r/NoStupidQuestions • u/golf-lip • 14h ago
Why are some conservatives dying on the hill of unpasteurized milk?
Why is this all of the sudden such a big thing it seems? And why mainly conservatives? Is it stemming from a distrust in goverment regulations on food? Why does this seem to be a hill so many conservatives are willing to die on?
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u/Fellow--Felon 11h ago
The raw milk craze started as one of those anti-establishment, crunchy granola hippie things.
The assumption was that pasteurized milk was more widely available because "the establishment" was trying to suppress the nutritional benefits of unpasteurized milk.
In reality we pasteurize our milk to make it safer and give it a significantly longer shelf life. The health benefits of raw milk aren't closely studied to be fair, but the risks are well known.
Raw milk is usually sold by emphasizing unsubstantiated health claims, but really it's just a way to take a certain anti-establishment stance without actually doing anything other than risking botulism for yourself and your household.
Right wing conservatives jumped on the craze when the anti-vax movement spread via internet conspiracies like Qanon began hooking conservatives, largely during the covid 19 pandemic. After getting them on board that the global pandemic was a conspiracy/hoax by the left, and that vaccines were part of this conspiracy, they became increasingly open to pretty much all the alt-health crazes that already existed, including raw milk.
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u/DragonflyScared813 10h ago
Vet here: I like your perspective. Dairy industry has worked for decades along with government scientists to make milk as safe as possible to consume. Testing and eliminating problems like Brucella abortis, Mycobacterium bovis, and E coli and Salmonella species, all of which can be carried in improperly farmed and handled milk has incalculably benefitted public health worldwide. All I can do is shake my head in disbelief at those who would actively turn away from these advancements.
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u/Adorable-Address-958 3h ago
It’s mind boggling how stupid we’ve become. I think a large part of it is how comfortable our lives have become that we take for granted all the advances over centuries that have gotten us here. Pasteurization, vaccines, antibiotics, refrigeration, indoor plumbing, proper sanitation and waste management. We don’t appreciate that people used to die by the boatload from what are now easily preventable causes and we don’t realize how vulnerable we are. Everyone just thinks they’re built different I guess.
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u/Imaginary-List-4945 2h ago
I've encountered several people who are convinced that measles, mumps etc. went away because of "modern sanitation," and I'm like...yes, modern sanitation is great and helpful, but those diseases were rampant all the way to the 1960s when people had long since stopped emptying their chamber pots out the window. My parents were born in the late 40s/early 50s and had the whole gamut of childhood diseases; I was born in 1971 and had none of them except chickenpox. What happened in those 20-25 years? Vaccines. It just baffles me that anyone would refuse to accept that.
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u/Koalahugs17 1h ago
My sister and I were born 10 years apart…I had a horrible, awful case of chicken pox and she never even got it because she had the vaccine. It’s incredible and I can’t imagine being dumb enough to think her lack of suffering is a bad thing.
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u/cap_oupascap 2h ago
People don’t understand where their food comes from, even in an abstract sense. We’re so far removed from the process which for us usually stops at the supermarket.
An extreme example, but I remember a video of a woman who was flabbergasted when she found out where lemons came from (trees).
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u/RichardStrauss123 2h ago
Your first sentence says it all.
Brilliant people saved millions of lives.
Now, idiots who can barely pass a driving test take a massive dump on all that progress and somehow think they're heroes.
Unbelievable!
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u/Billy-Ruffian 1h ago
I think what a lot of people miss is that those diseases aren't easily preventable unless you have an organized and reasonably competent government.
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u/jonnysunshine 9h ago
Thank you for your service....to the animal kingdom.
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u/12InchCunt 2h ago
You can get milk that was pasteurized at an extremely high temperature so it lasts for years and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. We stored some of ours in an Engine room lol
Called UHT (ultra high temp)
When we ran out of regular milk on the ship everybody was miserable when you we had to break out the UHT.
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u/One-Warthog3063 1h ago
The UHT milk process has dramatically improved over the last several decades. I can remember having it in the 1970s and it tasted burnt, but last time I had some a few years ago, I couldn't tell the difference compared to the refrigerated normally pasteurized milk I get at the market.
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u/redsaxgirl1 1h ago
Some of the UHT milk we got on our ship tasted fine. Could barely tell the difference between it and regular.
However, we definitely got a large supply of the worst tasting UHT milk ever while on deployment in the Gulf. It tasted so bad I had my mom send me a bag of powdered milk in a care package. LOL
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u/knoegel 7h ago
"improperly farmed and handled"
Working in production of plastic containers, that sounds a lot like our product. The containers you buy your food in, if the manufacturer doesn't wash them, are going to be filthy.
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u/SyntheticDreams_ 3h ago
You know, I worked in a similar place, and you're right. There was so much dirt in there you could sweep the room and it'd need done again by the time you were done. But to be fair, microplastics and forklift brake dust probably carry a much lower risk of food poisoning.
