"Raw milk"

[ponderingturtle]

pgwenthold -you might be surprised. I have run into some people who think anything sour or fermented is somehow healthier. In any case, raw milk fanatics claim it sours differently, supposedly proving that it's more wholesome. They say that raw milk "sours naturally" while pasteurized milk "putrefies."

This sounds like a job for surströmming, if fermented herring can not cure this idea, I don't know what can.

 

[Jorghnassen]

This sounds like a job for surströmming, if fermented herring can not cure this idea, I don't know what can.

I wish I could have some surströmming again. Unfortunately, I'm not planning on going to Sweden anytime soon.

And this thread reminded me of this:

For example, if I know that in America the cheese is dead, which means is pasteurized, which means legally dead and scientifically dead, and we don't want any cheese that is alive, then I have to put that up front. I have to say this cheese is safe, is pasteurized, is wrapped up in plastic. I know that plastic is a body bag. You can put it in the fridge. I know the fridge is the morgue; that's where you put the dead bodies. And so once you know that, this is the way you market cheese in America.

I started working with a French company in America, and they were trying to sell French cheese to the Americans. And they didn't understand, because in France the cheese is alive, which means that you can buy it young, mature or old, and that's why you have to read the age of the cheese when you go to buy the cheese. So you smell, you touch, you poke. If you need cheese for today, you want to buy a mature cheese. If you want cheese for next week, you buy a young cheese. And when you buy young cheese for next week, you go home, [but] you never put the cheese in the refrigerator, because you don't put your cat in the refrigerator. It's the same; it's alive. We are very afraid of getting sick with cheese. By the way, more French people die eating cheese than Americans die. But the priority is different; the logic of emotion is different. The French like the taste before safety. Americans want safety before the taste.

From this frontline interview.

 

[Madalch]

In any case, raw milk fanatics claim it sours differently, supposedly proving that it's more wholesome. They say that raw milk "sours naturally" while pasteurized milk "putrefies."

A data point- my wife agrees with you. She grew up in the Soviet Onion (yes, she hates it when I call it that, which is why I do it), where milk was always obtained from the farmer, and enjoyed as often sour as it was fresh.

Her experiments in trying to make sour milk with pastuerized Canadian milk did not yield anything she considered consumable. In her words, it didn't go sour, it simply rotted.

 

[ysabella]

ysabella--does the handout claim they sour in the same way? It looks like the point of the experiment is to find out if they sour in the same way. Even though the same strains of bacteria are involved there are still other factors, like number of bacteria, substrains of bacteria, and so on.

The handout says:

"In both pasteurized and raw milk, various microorganisms
succeed one another as the chemical environment of
the milk changes. The microbes themselves bring about
these changes. The stages of microbial growth are Streptococcus,
then Lactobacillus, then yeasts and molds, and
finally Bacillus.
Streptococci convert the milk sugar (lactose) to lactic
acid. The acidity of the milk increases to the point where
further streptococci growth is inhibited. Lactobacilli then
begin to grow and convert the remaining lactose into lactic
acid. Acidity increases further until Lactobacilli growth is
suppressed. The lactic acid sours the milk and curdles
(coagulates) the milk protein. Yeasts and molds grow well
in this acid environment, and they convert acid into nonacid
products. Finally, bacilli multiply in the environment
where protein is the only nutrient available."

Pasteurization will have made a log reduction in the bacilli, so there are quite a lot less of them to get started on it. Perhaps the same thing happens, it just starts more slowly?

A lot of these "sour milk" recipes are based on the scenario where you milk the cow twice a day and have no refrigerator. The milk sits in the pail until you get around to cooking with it. It would be a good experiment to try souring warm, fresh, unhomogenized pasteurized and unpasteurized milk, but I've never had access to both of them at the same time.

Yeah, I know I can get the raw milk from the local food co-op (I live in a very granola kind of town) but I'm not sure about the pasteurized, unhomogenized (I've seen it in California as "cream-top" milk from Straus dairy, but I'm not sure around here). But I can phone around. Tacoma or Seattle is bound to have it somewhere, if not Olympia itself.

I'll ask my Mom when I get a chance. She grew up on a dairy farm and became a dietitian. She's a big advocate of the "food intervention" movement--iodized salt, fortified flour, vitamins A & D in milk, etc. A lot of the foodies and the health quacks are reacting against that stuff.

I'd love to hear what she thinks.

