fried beef sandwich

8of9 wrote:
... Gawd... I was eating some really ripe roquefort + apples + crackers when I read that...

I had a prof who gave an awesome lecture series about lactose intolerance, and cultural pressures, etc. An interesting thing, IIRC, is that "vitamin D fortified" milk is pretty much useless because, if you can handle lactose, you can absorb the calcium in milk already. You don't need to use the vitamin D pathway to absorb the calcium, and for those whom it may benefit (lactose intolerant ppl) all the benefits are lost anyway since you get the runs...

Caveat: I took the class many many many moons ago, so don't quote me on this.

sakrilege

Is this the only reason the vitamin D is added?

Vespertine

I hope some vegans know that they can't just release the cows now because its very painful for them if they aren't milked.

Aside: I LOVE CHEESE. I just tried Harvarti the other day... oh that stuff is good.

Godless Dave

I thought the vitamin D was added to prevent rickets.

(It was a clue on Jeopardy! last week)

fried beef sandwich

it is; rickets is caused by either not getting enough calcium, or not absorbing enough.

emphryio

I used to drink tons of milk, upwards of a gallon a day.

Now a days I drink beer almost everyday and I find that the combination of milk and beer produces very painful gas so I hardly ever drink milk anymore.

Yesterday on a rare occasion I had no beer so I tried milk and cookies before bed. The result was I couldn't get out of bed until 1pm and have felt like crap all day. Like I can't think right or something.

Also I find that I really have lower bodyfat when I don't drink milk. You would think that milk would be better than beer for your health, but within reason I think this isn't true at all.

I have noticed that it is true time and time again that "milk drinkers" are in worse shape then beer drinkers. (Assuming we're not talking about alcoholics of course. and other variables are relatively constant.)

.....This post is an example of the dangers of milk I think. Damm my mind is groggy today.

Trinsec

Heh, but beer is most likely less healthy, as it's consisting of those.. uh I dunno, but they're not healthy anyway. Hell, most of my friends who are drinking beer are considerably fatter than other friends who don't drink beer.

Besides that, I used to drink loads of milk. Never got problems with it, but then, I am one of those famous North-Europeans! *cheer*
Kind of funny. When I was in the US, I met a man who constantly tried to convince me that milk was bad. Especially seeing as I could drink over a liter easily every day. What am I supposed to drink? American cola is filthy! *ducks and hides* (but it IS true!)

Nowadays I drink milk now and then. Just sometimes at night I do drink heated milk (Hey, I heard hot milk (with honey) helped to get you to sleep! Well.. doesn't really help much in my case except that I do like the taste! )

I don't see milk having that much fat. Of course, there are different types of milk. I just get 'half-full' milk (I guess that's comparable to 2% US milk? I dunno).
For those people who are lactose intolerant (like my mother), they can get soya milk. I don't like it, though. Just give me the good old bovine-sweat.

fried beef sandwich

Does anyone else remember when PETA started their "Drink Beer not Milk" campaign and got slammed by the media and concerned parent groups and mothers?

JohnR

Far as I can tell it is not the benifits of milk on trial, it the dairy farmers getting benifits from producing it. The argument I have heard is why are we (the taxpayers) subsidizing the production of milk. Like beer or coke or apple juice it should be priced and sold on the market like any other product. Yet it so overproduced that it is turned to cheese and stored, or just dumped.

Wyz_sub10

I cannot say decisively (especially for the US), but in Canada subsidies are often given to the poducts of agricultural products (wheat, milk, meat, etc.).

Coke and beer are not ag products, but are manufactured product. For instance, the gov't might give tax break to mines, and even to steel manufacturers, but not necessarily to automobile producers.

One of the reasons is the markup differential. There is much more profit in selling a car than in selling raw steel.

Milk is a base product used in ther manufacture of many commerical products. Milk is a commercial product in itself, of course. You've pique my curiosity to do a little research.