Political Theory

Re: Milk.

Al_Gore the Idiot — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:52:04 GMT

I have not drank conventional dairy milk in years. I made a switch to organic dairy milk and drank that for a few years. Now I drink rice based organic. I'm so used to it, I can't imagine drinking dairy anymore.

Conventionally raised cows, whom naturally feed on grass, are fed a grain based diet low in nutrition and high in chemicals. Often the grain is mixed with sawdust, cardboard, and even feces from other animals. Cows are injected growth hormones to make 'em grow as fast as possible. In fact American milk is banned in the EU because of the added hormones (specifically rBGH), which is linked to cancer. Dairy milk also causes excessive mucus production in many people.

Re: Milk.

Mike99 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:00:12 GMT

@Walden: really interesting post. On your point about using science to minimize risks but using it intelligently: this is why we steralize *bottles*, keep the mik *cold* if not being consumed straight away/ etc. There's also nothing wrong with testing milk for contamination of course. All of these things make sense. Pastaurization is a retarded manical response to the problem. The result: sickness. The health problems of pasteurized milk are well documented - and so are the things that are then allowed at least to some degree as an offshoot of that deviation from the norm - the chemicals, growth hormones, GMO, pesticides, antibiotics etc, that are in industrial milk.

In short pasteurization just makes it possible to sell filthy disease ridden milk that otherwise would not be fit for consumption. The *organic* raw milk crowd is on the right track.

Re: Milk.

Mike99 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:50:54 GMT

Anemone, you're factually wrong. I just addressed what you said "in all cases / under all circumstances". Of course, if you want to drink swill from a diseased cess pool, you better at least pasteurize it. That said, pastaurizing healthy, raw, organic milk from grass fed animals is detrimental, removes the benefit of the milk, and point of fact, makes it less safe, more unhealthy, espcially over the long term from all kinds of things other than bacterial infection. You're participating in a disucssion you seem to have very little knowledge on. The point is, you should not drink pasteurized milk. Now that you don't drink pasteurized milk, you would be wise to not drink filthy pus laden swill from a diseased animal, which is almost certianly what any industrially obtained milk IS going to be. Now you're left with one option if you still want to drink milk - get it from farmers you know and trust, who feed their animals only organic grass, whose animals are healthy, happy and well treated, and who you trust will be healthy at the time of milking. You then have two final safeguards against getting sick, your nose, and your tongue.

PS, the feeding of grain to cows instead of grass for a convenience and cost as a main diet is *one of the main things* that led to bacterial problems in milk. Grains cause cows to become acidic and this leads to a dying off of beneficial bacteria, and that made room for the opportunistic malicious bacteria. Instead of using brains, it was decided that the best idea was to deviate further from the norm, and to pasteurize, instead of saying "we can't feed cows grains, it makes them, and us, sick". Once that further deviation was normalized, it was then realised that you can get away with a *hell* of a lot of deviations from the norm, if you just pasteurize it. That of course was nothing but a race to the bottom.

Re: Milk.

Walden — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:24:34 GMT

@ Dave

There was once a study where researchers bred chickens for optimal egg production. The highest producing hens were reproduced while the lowest removed from the gene pool. It turns out the highest producing were also the most aggressive (most competitive for food). It created an overly stressful environment and caused a collapse in egg production.

In the case of diabetes, insulin resistance is a natural function of the cells so as to prevent sugar from entering the cell and killing it. The result is considered a 'disease,' or not optimal, but insulin resistance is in fact keeping the organism alive even if the mechanism can ultimately kill it.

What is 'optimal' is defined from mathematical models of closed systems. Any model is limited by which variables are considered and wherever the "best" outcome is plotted on a graph.

This is to say, evolution isn't "optimal" because our knowledge of what is optimal is based on models and is applied to reality in an imperfect matter. Nature does not 'optimize' because it is essentially playful and not directed by any rational or purposeful action.

The milieu of "modernity" took the veneration and acceptance of the natural course of things and rejected it. Nature was seen as just another machine and of course, machines can be modified. At the turn of the 20th century this reached a fever pitch, Darwinism became an obsession of the west. Consider the racial ideas of the Nazis, Marx's communist superman. This utopian thought persists in the egalitarian left (and safely ignored by the right who talk about "values" and such).

AE is so appealing because it is like a distilled rejection of this modern impulse in social spheres but I digress.

To the bacteria point: there exists more bacteria cells than human cells in your body. Nobody really knows how these interplay. Anti-biotics are known to kill gut bacteria which are necessary for breaking down food. There was a study demonstrating a link between gut backteria and *depression*.

Yes, milk might be a breeding ground for dangerous bacteria. But ultimately the good bacteria might be necessary. We can use science to reduce risks. But, in true statist form, the impulse was to then *kill* all the bacteria and to make these beneficial organism essentially illegal. One must move out of this mode of thinking.

