Controversial New Milk Shakes Up Big Dairy | Hacker News Reader

Controversial New Milk Shakes Up Big Dairy

wsj.com

72 pointscalbearia155 comments

non-wsj article about a2 milk: http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/03/30/a2-milk/

There is something significant and interesting here to consider around the foods we eat. How does history/social norms dictate food choice?

With milk specifically therE was new research talking about how it is unusual that we can drink milk at all [0]. Most of the world has trouble with Milk, but interestingly Europeans had developed the ability to digest milk.

Fast forward to today, milk primarily comes from “European” cows. However this “new” A2 milk comes from a different kind of cow and at least in theory doesn’t have the issues that typical (European) cows have.

When my first son was born, and now with our second, they both had issues when my wife would eat dairy. At the time I researched this extensively, and went as far as tried to acquire this “Jersey Cow milk”. Unfortunately, at the time I just couldn’t get it where I live. If this is now a true “thing” I would be really excited to see if it would allow my wife to drink milk while producing milk herself.

[0] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/story?id=8450036

I'm not sure whether you're trying to make a link between Europeans being able to digest milk and milk from Jersey cows somehow being more healthy than that of "European" cows, but I think that'd be nonsense.

The channel islands are essentially part of Europe, and I doubt that inhabitants of Jersey somehow have a different level of milk tolerance that'd cause them to selectively breed cattle with the A2 variant of the protein. It's more likely that the variation is due to random chance amplified by breeding many cows starting with only a few ancestors.

I am making no judgment on what is more "healthy". I am simply observing the fact that history/culture as a way of dictating what we eat, and making societal "norms".

In this case, there are tons of milks that are "more digestible" by larger percentages of the population, but for whatever reason we continue to see "milk" as to mean this specific type of cow.

We should probably clarify that it's cow milk that Europeans seem unusually well-equipped to digest. Mongols have drank horse milk for a very long time, ever since they were horse nomads.

Wow I did not know that, thanks!

I notice a large amount of cultural bias in my own opinions around milk... Objectively, drinking cow excretions is kinda odd. And milk from a horse is highly comparable.

And, yet, my first reaction to this interesting historical info is "ewwwww, horse milk, gross".

Have you tried goats milk? It's naturally A2, and can be easier for some stomachs. I actually make a goat's milk yogurt that, when left to ferment long enough (to consume all the lactose), has been perfectly fine on many friends' stomaches who usually claim some form of dairy intolerance.

The article can be read at http://archive.is/o239C.

Just as an aside note, in Australia this "new" A2 milk has been around for at least the last five years: http://www.farmweekly.com.au/news/agriculture/cattle/dairy/b...

I highly recommend those that have trouble with milk to try Oatly... especially their (now sold out) Barista Blend. It's the closest thing to milk that isn't. The mouthfeel of the barista blend is amazingly the same.

Don't buy the Pacific brand, it's crap in comparison.

Oatlys packages are funny. Their packages say "It's Swedish!" but when you read the fine-print on some packages, it's produced in Germany. I always preferred oat-drink istead of milk so have been using that since 1997 somewhere. My daughter had milk protein allergy when she was small and still loves Oatly and don't want milk at all. Luckily there are many other ways to get enough calcium if you just get away from the dairy industry propaganda...

US run-of-the-mill milk isn’t even what most people would think it is.

Typical “non-industrial” way of getting “milk” is to milk a cow into some bucket/pan to hold the liquid. It will start separating and cream will float to the top. It gets skimmed and used for other products. What’s below is normal milk.

In US (no clue where else), the milk is separated to get ALL fats out first. The the right amounts of fats are recombined with the liquid left over, often fortified with some vitamins and sold as “milk”. This is where you get the exact, perfectly non-separating, homogeneous product, with predictable fat contents.

EDIT: there is also mechanical homogenization process as noted in comment below that does not use chemicals, but instead mechanically breaks down clumps of fats to make them more dissolvable.

Problem is, once you separate the fats and then mix them back in, they don’t exactly want to stay mixed. For this you use stabilizers and other chemicals.

