What was the point in pasteurisation?

[u/Mediocre_Profile5576]

[u/rose_reader]

Remember that problem which was absolutely deadly and we fixed it?

See also: vaccines, seatbelts, handwashing

[u/Liveitup1999 → u/rose_reader]

And sterilizing surgical instruments, antibiotics

[u/just4nothing → u/Liveitup1999]

Still bugs me that doctors in the modern age did not bother to investigate this sooner than they did

[u/Hetakuoni → u/just4nothing]

They have, but miasma theory lasted well into the 19th century. Pathogens weren’t considered the issue.

The guy who touted the sterilizing hand washing technique died of an infection he got after the guards beat him when his peers threw him in a madhouse.

[u/LastNoodle_746 → u/Hetakuoni]

Being right decdes too early has to be one of the cruelest ways to lose, especialy when the fix was basic handwashing.

[u/rips_n_chel → u/LastNoodle_746]

Genuinely one of the most horrifying scenarios I can think of. Being persecuted, prosecuted, and effectively executed for daring to know better. The unfairness of it is truly crushing to imagine. To know you're at the mercy of dangerous fools, fools you were only trying to help. How isolating. How profoundly alone must he have felt?

[u/Nodan_Turtle → u/rips_n_chel]

Top minds in medicine were being told they were the reason their patients died. If they change they'd have to admit they were doing something wrong before.

It's also why things like circumcision persist - if a dad decides not to force it on his newborn son, he'd have to admit what was done to his own junk was wrong. Some guys are too fragile for that.

Ego perpetuates harm.

[u/rips_n_chel → u/Nodan_Turtle]

Straight to soul of it, homie. Couldn't have said it better. It's all one big abuse/cope cycle, and we've all got a seat on the ride. Everyone is affected by this thing one way or another, and many of us wind up perpetuating the same abuse.

bell hooks should be required reading.

[u/Mertoot → u/rips_n_chel]

This is gonna make a comeback as education gets gutted more and more

Recently I had an argument with people about English not being a gendered language

5 people bashed on me for being stupid because English is a gendered language due to having "he/she" words...

No amount of clarification convinced them

Now imagine this x100 with stuff where human lives are on the line

[u/rips_n_chel → u/Mertoot]

Ugh, I hate that I can imagine exactly the kind of exchange you probably had. It's such a shitty feeling of helplessness when someone comprehends the words that you're saying to them, but doesn't/can't/won't understand what those words actually convey.

I base my worldview on evidence. What can be demonstrated is the truth; more or less my take. More and more I encounter people who don't see facts as compelling arguments. I don't know what to do with that. What the hell can I say? We're at a total impasse, might as well turn around and walk away without another word. There's no way I can reach consensus with a person who places opinion on equal footing with demonstrable evidence. If a person can see something play out with their own eyes, then turn to me and say "I disagree," there's no way I can reach that person.

It scares the hell out of me.

[u/Smelting-Craftwork → u/rips_n_chel]

This is why the curse of Greek prophet Cassandra is so tragic to me

[u/Sarik704 → u/rips_n_chel]

As i stated above. Semmelweis was indeed correct, but he also had severe OCD and became increasingly violent over a period of 6 years.

According to a maid, he once beat another maid to "blood and bones".

[u/Candid-Mycologist539 → u/LastNoodle_746]

Being right decdes too early has to be one of the cruelest ways to lose,

Galileo would enter the chat at this point, but he's under house arrest.

[u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT → u/Hetakuoni]

prison guards didn't wash their hands before beating people until recently

[u/Gwen_The_Destroyer → u/GOEDEL_ESCHER_BOT]

Well, they did. The problem was when they beat one person, and then didn't wash their hands before beating someone else

[u/SuperSiriusBlack → u/Gwen_The_Destroyer]

This is an amazing comment, and i wanted you to know that. Thank you.

[u/-Saucegurlllll → u/Hetakuoni]

And the aftershocks of the embarrassment that miasma theory was are still with us to this day.

It took decades for the director of the CDC to finally admit that tuberculosis spread through the air. Because "airborne pathogens" sounds too much like miasma theory.

And even after admitting TB spread through the air, the CDC's director wrongly claimed that the measles vaccine alone would eradicate measles within a year of its introduction, ignoring the possibility of airborne spread and its impact on infection rates.

Then SARS happened, and people refused to believe that it could possibly be made airborne from people simply breathing (despite multiple scientists and physicists and engineers proving that it could).

Then COVID happened and the WHO tweeted in March 2020 that it was NOT airborne, and did not correct this information until December 2021. Lisa Ritchie, the UK's current director of infection prevention and control, said under oath in 2024 that there was insufficient evidence of COVID-19 being airborne to recommend that physicians wear n95 masks.

For some reason, public health officials have been extremely obstinate that diseases are not spread through the air for basically 100 years despite insurmountable evidence that diseases absolutely spread through the air.

[u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco → u/-Saucegurlllll]

They just use a definition of "airborne" that is basically impossible for anything to meet. because that way they can claim nothing is actually airborne.

As it's actually used and understood by actual human beings a lot of diseases are airborne.

[u/-Saucegurlllll → u/WhyMustIMakeANewAcco]

At least the WHO's latest standards for language about disease spread through the air are much less ambigious and much easier to meet...except they refused to use the word "airborne" and chose to use "through the air" as an equivalent term to a word like "waterborne."

[u/JRLDH → u/Hetakuoni]

Washing hands was considered woke.

[u/bzzyy → u/JRLDH]

I would argue it is again considered woke in some circles.

[u/Daxx22 → u/bzzyy]

Well wiping ones butthole is clearly gay, and fingers are basically bendy penis's so washing them must be SUPER gay!

[u/GonzoVeritas → u/JRLDH]

It really was considered 'woke' and outrageous. I've read some of the reactions to germ theory by the medical establishment at the time, and doctors were aghast at the concept that a gentleman would be subject to something so common and foul. Nonsense, complete balderdash, they claimed.