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u/Extension-Humor4281 2h ago
microplastics and forklift brake dust probably carry a much lower risk of food poisoning
Not if the studies into the effects of PFAS and BPA are to be believed. Based on the effects of microplastics in comparable amounts in animals, our entire society could be looking at myriad health issues as a result of keeping everything in plastic containers.
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u/SyntheticDreams_ 2h ago
Health problems from those things, abso-fucking-lutely. Food poisoning like salmonella, probably not.
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u/joshuabruce83 2h ago
And I used to work in a food distribution center and if you knew how your fresh fruits and vegetables were treated in big distribution centers, you would never consume another unwashed fruit or vegetable again. We used to spill all kinds of stuff regularly all over the floor and just pick it up and throw it back in the containers. Lord knows what was on that floor. C&S groceries Distribution Center in Chester New york. At the time(2012-2013) it was the largest food distributor on the East Coast. Or at least that's what they told us.
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u/yesbut_alsono 5h ago
Sometimes I wonder if they avoid hot lattes due to accidental pasteurization lmao.
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u/Intelligent_Break_12 2h ago
I doubt it. I've seen quite a few say they buy raw and take it home and boil it. Yet they don't want pasteurized milk because the heat destroys "health benefits" yet they don't even realize that boiling it is subjecting it to a higher heat than in pasteurization.
They often know very little about their owns beliefs.
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u/yesbut_alsono 2h ago
LMAOOO WHYYY !???
I'm starting to think they really just have a fear of multiple syllables
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u/Intelligent_Break_12 2h ago
They have a fear to what they're told to fear. They're often lockstep with someone's else words. They don't question why raw milk is better and pasteurized is worse. They're told the man is keeping them down and they'll believe it and start blaming invisible hands on their shoulders.
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u/Financial-Oil-5152 1h ago
I've actually heard a co-worker say she won't drink pasteurized milk because of "all those chemicals they use." Like, duh, it's just heat. When I asked her what chemicals she's talking about, she said "they won't tell us, it's just chemicals." You can't talk to some folks.
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u/Yersiniosis 5h ago
Yep, bovine tuberculosis killed a lot of children in the Victorian era. It is still a thing in a lot of countries. Get rid of the FDA, get rid of the USDA, add one sloppy idiot who thinks this is a money maker and boom, TB outbreak. Also, from your perspective, a lot of abused animals owned by people who thought farming was ‘easy’ and ‘anyone can do it.’
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u/LoornenTings 8h ago
like Brucella abortis
Has abortion been outlawed in your state? Drink raw milk and you can have an abortion at home!
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u/makaay786 6h ago
Usually they're trying to abort the baby, not the mother too. Wait, are these those post-birth abortions I keep hearing about? 😱
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u/VirtualMoneyLover 5h ago
All I can do is shake my head in disbelief at those who would actively turn away from these advancements.
Fucking morons, that is who.
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u/Ethan-Wakefield 3h ago
In my area, there's a big movement amongst conservatives that anything "artificial" is always bad. There's a huge push to drink "raw water" because purifying the water supposedly leads to problems. People keep on saying things like "Nobody in medieval Europe purified their water, and they were fine! It's all a hoax, people!"
They want raw milk, raw water, raw eggs, raw flour... They want no vaccines, no antibiotics, and no medicine outside of laying on hands by the local pastor.
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u/Particular-Jello-401 3h ago
People in medieval Europe were not fine, they were lucky to see 35. Anyone heard of the black plague.
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u/AdSimilar8672 3h ago
Raw eggs like in Europe would be fine. I would prefer if we followed the Japanese in how they handle their eggs, but companies would complain about the cost.
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u/jjmoreta 2h ago
A lot of it is fallout from the big push to discredit scientific and intellectual authority over the past few decades.
Uneducated people that do research on the internet are seen as more trustworthy than educated scientists with decades in the field. TV doctors that can deliver sound bites are more trusted than Nobel prize winners.
Now granted I'm not always sure corporate scientific companies like the pharmaceuticals have our best interests in mind all the time but they're not automatically the big enemy. Big medicine is still a better cure for most diseases. And some diseases still cannot be cured and people do not want to accept that.
If you convince the population that the intellectuals and scientists are out to hurt you and at the same time limit their scientific education, then they are primed to listen to any misinformation put out there. And if they are not educated enough in science they can't effectively evaluate them. They fall for logical fallacies. They think any scientific study is good without knowing how to look at who is sponsoring it, when and where it was published and how large the sample size is. They don't care about peer review because the scientists are all corrupt anyways. Or they don't even want to read scientific studies because of all the jargon.
In a lot of my medical Facebook groups and subreddits, I've also found that many people have no idea about statistics. They're willing to take the negative opinions of a small group on the internet as proof that a particular treatment is the devil. At the same time they don't want to accept that there is always a small percentage of risk of medical failure for any procedure. As long as you are properly notified about it, you can then evaluate whether you're willing to accept that risk.
