Got EU Milk?

[a completely inoffensive name]

EU has ended their milk quotas. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32136218

As far as I am concerned, the more milk production, the better. I can't get enough of the stuff. Hell, if the price drops enough, maybe I can buy European milk over here in California. I've seen the cows I get my milk from and they are dumb and dirty as.....well, as cows.

[Montmorency]

Channeling Horetore:

Why do nationalists and protectionists (but I repeat myself) hate the free market so much?

[Brenus]

"Why do nationalists and protectionists (but I repeat myself) hate the free market so much?" Because that will be the ruin of their farmers and small producers who won't be able to compete against super national companies which after this will pay no taxes and evade the ones they should pay pretending they made no profit? Why tyrants love free market and create poverty?
Once again the EU shows how much they care about the populations and love really the powerful and rich. After austerity measures and rocketing unemployment in the factories, let's do this for the farmers... Criminal idiots, they are playing with fire...

[Montmorency]

Oh, poor small UK, big evil EU.

Boo hoo

[Hooahguy]

Last time I drank milk in Europe they laughed and called me a Milk-Drinker...

Never again.

[rvg]

Last time I drank milk in Europe they laughed and called me a Milk-Drinker...

Last guy who called me that ended up dead. But that was in Whiterun.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Been trying to drink milk. Haven't managed to make it happen yet.

[Kadagar_AV]

I think Sweden is the most milk drinking country in the world...

I generally drink milk with the food... Growing up I drank about a litre a day... It tastes great and is good for you :)

[Husar]

Maybe it's better for us if the milk producers go bankrupt.

Kristina explains why:



Further links:
some group: http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/
Dr. Hyman with a serious warning: http://drhyman.com/blog/2013/10/28/m...-health/#close



Well, Forbes would seem reliable, no?: http://www.forbes.com/sites/fayeflam...nt-lied-to-us/

I'm quite the dairy consumer myself, in some cases it feels good for me, but when I'm already ill it usually seems better to avoid it since it actually does seem to increase e.g. pain in my throat when I have a cold. You could say I'm trying to reduce my usage a little, although I drink a lot less milk nowadays than I did when I was younger. But stopping the use of dairy products entirely does actually sound cruel.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I swear to god Husar, that first video almost made me punch my monitor.

[CrossLOPER]

I swear to god Husar, that first video almost made me punch my monitor.

Really? Well this is going to make you eat your own face:

http://foodbabe.com/

[Fragony]

If they are smart they make milk-powder for the Chinese market, white gold there.

[Brenus]

"Oh, poor small UK, big evil EU." Yeah, that is what I call a very convincing argument. Well, do ask Greeks about nice and caring EU. Or Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, Irish and now French workers.

[Greyblades]

Maybe it's better for us if the milk producers go bankrupt.

Kristina explains why:

I'm willing to believe that the benefits of milk has been over hyped by milk companies and may even be detrimental to an extent, but I still reserve the right to ignore and/or beat any hippie who uses the phrase "pure foods".

[Fragony]

I heard the arguments against milk but still a single thing stands out, where milk is on the daily menu people are much taller in general. That's a sign of health. If it is unhealthy I will keep drinking it anyway because I feel less good if I don't.

[Montmorency]

"Oh, poor small UK, big evil EU." Yeah, that is what I call a very convincing argument. Well, do ask Greeks about nice and caring EU. Or Spanish, Italians, Portuguese, Irish and now French workers.

Ah, so it's just the same old 'Everything the EU (and US) does is evil' canard.

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/milk...a-trade_en.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/milk...a-trade_en.pdf

Please explain how this could harm the dairy sectors of EU states with reference to the above figures.

Why will more extra-EU exports drive down prices for the 90% of production that is exchanged between member-states when the mechanism is different above the level of the cows actually being milked?

EU special interventions are still in place to act as price floors, and imports from outside the EU make up less than 1% of internal production - since tariffs are still in place.

Are you sure you have any factual basis for opposing the ending of these quotas?

[Montmorency]

Also, the anti-milk movement is, as usual, economically-motivated and primarily targets ignorant liberal types and paranoid reactionaries.

Here's just a sample from a serious source: Park, Y. W., Haenlein, G. F., & Ag, D. S. (2013). Milk and Dairy Products in Human Nutrition. Wiley-Blackwell.

Section 5.4 describes the possibility of certain cow genotypes producing milk that, through an allergen byproduct BCM-7, could contribute significantly to the onset of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, but the research is mixed and milk from most genotypes is not associated with such risks, though at least in the EU one of the dominant genotypes is the A1 genotype associated with BCM-7 byproducts. But milk contains many useful proteins ("biopeptides", e.g. casein-related compounds) that are inactive in raw milk but may be released and activated during industrial processing or in the gastrointestinal tract (opposite to some of the claims in the anti-milk movement).