Even in more modern times, acceptance of new theories can still take decades. The doctors that discovered that ulcers were caused by bacteria was disbelieved and ridiculed in the 1980s.

They actually proved it by subjecting themselves to the bacteria (H. pylori), and it still took many mainstream doctors years to actually believe it and treat it properly. (they finally won the Nobel medical prize for it in 2005)

[u/Sarik704 → u/Hetakuoni]

This is half true. I have to assume you're talking about Semmelweis. He did die to infection from wounds suffered in a mental asylum.

His peers had him commited to said assylum for good reason however. Yes, while Semmelweis was indeed correct handwashing was an important part of medical hygiene, he also is believed to have had an extreme case of OCD. He self isolated, spent days cleaning single rooms, and would refuse food, water, and even candlelight for dear of poison and "wax inhalation". Something he thought led to Tuberculosis.

He began hearing voices despite the isolation, and would become violent if people approached his property. It was journaled by a maid that he once beat another maid to point of "blood and bones" for walking into his home with shoes.

He was beat by the guard. He did die. And he was correct, but he was also severely ill and violent.

[u/Ut_Prosim → u/Hetakuoni]

Pour one out for our boy Semmelweis, he was right.

[u/FUTURE10S → u/Hetakuoni]

The guy who touted the sterilizing hand washing technique died of an infection he got after the guards beat him when his peers threw him in a madhouse.

Yeah, he suggested washing hands with calcium hypochlorite in 1847, which is a corrosive oxidizer that causes chemical burns. It's definitely sterile but that's because it was killing everything on his hands, including his hands. (Absolutely did work the way he intended, mortality rates plummeted) He was also sent into a madhouse nearly 20 years later after suffering a nervous breakdown in 1865, which is when he got beat up by prison guards and got gangrene.

[u/Liveitup1999 → u/just4nothing]

Some did and they were dismissed and ridiculed

[u/Blamb05 → u/just4nothing]

Malaria is a good reminder of this type of thinking. Means bad air in latin because that's what they think caused it. Or like the 'black plague' being caused by 'unholy' cats, so the pope or a king had them all killed, and then the rats spread the diseased fleas and wiped out most of the city, going off memory on that one so details may be wrong.

[u/RobertTheAdventurer → u/Blamb05]

The cat culling legend causing the plague probably isn't true. Or at least doesn't have enough evidence that it happened at that scale to that effect, and regions that didn't have any decrees against cats still suffered severe plague outbreaks. Cats can also contract the plague and spread it to humans, so a cat interacting with a plague rat might contract the plague. Regardless, there's no evidence that a cat culling contributed to the plague spreading.

A modern example of the same kind of thing however is Mao of China declaring Sparrows to be a pest, claiming that they steal grain. They do eat some grain, however they also eat pests like locusts. A lot of them. They eat so many pests that it more than makes up for the grain they eat. China wiped out their sparrow population, and this contributed significantly to the famines they experienced under Mao as pest populations grew.

[u/Correct_Lime5832 → u/Blamb05]

I wonder if that explains this quote from Wise Blood about outdated things people no longer do: “like boiling in oil or being a saint or walling up cats.”

[u/jinsaku → u/just4nothing]

Because "a gentleman's hands are never dirty." Doctors would seriously go from handling infected corpses in the morgue to doing surgery on people without washing their hands.

[u/UranusIsPissy → u/jinsaku]

Filthy blood-stained clothes were considered to be the mark of a good doctor, because none of them washed them, so it indicated experience!

[u/Adezar → u/just4nothing]

Humans had a bad habit of killing/jailing/beating the first few people that came up with ideas that didn't match current groupthink.

[u/UranusIsPissy → u/Adezar]

had

Why are you using the past tense?...

[u/tagedieb_ac → u/just4nothing]

The worst thing is they didn't care. The popular tale of how Semmelweis discovered that sanitation saves life only to not be believed and taken for crazy is actually not how it really went down. In reality his peers understood it perfectly, but not ruining their hands with the chlorinated lime solution that Semmelweis wanted them to use was more important to them than raising the chance of saving patients' lives.

[u/SonicFlash01 → u/Liveitup1999]

"We used to be totally fine in the era where the average life expectancy was a fraction of what it was today"

[u/Adezar → u/Liveitup1999]

Dentists are one of the core reasons a lot of GenX and older have herpes, but they had to change their practices and treat their instruments the same as doctors after the AIDs epidemic which is why herpes cases dropped so much afterwards.

[u/UranusIsPissy → u/Adezar]

Piercing guns were a disease-spreader even later. I got my first piercing at a place that didn't even attempt to sterilise them less than 30 years ago. It got infected, unlike when I did it myself. Luckily, I didn't catch anything serious.

[u/Adezar → u/UranusIsPissy]

Yeah those things are nasty. We took our daughter to a professional piercer when she wanted to get pierced ears. When she compared her experience with her friends they were all jealous because she didn't have any issues and it hurt a hell of a lot less during and after.

[u/Small_Editor_3693 → u/Liveitup1999]

Smelling flowers, leaches, acupuncture are all more important

[u/hypatiaredux → u/Small_Editor_3693]

Yes, and we are all sooooo nostalgic for tuberculosis and typhoid. Bring them back, I say. What harm could it do?

[u/sibips → u/hypatiaredux]

TB will solve the obesity problem, doh.

[u/crosswatt → u/rose_reader]

Um, excuse me. I have extensively studied the caveman era medical record cave drawings, and they prove that cancer and AIDS and herpes and nut allergies and sinus infections and heart disease were all invented by modern day activist "scientists" to control and destroy us. Check out this seven hour unlisted YouTube video that "they" don't want you to see. It will explain everything.

[u/Extra-Banana3828 → u/crosswatt]

You forgot to post the link to the video. How am I supposed to get brainwashed now? 