Re: Milk.

jmorris84 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:53:02 GMT

k, see ya.

Re: Milk.

Anenome — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:50:52 GMT

/sigh.

Yes. I know alllllll about that.

And we're done. Keep drinking your milk. I never tried to dissuade you. But you're fooling yourself if you really think it's equally safe as pasteurized in all circumstances and on balance.

As for denaturing things with heat, it's what human beings do. Doesn't seem to have destroyed our diet so far.

Re: Milk.

jmorris84 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:42:33 GMT

Anenome, you do realize that there is already bacteria in the milk, right? Did you know that there are different types of bacteria; many being good? Without bacteria, we wouldn't be here.

Re: Milk.

Anenome — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:39:40 GMT

But before pasteurized goes 'really bad' it's considerably safer.

Re: Milk.

Mike99 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:34:40 GMT

When pasteurized milk goes bad, it goes really bad. While raw milk can go bad you have to realise it is a culture of bacteria already, now the bad bacteria must fight to populate it to a degree that it will make you sick before it will do so. In the raw milk, the bad bacteria has a fight on it's hands, in the pasteurized milk, although initially there is nothing "alive" in there, if it becomes contaminated, the bad bacteria has free reign to populate. Case in point, raw milk when left out will simply become "sour cream". How do you think yoghurt is made? by populating the milk with specific strains of bacteria. Cheese also. etc.

Re: Milk.

Anenome — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:25:05 GMT

Mike, welcome to the forums.

jmorris84:

Then why are you in this thread making such claims? I've done my homework and found that the claims you are making are pretty bogus. Since you're in here saying the things that you are, I don't feel like it is too much to back up what you are saying. Otherwise, it's just words with little to no meaning.

There should not be any argument that unpasteurized milk is more vulnerable to bacteria than pasteurized. If you don't accept that, there's no point. Everything follows from that.

Re: Milk.

Mike99 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 20:24:05 GMT

It goes like this, and it's really very straight forward common sense when you break it down. Raw natural milk has enzymes and normal, naturally forming bacteria that are very healthy and necessary for life. They are there by virtue of the cows own immune system, that allows their presence to the exclusion of harmful bacteria which are targets of the animals immune system, as is the case in our own bodies. The enzymes in particular are important for the break down of the milk proteins - for digestion. Pasteurization destroys most of these enzymes and probiotics (good bacteria), and alters the milk such that it is no longer the same substance it was. "Milk" is no longer "Milk". When you talk about pasteurized milk versus raw milk, you are not talking about the same thing, and that's a fact, in fact they are radically departed from one another. In terms of it's health effects, etc, they are two totally different things. Healthy bacterea are those that could be defined as forming a symbiotic relationship with the host. For example, some "good" intestinal bacteria will actually break down toxins and / or produce beneficial elements that our bodies need as by products. Harmful bacterea are the reverse, they are perhaps best defined by their ability to steal nutrition that we need, and produce toxic byproducts. Both types of bactera compete for dominanance in the human intestinal system, and they are an important and in fact key part of our immune system. Think of harmful bacteria like collectivists - they are opportunistic, strike where there is weakness. Healthy animals and humans don't have these in significant numbers - their numbers are controlled by the good bacteria - you can think of those ones as "liberty activists". We have at any one time up to several pounds of bacterea living on/in us, and they are a very neglected area of study when it comes to human immunity and health including brain and heart, and literally the whole body. Recent studies are proving just how important they are, making much of germ theory of the last century, as far as I can tell at this stage all but completely irrelevant. Many chronic diseases are significantly helped or even cured simply by restoring intestinal flora to a healthy balance, including cases of autism. One of the key ways to do this by drinking raw milk products. You can't do it with pasteurized milk, all the good stuff is destroyed by the pasteurization process. You might care to note that the aristorcratic money classes, such as the British royal family, only drink raw organic unpasteurized milk from their own farms. Can you think why that might be. Also I notice they seem to just almost refuse to die, living a LONG time, much to the displeasure of those who know what they live for.

If you are talking about raw milk from an industrialised milking farm, where the animals live in squalor and hideous conditions, where they hardly move, are tortured by the workers, fed with chemicals, pesticides and antibiotics, and are often so diseased that there are literally huge amounts of somatic cells (pus) in their milk, that is also often contaminated literally with faeces from diseased animals, then yes, if you insist on drinking something that disgusting and from such an unethical source, you really MUST pasteurize it, or you ARE likely to become sick, and possibly die. If that makes you feel better, alrighty then. Of course if you drink from a public toilet, or eat raw green rotting meat spinkled with sick pig droppings, out of a dumpster you will most likely also get very sick, and probably die - yet there are surely industrial processes that could make those things "safe" as well. Either way, to do either with full knowledge of what the thing is and to be ok with that.... I say, there's little available in the realm of the living to save you.