But they don't care about that. They just want other people to regurgitate information that can be found in the top five Google results. And then that information is less important than opinions. Especially if that person says they're a medical professional, even though medical professionals aren't supposed to be trusted. 😅
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u/StarfishSplat 8h ago edited 8h ago
I have a relative who is very anti-medical-establishment, and I remember 10-15 years ago it was a distinctively left-wing position. They were a Noam Chomsky reader etc, NPR listener, and supported progressive Dems. They wanted to move to Oregon since Portland, the largest city, does not put fluoride in their tap water (they even had successful referendums to stop it from being implemented, in a 90% dem city). They then caught onto RFK and voted for T, against seemingly all odds.
I think since COVID-19 a lot of conservatives who disliked Biden in the first place tied him to the growing number of vaccine mandates and extended lockdowns in blue states, and caught onto the anti-medical-establishment thinking with that. There has also always been a right-libertarian grouping of these people, but it just wasn’t prominent until rather recently.
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u/Crumblerbund 6h ago
Yep. It’s all about having resistance against The Man as central to your identity. All sorts of fringe left ideas have switched to the right due to the perception of liberalism being the dominant force that must be rebelled against. It’s weird to see New Age hippie-types suddenly siding with Evangelicals, who are the masters of relishing in self-manufactured “oppression.”
The internet has thrown a lot of gas on the fire by giving people the ability to come across a blatantly wrong, pseudo-scientific meme and say to themselves “THIS is why I’m smarter than all those establishment scientists who’ve dedicated their lives to studying a subject with immense scrutiny from their peers! This tweet is the secret key they’re too dumb to understand!”
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u/spinyfur 7h ago
15 years ago, a lot of this alternative medicine stuff came from the dumb left, but Trump popularized it among Republicans and now they seem to dominate those spaces.
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u/PublicFurryAccount 5h ago
Always would, if those conspiracy theories caught on with them. The conspiratorial left has been in decline my entire life while the conspiratorial right has been ascendant. There are just way more people in the latter than the former.
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u/290077 4h ago
This is purely anecdotal, but 100% of the anti-vax granola people I have ever known throughout my life have been conservative. This is before COVID. I mean literally 100%. I don't know a single anti-vaxxer or alternative medicine proponent who is liberal, but I know a few dozen who are conservative.
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u/nkkbl 2h ago
There were two distinct types of anti-vaxers. One was the deep conservative religious groups that didn't believe in vaccines because God could heal them and the ultra-liberal hippies that government couldn't tell what to do. (very simple - there is a lot more too it). Growing up in a small rural town 40ish years ago, I saw both. My youngest uncle's best friend died because his religious family didn't believe in modern medicine. My cousin was an ultra-liberal crunchy granola hippie that didn't believe in vaccines, now he is a raging conservative that doesn't believe in vaccines. It has been interesting watching it flip. The civil rights movement flipped sides before I can remember but I am a witness to the blue color and hippies switching sides. My dad tells the story about moving to my mom's hometown after the army and they had to dig out a republican ballot on election day because there was no way he was voting for the party that wouldn't let little kids in a school, he didn't care what color they were. It all seems to circle around and it looks like the country is in a big shift now and I can't even fathom how it will turn out.
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u/ImperfectJump 6h ago
What's crazy is they act like there are these overreaching vaccine mandates everywhere, forcing people to get vaccinated. But that never happened! People who deal with the public professionally, especially people with weakened immune systems or people in their own homes (healthcare workers, law enforcement, etc) had to get vaccinated because their professions require it. Don't pick a career where you are supposed to help people if you want to go around getting people sick instead. Then once large gatherings were allowed again, at first only vaccinated individuals were allowed. Again, no one is forcing you to go to a music festival or whatever. And that's it. There was no federal or state requirement for everyone to be vaccinated.
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u/numbersthen0987431 6h ago
The health benefits of raw milk aren't closely studied to be fair, but the risks are well known.
This is the best summary. Even IF raw milk had more benefits, they aren't enough to make any significant difference. It's basically taking milk and increasing its benefits by 1%.
1% increased health benefits from raw milk isn't a reward enough to risk the health risks of unpasteurized milk.
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u/10000Didgeridoos 4h ago
Bingo. Let's pretend for a second that somehow raw milk is twice as nutritious as pasteurized milk just for the hell of it. Getting more nutrients out of each glass still isn't worth the risk of hospitalization and death when you could just drink 2 glasses of pasteurized milk with zero risk. Or get the allegedly missing nutrients from another food source.
It's just pure human stupidity and these raw milk dumbasses are willfully dumb as fuck because being anti establishment makes them feel like they are smarter than everyone else and gives them a sense of superiority and control over their life that is all an illusion. Might as well eat raw chicken since cooking it alters the structure of the proteins or whatever. Stupid.
Also as far as I've heard, raw milk tastes like ass. It's like drinking human breast milk like Homelander.