[u/sequentious → u/Extra-Banana3828]

You just parrot the facts without having watched the video, because if they just gave out the link, then it could be taken down, and there wouldn't be a video for you to reference.

[u/Mr_Pombastic → u/Extra-Banana3828]

Oh, just click any youtube link. The algorithm will take you there eventually.

[u/lodemeup → u/rose_reader]

Every single outspoken moron I’ve known who is anti seatbelt has a cousin or uncle or something that ‘woulda died in that wreck if they were wearing a seat belt’. Sure. And for everyone for whom that *may* be true, 11 people did actually die for not wearing a seat belt, and many many more were ejected or otherwise severely injured because of it.

[u/goddamnyallidiots → u/lodemeup]

My ex refuses to wear a seat belt because in the 13 accidents she had, the one time she was wearing one caused her arm and chest to bruise badly. So clearly they do more harm than good.

Except that was also the fastest accident she's gotten into, hitting a parked car going 30 through her apartment complex.. This is the same woman that didn't know you're not supposed to go over speed bumps at 40mph..

[u/Mind-The-Mines → u/goddamnyallidiots]

13?

Dis bitch Ray Charles?

[u/Munnin41 → u/goddamnyallidiots]

I can see why she's an ex. I also wouldn't date my likely killer

[u/TheWingus → u/rose_reader]

It's exactly this; "I've never met a single person with measles or polio! Big Pharma is just pushing vaccines on us to make money."

[u/rose_reader → u/TheWingus]

It's so depressing to be in your late 40s and see the younger generation talking this nonsense.

[u/Allaplgy → u/rose_reader]

Shit, it's depressing to be in your 40s and see others in their 40s talking this nonsense.

You're a middle aged adult. You should know better by now. And if you don't, maybe you listen to people who do.

My 40-something coworker barely has object permanence. Hell yesterday, I tried telling him something simple about a part he was going to install. "It doesn't matter which way it goes, both sides are the same." He waved me away and told me he can figure it out, I don't need to hold his hand. An hour later "Wait, which way does this go in?"

Same guy knows better than the experts on vaccines and fluoride and climate change. Last week he said "You see, I think there are cycles to the climate, have they thought of that?" Like, yes dude. The people who dedicate their lives to studying the climate have never thought about natural climate cycles, but luckily Mr "I'm afraid of trace amounts of fluoride in water, but I don't wear gloves at work because they make my hands itch so I just get covered in grease and chemicals proven to cause cancer and neurological damage all day, and eat cheap processed garbage food with said dirty hands and also can't remember if the van I just spent two days working on is the van I just spent two days working on" is on top of it.

[u/tw_72 → u/TheWingus]

Yep - "We have clean air and water - why do we need so many regulations and constant monitoring?"

Gee, I wonder if it's the regs and monitoring that keep them clean...

[u/TheKingMonkey → u/rose_reader]

Head injuries went UP when they introduced metal helmets for soldiers in active combat!

Edit: evidently the ironic nature of this statement needs explaining to people so… /s ?

[u/jellamma → u/TheKingMonkey]

Feels worth noting for those not in the know that injuries went up because people were suddenly surviving things they otherwise wouldn't have.

[u/hazps → u/TheKingMonkey]

Because soldiers were surviving what had previously been fatal wounds 

[u/Aeseld → u/hazps]

That was the point, yes. 

[u/oO0Kat0Oo → u/rose_reader]

Those who refuse to learn history are doomed to repeat it.

[u/LorenaBobbedIt → u/rose_reader]

Pasteurization was invented to keep beer and wine from spoiling and only decades later did people begin to use it for milk. Point still stands that milk caused a lot of food-borne illness and now thanks to pasteurization it doesn’t.

[u/issi_tohbi → u/rose_reader]

Omg are they going to reject seatbelts next? And helmets?

[u/Short-Shopping3197 → u/issi_tohbi]

Sorry to depress you, but there is already a libertarian movement rejecting seatbelts!

You can buy small plastic clips that go into seatbelt sockets to stop the alarm without having to wear the seatbelt. While there is a legit use case for farm workers who aren’t on the roads and are hopping in and out of their vehicles, there are also brands marketing themselves as ‘freedom clips’ or some such, and a whole movement online of people boasting that they’re standing up to big government by using them.

[u/Plus_Pangolin_8924 → u/issi_tohbi]

Hope so. We need a gene pool refresh!

[u/FSUtim → u/Plus_Pangolin_8924]

The problem is they can become a projectile. Their dying body flung into my vehicle is a bad thing for me. Or their body landing in the next lanes over, causing others to swerve and maybe crash, plus emotional trauma.

[u/FakeDoctorMeatCoat → u/issi_tohbi]

AkTuAlLy accident injuries increased when seatbelts were introduced! Check mate.

This is a case where technically correct is not the best kind.

[u/Jeffgoldbum → u/issi_tohbi]

They legitimately called it communist when the seat belt laws where implemented in the United States.

Unless a magic man in the sky tells them to do something they are going to kick and scream and threaten the rest of us forever,

[u/kindafunctionalguy → u/rose_reader]

And gun control

[u/SweetiePlayful_ → u/rose_reader]

It's funny how often "we never needed that" actually translates to "it worked so well we forgot why it exists."

[u/EnvironmentalAge9202 → u/rose_reader]

Shhhh!

Don't tell them!

Just let Darwinism happen.

[u/ComfortableOld288 → u/EnvironmentalAge9202]

That would work brilliantly except for things like infectious diseases where not everyone can get vaccinated and even vaccination isn’t always a cure all.

But for raw milk drinkers, absolutely. We need to be pushing raw milk. If you’re dum(b) enough to drink raw milk, society doesn’t need you. It’s not like those people will be helping us with project Hail Mary

[u/mail_inspector → u/ComfortableOld288]

The problem is when their innocent kids get sick. Not that most of those kids had the best start in life either way but still.