Once absorbed, casein peptides have the potential to exert numerous biological effects in the human, i.e. they may play a crucial role in the transport and absorption of certain minerals, bind toxins, mediate immunomodulatory effects and behave as opioid receptor agonists or antagonists (Phelan et al ., 2009). Because of their biological activity, serious interest has also been raised regarding whey proteins that exhibit a diverse array of non-specific activities, i.e. anti-inflammatory, bacteriostatic, antioxidant, opioid and anticancer properties (Chatterton et al ., 2006; Pan et al ., 2006).

[Gilrandir]

I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the USA the great majority of people don't know what is the real milk as well as the real bread, the real honey, the real strawberries... These (and many other products sold in American supermarkets) are pale shadows of what they should taste like, they are close to insipid.
No offense meant.

[Montmorency]

When my parents and their extended families came to the United States from the Soviet Union in '89-90, they were quite shocked to see the fruits and vegetables for sale in groceries and supermarkets. At first, they didn't even attempt to purchase them, and instead asked around for the locations of the "real" produce. They had mistaken the actual produce for display models.

Why? Because, unlike in the Soviet Union (apparently), the produce in America (New York) was not coated with dung and dirt.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Of course, I do understand that many parts of the US are food deserts, but I wouldn't be too complacent if I were you either.

[Husar]

I swear to god Husar, that first video almost made me punch my monitor.

Well, it's your monitor, Kristina might think however, that it's the dairy foods and your unhealthy diet that make you so aggressive.

I'm willing to believe that the benefits of milk has been over hyped by milk companies and may even be detrimental to an extent, but I still reserve the right to ignore and/or beat any hippie who uses the phrase "pure foods".

Well, I hardly hear an explanation on why processed foods are all bad. You can say adding unhealthy ingredients is bad but just processing food doesn't make it bad just by itself. If you cook meat you already process it and that's usually a good idea. Then again Kristina probably avoids meat anyway. I've seen a book once that said starch is responsible for all our health woes. If that is also true, what can we still eat in order to live forever? But yes, a lot of people make a lot of money by selling milk, and even more serious people have their doubts about the benefits if one can look beyond Kristina.

I heard the arguments against milk but still a single thing stands out, where milk is on the daily menu people are much taller in general. That's a sign of health. If it is unhealthy I will keep drinking it anyway because I feel less good if I don't.

I also feel good when I eat chocolate but most people would advise me against basing my diet on it.

Also, the anti-milk movement is, as usual, economically-motivated and primarily targets ignorant liberal types and paranoid reactionaries.

Here's just a sample from a serious source: Park, Y. W., Haenlein, G. F., & Ag, D. S. (2013). Milk and Dairy Products in Human Nutrition. Wiley-Blackwell.

Section 5.4 describes the possibility of certain cow genotypes producing milk that, through an allergen byproduct BCM-7, could contribute significantly to the onset of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, but the research is mixed and milk from most genotypes is not associated with such risks, though at least in the EU one of the dominant genotypes is the A1 genotype associated with BCM-7 byproducts. But milk contains many useful proteins ("biopeptides", e.g. casein-related compounds) that are inactive in raw milk but may be released and activated during industrial processing or in the gastrointestinal tract (opposite to some of the claims in the anti-milk movement).

But the pro-milk movement is backed by a multi-million dollar milk-industry, you say that as though they had no economical motivation at all. The forbes article I linked also mentions how there are differences between milk and dairy products. I know that Kristina is really attractive but it seems like noone reads the other links because of that.

So here's a quote from the Forbes article, which is based on a serious study from 2014, newer than the source you quote:

It would make sense to urge caution if this were one of those single studies that must be weighed against a huge body of evidence backing the benefits of milk. An editorial in the same journal by Mary Schooling of City University of New York School of Public Health suggests this is not the case. She says that until now the public health guidelines were based more on opinion and assumption than studies that looked directly at the correlation between milk drinking and health. We saw the same thing with salt – with public health guidelines based as much on a religious-type belief in the evils of salt than on any good, solid studies.

There is a reasoned way to react to this shocking milk study. First, you can apply a little personalized medicine even if you haven’t paid to have your genome sequenced. If you’re like me and you hate milk, it’s simple. Eat yogurt. The study also noted that there were no health risks associated with yogurt or cheese. Yogurt was correlated with some benefits.

So yeah, this study would both contradict Kristina in that all dairy products are bad just because milk is potentially bad/not good and it would explain why I love yogurt so much. me-><-yogurt

[Fragony]

I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the USA the great majority of people don't know what is the real milk as well as the real bread, the real honey, the real strawberries... These (and many other products sold in American supermarkets) are pale shadows of what they should taste like, they are close to insipid.
No offense meant.

It's almost impossible to find fresh milk in most of Europe and America, it has been heated, pasturised(sp?). It is an entirely dfferent thing. You can find treated milk here but it's somewhere between the other crap if you insist on buying that stuff. Untreated fresh milk is awesome and is really nutricious, nobody buys the cooked stuff it tastes horrible, like chewing on plastic.