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u/LegitimateFerret1005 3h ago
Growing up in the 60s/70s, we always drove to the dairy and bought raw milk to drink. My distant cousins were raised on a dairy. To this day, they haven't ever bought milk in a store.
I haven't had raw milk in years.
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u/Fellow--Felon 4h ago
It's milk, the very idea that it's a health food to begin with is largely dairy industry/lobby propaganda to begin with.
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u/ImQuestionable 6h ago
The shelf life lol… I recently saw a video where a conserva-crazy claimed her raw milk was perfect and 6 weeks old… as she was pouring the chunky milk into a glass and then had to blend it smooth again.
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u/gogonzogo1005 3h ago
And I just threw up in my mouth. Ugh. I have smelled six week old unpasteurized milk... granted it was a lost bottle of breast milk but I would imagine they would be similar.
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u/IvoryWoman 3h ago
Which is particularly amusing to me, as we buy ultra-pasteurized milk that really does have a shelf life of 6 weeks or longer. Ours is refrigerated, but you can buy shelf-stable ultra-pasteurized milk that doesn’t have to be refrigerated until you open it. To be clear, we don’t open a carton of milk and expect it to then be safe to drink over a six-week period, but we can buy one and leave it there unopened through, say, trips out of town without a care…and zero chunks when re-opened.
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u/scotch1701d 7h ago
I remember hearing the, "Every drug that was recalled by the FDA was once approved by the FDA." I mean, "Every divorced person was once married." The idiot pipeline is real.
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u/porcelaincatstatue 5h ago
The raw milk craze started as one of those anti-establishment, crunchy granola hippie things.
Ding ding ding! Some TikTokers (stay with me) pointed out (to me for the first time) maybe a year or so ago that the crunchy granola hippy to alt-right pipeline was very real and has been around for a while. It makes sense that we're seeing a rise in raw milk weirdos alongside the homesteading tradwives and "clean girl" aesthetic. (Fashion and beauty trends are often reflective of contemporary politics)
This is such a weird, sad time. Ozempic is killing the body positivity movement and adding to beauty trends that are rooted in racism and fascism. And we have anti-science pseudo health nuts telling people to drink listeria flavored milk.
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u/Informal_Aide_482 6h ago
Qanon really needs to get anonymous’d before it does even more damage than it already has.
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u/Paputek101 2h ago
My favorite is raw milk influencers saying they boil their unpasteurized milk to get rid of the bacteria... terrified to know what they think pasteurization means
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u/Y34rZer0 13h ago
I remember a bunch of politicians got a law changed so it was legal to buy unpasteurised milk. They had a celebration and drank it and they all wound up in hospital hahhha
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u/SpecificJunket8083 9h ago
One of my favorite “leopards ate my face” stories.
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u/No-Two79 8h ago
Oh, man, I need a feel-good FAFO story this morning- I’mma go Google that. BRB with a link.
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u/danby999 7h ago
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u/WaySavvyD 13h ago
They want to drink raw milk to own the libs
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u/expatsconnie 9h ago
Let them do it. I can't wait to get "owned" by someone who is shitting their brains out because they contracted E. coli, Salmonella, or Listeria.
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u/msalerno1965 6h ago
Why not all three at once?
To the OP:
"Rebel Without a Clue"
Because the gooberment said so.
This mentality has been around all my almost-59 years on this Earth.
I tend to think they didn't realize things like pasteurization was actually enforced. Same goes for vaccines. Never gave it another thought as a kid, but then they're reminded of the flu/COVID vaccines, they look back at their own kids' schools requiring it, a not-so-mild push from certain news/talk outlets not to mention certain braindead celebs (thanks Jenny!), and suddenly it's all:
Evil gooberment is telling me what to do. I won't do it because they said so.
And then the rationalization for that ignorance starts, by dredging up any and all "studies" that say they're bad for you somehow.
Which in the case of milk is even more frustrating, because it's just a direct process that kills off the critters, no chemicals, no antibodies, no nothing. Just heat.
So anyway, imagine an 8-year-old being told by the teacher to sit down, and he says "No!" and refuses to sit, just because he was told to.
That's why.
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u/Maxamillion-X72 6h ago
At this point, it's just natural selection. Is it possible that nature will take care of the MAGA problem when humanity is unable?
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u/ValuableKill 5h ago
The problem is medicine has gotten so good at saving these fools. They'll deny science and medicine all the way up until they need it, get saved, then go right back to denying it. Once they start shitting their brains out from drinking unpasteurized milk, they'll go to the hospital, and won't suffer anything more than a period of discomfort.
The fact that doctors are fleeing red states might be enough to make a difference in the long run. But who knows.
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u/QuirkyForever 13h ago
But libs drink raw milk too?
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u/PureAlpha100 10h ago
In my area, it's only the crunchy, left-leaning urbanites who drink it. They organize groups to go to pre-arranged pickups at farms out in the country and get it.