EU apparently is pretty strict on what these “stabilizers” can be, by specific dairy product. US appears to be in an arms race with itself to make these more intricate. These also can be allergens.

Don’t know how wide-spread this is, but I know over a dozen people that are “lactose-intolerant” in US, but can consume dairy quite safely in EU.

A2 could be hitting on something similar, but for some people even non-homogenized milk from the Holsteins (supposedly containing the evil A1) could be the answer.

I can't comment on what the US allows, but the normal process of standardising and homogenising doesn't involve any additives. The fats and a liquid known as permeate are separated from the milk via centrifuges and filters. Then the parts are tested and recombined to produce a given level of fat, protein and lactose. After this the milk is homogenised by forcing through a screen which breaks up the fats and then pasteurised. There's no need for additives in this process as milk is naturally an emulsion.

One reason for homogenisation is the pasteurisation process causes the fats to clump together and rise. This is exploited when making clotted cream.

Personally I buy non-homogenised milk as I prefer the taste, but that's just me,

Good call, I’ll edit to clarify that.

In milk you still get natural separation: https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/10654-stabilizer-o...

It’s far more pronounced in milk products mixed with something else - chocolate milk, ice cream, etc.

Your edit does not clarify the fact that you are incorrect - what is sold as 'milk' in the US has no stabilizers or chemicals in it. Those are only present in milk-based products and milk-based drinks.

That’s correct for milk-based drinks, they often have a ‘stabiliser’ added to improve the texture - often xanthan or guar gums - to make them feel creamier and keep the additives in suspension. In ice cream other gums are used to trap air in the mix leading to a lighter creamier feeling product that uses less milk.

However fresh pasteurised and UHT milks contain no additives.

You are not correct.

Stabilizers and emulsifiers are only used in beverages made from milk (chocolate or strawberry milk) and heavy whipping creams. They are not used in normal dairy products, even homogenized ones.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Creaming_and_homogenizati...

Unfortunately, can’t seem to edit any more.

That said, I’d still like to see a source that specifically addresses the entire content of what’s sold in a US grocery store. The link simply refers to homogenization via the mechanical process. I don’t see anything in the article stating unequivocally that no chemical is used in the final product.

For example, this producer states it outright: https://www.strausfamilycreamery.com/faq/ (look under allergens section)

It turns out that people who think they are lactose intolerant often are not. They get discomfort from something in the milk but not necessarily the lactose, hence A2 milk. It will be interesting tot see how it all pans out. http://www.liggins.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/news/news-2017/a2...

There are some parallels there to "gluten" sensitivity and fructans. "Gluten" complaints overshadow the amount of celiac disease by a wide margin.

https://newatlas.com/fructan-not-gluten-gastrointestinal-sen...

"There is no current scientific evidence that A2 milk has nutrition and health benefits beyond regular milk"

- Greg Miller, chief science officer at the National Dairy Council in the U.S.

Of course, things like "easier to digest" are neither a nutritive nor health benefit, so technically both that statement and some of the pro-A2 claims could simultaneously be true.

It’s not like he has a vested interest or anything.

It doesn’t take much google time to get a more informed answer. The numbers in the studies aren’t large but it’s presumably hard to get ethics for feeding people with a severe stroke intolerance something that is closely related to the allergen. Starting small would seem logical.

Nutrition research is famously bad, worse than social science research. I would want to see a lot of replication before I took it with even a grain of delicious salt. The history of such research is a disappointing one after all. Humans are incredibly diverse, and it’s hard to do good research with controls on us when it comes to diet, but that still means weak prelim studies are often not worth the time of day.

> Although the science behind so-called A2 milk remains disputed, the entry of big companies into the market shows how changing consumer preferences create new opportunities that dairy giants can’t afford to ignore—especially as profits have been eroded in recent years by everything from almond milk to dairy-free ice cream.

Some days I want them to stop all AI research and get to work on an extension that removes all weasel words from articles.