However, if you are talking about a healthy cow, treated well, that eats organic grass, has a strong immune system, is happy and well fed and milked to an amount that is not harmful or exploitative of the animal - in essence from an animal that is treated with a high standard of ethics - and the animal is not sick when milked - as they usually are likely to not be in such cases - then you are talking about something that is utterly different and unlike industrial pasteurized "milk". If for some reason an animal does become sick, if yo know the farm, and the people, and you act as an ethical consumer (that is to YOUR benefit), they will not milk that animal. And that is to THEIR benefit. You are a trusting, well paying loyal customer. If they make you sick, you will not buy from them again, and they lose. Pasteurization lets filthy, disgraceful horrors pass for food production, and unhealthy, poisonous garbage pass for food. Personally I drink raw cows milk all the time, from just such a farm of grass fed, organic, healthy and ethically treated animals. I know the people who run the farm well. I have never been sick from it. It is always extremely clean and fresh smelling, tastes great. I give it to my kids, relatives, and people who don't normally drink raw milk and didn't even know that it was. They never get sick. They always say how great it made them feel. I used to be very allergic to cows milk, and I rarely drank it. When I learned about the fraud that is "pasteurization", and what that really does to healthy *proper* food (not the garbage that passes for it), I tried it out and it did the reverse: not only did I not suffer allergies from it, since drinking raw milk other allergies I had that were not milk related have gradually disappeared. Yes, that is just one opinion, but you will find that across the board it is a highly common one.

So, people who say raw milk is dangerous, need to get the facts straight. They are, in my opinion and observation, no different than people who advocate things like stimulus spending as a "solution" to the booms and busts created by the fiat money system in the first place. They want morphine for the drug addict. They want to chop the limb for a treatable infection. They want to euthanise grandma when a treatment exists, when there is still a good chance. It's the same ideology, the same diseased lazy way of thinking that all these things stem from. They are ignorant, spouting fallacious inconsistencies, based on fraud, and usually they don't even know that. In other words, "money" is not necessarily "money", and so also in this world "milk" is not necessarily "milk", just as "food" is not necessarily "food". If you don't want to take the responsibility for this fact, then my advice is don't drink or consume any dairy or animal products. If you can't take the trouble to be assured of the source, you're better off without it. But hey, it's just my opinion.

By the way I'm new here, this is my first post (Hi). I came to read and maybe ask questions but I thought I'd chip in here on this thread. I'm very inspired and interested in the logic and philosophy of Mises, Ron Paul, Hayek, Hazlet, etc and I've read several of their books already. I feel grateful to be the beneficiary of their work. I feel that ignorance and lack of democracy ie. the free flow of information in the market place are the only problem humanity has. With that restored, I feel all problems would be resolved by humans themselves. We are not a virus, we are not a cancer, the world is not "better off without us". I think life is sacred and fantastic. There are some few psychopathic sick people in the world who consciously do evil for it's own sake, but they are in a vast minority, and if they weren't able to survive in it by the permission tacit or otherwise of the rest of us, that too would be a virtual non-issue. That said, I have many questions and that's why I came here, but just thought I would share this knowledge I have learned in the last few years.

Re: Milk.

jmorris84 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:27:07 GMT

Then why are you in this thread making such claims? I've done my homework and found that the claims you are making are pretty bogus. Since you're in here saying the things that you are, I don't feel like it is too much to back up what you are saying. Otherwise, it's just words with little to no meaning.

Re: Milk.

Anenome — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:16:59 GMT

jmorris84:

Why would I agree with that; especially considering you haven't made a valid argument with supporting facts that would prove or make a reasonable claim about such a thing? Your use of the word "risk" seems to be pretty loose as well. Am I more liable to die from drinking raw milk as compared to milk that is treated with high temperatures? Am I more liable to become more sick or ill? What type of illness am I more liable to get? Why is it that there are literally millions of people in the world drinking raw milk without a problem?

Yeah, we're gonna agree to disagree at this point. I think you're a partisan on this who's either not aware or unwilling to accept the facts regarding milk-bacteria and pasteurization. I don't intend to do your homework for you, and I don't care enough about the issue to debate it.

People have really weird and weirdly strong beliefs about food. Arguing with people about GMO foods is equally boring to me.

Re: Milk.

SkepticalMetal — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:08:11 GMT

My Mom used to buy Organic Valley's milk, and now she only buys stuff like Almond milk.

Re: Milk.

jmorris84 — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:07:21 GMT

Why would I agree with that; especially considering you haven't made a valid argument with supporting facts that would prove or make a reasonable claim about such a thing? Your use of the word "risk" seems to be pretty loose as well. Am I more liable to die from drinking raw milk as compared to milk that is treated with high temperatures? Am I more liable to become more sick or ill? What type of illness am I more liable to get? Why is it that there are literally millions of people in the world drinking raw milk without a problem?