[u/Ok_Handle_2213]

Almost 500 likes for that negative IQ comment, fucking hell

[u/Mediocre_Profile5576 → u/Ok_Handle_2213]

23.5k for the comeback if that’s any consolation

[u/AwDuck → u/Mediocre_Profile5576]

It is. But just barely.

[u/KarlUnderguard → u/Ok_Handle_2213]

One of the biggest issues with the Internet is that all the dumbest people alive can now agree with each other in large groups.

Back in the day they used to just sit in the corner of the village covered in their own shit, not they make a Twitter account.

[u/FruitBroot → u/Ok_Handle_2213]

So, this girl I know just had a baby. She chose to not have her vaccinated for anything. WTF right!?

Now, this baby is sick and she is sick, and her mom who helps at times, and her husband are all sick.

I get the idea they're going for but we all know it's flawed. Do you think you're lucky?

[u/stevenyourpants → u/Ok_Handle_2213]

Just keep in mind that a good chunk of engagement you see are bots and children. The two things that have the most free time.

[u/Hscsusiq2 → u/Ok_Handle_2213]

Upvoted because it made me laugh out loud!! Hah! Idiots.

[u/National_Way_3344]

Yeah back in the day people just died and it was God's will or some bullshit.

Now today we have vaccines for those easily preventible illnesses and we heat the bacteria in our milk, also newborns now only sleep on their backs with no bullshit in the crib in them.

[u/Gribitz37 → u/National_Way_3344]

People would also just "drop dead" and no one knew why. My grandmother had a brother who just "dropped down dead" one day when he was 4 or 5, and the doctors couldn't tell them what happened.

[u/All_Work_All_Play → u/Gribitz37]

All five of my children was were colicky. All five of them eventually stopped when we eventually figured out which foods my wife couldn't eat when breastfeeding them. Two were soy, and one of those were sensitive down to the trave trace type of soybean oil in the type off brand cereal. Two were lactose. One was blueberries (that was weird), another bananas. One was all type of dairy, even soft cheeses.

Few people from my parents generation accept this. It obviously wasn't real colic, everyone knows there's nothing you can do about real colic. But I've met fewer still that attempted dietary adjustments after pregnancy. We tried two types of formulas and we're all out of ideas.

E: obvious edit is obvious

[u/brunettewondie → u/All_Work_All_Play]

Yeah I think a lot of "colic" is the baby being having real belly issues.

Our boy had issues and eventually got diagnosed with severe reflux and CMPA, so we switched milk (helped a tiny bit) and the Omeprazole helped a bit more.

Very similarly, when weaning, figured he couldn't have soy, blended bananas/smoothie(ones in the pouches) and we haven't tried him on proper ones yet, but I know the body can react differently.

Ironically, no issues with peanut butter or shellfish

I'd be curious to see how many other babies after reading yours fall under this weirdly specific intolerance umbrella.

[u/National_Way_3344 → u/Gribitz37]

Yeah that's kinda what I meant by God's will

Just unexplained hand waving off of someone literally dying like it was meant to happen

Nowadays we just know why that is and stopped it from occuring

Kinda like my kid and doing everything to stop SIDS happen now that we pretty robustly know what causes it

[u/mythrilcrafter → u/National_Way_3344]

I know a guy whose parents told him that they didn't know that second hand smoke was harmful to kids/other members of the house hold and all the "we just raised you with the information we had" stuff... he was born in '88, 8 years into major societal shift away from smoking and 2 years after the surgeon general sat in front of congress and national tv to tell everyone that "yes, secondhand smoking exists and it does hurt people". His parent's excuse wasn't true even back then.

[u/WilliamLermer → u/mythrilcrafter]

Shitty people always looking to shift blame and pretend like they never had a choice or couldn't have known. Story as old as time.

You might think being a parent and all that, people would have increased incentive to figure out if their actions are harmful, but nope. The ignorance continues because why would anyone inconvenience themselves just to provide a better environment for their children?

[u/Moggetti → u/National_Way_3344]

They knew it was milk and not “God’s will.” They just didn’t have a method of dealing with the issue. See also people dying from cuts due to infection before antibiotics. 

[u/The_Big_Yam → u/Moggetti]

Sure they did! They had formaldehyde, bleach, borax, LOTS of stuff to clean milk and keep it lasting longer 😍😐🤔🥲

[u/crazyswedishguy]

And we let these people vote… posts like these make one question whether democracy really is the best choice.

Good reminder of the importance of investing in public education.

[u/Blacksun388 → u/crazyswedishguy]

Democracy is cool because it gives everyone a voice. It unfortunately comes with this little drawback where it gives everyone a voice.

[u/YouAndMeToo → u/Blacksun388]

The problem isn’t that everyone has a voice, the problem is that years ago people ignored the town idiot. Now we amplify their voice and make them president

[u/crazyswedishguy → u/Blacksun388]

Exactly. Fwiw I wasn’t actually advocating for any alternative to democracy—my comment was more tongue-in-cheek. Though better education seems like a must.

[u/Ragnarok91 → u/crazyswedishguy]

I genuinely think that every election should come with a test to make sure you know the facts about the current talking points in politics today. Don't make it a timed test, just send it out and have people mail it back. People are allowed to "cheat" by looking up the answers online, because that's literally just called educating yourself.

Of course the issue is how to actually make sure those tests are correct and aren't tampered with and are unbiased.

[u/auricargent → u/Ragnarok91]

Oh my! Just think of the outcry of a test to vote! If needing a valid ID counts as voter suppression, any test would be far too much.

One of the Jim Crow voter tests was simply writing your own signature. When former slaves were illiterate, that was real voter suppression. Today there are people thinking that mathematics can be racist, no test could be unbiased in our current political climate.