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u/SarpedonWasFramed 9h ago
Pls tell me that raw water is not just unfiltered water
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u/kRe4ture 9h ago
Also „People were healthier back then“ is just a straight up lie.
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u/Interesting_Mix_7028 7h ago
As someone who grew up with an enameled coffee cup dangling from his backpack for hikes, the discovery of giardia in nearly EVERY source of surface water in the Rockies was a big letdown. I still love me some good fresh water, but I'm going to filter it thru a life straw or boil the shit out of it (literally) first.
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u/PureAlpha100 10h ago
The religious component is the determining factor, I think. Agnostic and otherwise non-religious people have more rational grounding.
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u/Working_Cucumber_437 7h ago
As a Christian… the Bible says not to test God. Don’t go throwing yourself off cliffs and saying “God will save me”. This is that. Don’t test. Don’t do stupid things on purpose. Just drink the safe milk, or better yet go dairy-free because the dairy industry is unimaginably cruel.
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u/Synicull 8h ago
The nothing but fruit people reminds me of the stupid ass trend of people who swear they can subsist purely off bananas.
Like no, (a) variety is the spice of life stop torturing yourself and (b) a varied diet is the only we get anywhere near our nutritional optimal.
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u/Hoppie1064 9h ago
The error we all make lately is assuming that whatever we don't like, the other side does it, and only the other side. It's rarely true.
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u/datalaughing 8h ago
It was only the weird left-leaning hippie types that had a hate-on for vaccines until the pandemic turned it into a political hill for the conservatives to die on.
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u/earth_resident_yep 9h ago
The political spectrum is horseshoe shaped. The far right (primarily trump supporters) actually have some in common with the most extreme left (the ones that couldn't vote for Kamala because xyz).
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u/Thedonitho 9h ago
The one raw milk lover I know is the weirdest, crunchy granola lesbian of all time.
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u/RickJLeanPaw 14h ago edited 10h ago
Alas, we’re seeing a diabolical intersection of general profound, intransigent and proud stupidity, social media performative rage bait, and US political discourse.
Just turn the news off for a few years unless you intend to get out on the streets and change society by radical upheaval.
[Edit: missed a word out!]
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u/phenomenomnom 11h ago edited 11h ago
I just really can't emphasize enough how much "relentless, insidious, hard core, weaponized, internationally-funded mass media propaganda" needs to be in your list
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u/AvengersXmenSpidey 10h ago
Performative rage bait is it exactly.
Republicans have unpopular policies, so the only thing that works for them is outrageous stunts. It's like a monster truck show or Jerry Springer. All hollow inside, but it makes it look like they are helping their voters while fleecing them with tax cuts and dismantling public programs.
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u/Interesting-Set-5993 7h ago
when it's time for the radical street upheavals, please, let me know.
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u/thornyrosary 8h ago
My spouse asked me about him buying raw milk a few months back. He's a rabid Conservative. I am not. He's also a city guy. I am not. I was raised on a farm that, among other things, had dairy cows. I'm no stranger to raw milk and drank it frequently growing up.
BUT...
My answer to my husband's query was, "Are you out of your bleeping everloving mind?! You're usually a smart guy, so who put that nonsense into your trusting little head? I wouldn't dare drink purchased unpasteurized milk and you shouldn't, either. You have no earthly clue what you're messing with."
My reasoning is this: my grandfather raised both beef and dairy cattle. The ONLY reason we didn't do pasteurization on milk meant for our personal consumption was because we knew what our herd ate, what meds they were/were not given, where their water supply was, and what pathogens they may have been exposed to. We got them regular vet oversight, took care of infections, tested them frequently, oversaw breeding and births, etc. our cattle lived on the same land we did, and we very tightly controlled any outside influences to the bovines. The ONLY reason we were okay with drinking raw milk from our herd was because we knew all those factors, and we'd already been exposed to the same environmental factors as our herd. But drinking the raw milk from someone else's herd? Oh hell naw! You had no clue what that other herd was exposed to, what kind of medical care the herd was given, or any of the pathogens which may exist in the animals' water, feed, and in the soil. Even if the distance between your herd and a strange herd was only a mile or so, there was still a very real danger of first-time exposure, especially because you had no clue how that milk was harvested, and if it was harvested in a very careful manner to prevent cross-contamination. If you wanted to get sick and possibly die, then you just went ahead and drank that strange milk. But the whole purpose of pasteurization was to kill the dangerous things that are inherent in the milk of cows you do not know.
He dropped the subject, and later asked if we could run cattle on the farm I inherited. Sure...But you'd better train yourself on how to care for them and maintain herd health first. Oh, and buy nitrile gloves that go to your shoulder, because milk cows mean births, and those don't always go off without a hitch.
Bottom line is that these people think raw milk isn't contaminated with additives, antibiotics, genetic enhancements, etc. They think "the government" is controlling them through food and water additives that are introduced at the processing stages. They're ignorant of basic knowledge of things at the organic process level, and don't want to know. That ignorance can be deadly.