You should remove all the non-weasel words, since the weasel words are the only true ones in these cases.

I've been waiting for this to go mainstream for a long time. Unfortunately, my experience of mainstream milk is it's generally pretty crappy, mostly because of how it's produced. In New Zealand, the average "milk" is pretty disappointing.

I've enjoyed A2 milk in the past but it's always been from boutique farms and most of the time they don't scale up (e.g. Ridge A2 Milk was a company which produced a great product but failed ~2010 I guess due to lack of traction).

I'm not sure whether it's better milk because of the chemical structure, or because it's not reconstituted in a factory. I'm personally enjoying Naturalea milk, it's one of the few I can actually enjoy (http://goodmanfielder.com/portfolio/naturalea/). I think that their entire production process yields a better product, something that Fonterra will unlikely be able to achieve because they scale their production while minimising cost.

I'd rather pay a bit more and get milk I enjoy. Boutique A2 milk is some of the best I've had.

> In New Zealand, the average "milk" is pretty disappointing.

Genuinely surprised. One of the things I hate about living in the US is the terrible milk. I have a hard time drinking it. I don’t know what they do to it here but it comes with a gross, almost off aftertaste. (It also seems to have a surprisingly long shelf life.) New Zealand milk is amazing by comparison. It’s one of the things I love about going home. :-)

If available to you, I can recommend trying the following brands:

* http://www.kalonasupernatural.com/ - non-homogenized, available at Natural Grocers

* http://www.promisedlanddairy.com/our-story/ - seems to be from Jersey cows, if the color of the milk is any indication

Another thing to watch out for if you are buying Horizon Organic is the UHT (ultra high temperature) processing it and some other brands use. It makes the milk shelf-stable (i.e. a sealed container needs no refrigeration) but adds a burnt taste that can be offputting.

This is very common in Germany, it has some similar taste as the aromas they use for margarine to taste creamy. It's really horrible, I have never managed more than a sip of milk in Germany. Shelf life is three months, room temperature. If you want fresh milk you can find it in some bigger supermarkets but only a few bottles and I seldom seen anyone buy it.

Depending on where you live there are better options for milk. In the Seattle area, local to me, it's possible to find vat pasteurized milk from grass fed cows in many of the slightly upscale organic stores.

Grass fed is the standard in New Zealand.

I think that even if you went looking for it you couldn't find corn fed dairy cows.

Correct, there's no such thing as grain-fed dairy in NZ, though you can get some grain-finished beef. Dairy cows are supplemented with palm kernel cake though which has some controversy around it.

Paywalled but some background for readers outside Australia:

The supermarket duopoly Coles/Woolworths have had a pricing war by selling substandard 'milk' at a loss to encourage customers through their stores. The result has been many farmers and smaller dairies struggling financially, e.g the Murray Goulburn cooperative forced to sell its operations to Canadian Saputo recently. FWIW, I normally buy Jonesy's and the local deli has recently started selling St David's - processed in suburban Melbourne.

A2 is thus one smaller brand seeking market differentiation through improved product - it all tastes just like milk to me but I then don't have the protein intolerance.

Made 4x on their stock since I added them to my portfolio. Ironically doing better than most tech companies.

How is that ironic?

Dairy doesn’t seem super profitable.

It is, just (for a variety of reasons) not super profitable in the US.

But there’s also scale, etc involved - Fonterra is cumulatively a huge dairy producer so has significant pricing power.

Also as far as I can make out (moved from nz to the us many many years ago) farming in the US seems to be much less efficient - the mere existence of subsidies speaks to that.

(Minor edit: I did a quick google to make sure I was still right about the above statements, and per Wikipedia - so 100% accurate - NZ is the only developed nation with no subsidies or price rules on agriculture, and Fonterra alone is responsible for 30% of global dairy exports)

yes nz has made headlines by reforming their agricultural business many years ago and its been working great for them.

> and its been working great for them.