 

[ysabella]

This sounds like a job for surströmming, if fermented herring can not cure this idea, I don't know what can.

Or perhaps Hákarl, the Icelandic buried/rotted shark treat?

Fresh news today about raw milk: Drinking farm milk reduces childhood asthma and allergies but raw consumption remains unsafe:

"All the children drinking unpasteurised farm milk and eating other farm-related dairy products showed the same level of protection against asthma and allergies, regardless of whether they were living on a farm or not" says lead author Marco Waser, a doctor in natural sciences from the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

"This is an important finding as it rules out other protective factors that farm life may provide, such as exposure to microbial compounds in animal shed and farm homes. For example, earlier studies have shown that farm children are less likely to be affected by pollen.

"Our research showed that the children who enjoyed the best protection from asthma and allergies had been drinking farm milk since their first year of life."

About half of the parents who told researchers that their child regularly drank farm milk said that they did not boil the milk before giving it to them. The protective results were the same, regardless of whether milk was boiled or not.

However, as drinking raw milk is not recommended, especially for young children, this may have encouraged parents to say they boiled milk when they didn’t, indicating a higher level of raw milk consumption.

This is a bit iffy, but they seem to have found a correlation. I wonder if it's just that kids need to be exposed to germs, and they get more in the raw milk?

I even ran into a woman drinking raw milk when she was pregnant, on one forum. That bothered me, because my mom had told me some stories about babies born with listeriosis because the mother drank raw milk (my mom's an MD). But the woman had her healthy baby arrive just fine, I'm glad to say.

 

[ysabella]

A data point- my wife agrees with you. She grew up in the Soviet Onion (yes, she hates it when I call it that, which is why I do it), where milk was always obtained from the farmer, and enjoyed as often sour as it was fresh.

Her experiments in trying to make sour milk with pastuerized Canadian milk did not yield anything she considered consumable. In her words, it didn't go sour, it simply rotted.

Thanks, Madalch. I am open to the possibility that it works that way. I think homogenization could be an interesting data point, too.

 

[Rolfe]

Buying "raw" milk and then boiling it?? Which planet are these people on?

Do they have the foggiest idea what pasteurisation actually involves?

It's the heating of milk to a temperature below boiling point (about 60C if my memory is correct), and holding it there for about half an hour before rapidly cooling it again. The whole point being that while boiling the stuff would inevitably achieve the same if not more reduction in bacterial content, it changes the physical properties and taste of the milk very substantially, and is not popular with consumers. Many people (myself included) very much dislike UHT milk, which is effectively sterile because it has been treated at above boiling point, but which tastes radically different. Pasteurisation is designed to achieve a significant reduction in bacterial content without subjecting the milk to temperatures which change its properties as radically as boiling.

Boiling milk will achieve something between pasteurisation and UHT, but will definitely change the taste in a similar way to UHT.

What was the point in buying unpasteurised milk again?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm not sure about the pasteurized, unhomogenized (I've seen it in California as "cream-top" milk from Straus dairy, but I'm not sure around here).

Funny, that. That was the standard sort of basic ordinary milk I had delivered to my doorstep every morning in Sussex, until I moved last October.

I used to save the top of the milk as a treat with coffee or porridge. I sort of miss being able to do that with the homogenised supermarket stuff I'm buying now, but on the other hand I'm getting to like the slightly more creamy taste of all the bottle.

I've noticed a few times recently that I seem to prefer the taste of the homogenised, pasteurised bog-standard supermarket product once it is getting closer to its use-by date (stored in the fridge). Brand new from the shop, it seems relatively bland. But I haven't done any formal trials, it was just an impression.

The one time I went to the US, and I was with my hostess in the supermarket and she was asking what sort of milk to buy. (I'd turned up with the wherewithal to make tea, as had another Brit in the party.) There was an enormous range of choices, things with added this and that I'd never seen before, but I just kept saying "ordinary milk". Coo juice, as my biochemistry professor used to say at coffee time. Didn't seem possible to get. What we eventually settled on was something which I thought had only vitamin D added, which seemed likely to be relatively "natural", but it still tasted odd to me. So I wonder if the situation is the US is a bit different from in the UK.

I also remember being in Germany, and one lunch was courtesy of the German Milk Marketing Board. I went hungry. I don't like yoghurt or buttermilk or anything like that, and that's all there was. No actual milk, not even any ordinary cream. At meals, the milk on the table was very processed, seemingly more processed than UHT. Not nice in tea. I later read in Bernard Levin's memoirs that the only way to get ordinary milk in Germany is to request "trinkmilch", quite forcefully. I'm not sure if that would have worked in the Bayreuth Jugendherberge though!

