could in later times. Those adaptations are getting more tan more easily and growing thicker skin. We can still see this now in people who don’t use sunscreen and their skin looks tougher and more leathery. Also, there were some ancient sunscreens ranging from simple mud to pastes made from ground plants.
People have been making clothing for ~5 million years or so.
Well there is that protective layer in the atmosphere that we fucked up.
The ozone layer is slowly healing itself, but we still have a long way to go before it is stable again.
Also as others pointed out, we don’t work the fields and spend most of our time outside any more…so the natural protection isn’t building up like it did in the past.
Have you ever seen an Australian rancher? They look like boiled lobsters
When you get old and spend a lot of time outdoors, you look like a dried up prune. Regardless of skin color, typically