If money is all that you count. Switching from low-impact sheep farming (especially in the South Island) to dairy has basically ruined the environment. It's NZ's worst kept secret. I guess it will take something like Japan's "四大公害病" to make everyone wake up

The "low impact" sheep farming clearing millions of acres of forest.

But yeah it does seem like the Canterbury authorities especially have been terrible at actually enforcing environmental laws (based on stuff.co.nz -- the best reporting and editing in the world :) ).

As long as you don’t swim or like clean water. On the bright side, we adjusted the permissible E. coli limits, so more rivers are now ‘wadable’. You can’t make this stuff up.

To quote the Fonterra billboards that are all over NZ “Milk Money From The Land”. That disgusting company accounts for a third of the worlds dairy exports. They are doing just fine.

this company is just another middleman. Uber for milk. Smart buy

Fonterra is a co op - you are literally buying from the farmers as directly as is sane. Seriously I wish people would stop just going “you should just have Uber for X” every time they hear about something that isn’t advertised as “Uber for X”

The alternative (directly dealing with numerous separate farmers) and then finding a company to do the transport and processing would be stupidly inefficient.

Are you? Fonterra are a terrible company and I do t believe that many farmers would be pleased with the management of Fonterra.

For those considering cow milk alternatives, I've been drinking pea 'milk' from Ripple foods and it is pretty great.

I also really enjoy Califia Farms' Coconut Almond Milk.

And for ice cream, Coconut Bliss I find to be even better than the real stuff.

Your mileage may vary of course.

I've found that milk alternatives have more than 20 ingredients in them. I don't understand what half of them are, and I don't know what long term effects such milks have. I'd love to switch to an alternative, but haven't found one without several additives in them.

Many nut and seed "milks" are an easy DIY. Just soak the, for example, almonds overnight then put them through a sturdy cold press juicer. Soy milk is more work, as it must be heated.

It should be consumed with in a couple days, since there are no preservatives.

I think that some EU court ruled that only actual milk can be called milk so no more Soy Milk, Almond Milk etc. Don't think that it is enforced anywhere yet.

Been hearing from people IRL that have tried this and swear by it. Definitely time to give it a shot.

Any of them blind it?

Not scientifically. All of them had regular milk previously and gave it up for some amount of time before trying out the "new milk."

Actually makes me feel worse. Tried it a few times but never end up finishing the half gallon.

What's the tech behind this? Are these GMO dairy cows that do not produce the protein?

Looks like good old fashioned genetic screening.

> A genetic test, developed by the a2 Milk Company, determines whether a cow produces A2 or A1 type protein in its milk. The test allows the company to certify milk producers as producing milk that does not metabolise to β-casomorphin 7.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_milk

They make a genetic test, the gene variation is from a natural mutation.

They use the test to certify herds as producing the A2 milk.

Jersey, Guernsey cows produce milk that only has the A2 protein naturally. No screening required. http://www.honeymoonbrands.com/milk and https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/a1-milk-a2-m...

Your first link doesn't mention A1/A2 at all, and the second says "The A1 protein is much less prevalent in milk from Jersey, Guernsey, and most Asian and African cow breeds, where, instead, the A2 protein predominates." which doesn't support your claim that they only produce A2.

We exclusively use Koko coconut milk in my family.

Paywall removed: https://outline.com/eVph3y

As a lactard, I can attest—I tried this and didn’t have any indigestion problems. Maybe lactose intolerance is a hoax.

I think alot of it is generalized without enough scientific analysis/limited by current technology.

"Lactose intolerance" could be many different reactions that could be not lactose specifically with many individuals. Could be a byproduct commonly found with lactose(and maybe the a2 milk process removes that)

(similar to how recent, debated, studies for gluten intolerance may not be specifically gluten for many people, could be a similar by product/chemical/reaction to something commonly produced with gluten).

> "Lactose intolerance" could be many different reactions

It's not, it's pretty well understood.

OTOH, lots of allergies to milk proteins are misidentified by sufferers of them as lactose intolerance, as they have vaguely similar superficial symptoms and are both negated by avoiding milk.