So there does seem to be quite wide local variation in what you get as standard when you ask for milk.

Rolfe.

 

[Aepervius]

When I was younger we had to get the milk in one of those metal container, at my parent home. It was even sometime still warm from the milking... I hated the taste of it, it tasted like butter. I would never drink that thing if I can help it.

 

[ChristineR]

It's completely different in the U.S. Rolfe. What you call "ordinary" milk is all but impossible to find. Most U.S. milk is the horrible watery stuff. It's probably easier to get black market raw milk from a small farmer than to get pasteurized "ordinary" milk.

And Florida is a pretty odd place as it is, with an economy based on old people who have sold off all their assets and have come to Florida to spend money before they die. There are plenty of young working people in Florida, but they are quite poor compared to their counterparts in other parts of the US, and often racial minorities.

 

[jon]

It's completely different in the U.S. Rolfe. What you call "ordinary" milk is all but impossible to find. Most U.S. milk is the horrible watery stuff. It's probably easier to get black market raw milk from a small farmer than to get pasteurized "ordinary" milk.

Maybe I've got no taste - but milk from wholefoods market in the US tasted much like UK supermarket stuff to me. Milk from 7/11 didn't taste all that different, either...

 

[ChristineR]

Maybe I've got no taste - but milk from wholefoods market in the US tasted much like UK supermarket stuff to me. Milk from 7/11 didn't taste all that different, either...

If I'm understanding Rolfe correctly, Milk from 7/11, Wholefoods, and a UK supermarket are all pretty much the same thing, and not what he would call "ordinary" milk at all.

 

[Bikewer]

They had an interesting segment on this on NPR a few months ago. Some guy wanted to be a gentleman farmer and bought a farm complete with a few dairy cows.
Soon after, he was approached by a number of individuals who wanted to buy raw milk from the cows.
Turns out this was illegal, under that particular state's laws. He could use all he wanted as the owner of the animal, but no resale allowed.

So, they formed a consortium of sorts, with a number of raw-food types buying "shares" of the cows. Since they were all owners.....


I've been happy with the commercially packaged stuff for most all my 60 years.

 

[Rolfe]

So far as I can tell (having worked on a dairy farm as a student), full-cream pasteurised milk differs only subtly from the same stuff straight out of the cow, if at all. This is the whole point of the design of the pasteurisation process! (I'm talking used fresh, I accept the cheese-making properties will probably be a lot different.)

Both differ massively from all the treated, fortified, flavoured and so on milks you can buy in the supermarket. And, by the way, from boiled milk, which is only fit for making cocoa in my opinion. They even differ quite markedly from pasteurised homogenised milk, though I have to say I don't have an issue with the homogenised milk - what you lose in "the top off the bottle", you gain in not having a cream ring - which tends to sour quickly - round every milk container you use. But if I didn't like homogenised, I'm pretty sure I could find someone selling unhomogenised milk here - as I said, it was the standard supply where I lived in Sussex.

Is it possible all this fuss has nothing to do with pasteurisation at all, and is simply the only way these people in the US can get at milk without someone processing it into an entirely different beast altogether? If they simply can't buy ordinary pasteurised-but-otherwise-untreated milk, then there's no way to make any comparison.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

If I'm understanding Rolfe correctly, Milk from 7/11, Wholefoods, and a UK supermarket are all pretty much the same thing, and not what he would call "ordinary" milk at all.

No, I'd probably call that "ordinary", except that it's homogenised, which as I said above, I certainly notice, but don't have a problem with.

In the US (Hendersonville, Tennessee), the nearest we could seem to get was "D-milk" or something like that, which looked normal enough, and which I hoped was just ordinary pasteurised homogenised with added vitamin D. But it tasted really weird. Not as weird as the stuff they give you in Germany, which is close to what I'd call evaporated milk, but still peculiar.

Rolfe.

 

[ChristineR]

All milk sold at 7/11, US supermarkets, and Wholefoods is pasteurized, homogenized, and watered to the legal consistency. It is all also "Vitamin A & D" milk which is what you didn't like the taste of. I don't know if it's the vitamins, or just something else.

All this milk is also Holstein milk, which is pale blue in color and tastes pretty wretched. The Wholefoods version is organic, which makes no noticeable difference.

