Milk in Europe

[wensleydale]

I keep coming across literature implying that Europe is a paradise of raw milk. That milk is hardly ever pasteurized, that something called thermization is used instead, and that no one ever gets sick ever, from anything. Or gets a broken bone either. In fact, this literature implies that using pasteurized milk will turn anyone who drinks it into a congested brittle boned wreck with no immune system.

I should note that a lot of the people that advocate this approach are in fact professional quacks and that a well respected livestock veterinarian told me that if it was my cow fine, but any other cow forget it (but he must be in the pocket of big milk, he works for APHIS and is an expert on livestock disease).

That said, what is milk like in Europe? Is it the raw milk paradise I have been told it is?

 

[zoomaniac]

Hmh. I don't think so (or at least it isn't a "raw milk paradise").

I will only speak for Switzerland (which is well known for milk products worldwide, as like milk chocolate or cheese for example).
Here, people normally buy and drink pasteurized or UHT (ultra heated) milk, not raw milk. But some cheese ist made with raw milk. However, so far, we really live good with that way...

 

[Pootle]

Europe is of course the land of milk & honey, the promised land etc,, and all that...

more seriously most Europeans have their own personal cow that travels around with that person, to and from work, holidays, sometimes even on social family events. The personal cow is of course a walking tap of fresh milk, so if I am having a brew in work, I make the said coffee or tea and putting the cup in place a couple of squits on the teet et voila, a brew as you like it. For more complex recipes such as cereals with milk I like to use the teets on the udder nearest the front of the cow for a creamier deposit.

 

[lamna]

Can't speak for Europe as a whole but here in the UK we don't drink milk with cow mess in it.

 

[Jana]

In the Czech republic (Czechoslovakia then), sale of unpasteurized milk has been completely prohibited since year 1934, in order to protect people from infections.

70 years later, after our entry into the EU in 2004, this ban has been lifted. EU norms in hygiene and food safety are in many cases weaker then our traditional old laws.

I don´t drink milk. And when I use it for my cooking, it always goes over boiling point, so I don´t really care which sort I buy.

 

[DDcorvus]

All milk in Belgian and Dutch supermarkets is pasteurized or UHT milk, but if you go to specialised shops you can buy raw milk, but you will need to and look for it. Like in the Swiss case also quite some Belgian, French, Italian and Spanish cheeses are made with raw milk. So quite some people might eat cheese made from raw milk, but there will only be very few people drinking raw milk.

 

[Arizona Docent]

I gave up drinking milk years and years ago on the advice of a nutritionist. Think about it. All mammals drink milk for a short time and after a few months (or years for long lived mammals) are weaned off it. Cow's milk is good for baby cows and that is about it IMO. (Well maybe good for making yogurt, butter or cheese, but I do not understand why anyone drinks it straight.)

 

[Jana]

I gave up drinking milk years and years ago on the advice of a nutritionist. Think about it. All mammals drink milk for a short time and after a few months (or years for long lived mammals) are weaned off it. Cow's milk is good for baby cows and that is about it IMO. (Well maybe good for making yogurt, butter or cheese, but I do not understand why anyone drinks it straight.)

Drinking milk might be just a matter of individual taste today. But in the past, milk used to be the most important proteine source for poorer village families in my country, lets say till end of 19th century in poorer regions. To own a cow (or at least a lady-goat - for the really poor) meant a lot, to lose it was equal to a small catastrophe.

I always found interesting the distribution of lactose-tolerance in Europe. It covers most of northern and central Europe, accross nations of very different genetic backround. It must have been a real evolutional advantage if this mutation had spread so far.

 

[Pleistohorse]

Drinking milk might be just a matter of individual taste today. But in the past, milk used to be the most important proteine source for poorer village families in my country, lets say till end of 19th century in poorer regions. To own a cow (or at least a lady-goat - for the really poor) meant a lot, to lose it was equal to a small catastrophe.

I always found interesting the distribution of lactose-tolerance in Europe. It covers most of northern and central Europe, accross nations of very different genetic backround. It must have been a real evolutional advantage if this mutation had spread so far.

Excellent point. Very interesting.

 

[lamna]

Some peoples have adapted to be able to digest milk as an adult, particularly those from North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, India and East Africa, as we've been herding animals for so long.

 

[Chlidonias]

I gave up drinking milk years and years ago on the advice of a nutritionist. Think about it. All mammals drink milk for a short time and after a few months (or years for long lived mammals) are weaned off it. Cow's milk is good for baby cows and that is about it IMO. (Well maybe good for making yogurt, butter or cheese, but I do not understand why anyone drinks it straight.)

your nutritionalist sounds to have a rather simple grasp of nutrition. To say that milk is only for baby mammals is to overlook the fact that a very high percentage of individuals from most human populations produce lactase through their entire lives, a bi-product of the farming culture. The sole purpose of lactase is to digest lactose. If humans "weren't meant" to use milk products as adults, then they would physically not be able to. It is an evolutionary trait, not some diet fad. There are races which are entirely lactose-intolerant (i.e. from non-farming cultures, as in North American Indians, Bantu, and eskimos), but a large proportion of the world's population is derived from livestock-farmers (in particular most of Europe and Central Asia). In basic terms, hunter-gatherer cultures are lactose-intolerant, farming cultures are lactose-tolerant.

A nutritionist should never be saying not to drink milk because it is for baby mammals; they should be saying do drink milk unless you are lactose-intolerant.

 

[Arizona Docent]

Being raised (like most Americans) drinking milk I gave it up almost two decades ago and am in excellent health. I am not a doctor or nutritionist, I just know from my own experience I see no need for it.

 

[cleusk]

I absolutely love milk. Especially chocolate milk. The Nesquick flavors are also good.

 

[wensleydale]

I thought so. I recently got into home cheesemaking, and if you read some of the books and websites about the subject there is much psuedoscientific babble about pasteurization destroying beneficial bacteria (except you can get your gut flora from other sources), having no usable calcium, that magical enzymes are gone , etc.

I am told that raw milk is better for some cheesemaking, but all of the cheese made in the U.S. (I think) must be aged for a minimum of 60 days before being released to the paying public. I think. I have eaten raw milk cheese and detected no difference between that and pasteurized milk cheese.

Supposedly Europe has contraptions called "milkmats" that dispense raw milk from a single farmer on every corner (well actually they are supposed to be "common"). Has anyone ever seen one of these contraptions?

 

[wensleydale]

Europe is of course the land of milk & honey, the promised land etc,, and all that...

more seriously most Europeans have their own personal cow that travels around with that person, to and from work, holidays, sometimes even on social family events. The personal cow is of course a walking tap of fresh milk, so if I am having a brew in work, I make the said coffee or tea and putting the cup in place a couple of squits on the teet et voila, a brew as you like it. For more complex recipes such as cereals with milk I like to use the teets on the udder nearest the front of the cow for a creamier deposit.

Funny, I was just at the county fair and a cow offered to follow me around and do just that. She was a Jersey cow and said I seemed like the type to want that kind of service and gave me her card. Her one catch was that I had to let her take her calf to work with her. Should I email her? I also had an offer from a Holstein, but I am told the milk they give isn't as rich.

 

[nanoboy]

Nice little article on lactose intolerance. The percentage of lactose intolerant Chinese has decreased a little bit since the article was published (according to another study I read somewhere).

Got lactase?

Also, I have read that lactose tolerance in humans has only 'evolved' in the last 20,000 years when we changed from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to fixed settlements/farming.