Exactly. But this is poorly understood by the general population and who is going to understand or know if a particular milk protein is present?

It's going to be heavily advertised if it hasn't started already, and then everyone will be lactose intollerant. Because someone that feels better using a more expensive product will keep buying the more expensive product as long as they feel better from it.

You could get some refined lactose and mix it in water to see.

Use lots and you'll for sure know if you are lactase deficient.

It's not a hoax at all. The ability to digest lactose is due to a mutation in humans that began in Europe thousands of years ago. It's about as far from a hoax as you can get: You either produce the lactase enzyme (required to break down lactose) or you don't.

1. https://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-... 2. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#source...

As another linked article attests, this milk doesn’t do anything in regards to lactose. It instead is a milk that uses a less common (in the Western World) A2 type of Casein Protein instead of A1 type. There are various health claims about A2 and A1 that have nothing to do with lactose intolerance. Lactose is a sugar in milk, and casein the main protein component.

Exactly. So if people claim that they are "lactose intolerant" and can drink A2 with no bad effect, they are not making much sense.

It makes sense: they assumed they were lactose intolerant because they had digestive problems with milk; but then found out the problem is something else.

That "something else" may be the A1 protein but they don't want to make assumptions too quickly this time.

> Maybe lactose intolerance is a hoax.

It's clearly not, and the mechanism is well understood; however, lots of people who think they are lactose intolerant are mis-(and usually self-)diagnosed, and really have allergies to one or more proteins found in milk (and this has also been widely known for a long time), which is completely different than lactose intolerance.

Or maybe it's not a hoax and you are misdiagnosed. You might have cow milk protein allergy/intolerance, which is an allergic reaction that happens only in the digestive tract.

Try eating some dried/cured meat that has lactose added as a conservative. No issues? Not lactose intolerant.

Try taking some medicine that has lactose added as a binding agent. No issues? Not lactose intolerant.

Try eating any cured cheese such as Cheddar or Edam (0.0 g lactose, but check the carbs/sugars label to be sure). Issues? Not lactose intolerant.

Try drinking normal milk and then the same thing with exogenous lactase (e.g. Lactaid). Issues without lactase, but no issues with it? Lactose intolerant. Issues with both or no issues with any? Not lactose intolerant.

It's fairly easy to self-diagnose as long as you know how the intolerance works (an enzyme is missing in your digestive tract) and the lactose content of things.

Shaking up big dairy would make big butter, no?

*yuge

This isn't Reddit! ;)

I don't understand why we can't blacklist domains on HN.

Why would we blacklist one of the most important American newspapers?

All of the articles are paywalled.

Do you work for free?

false dichotomy.

I should be able to blacklist it from showing up when I look at hacker news, either by the grace of the ycombinator site or via a custom client. Does this exist?

There are browser extensions which support that, as well as other features ("cleaner" UI, thread collapsing before it was in core, inline reply, etc). Explore a few, you might find something you like.

No, because web discussion boards are still behind where NNTP news readers were 20 years ago.

EDIT: Or, 30 years, for that matter.

It's one of the highest quality news sources in the United States and many people pay for it.

I've developed somewhat of a brain ad-on to bypass the paywall: click on the address bar and select all, cut, type "archive.is", paste in the search box, press enter.

The WSJ would be much better served by requiring a free, easy login with an email or social account, then throttle down the number of free articles one can read. Turning down people interested in your product that you could offer a sample at zero marginal cost to you seems such a poor business decision.

HN does blacklist domains. Here's the blacklisted domain list from 2009[1]. Here's a blog post examining penalties applied to posts, some of the penalties are based on the domain[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044

[2] http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

The question has been answered countless times. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928452.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928127 and marked it off-topic.

I don't want to see another good cheap source of protein be demonized, the way gluten (seitan) and peanuts have been. Most people can tolerate milk well.