I currently have the good fortune to live close to a dairy which keeps Guernsey cows and sells pasteurized milk in whole, skim, 2%, 1% and unhomogenized varieties. It is sold at a limited number of locally owned markets. It contains vitamins A&D.

When I lived in Florida, I was able to buy black market raw milk.

These three are the only milk choices I have ever seen in the US. So yes, for these folks there only choices are raw milk and the unrecognizable processed stuff. And they're lucky to have raw milk as an option. You have to know someone who will introduce you to the farmer, and you will have to drive to his farm or meet him somewhere if he happens to truck it into town.

 

[Rolfe]

Most daily cows around here are Friesian/Holstein, though with Ayrshire lurking there as most were bred from original Ayrshire stock some generations ago. It's axiomatic that Ayshire milk was better, and farmers only switched to Friesians because the bull calves made better beef. However, more recently there has been a concerted effort to breed for good milk production above all, and hang the bull calves (not literally, one hopes!). Some very high standards have been reached. So far as I know, milk isn't watered. You can get full cream (4% butterfat), semi-skimmed or skimmed. All pasteurised and usually homogenised, but with no other additives. It tastes fine.

I can't see why fortifying with a few vitamins should make any difference. But that milk did taste very strange. And there were loads of other things on the shelves too, flavours and all sorts. You can buy flavoured milk here too, but it's a small section as opposed to the huge crates and buckets of "ordinary" milk. (Premium milks such as Channel Island would be small specialist shelves as well.) The D-milk or whatever it was we got in Tennessee was presented just as one choice out of many, I didn't see the same huge stockpiles of what was obviously "just milk".

It's possible some of this is due to the dairy herd. Since there isn't a huge trade in bull semen across the Atlantic, I surmise that what we call a Holstein or Friesian might be quite a bit different from the "same breed" in the States.

Bottom line, is there any appreciable taste difference which is simply attributable to pasteurisation, by itself, as a process? Anything that makes the risk of consuming pasteurised milk worth while?

Is there any health benefit of unpasteurised milk, sufficient to justify taking the undoubted health risks? Even if it were proven that there might be a benefit to the developing immune system by exposing it to more bacteria, would this outweigh these risks? (NO!)

What is going through the minds of people who take the trouble to source unpasteurised milk, often illegally, and then BOIL IT??? Boiling does exactly what pasteurisation does only more of it and more crudely, so that certainly the milk should be safe, but the taste is definitely altered a lot (and not for the better).

I simply don't get the rationale for what is going on here.

Rolfe.

 

[ChristineR]

Well, there are is a fair amount of woo in this, but the people who are buying unpasteurized milk and boiling it (probably) do not have any other source of unhomogenized milk. It may also be the only form of Guernsey (or other breed) milk.

I can buy it, but only because I'm lucky enough to live in a wealthy community with a lot of health food types. The market determines what sort of milk is going to be sold. If enough people are demanding raw milk for its alleged health benefits and there is no market for quality pasteurized milk, your choices will be completely raw and completely processed.

As for people buying raw to ferment it, I suspect that these are mostly health faddists with the occasional elderly person who misses the old milk.

 

[Freethinker]

Most daily cows around here are Friesian/Holstein, though with Ayrshire lurking there as most were bred from original Ayrshire stock some generations ago. It's axiomatic that Ayshire milk was better, and farmers only switched to Friesians because the bull calves made better beef.

The primary appeal of the Holstein is it's massive gut capacity and ability to use that gut to turn massive amounts of concentrated feed into milk. More traditional dairy cattle like Guernseys and Jerseys are better at producing milk an a more typical pasture diet. Holsteins, at least in the US, are on the verge of becoming like domesticated turkeys, in that they may not survive out on pasture like other breeds can. They have vast feed requirements, and udders that almost prevent them from walking to graze and that produce far more milk than a calf could consume.

 

[Rolfe]

The Freisian/Holsteins around here graze outside as routine. And the udder conformation has improved markedly since the breed was first introduced in the 1960s and 70s. I haven't seen one with a badly pendulous udder for quite some time. Udder conformation is one of the criteria selected for in the breeding programme.

Certainly all dairy cows produce much more milk than a single calf can consume. Jersey, Ayrshire, you name it.

If this is all just about sourcing milk that hasn't been processed out of all recognition, I wonder why someone doesn't start marketing milk which has only undergone the legal pasteurisation process and nothing else. Sounds as if there is a market right there.

Rolfe.