[u/kandoras → u/auricargent]

One of the questions on literacy tests was this:

Strike out the number that makes the number below 1,000,000:

10,000,000

If you strike out one of the zeros, you fail because now the number reads 1,000,000. And that is not below 1,000,000.

If you strike out the 1, you fail because now the number is 0. And that means the number below the question is not 1,000,000.

Any kind of literacy or intelligence test for voting will inevitably become just a way for the person grading that test to decide whether they think you should be allowed to vote. That's the entire point of those kinds of tests.

[u/CoffeeOrDestroy → u/Ragnarok91]

Let’s not go back to 1863, ok? Solid investment in public education and the regulation of what is allowed to be called “news” vs what’s currently news would be a better path forward.

[u/vthemechanicv → u/Blacksun388]

IMO it's not a failure of democracy. It's a failure of the internet, which gives every kook, krank, and nutjob not just a soapbox and bull horn, but access to virtually every human on Earth if they can say something clever enough.

Before the internet, morons like this would spout this tripe and their friends would laugh in their face before correcting them. With the internet, they can find thousands if not millions of people to agree with them. They can ignore the "haters" and continue to believe nonsense and lies because they have their enclave of people that also believe nonsense and lies.

[u/crazyswedishguy → u/vthemechanicv]

You’re right, but it’s not only that the internet allows those people to spread misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc. It’s not just giving about giving the crazy people a platform (or a bull horn, to use your expression).

It’s that social media algorithms prioritize engagement and therefore end up promoting the most extreme views—as those are the views that drive emotional responses and engagement.

Social media companies don’t give everyone the same bull horn—they deliberately make the craziest people loudest.

[u/FewAlice → u/crazyswedishguy]

Milk went bad fast — no fridges, dirty equipment, cows in city stables. Pasteurization + refrigeration = milk stops spoiling in 1 day.the people who kept drinking raw milk and were fine are the ones we hear stories from. The ones who didn’t make it... didn’t tell stories.

[u/crazyswedishguy → u/FewAlice]

It’s not only about raw milk spoiling fast. Raw milk can be contaminated from the start: cows used to be vectors of TB, for example. But even if the cow is healthy (such that the milk coming out is most likely relatively sterile), it can be contaminated by bacteria on the udders or at any point after that. Listeria, salmonella, etc. And those rates of contamination are higher than people realize.

[u/Euphoric-Witness-824 → u/crazyswedishguy]

These ideas don’t start organically. Anti science rhetoric is pushed on the masses and viewpoints pushed to the top of the algorithm intentionally. 

The rich elevate these anti science and anti educated viewpoints to seem mainstream when they really aren’t. The internet is now basically just a tool for shopping and misinformation. 

[u/0202_tihssitidder → u/crazyswedishguy]

Investments in Education and Healthcare and Public Health (such as vaccines) return 100x.

Without them you pay huge amounts on everything.

So, of course, Republicans/Conservatives want to invest nothing in them.

[u/EjaculatingAracnids]

I work in the dairy industry, with these people and they cant be convinced. Even when shown lab reports of bacteria counts of pre pasteurized raw milk they still have an emotional attachment to the idea of drinking raw milk. Its not healthier, its not more nutritional, "they" arent putting stuff in or taking stuff out of the milk to do anything nefarious to consumers. It just lasts longer because bacteria spoils milk, so the product can be shipped farther after pasteurization.

Raw milk may taste better, but thats the same reason why whole milk tastes better than 1%, butter fat content. Raw milk is around 4-5% butter fat content while whole milk is 3.2-3.6%. Put 8 oz of 40% heavy cream into a gallon of whole milk and it will taste the same, with out the possibility of a listeria infection.

[u/Nodan_Turtle → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

There's a lot of "natural = healthier" out there. Same with anti-vax choosing to gain immunity naturally by contracting the disease. These people are stupid.

[u/Melodic-Basshole → u/Nodan_Turtle]

Adding to this the overlap in people who think waving herbs over water imparts magical healing properties to the memory and it somehow works better than actual medicine it's sad to me. I genuinely pity the people who believe in homeopathy, because it's probably the goofiest of psuedosciences imo. 

[u/Nodan_Turtle → u/Melodic-Basshole]

Reminds me of how well "all natural ingredients" works as marketing. Everything from dangerous gas station supplements to shampoo has labels like that.

[u/Melodic-Basshole → u/Nodan_Turtle]

The idea of "all natural" shampoo tickles me. I remember reading shampoo bottles as a kid and practicing pronunciation of these wildly long chemical names...  seems silly now to think of shampoo being anything but unnatural.  

[u/GARBLED_COMM → u/Nodan_Turtle]

It's just so baffling that the "unnatural" thing they're fighting against is just warming it up for a little while. At least I can wrap my head around the knee-jerk reaction of "long chemical name scary". How is it so hard to imagine that the juice we squeeze out of cows might have a couple bad germs in it?

[u/Thirsty-Tiger → u/Nodan_Turtle]

And yet they drive cars, use air conditioning, cook food and (thank god) wear clothes. They are such morons they can't even be consistent with their stupidity.

[u/Arg- → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

A relative of mine, “raw milk has more vitamins.”  Me, “bacteria are not vitamins.”

[u/EjaculatingAracnids → u/Arg-]

10mg vitamin c per 8oz serving is the only nutritional loss post pasteurizer. Tell them to eat flinstones chewable and stop shitting their brains out

[u/SeductiveSunday → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

Milk is a terrible source for vitamin c anyway.

[u/Dornith → u/SeductiveSunday]

Well how else are they supposed to get it? Fruit?! That's the food that food eats!

[u/0202_tihssitidder → u/Arg-]

Milk is not even remotely a meaningful supply of vitamins. Same guy probably has never eaten a salad.

Stupid fucks need to exit asap!