@dang: Can somebody please tag WSJ articles as paywalled? I am getting deeply bored of seeing the domain name and clicking through anyway thinking this would be something I could actually read.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989. As long as the paywalls have workarounds, they're ok here. They suck and are annoying to everyone, but HN would be worse without WSJ, NYT, the New Yorker, the Economist, etc., so this is a lesser-evil solution. Hopefully someone will eventually fix publishing on the web, and then we won't have either the paywall problem or the paywall complaint problem.

The situation is made less annoying by users posting workarounds in the threads, which they usually do, and have done in this one.

And for those of us who are not frequent consumers of their content, we don't even need a work-around. The paywall only kicks in after a quota has been hit.

I'm apparently for whatever reason in the category of "gets insta-paywalled, no quota, incognito mode doesn't help" but the comments elsethread making clear that many others aren't suggests to me that I was overestimating the actual annoyance level caused across the userbase, so the current policy now makes much more sense to me.

Thanks for the explanation.

Incognito mode often doesn't help for me either, but if you look for workarounds posted in the threads, you'll usually find one. It's also ok to ask for one.

Thanks! All things considered, I have only one thing to say: Please excuse my being a miserable bastard.

We are all miserable bastards.

You can bypass the paywall with some referrers like Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=LINK_GOES_HERE

It's a soft paywall that only kicks in after you have used up your monthly free quota. If are a regular visitor, you should consider a subscription. Otherwise, you have 2 options.

A) Open the link incognito mode

B) Go to http://archive.is/ and enter the link there.

Quality journalism costs money. I actually prefer WSJ, NTY, and WaPo's approach of pushing for a subscription model over ad based models.

I don't think I've visited WSJ and it instantly paywalled me. Same in private mode.

Same for me, never visited, using private browser, still no article to read.

I need a workaround at work, but not at home. You're probably on a IP that has heavily used the free content.

I have a fixed IP, always the same. Only me and my wife uses it ever. None of us reads this page normally.

Milk is produced by forcing cows into pregnancy and then taking their babies away (on the first 72h). No matter if the milk is A1 or A2, it's made of cruelty by exploiting mothers and orphan children. Enjoy your next breakfast on mothers day.

Cruelty makes my Cinnamon Chex delicious.

I will, it's still pleasant.

All it takes is picking up a different product in the dairy aisle to stop it from happening, why not choose compassion?

Pleasantness doesn’t make up for what the calf loses or their mother had to go through.

Revealing when you get downvotes but no replies to a comment written with nothing but kidness and good intentions.

People really don’t want to think about the morality of their choices.

Haha I got downvoted for a harmless joke. This thread is a dumpster fire.

Same!

What is the point of this comment? Are you acting as if doing a wrong thing is right if it's pleasant?

>forcing cows into pregnancy

Do you mean artificial insemination or animal husbandry?

Are you a vegetarian?

I pretty much switched to oat milk, it's pretty good!

Wow, they're literally creating demand for a product that serves no purpose by "glutenizing" some harmless milk protein and selling "gluten-free" milk. Shameful.

And the irony is that milk has a component, lactose, that is legitimately indigestible for large numbers of people. It was gluten before gluten was gluten, except not BS! But products already exist for that, so they're glutenizing milk because, let's face it, a sucker is born every second and it ain't cheap sending kids to college these days.

Godspeed A2 milk, may the impoverishment of your customers reduce their propensity to procreate!

Preemptive edit: the stealth marketing is so so thick in this thread! Yuck!

Are you saying that gluten is healthy? That it has no negative impact on the human body? That's contrary to the current science, is it not?

> That's contrary to the current science, is it not?

No, for people without Celiac’s, NCGS, gluten ataxia or a wheat allergy gluten-free eating is a fad diet [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten-free_diet

Isn’t the idea that these people have NCGS?

The more recent research -- by the people who originally studied NCGS -- is that the earlier studies may have been detecting sensitivity to other things, and that NCGS may not exist at all.

I have no opinion on the gluten-free diet trend.

I believe that the popular opinion by many is that they do not have NCGS. TV personalities like Bourdain drive this heavily by discussing how gf used to not really be a thing in restaurants, but now is quite popular.