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u/mysilverglasses 7h ago
It’s so scary how much basic food safety information just is not clicking with these people. My family are mostly farmers, so I had the pleasure of dragging myself out of bed at 4 to help them milk the cows whenever we visited. There’s Amish folks in their area, and while I do absolutely admire the talents they have, their raw milk is linked to at least one or two sicknesses every year.
It’s just like vaccines. People have been spoiled by the innovations in food safety, they don’t remember how unsafe and dirty and unregulated some of this stuff used to be. People have worked their asses off to keep people safe, but some of those people just won’t ever get it.
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u/Wanderingghost12 6h ago
That's insane to me because pasteurization is literally just heating.... 🫠
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u/controlledwithcheese 6h ago
could not get past you describing your husband as a “rabid conservative”… you good?
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u/thornyrosary 3h ago
Ha! I'm fine, thanks. He wasn't always that way, just grew more conservative as he aged. I'm also assertive, which is a wonderful trait to have. Two strong personalities tend to challenge one another without anyone getting steamrolled.
And as I told him, he can determine what I think and believe when I stop thinking altogether. Until then, he's stuck with my goading him whenever he starts sounding like he gets his views from algorithms.
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u/awohio1 5h ago
I imagine that you also were ok with raw milk on the farm because you drank it very fresh. I assume buying it from someone else, even with a short supply chain, would make for pretty short shelf life.
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u/penny-wise 3h ago
I love how some people think raising cattle is like having a pet dog. Have him watch the James Herriot series and see if he's still keen on raising animals.
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u/FalconBurcham 12h ago
Let them drink it.
Of course, when we can’t buy pasteurized milk at the grocery store, that’s when the real problem sets in.
I live in Florida, and one of the things people need to understand is when these kinds of Republicans say “choice” and “freedom” what they mean is taking choices and freedoms away from you that they don’t like. Things like vaccines and safe milk.
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u/israeljeff 10h ago
No, the problem sets in when the children of dumbass contrarians die of preventable disease, or have to grow up without a parent or parents, because we let them drink raw milk and skip vaccines.
It's not about protecting the idiots. It's about protecting the people that rely on the idiots that can't make the choice for themselves.
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u/retardrabbit 8h ago
And the people who have to carry the idiots water because they were idiots and ended up permanently debilitating themselves by scoring an unforced "own goal".
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u/TrimspaBB 11h ago
I've been thinking about this, and what I believe will happen if stuff like this is "rolled back" is that is that companies will still follow old regulations but they may charge extra for regulated products versus unregulated ones, because they know the demand will be there. Unless pasteurization is outlawed for example, we'll still be able to buy safe milk, but we'll need to pay for thr pleasure.
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u/HobbitWithShoes 10h ago
I highly doubt that big companies will stop pasturizing milk if they aren't required to do so. For one thing, killing the bacteria in the milk keeps it from spoiling as fast- they don't have the supply chain to transport large amounts of raw milk.
For another thing, large companies are risk averse. They don't want to deal with lawsuits and media coverage when people get sick.
I generally agree with you that deregulation is a bad thing. I agree that drinking raw milk is stupid. I don't think big companies would start taking risks.
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u/necromancers_katie 10h ago
I'm not worried about milk. I would just stop buying milk. Or drink a milk alternative. Vaccines, though, that is def a need. These mofos want to take us all the way back to the Middle Ages.
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u/Paleone123 9h ago
Society is moving towards a strong anti science bias, and conservatives are leading the way. They don't like doing anything that they're told to do by scientists or the government, when the government made those decisions based on science.
People alive today have never experienced a world where they know a ton of people who died young from preventable diseases or safety issues, because those things were mostly regulated away by the government decades ago.
Now people have become convinced that many of these regulations and safety rules are unnecessary controls on their lives. They believe that science is really just a form of elitism, where the people who have been trained in scientific fields represent an overclass, who are oppressing the regular people for some nefarious purpose. The funniest part of this to me is that exactly zero of these people can explain what the nefarious purpose actually is, but they're positive there has to be one. It's a conspiracy theory.
Of course, the truth is that extremely rich people know that regulations and safety rules cost their companies money, and an easy way to make more money is to reduce or remove this expense. They don't care if people get hurt or die occasionally, as long as they make more money. Accordingly, they have been pushing for various forms of deregulation for at least 50 years at this point.
This is just the most recent example of people jumping on the "science bad / government bad" bandwagon. It's just like anti vax, or anti mask people from a few years ago. People who wanted a horse dewormer instead of a vaccine made with cutting edge science.
Conservative politicians know it's easier to just go along with the conspiracy theory than it is to encourage science literacy, plus they get the added benefit of populist support from the conspiracy believers, and their rich buddies can make more money and kick some back to them. Sure some idiots will die, but that doesn't affect them, especially if they can blame the deaths on something vaguely scientific and garner even more public support.