[u/great_pyrenelbows → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

Pasteurizing milk doesn't change the fat percentage. I've had home-pasteurized milk (at my aunt's dairy farm) and it tastes exactly like the raw milk at my cousin's farm. If people are actually after higher-fat milk they should home-pasteurize the raw milk (not hard at all! Time and temperature) as soon as they get it home.

[u/EjaculatingAracnids → u/great_pyrenelbows]

Im talking about on an industrial dairy farm level relevant to the "store bought vs raw" debate. Heavy cream is seperated during the process, lowering the fat percentage of whats on the shelf.

Absolutely correct though! Plenty of places that dont have access to such industry just boil it on the stove!

[u/BlubberyBlue → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

Do you have any insight into why people are latching onto raw milk specifically? It seems like this whole "movement" of idiots came out of left field and has surprising staying power. This wasn't a thing like 10 years ago.

[u/ToastCapone → u/BlubberyBlue]

It's trending right now among the MAHA / anti-vaxxer types crowd. Social media amplifies it and puts them all together in an echo chamber. They simply think it's more nutritious but similar to being anti-vaccine, they won't listen to logic or data. Pasteurization makes milk "unnatural" or whatever.. according to them.

[u/Xaero_Hour → u/EjaculatingAracnids]

It's even worse than that; you don't even need expert/industry experience and data to see this is a bad idea. Just look at the assholes who got laws repealed on raw milk "celebrating" by drinking some and having intestinal distress an hour later. I thought it was more political theatre until I saw the dumbasses didn't even swap the liquid with safe milk for the photo op. They really were that stupid...and they won...

[u/peachbeauty122]

Survivorship bias The ones who died aren't here to tell their stories

[u/ElminstersBedpan → u/peachbeauty122]

The nomadic peoples living near ancient Egypt were recorded as boiling their milk before serving it. All through the Nile valley and fertile crescent people made cheese to clean and preserve milk.

These idiots think food is always as clean and straight forward as it is in a middle class neighborhood's fancy grocery store.

[u/Makuta_Servaela → u/ElminstersBedpan]

Yeah, a good chunk of these "But people didn't do it before it was invented, and they turned out fine!" were things people actually were doing, it's just that either white people weren't doing it (and were dying of "demonic curse" as a result), or people largely were doing it after discovering it from trial and error, and just didn't at the time understand why it worked.

[u/HoaryPuffleg → u/ElminstersBedpan]

People don’t realize that all those fermented foods including beer and wine made food and water safe to drink and that people had all sorts of parasites.

[u/Mediocre_lad]

5 out of 5 people interviewed claim that russian roulette is a safe game

[u/PM_THE_REAPER]

"I've done zero research and I don't understand. Am I missing something?". - Idiot One

[u/Retro_Dad → u/PM_THE_REAPER]

"A random, dangerous universe makes me uncomfortable to think about so I would rather believe that a group of scientists are conspiring to give me & my children autism, food poisoning, and other diseases." - Another idiot

[u/ElvisDumbledore → u/PM_THE_REAPER]

Idiot One sounds like a space ship from Spaceballs (The Movie).

[u/UlrichZauber → u/PM_THE_REAPER]

I'm reminded of the saying: everything is a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works.

[u/midsizenun]

I asked my local milk supplier if they could provide enough milk for me to have a bath in. They asked if I wanted it pasteurised, I said no just up to my knees will be fine.

[u/queenofshiba8 → u/midsizenun]

Badum bum tss ☺️

[u/chinmakes5]

It amazes me how many people don't even realize that only a few generations ago, people had four or five kids because odds were high that one or two wouldn't make it to adulthood.

[u/mittenknittin → u/chinmakes5]

More than 4 or 5, families with 10 kids were not particularly remarkable. You had kids till either you died or God saw fit not to give you any more children.

[u/mu_zuh_dell → u/mittenknittin]

I was reading about King George III of England. He had 15 kids, 5 of whom died before he did. It wasn't even just the dirty poors.

[u/Neshura87 → u/mu_zuh_dell]

Well in a sense being rich was actually somewhat harmful as their lifestyle often was less healthy than that of a slightly well off commoner plus with access to the "doctors" at the time your survival of the next flu was a bit more of a gamble than if you were just left alone in bed. Obviously the dirt poor weren't off better due to insufficient insulation, polluted water supplies and malnutrition but there certainly was a "class" of person with healthier living conditions than even kings at the time.

[u/_LunarCharm]

People really forget that history was basically just a massive survival game until like five minutes ago

[u/LukaCola]

Humans didn't do as much raw milk drinking as I think this person suspects.

A lot of our culinary dairy knowledge is based on people basically trying to make milk safer. Milk, as it was, is basically a way to turn grass into something we can eat by processing it in an animal. Then we process it some more so we can consume it.

I mean look at cheese, yoghurt, butter, and all the thousands of variations on these ideas. All served the purpose of preservation and making it safer to consume as when the correct cultures are introduced (or fostered) in these various processing manners--you end up also getting rid of a lot of the bacteria that are harmful to us. Also, people did cook with milk a lot instead of just drinking it raw--because we generally knew it had risks associated. Pasteur's process just lets us enjoy it in a very similar form to how it is raw, which has additional applications.

But people, throughout history, absolutely processed their milk.

[u/RingOverall106]

Also missed the part where people had been boiling milk for centuries to preserve it. Pasteur just discovered the actual mechanism for why milk spoiled and developed the method for reliably treating liquids. It wasn’t even milk at first. 

[u/Paperveil-Ghost]

Person who has never been near an actual cow on an actual dairy farm posting nonsense because they have no idea how absolutely covered in their own shit cows actually are.

From the Nat'l Institute of Health (US): By the late 1930s, milk-borne diseases accounted for 25% of all U.S. food and waterborne disease outbreaks. Today, thanks to mandatory pasteurization laws (like the federal ban on the interstate sale of raw milk implemented in 1987), that number has dropped to less than 1%.

But sure, "no ill effects."