[Montmorency]

But the pro-milk movement is backed by a multi-million dollar milk-industry

But of course one need not fall in either camp.

As for differences between milk and more-processed dairy products - they obviously exist, but that's not to say milk is somehow more harmful. If you take a look at the study underlying the Forbes piece, two major problems with the analysis spring to mind very quickly:

1. There's no indication the study authors broke down any frequencies by age distribution, meaning skewed consumption could underlie the results. In other words, maybe older people drink more milk than less-old people (and almost everyone surveyed was at-least middle-aged). So of course if that's the case you will see milk-drinkers more likely to get fractures or, you know, die - from old age. In other words, you might as well interpret the results as showing that milk-drinking is associated with increased longevity.

2. The actual hazard ratios, both within and between-group, are pretty minimal.

[Fragony]

You guys aren't drinking milk, you are drinking something that was made out of milk. If you have a little bit of countryside at hand I would suggest you get your milk there. It won't survive a few days in your fridge and whatever comes out of it if you do keep it that long there could be a slight problem for your health, but simply put, it isn't fresh milk you are drinking. The best milk you can drink is what we call 'biezenmelk' here, it's yellow, not like yellow snow, healthy actually. It's the milk from a pregnant cow and is the best, but to get it you must also go to a local farmer as supermarkets don't sell it. But again, you aren't drinking milk.

[Gilrandir]

When my parents and their extended families came to the United States from the Soviet Union in '89-90, they were quite shocked to see the fruits and vegetables for sale in groceries and supermarkets. At first, they didn't even attempt to purchase them, and instead asked around for the locations of the "real" produce. They had mistaken the actual produce for display models.

Why? Because, unlike in the Soviet Union (apparently), the produce in America (New York) was not coated with dung and dirt.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I speak not of the appearence, but of the taste of the products in the USA, that is of the abscence of it.

[Beskar]

American bread is not even bread, it is like cake.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

American bread is not even bread, it is like cake.

We have all sorts. Our mass-produced stuff does tend toward an overly sweetish taste and has been carefully decoupled from any natural nutritional value in favor or artificial vitamin supplementation.

On the positive side, Wonderbread and its compatriots cover both major food groups (sugars AND preservatives) at the same time.

[Husar]

But of course one need not fall in either camp.

As for differences between milk and more-processed dairy products - they obviously exist, but that's not to say milk is somehow more harmful. If you take a look at the study underlying the Forbes piece, two major problems with the analysis spring to mind very quickly:

1. There's no indication the study authors broke down any frequencies by age distribution, meaning skewed consumption could underlie the results. In other words, maybe older people drink more milk than less-old people (and almost everyone surveyed was at-least middle-aged). So of course if that's the case you will see milk-drinkers more likely to get fractures or, you know, die - from old age. In other words, you might as well interpret the results as showing that milk-drinking is associated with increased longevity.

2. The actual hazard ratios, both within and between-group, are pretty minimal.

So yeah, maybe we can conclude that using most things in moderation and varying your food (e.g. dark chocolate today, white chocolate tomorrow etc. ) is not the worst idea, and at the same time milk may not be quite as healthy as people thought for a while. I'm certainly not in the Kristina-camp of milk-haters and consume quite a lot of dairy products every day.

You guys aren't drinking milk, you are drinking something that was made out of milk. If you have a little bit of countryside at hand I would suggest you get your milk there. It won't survive a few days in your fridge and whatever comes out of it if you do keep it that long there could be a slight problem for your health, but simply put, it isn't fresh milk you are drinking. The best milk you can drink is what we call 'biezenmelk' here, it's yellow, not like yellow snow, healthy actually. It's the milk from a pregnant cow and is the best, but to get it you must also go to a local farmer as supermarkets don't sell it. But again, you aren't drinking milk.

So you think capitalism ruined our milk or do you think it is actually viable to provide everyone with fresh milk that costs 2-3 times as much? If so, why does the market not do that?

[Sigurd]

Let's ignore the lactose intolerant hate. If you can drink milk - you sir, are an evolutionary deviant and are meant to drink it.

[Fragony]

Why should I care, I get my food from local markets that sell stuff from the region, eat what you want to eat it's all fine with me. I just prefer good products, silly as I am. No poisen on vegitables, how could I. A cow that walks freely for it's short life, inconceivable. One pig or cow is enough for four persons if you have a good fridge. 400 total, split by four.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I heard the arguments against milk but still a single thing stands out, where milk is on the daily menu people are much taller in general. That's a sign of health.

Reminds me of that 'Walking the Nile' series that was on recently. The guy met a tribe of pastoralists in Sudan who lived mainly off of milk, and these guys were massive, really freakishly tall. I think they might have been overdoing it though because their teeth were shooting out of their mouth at wild angles. Its certainly true that milk makes your bones/teeth grow.