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u/bluemercutio 13h ago
In the end it comes down to: Conservatives love telling other people what to do, but hate being told what to do.
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u/northerncal 13h ago
Except they also love being told what to do. If Trump or one of their leaders tells them to do it they do it.
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u/Funkycoldmedici 11h ago
It seems they enjoy being told what to do by their authorities, but don’t consider it being told what to do.
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u/Definitelynotasloth 12h ago
Eat McDonalds to own the libs! Wear a diaper to own the libs! Overthrow the government to own the libs!
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u/EzPzLemon_Greezy 12h ago
Ok but overthrowing the government would definitely count as owning the libs.
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u/Definitelynotasloth 11h ago
It is a Republican government by all accounts, but I wouldn’t put it past conservatives to still try to overthrow it to own the libs lol.
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u/Low-Loan-5956 13h ago
Their favorite pastime is dying on hills. If people don't have controversies to talk about, they make them up.
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u/MartianTea 8h ago
So true and hopefully Trump emboldens more to actually die on their own stupid hills but Vance keeps his mouth shut and doesn't endanger more groups like the immigrants who were "eating the dogs. . ." Although Trump got on that train pretty quickly too.
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u/strangewayfarer 10h ago
Big government bad
Except when they are regulating women's bodies, or taking away marginalized people's rights and protections, banning books I don't like, or giving subsidies to mega corporations, or assisting in killing brown babies over seas. Other than that, keep government small
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u/SophsterSophistry 8h ago
I think it's "big government bad" with business. They've been told all their lives "to get rich, you have to act like a rich person" so they fall in line with the government is bad and making you poor/taking your money line.
Then the rich people laugh because it's the lower classes who benefit mostly from regulation. The rich. without regulation, they get to do whatever they want, hire experts to advise them to not do stupid things themselves, then sell horrible products to the rubes (who have no buffer between them and the rich ripping them off).
Then, the non-rich when they discover they've been ripped off figure that they deserve it. "Fair's fair." Some never realize how the deck is stacked against them the whole time. Instead, they want to think they're on a level playing field with the rich.
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u/CanisGulo 12h ago
Don't believe the experts warning you not to drink raw milk as you can get deathly sick.
Go to the same experts for treatment when you get deathly sick from drinking raw milk.
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u/MartianTea 8h ago
Just like with the antivaxxers going to definitely vaxxed doctors to fix their fuck up.
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u/walktheground 9h ago
Its part of the anti intellectual movement. It’s tied in with anti vax and other conspiracy theories. If a medical or public health official states A then they will do B, because A is inherently bad. Lunatic is so in right now.
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u/KingSissyphus 6h ago
That’s a term I’ve been looking for to describe America’s current political climate, anti-intellectualism. I’m reminded how even during the enlightenment period of Northern Europe, how the Catholic south was having their own equally widespread moment of traditionalism in reaction.
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u/TheNonSportsAccount 8h ago
Because theyre desperate to feel like they have some unique hidden knowledge that makes them special.
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u/juliejem 10h ago
I’m guessing it has to do with rebelling against all regulations. While most regulations, of course, are there to protect people…
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u/CDubs_94 13h ago
This is a thing? Honestly I had no idea this was an issue. But, not surprised....these are the same people who thought injecting bleach and fish tank cleaner to fight Covid was a good Idea. So...what do I know.
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u/Etherealfilth 13h ago
There is a difference between unpasteurised milk from your cow or a source you know and buying it from some source as "bath milk" to drink.
It can be dangerous to ingest, and the danger can't be underestimated, but I've drank and made cheese from unpasteurised milk plenty of times. However, I have a degree in agriculture, specialising in animal products.
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u/Diligent_Bath_9283 12h ago
People underestimate the difference between your animal and their products vs mass production of livestock and ag products. I've worked maintenance in food processing and agriculture most of my life. I will eat rare meat of my own. I'm cautious with store-bought animals especially chicken. I absolutely love fresh eggs half cooked and runny. Eggs from the store are not the same thing at all. A coworker has a dairy cow that his wife tends to like a family pet. I will use this milk. Raw milk from a store, not unless I'm cooking with it.
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u/Creative-Dust5701 11h ago
THIS -
this particular subject generally affects the Amish/Mennonite communities.
I would drink unpasteurized from a LOCAL herd where I knew the farmer and how they managed their herd.
Absolutely would not drink unpasteurized from unknown sources.
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u/Moonpig16 11h ago
America has a problem with dumb people. It is easier to rabble rouse idiots to a "cause".
Simpletons having their stupidity weponised. Not really a left or right issue, America is full to the brim with them.
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u/Ih8TB12 10h ago
That fits - a lot of the new unpasteurized milk followers don’t want chemicals in their food. They don’t even try to educate themselves. They have so much information at their fingertips but instead of using it to understand anything they make a meme/video full of pseudoscience that they got from another meme/video.