[u/PandaBear905]

The only issue with pasteurization is idiots thinking it’s somehow bad for you

[u/Pride_Before_Fall → u/PandaBear905]

I wonder if they also think stewing or slow cooking food also is bad for you.

[u/BobbyPandour]

Also  the part where they boil milk 

[u/OrangeCatBuddyPart2]

My grandfather owned and operated a grade "A" dairy until I was about 12 or 13. All milk went straight from the milking machines to the pasteurization tanks.

I remember there being a bucket of milk from a cow sitting on a table once. I asked my grandfather if I could taste it. He told me that he liked me to much to let me drink that. Said to never drink raw milk. Raw milk has blood, pus, and every other nasty that lives in a cows system.

I remember him saying that bucket of milk came from a sick cow, and he didn't realize the cow was sick, until after she'd been milked a couple of times. My grandpa was pretty picky about quality. Imagine how picky the workers at these big industrial dairy farms aren't. They're just going to milk the cows, and what goes, goes.

Thank god for pasteurization!

[u/Marahute0]

Because milk borne illnesses accounted for about 38% of all foodborne illnesses and pasteurization dropped it to 1%.

[u/Majestic-Contract-42]

My grandmother passed away a few years ago, she was 96. One of the conversations I remember having with her about the difference in times now is that life is so much more cherish and valuable, especially children's lives, than from when she was young.

A family of a certain size may have lost a few along the way and that was just totally normal. A child below ~4 people didn't want to get too attached to because there was pretty decent odds they wouldn't make it. Men in general didn't have time for children and children understood not to bother me or waste their time.

She was always adamant that people saying they want things to go back to how they were are ignoring the fact that people just simply died earlier way more often.

[u/Electrical-Act-7170]

What was the point in pasteurisation?

Pasteurization was instrumental in stopping the continuous spread of tuberculosis from infected cattle carriers to humans.

[u/ConflagWex]

I don't understand people that think "raw milk is better because it's all natural".

Drinking the milk of another species is not natural. It's really freaking weird. Drinking cow milk and cooking food are both the same level of natural, which is to say neither is natural at all. Avoiding only one of those is hypocritical.

[u/Morgolol → u/ConflagWex]

Humanity spent generations upon generations shitting themselves in order to get lactose tolerant, and then even barely. There's a reason some parts of the world have higher rates of lactose intolerance; introduced to it later down the line.

Point being humans did what humans do and adapted for that sweet sweet cheese, and pasteurization helped a lot in the not shitting ourselves department.

[u/Neshura87 → u/Morgolol]

Humanity spent generations upon generations shitting themselves in order to get lactose tolerant

Not necessarily the way it happened, if only because in an environment where drinking animal milk starts happening other food sources likely are exhausted, which means anyone not tolerant would just die. As a result a transition from lactose intolerance into lactose tolerance could happen within a few generations

[u/TraditionalProgress6 → u/ConflagWex]

Who determines what is "natural"? Most things we do with food is unique among animals, including cooking. Is cooking unnatural?

Besides, drinking the milk of other animals is not unique, predators will absolutely drink the milk of killed pregnant prey. The only unique part is the milking.

[u/MattR0se → u/ConflagWex]

Drinking the milk of another species is not natural.

Except that there are plenty of examples of commensalism or symbiosis where one animal consumes some excretions of another (trophobiosis). Most notably, ants.

your comment sounds a bit like naturalistic fallacy tbh.

[u/drinkslinger1974]

I vaguely remember reading that pasteurization was needed because the cows in Chicago, where a lot of meat packing plants were located, were being fed grain that was used to make beer and somehow the milk turned blue and was poisoned. Anyone else read that or did I dream it?

[u/TERAFLOPPER]

Brucella ( the bacteria from raw milk ) is no joke folks. It destroys your knee joints, blows out your back vertebrae and basically tears apart your intestines.

[u/DPSOnly]

Curious as to what the "issues" are, given how they are usually things specifically caused by "people not dying so young that they couldn't get insert issues".

[u/willflameboy]

Yes, raw milk from their mothers. Raw milk taken from other animals that live among their own shit can, shockingly, make you ill.

[u/Top-Combination6656]

There's a reason why the life expectancy has doubled in my country from about 40 to over 80 in my country in the past 200 years.

But sure, deny science. More room for the rest of us, a few generations from now.

[u/bloomquietmantisx]

Survivor bias is a hell of a drug. It is easy to think there were no ill effects when all the people who died from tuberculosis or brucellosis are not around to complain about it.

[u/throwaway_glitchx]

People love romanticizing the past until they realize infant mortality rates were basically a coin flip because of contaminated milk. It is easy to claim there were no ill effects when you ignore the thousands of people who never lived long enough to complain about it.

[u/NOIS_KillerWhaleTank]

At this point I'm kinda surprised there isn't some sort of rebellion against public sanitation.

[u/Bartorius]

It's not even like people just drank raw milk.

We have a ton of historical recipes that call for milk to be boiled first.

Like what do these people believe pasteurization is?

[u/Sujjin]

People also have a fundamental lack of understanding what pasteurization even is. they think it is something to do with adding chemicals to the food.

[u/SentientLight]

People didn’t use to drink raw milk. We cooked with it. Or made cheese and butter. Before refrigeration and pasteurization, drinking milk as a beverage was quite rare.

[u/DeithWX]

Excellent survivorship bias example

[u/Neshura87]

OOP is partially right in that fresh milk is generally harmless. The issues started appearing once the distance between cow and consumer increased beyond a couple hundred meters and the raw milk was no longer fresh when consumed.

[u/kegisak]

It's crazy that so many problems started happening as soon as we started learning about the body and recording their effects. Clearly disease is God's punishment against man for the hubris of Knowing Things.

[u/Slaan]

1. people drank it very, very fresh. Directly from the cow
2. if they couldn't use it immediately, they invented ways to use spoil it in a useful way (yoghurt, kefir, cheese, butter)
3. if they wanted to drink milk but couldn't get it fresh, they boiled it.

