Alot of the tastiness is cream content. Look for non-homogenized milk or some of the fancy milk varieties at Whole Foods or a coop.

It usually tastes great and is often ultra pasteurized, as it’s a low volume product.

It tastes better (and is not that hard to get here in the UK) but I prefer filtered milk which stays fresher.

> It is highly unlikely to be dangerous enough to have a significant, or even measurable, effect on life expectancies.

Assuming you are a normal healthy adult who gets plenty of nutrition - like someone in the modern world. If you are eating near starvation your immune system won't be as strong. If you are otherwise unhealthy the potential bacteria can overwhelm you...

So, do you leave your burritos out for 3 hours so the listeria can grow?

Online arguments about anything like this since COVID boil down to “if you don’t die, it’s ok”. An old or sick person can easily die from food poisoning. If you are hearty and hale, you’re going to feel like crap and get stuff like violent diarrhea.

most milk doesn't even have anything growing in it. If you take care in storage - refrigeration, clean containers, and use it fast you are probably safe. Probably is of course odds and so if everyone did it there would be deaths - but most people would never be sick

Most chicken doesn’t either. Yet we don’t eat rare, juicy chicken.

It’s a risk. There’s a long history of sick and dead people associated with raw milk.

its not a comparable risk, not even remotely.

26 deaths, 356 hospitalised, and less than 1% of food borne disease outbreaks over a 26 year period in England and Wales: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6805749/

ANY food would be safer cooked, but most people eat quite a lot raw.

The thing about milk is that its usually pretty obvious if its gone off.

The risk lies in certain diseases (TB is the highest risk) which can kill. However, there is a TB vaccine.

And some entire US states have been declared TB-free and/or brucellosis free, and cows are routinely tested under various circumstances to ensure that they stay that way. So some of the risks of the past, whether or not they've been exaggerated, are no longer an issue.

Yes, the BCG vaccine for TB:

https://www.cdc.gov/tb/vaccines/index.html

The BCG vaccine is not commonly used in USA.

Oh my god, wrong wrong wrong. Stop drinking raw milk. Louis Pasteur is spinning in his grave. https://arstechnica.com/features/2025/07/its-shocking-massiv...

Does it still taste good if you pasteurize it yourself? Maybe in a more controlled way than industry does it?

I'm wondering if it is the freshness that partially makes the non-pasteurized milk taste good, since it is illegal to sell over state lines and possibly to sell at all, it is probably much fresher.

Industrial pasteurization is going to be far more controlled than whatever you bodge together in your kitchen or garage.

Do you think that profit mongers are going to waste energy and time overcooking it?

Yes, it may well be the freshness. In the UK it has to he sold directly by the farm (either on premises, or they can take it to a market AFAIK).

I think pasteurising it yourself would be worse as its harder to control temperatures precisely without the right equipment.

It’s more likely higher fat content.

I do not think pasteurisation affects fat content?

Homogenisation is a separate process and it is possible (at least in the UK) to buy not homogenised pasteurised milk which should have the same far content.

To me filtered milk (which is filtered to remove bacteria and other things before pasteurisation to keep it fresh for longer tastes very good, which favours the argument it is the freshness that matters.

It doesn't but processing does. I think some dairies extract the fat and re-add it later to a consistency. That's why I don't buy retail milk and do a farmer-consumer milk-man! :)

Yep! Can confirm that the fresh milk from my grandfather's cows is tastiest before being run through a separator to remove the fat.