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Comment by amalag | Hacker News Reader

What load of bullshit. It does not even mention pasteurization. As most of the uninformed comments on this page as well. As a comment rightly notes:

Raw milk contains lactase producing bacteria, so anyone consuming milk in its raw form would be able to digest it without any digestion problems. Only pasteurized milk is lactase free as heating destroys the bacteria that produce the enzyme. Most milk historically would have been consumed raw so an adaptation to produce lactase would have been unnecessary and would not provide a significant competitive advantage.

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It's amazing how quickly that claim falls to basic research: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/BuyStor...

> Probiotic microorganisms must be of human origin in order to have an impact on human health (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). Bacteria present in raw milk are from infected udder tissues (e.g., mastitis causing bacteria), the dairy environment (e.g., soil, water, and cow manure), and milking equipment. High bacteria counts in raw milk only indicate poor animal health and poor farm hygiene.

> Bacteria in raw milk are typically not of human origin. An exception is Streptococcus pyogenes. S. pyogenes that has adapted to humans can be transmitted to animals. Once S. pyogenes is colonized in animals, it can be re-transmitted to humans as a human pathogen that causes strep throat. For example, S. pyogenes can infect a cow udder to cause mastitis. The infected cow udder can subsequently shed S. pyogenes, a pathogen, into raw milk.

This is one reason many people are wary of 'raw milk': People lie to promote it. They tell bald-faced lies, and they expect people won't check up on them. And then they spin conspiracy theories when someone does check up on them and call them on their lies. It's just cynical advertising from an industry that uses fear to sell its wares.

His claim is basically true that (pure, uninfected) raw milk is better for you than regular milk. Good luck being able to buy pure uninfected raw milk. I suppose its the hand of Darwin striking down the gullible, and/or the children of the gullible. His lie is more by omission in that its a fairly idiotic way to obtain nutrition. If you must drink something unhealthy try corn syrup soda, or fruit juice, might make you unhealthy in the long run but at least probably not infected.

The best comparison is by analogy in that a raw bratwurst will provide you with a tiny delta better nutrition than a cooked bratwurst. There seems to be no way to successfully argue it isn't better. Although you'd have to be some kind of idiot to eat a raw bratwurst other than some kind of MTV "jackass" tv show stunt to see just how badly you can food poison yourself and still survive.

> The best comparison is by analogy in that a raw bratwurst will provide you with a tiny delta better nutrition than a cooked bratwurst.

I don't think this is strictly true, it's more complicated than that. You increase the bioavailability of many of the nutrients (especially proteins) by cooking, but lose some of the vitamins which are heat sensitive.

OK fair point. Probably the right way to do it (which would result in arguments...) would be to create a numerical metric of "goodness" based on a huge number of known macro and micro nutrients found in brats.

I was thinking in my numerical function that total caloric intake is going to be reduced by rendering out fat in the cooking process so it would be a net loss. I was inspired to google and pork is a reasonably good source of vitamin B-6 would have to research its heat stability which I'm not quite motivated enough to do. Also I'm unclear if my google source is talking about B-6 pre or post cooking. It may be there's too much pre cooking (probably not, but maybe)

Haha your reply made me smile :) That would be a really interesting thing to do. It would be cool to have an optimum cooking range for different nutritional benefits. I wonder what nutritional values, outside of fat of course, our tastes are most calibrated for.

The key FDA claim: "There are no beneficial bacteria in raw milk for gastrointestinal health." And their support for that is that "Probiotic microorganisms must be of human origin in order to have an impact on human health (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000). " So with this logic we sterilize milk to reduce harmful bacteria from commercial farming methods with the theory that there is nothing beneficial in raw milk. Congratulations on that logic

The real reason for pasteurization is the benefit to large scale commercial dairy farming. Non-pasteurized milk will spoil soon, but once you kill all the bacteria, it will stay longer, thus allowing a supply chain and warehouses full of "milk" at Costco. I am fortunate enough to be able to drink it regularly, but with US laws intended to support large scale commercial operations, I don't know for how long.

> The real reason for pasteurization is the benefit to large scale commercial dairy farming.

And here we go with the conspiracy theories. What's your biological training?

"Basic research" has been leading us to eradicate any and all microorganisms from our presence for decades. No doubt that this has been a great step forward in protection from acute illness, but far less is known about the tradeoffs we are making in terms of chronic disease.

As a case in point, it is generally known that children who grew up on farms have fewer allergies and asthma as adults. The mechanism behind this is not crystal clear, but raw milk consumption is a strong candidate. "Despite these risks there is a growing body of epidemiological evidence suggesting that consumption of unprocessed cow's milk does not increase but rather decreases the risk of asthma, hay fever and atopic sensitisation" (Braun-Fahrländer, C. and Von Mutius, E. (2011))

Treating the human body not as a magical place of cleanliness but as a germ-filled ecosystem is a critical step forward for science. We are only beginning to understand the role of things like gut bacteria in chronic diseases like obesity. I am personally less concerned what "basic research" has to say on the matter (germs make you sick, everyone knows this) and much more interested in the cutting-edge (certain germ exposures may prevent disease).

>Probiotic microorganisms must be of human origin in order to have an impact on human health (Teitelbaum and Walker, 2000).

That's a downright ludicrous claim, unless they're claiming priobiotic == human origin by definition, and not the more normal definition of "beneficial microorganisms, regardless of source". If this were true, then there would never be any probiotics, except for ones where our own cells mutated into bacteria. They came from somewhere. We don't have them all in all of us. That alone eliminates your entire argument.

> That alone eliminates your entire argument.

Sure. I believe you. What, if any, training in biology have you had?

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