Long before they gathered by the millions to live in cities, people in China lived agrarian lives where they tilled the soil for their harvest. They also drank milk straight from cows and sheep, a practice that modern Chinese are bringing back on the streets of Zhangye, Gansu where customers are lining up to buy milk straight from a cow.
This may seem like a strange practice for people who can walk into a store and buy milk in a box, but Chinese consumers have been shaken by a continuing series of food scandals. Even though it was a while ago, many haven’t forgotten about the 2008 Sanlu milk scandal in which products laced with melamine resulted in hundreds of thousands of victims, including the deaths of six infants.
For that reason, Chinese consumers are focusing on food safety, and prefer imports over domestic products. The fears have grown so much that some Chinese even import rice from Japan.
But is drinking milk straight from a cow safe? Is it healthier, even? That depends on whom you ask, and in which context.
The US Food and Drug Administration says all milk for consumption should undergo pasteurization, a process in which heat kills off harmful bacteria like E-coli, Listeria and salmonella that cause foodborne diseases. The FDA quotes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in saying more than 1,500 US citizens became sick from drinking raw milk between 1993 and 2006.
However, there’s another way of thinking that suggests raw milk is healthier to drink specifically because it hasn’t undergone pasteurization. The Farmer’s Almanac said that the process of pasteurization also kills off many of the “good bacteria” in milk that helps drinkers with digestion and boosts their health.
Furthermore, pasteurizing milk also breaks down many of the proteins it contains that would have been used as antibodies used to fight off disease and infection. The Farmer’s Almanac also said that raw milk, due to the bacteria it has that are removed by pasteurization, can be consumed by people who are lactose-intolerant.
But there is one thing that raw milk can’t provide that processed milk does have, and that’s Vitamin D, an essential nutrient for children. Raw milk drinkers must take Vitamin D supplements, or get them from elsewhere.
And while it’s always great to cut out the middleman, there’s always the question of the quality of the source of the milk, which in this case spends its days in a Chinese city. While milk sold in stores is regularly inspected, we can’t be sure of the health of these two cows and their milk which is being sold freely on the streets.