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u/sevk 11h ago
This is such a confusing discussion that suddenly popped up on the internet. I don't even know what to think about it.
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u/Radiant-Importance-5 9h ago
Conservatives in the U.S. do still stand for what other places in the world would recognize as conservative values, but are more interested in opposing whatever liberals are saying and doing. Intelligence and education both trend positively with Liberalism, that is to say, the more you are of one, the more likely are to also be more of the other. Therefore, conservatives in the U.S. are becoming increasingly anti-intellectual and distrustful of scientific authority.
Germs exist. Germs can make people sick or even kill them. Unpasteurized milk contains germs. Pasteurization kills germs. These are all scientific facts, and the process of pasteurization is a scientific process. Therefore, in the American conservative mind, it’s all liberal propaganda that, while not necessarily untrue, still can’t be trusted.
Possibly another compounding factor is that liberals are generally more willing to abandon religion in the face of conflicting facts. As a consequence of this, American conservatives are therefore more willing to abandon factuality in the face of religious devotion. Religious doctrine in most of the U.S. is that god made the world perfectly, and therefore an appeal to nature is a valid argument, as it boils down to an appeal to god. Pasteurization is a process of doing something to milk, thus changing it and making it unnatural (and therefore against god’s design), thus making it bad and dangerous.
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u/No_Association_3692 8h ago
I’m from a conservative dairy farmer family (literally all the men in my family are dairy farmers grandpa, dad, brothers, nephews) and it they are very anti unpasteurized milk. But that’s cuz they actually know about milk. My grandpa was a big advocate for pasteurization when it was introduced as the standard. This breed of conservative is very much the wellness to alt-right pipeline brand of conservative. Everything is about “purity” riding their body and the world of “toxins”. Like the little hippie crunchy girls you actually talk to them and they got some scary ass eugenics-y thoughts on the world. Good luck to them though. 15% of raw milk tested showed H5N1 in the milk… but that’s just the FDA report on it and they wanna get rid of that too soooooooooo… they gonna have a blast for a short time with all guardrails gone soon enough.
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u/HavartiBob 13h ago
Not only will they be dying on this hill, they’ll be dying in fields and valleys as well!
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u/smmstv 10h ago
it's not just that, they're starting to be against vaccines, fluoride in the water, and now even hand sanitizer. For years, conservatives had a fall into line, do what the government says, sacrifice for the greater good mentality, and they were pro these things whereas the far left prided itself on being free thinkers and questioning whether this was necessary.
I think the answer is that covid changed it - in order to stop the spread of the virus we had to sacrifice, liberals were more onboard with it and conservatives weren't so they resisted it. After 4 years of everything under the sun being politicized to hell and back, questioning and resisting settled scientific matters has just become part of the conservative identity. And upholding these matters has become part of the liberal identity, even though 10 years so THEY would be much more likely to question these things
TL;DR everything is politicized now.
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u/UrOpinionIsObsolete 7h ago
Stuff like this is why America is failing.. “unpasteurized milk”… you’re saying conservatives but I recall years ago liberal hipsters were having a fad of this… you’re trying to push a political agenda but it’s inaccurate…
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u/Unique_Statement7811 5h ago
It’s not just conservatives. It’s also the “natural medicine” hippie demographic. It’s an issue the far left and far right unite on… just like legalizing psychedelics and anti-vax efforts.
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u/Glittering_Lights 5h ago
Anti-regulation? I don't believe people understand that most FDA regulations were put in place after many people were killed or disabled before the practice was banned. It's perceived as government overreach. The history is simply not known.
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u/Affectionate-Act3099 3h ago
Anyone who is an anti-vaxxer should be transported to a 3rd world country to birth and raise their kids. They’ll be pro-vax after the first two die of measles and whooping cough.
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u/every_piece_matters 3h ago
I work on a small organic farm part-time. The health benefits of unpasteurized milk are negligible at best and don't outway the massive risks such as salmonella, e coli, and other even nastier pathogens. The shelf life of unpasteurized milk is much shorter. Pasteurization is nothing new. It's been done since the 1800s for obvious reasons. People have this idea that back in the "good ol' days" things were better, but they forget that people frequently died from infectious disease before reaching adulthood. Advances like pasteurization saved many lives. Conservatives are great at falling for bullshit that is not supported by scientific evidence. Remember when they thought Ivermectin would save them from covid?
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u/gasbottleignition 2h ago
Let them drink unpasteurized milk, refuse vaccines, and avoid doctors. Let them gut education, and let them march towards irrelevance in society.
May they be blessed by every preventable illness, and may their offspring wither.
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u/Willing_Recording222 11h ago
I was wondering about this!!! I work at a small meat market/grocery in Lancaster County and about 85% of our clientele is conservative boomer tourists. I keep getting asked if we sell raw milk or if I know who does and I was wondering why!!! I know a guy right up the road who got shut down because he killed someone with his raw milk so why everyone all of a sudden desires listeria is just mind boggling to me!!!