What makes a drink bubbly?  The drink is infused with carbon dioxide which is released when the container is opened. Of course, one didn’t think that it was possible to make milk fizzy till very recently but using the same principle with the right equipment can go a long way to making this happen. It looks like the huge beverage brand Coca Cola is the umbrella under which it will be launched. The news is that there has already been a soft launch in – where else but the Big Apple? It’s a mix of milk, fruit and cane sugar to sweeten.  

This direction is obviously the route to younger consumers and with the milk being offered in many flavours – who knows? They might just have a whopping runaway success on their hands. Flavoured milk with fizz might just become very fashionable!

Today, there have been experiments that have succeeded in producing transgenic cows. What began with a mouse becoming a mighty mouse being able to help in human cancers has today gone way beyond that to experiments with other animals as well. Introducing a gene that does not belong to the animal’s genetic make up is not usually successful but there are instances where it has been possible and most animals undergo gene transfer through the process of microinjection.

Why do this at all? There are advantages, no doubt. These animals can be used for medical research and for better health. They can be programmed to produce more – in the case of cows, a breed could be raised that is extremely disease-resistant as well as high yielding. There can be breeds that are modified to yield more meat or more milk – whatever the farmer is breeding them for. They could also yield milk sooner than they have before. In the medical field, there could be animals that are reared specifically to produce products like mediums to make healthy cells grow, organs for transplant, etc.

The question remains: Can we play God? Are we really the only ones that matter in the world? Or in the universe? Man has always thought so. Nature might not. Interfering with natural processes when it comes to the weather has resulted in catastrophes like global warming. Will this interfering in the process of evolution also be the same? Will mankind end up like something out of a gruesome Hollywood movie where the plot goes through callousness or carelessness in experiments that end up with monsters populating and taking over the world? Most important, is it right to do so? We didn’t invent Life or its myriad life forms. What right have we to mutate them and change them beyond recognition?

So is it ethical? I think not. Will it happen? With a company like Dupont having acquired the sole rights for this process, of course it will. Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

Why this sudden milk madness? Is everyone drinking more milk suddenly? In these days of people tending to find everything about dairy objectionable, how come there’s more and more milk and milk products being consumed? One major reason is the emergence of new markets and therefore a lot more money being spent on what till now could have been luxuries. The rise in disposable incomes now puts milk into a lot of people’s necessity bracket in countries like China, Brazil, India and Russia and there are many more drinking milk there like it were going out of fashion.

Well, that contributes to the prices of milk going up. It really is a result of demand and supply – the demand just cannot be met by the farmers no matter how hard they try. When the combined billions of China and India chasing the white stuff, one can only expect milk prices to rise, not fall.

I’ve never asked them – but I wonder now whether they tell their kids not to drink their milk in these days of milk-bashing. I just wish everyone would follow the happy maxim of one man’s meat being another man’s poison and leave those who love their milk to drink it and those who don’t to stay away from it and not touch it with a bargepole. Why, oh why do they have to take away one of the pleasures of my life? With studies and dire warnings and facts and figures!

The point is, there have always been people for whom milk has caused problems – now me, I just go “tsk, tsk, the pore things – how terrible for them!” However, what I do not like is someone telling me not to drink something that I have enjoyed all my life. Not only have I enjoyed it, I firmly believe that it is necessary to my well being. You know – out for a brisk walk, come back starving – open that refrigerator door, pull out the milk, pour, drink – ahhhhh – heaven. And I hate anyone coming in the way of these wonderful moments of bliss.

Like I said, it’s never harmed me and while so many of my friends who follow crazy diets every three months have problems with their blood pressure, their sugar levels, their aching joints, their mood swings, I’m happy as can be – and don’t try and tell me it’s not because of my daily addiction to the white stuff – I will not be convinced. As convinced as I am that five years from now, maybe less, there will be another bout of research to prove that milk really is good for you, surprise, surprise!

So I’ll leave those milk bashers alone, try to expunge what they preach from my consciousness and carry on coloring my world white with milky goodness. If anyone out there doesn’t like it – too bad. If they tell me I’m an addict – I don’t care, I’m not changing. If they come after me, I’ve got the white magic power on my side – so beware!

Time was when there were blue skies, wide open spaces, farms and barns with sweet smelling hay and fresh, frothy, warm milk – straight from being milked in the barn to the table. Today you hardly see blue skies smiling down on you, not in most urban environments – and the milk is all pasteurized – well most of it anyway.

The proponents of raw milk will tell you that allergies and asthma are modern day conditions that have become rampant after we have started pasteurizing our milk. On the other hand, the pro-pasteurizing group will tell you that if you don’t pasteurize, you are in danger of contracting a whole lot of diseases that could be transmitted from harmful bacteria growing unchecked in milk. Let’s face it, that’s why Louis Pasteur did what he did and recommended this method which today bears his name.

There have been studies and there are research results to show us the benefits of both as well as the dangers of both. So which is the path to follow? Maybe where we are going wrong is to look at them as black and white, not seeing the shades of gray in between. Maybe what we need to determine is not whether we need to have only raw milk or only pasteurized milk but where it is all right to have one and not the other, as well as who would be least susceptible to the problems of one or the other.
The problem perhaps lies in the fact that most of the milk that we get at the store is mass-produced. Read a great big dose of hormones and antibiotics in the milk. Also, huge numbers when it comes to cattle crowded into small spaces and therefore the risk of contamination and infection spreading very quickly. The need for pasteurization is absolutely necessary. Even probably if it means that you’re losing out on some of the essential goodness of cow’s milk when it is heated to these temperatures. It is just that the flip side could be a bit too dangerous to contemplate.

When it comes to a farm environment however, this changes. You have huge grazing land, fresh air and you know when your cows are healthy or ill. The milk is usually organic, hormone free and very often even antibiotic-free. Then, it’s raw milk time with no fear. If you have the luxury of getting hold of milk like this, go ahead and switch to raw milk. You’ll get your milk proteins the way Nature intended, you’ll get a lot of the vitamins that are otherwise reduced and you get a lot of the good bacteria so necessary for the healthy functioning of your gut.

So if you have access to healthy raw milk, that is the way to go. If you’re walking into a store and picking your milk off the shelves, take heed. Milk is a medium that facilitates the quick and easy growth of a whole lot of harmful bacteria. So while some of the essential nutrients are lost when milk is pasteurized, so are a lot of the harmful bacteria.

It’s a toss up – it all depends on the milk you have access to. That should determine whether you get all the goodness of raw milk or whether you get milk without the potential for serious health problems. So before you do a lot of reading on raw milk or pasteurized milk-bashing, it helps to realize that both have their place in this world. Till such time as we can ensure that milk supply can have the manageability of a small farm atmosphere, we have to perhaps live with the idea of pasteurized milk on a daily basis. After all, if there were no large-scale milk manufacturing, milk would be much higher priced than it is today.