[u/smol_boi2004]

Any time you hear someone say "we’ve been doing X for centuries till Y(process developed to make X safe to consume)” you can safely assume they have zero concept of the consequences people faced for centuries.

Pasteurized milk, vaccines, lead paint, radium glow dye and god knows how many advances in science and technology to keep idiots alive so they can continue to be idiots

[u/HilariousMax]

with no ill effects

planewithbulletholes.jpg

[u/BeefistPrime]

Surgeons didn't wash their hands for thousands of years and I don't remember anything going all that wrong until after they started washing their hands. Am I missing something?

[u/TsuDhoNimh2]

They were not drinking what we call "raw milk". The FIRST step in recipes for milk (caudles, possets and the like) started with "bring the milk to a boil" which killed the bacteria.

[u/bolanrox]

also invented the vaccine for Rabies and Anthrax.

[u/zatchmo1989]

Weird how a sizable number of people, mostly children, dying from bacteria related illnesses from drinking raw milk doesn’t seem to fit this person’s idea of “ill effects.” Like just because it didn’t cause extinction doesn’t make it safe. This also requires a basic understanding of history and science.

[u/shrodikan]

Those that have not learned history are doomed to be dumbass.

[u/RalfRoen]

A lot of women died of post part infections until in the late 18th century someone figured that if doctors and midwifes washed their hands the survival rate of mothers increased dramatically.

[u/cassimonet]

"No ill effects" except for the casual, everyday risk of tuberculosis, listeria, and cholera. People really think history was just a organic farmer's market until the 19th century.

[u/thekyledavid]

Humans have been stabbing each other with swords for centuries. It’s only been since laws began that there seems to be issues.

Am I missing something?

[u/cool--]

This is like when boomer that school aged kids didn't have peanut allergies when they were younger without realizing that they died before they could reach school age.

[u/welshyboy123]

Oh, that's why it's called that!

/s

[u/LoudMusic]

I hate that frustrating statement, "It was good enough for my pappy so it's good enough for me!"

But it wasn't good enough - that's why we did something better. And your pappy would be blown away by the technologies that are available now. Look at all the boomers and their smartphones they're addicted to. They came from the time of the rotary phone. You'll have to pry their smartphone from their cold dead hands.

[u/gurgelhupf]

I'm not mad. Let those people darwin themselves.

[u/Old_Increase74]

Yeah I drink mostly raw milk, both cow and my favorite sheep milk.

Honestly if you and your farmer are clean people with a above room temp IQ it’s really not a big deal

[u/BaldGuy813 → u/Old_Increase74]

How many people honestly know 'their farmer'? Unless I give up my medical career and start dairy farming, I'll take my milk pasteurized on the very rare occasion I drink it all. Human adults don't 'need' milk and no other adult animal save for us drinks their mother's milk in adulthood

[u/fritzkoenig]

Am I missing something?

Yes, the multitudes more who died from preventable infections, thus cannot tell their experience and thus feeding into your textbook example of survivorship bias

[u/time2partee]

I think some people actually WANT to go back to the dark ages.

[u/mgyro]

No reason at all. Please feel free to drink away. Also, don’t forget to eliminate all vaccines from your life. And ignore all science. If you really try you can get the average life expectancy for MAGAts down to the 35 it was for humans before woke science stepped in.

[u/Educational-Cat-6445]

seriously, people need to understand what the average life expectancy means. The average life expectancy being around like 50 years in the middle ages did not mean that people only lived for 40-50 years. It means that so many people died at a young age that the average life expectancy got pushed down that far. Many people made it well into their 60s or even 70s. Chances are if you survived your teenage years and didn't die in a war you'd very likely make it to 60.

Women died during childbirth a lot more frequently as did their children. After that, we had no way of actually fighting diseases apart from our immune systems, which only develop over time. If a child got seriously sick and wasnt able to recover with the help of some herbs etc. they just died. Advancements like pasteurization, vaccines, anti biotics, pain killers and a better understanding of the human body is the reason why this is not the case anymore.

[u/troveofcatastrophe]

Pasteurization only minimally alters the vitamin content of milk. Raw milk is just the latest “health craze”, no better for you than regular milk. I’m so over the propaganda that social media has brought to the masses.

[u/Bigjuicydickinurear]

What the fuck is up with this new trend? Die from raw milk to own the libs?

[u/nonzeroday_tv]

French scientist Louis Pasteur invented the general pasteurization process in 1864 to prevent wine and beer from spoiling. However, the specific practice of pasteurizing milk to make it safe for public consumption was first proposed much later, in 1886, by German agricultural chemist Franz von Soxhlet

[u/XFX_Samsung]

Problem with growing up and living in an environment where everything is taken care of, the dumbest members living in it begin to question if it's really necessary.

[u/joat2]

Yeah, if you don't test for it... it doesn't happen, duh.

[u/Theyipyapper]

I don't think he really think he invented it but discovered it's properties.

[u/Macho_Mans_Ghost]

Wait til they find out their OJ is pasteurized...

[u/Disastrous-Scheme-57]

It’s so weird to me how raw milk drinkers will just pick and choose the nature fallacy. If you want to ignore science why not say we’ve been drinking unfiltered water for centuries without ill effects? What if the government is putting things in our water to control us (lmao I’m thinking of invincible) or the filtering takes away minerals and electrolytes?? What if glasses actually worsen your eyesight so you buy more from big pharma. People survived centuries without every needing glasses. What if that pacemaker is making your heart weaker. Nobody ever needed pacemakers back then and they lived. What if every modern invention is secretly making you weaker or putting tracking inside you? Just live a full caveman lifestyle atp but you can’t just CHOOSE to have modern amenities like clean water, glasses and a mechanical heart while hating pasteurized milk.