Well...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599

And not that Huff Post is a health go-to (but nor is Wikipedia):

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1834836

Mouse model study [1]. Intriguing, but far from meriting behaviour changes. Meanwhile, your Huffington Post author cites a largely-discredited glyphosate study [2] in the middle of an anti-GMO rant [3]. (Wikipedia is generally more reliable than the Huffington Post.)

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23253599

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Séralini_affair#Retraction

[3] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ask-jj-gmos_b_9547198.h...

I think there many people who think that gluten is evil but seitan is an amazing vegan food with wondrous health benefits. Given how the placebo effect works, it’s entirely possible that both are true in a bizarre sense :)

My personal belief is that a lot of “gluten intolerant” people derive considerable benefit from a low-gluten diet because many low-gluten diets have less starch.

(Hint: look up what seitan is.)

The idea that it is nonsense to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac. I understand you are referring to the dietary fad, but some people have legitimate medical need to strictly avoid gluten.

It is possible that non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a real condition which merely has not been adequately researched yet. If it is real, it is a disservice to mock and be so opposed to people trying to conduct an elimination diet to discover their food intolerance.

As someone with celiac, the more people avoid gluten, the better for me, so I am biased. Currently the world is swimming in it and it’s very difficult to avoid.

> The idea that it is nonsense to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac.

More like: "The idea that it is generally beneficial to be avoiding gluten is harmful for people with celiac."

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend with a gluten allergy as confirmed by blood test and endoscopy. Obviously he should avoid gluten.

People who think that gluten "is bad" should keep their mouth shut or get an actual diagnosis showing it's actually bad for them.

Those without an actual allergy who make a fuss over it desensitize the food service industry, and people at large, to the severity of the problem in people with a legitimate allergy.

I understand your concern, but in my experience this has not been the case. Many times I have been asked, “Allergy or Preference” and the level of care changes depending on the answer.

In my case my daughter has diagnosed celiac and we eat out quite a bit. The number of dietary options both out at restaurants as well as at the supermarket, the general level of education around what even is gluten, I believe has greatly benefited from non-celiac positive people preferring gluten-free food (for whatever cockamamie reason they may have).

If it was not a dietary trend I don’t think we would have nearly the number of options, and certainly not entire gluten free menus at restaurants available to choose from.

NCGS has not been proven to be a real condition caused by gluten, and there is no test for it - but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I feel like it’s perfectly reasonable for people to do their own elimination diet to test for sensitivities, and others have no legitimate reason to not respect that. If someone don’t want something in their food, that’s my business and I’m not sure why that opens them to criticism.

When you try to be selective about your food, often there is struggle about it with others. While trying to debug my health, I was a vegetarian for years. For some reason many people are opposed to others being vegetarians or vegans, for reasons that seem too complex to analyze here. Importantly, though these diets have been proven to be healthy, but many people still act strongly opposed to others practicing them.

My experience at restaurants is that people are usually cool when I tell them I have a severe medical condition. However, I am so sensitive to gluten that I cannot eat at restaurants at all. Wheat is simply far too common, and they will never be ready for my level of sensitivity. The thing is, not all people with celiac are this sensitize or have symptoms they can notice. With people with mild or imaginary gluten conditions, food preparers can mess up significantly and the customer won’t come back and say ‘wow, you made me incredibly sick’ because they might not even have any ill effects. So, it essentially creates false negatives for their kitchen performance. Again, doesnt matter because I eat a strict medical diet and will never be able to eat at average restaurants.

One note, I realize you generally mean intolerance or sensitivity, but I have to point out celiac is not an allergy, it’s an automummune disease triggered by gluten.

Sorry it took me a few days to reply.

Clarification for those who haven't read the article: By "glutenizing" here, 8077628 is not referring to some physical process performed on the protein; rather he means demonizing it. By "gluten-free" milk, he does not mean milk that is actually gluten-free, but rather milk that lacks this particular protein, and thus has a property that is socially analogous to that of being gluten-free.

I don't understand how your post relates to the article. I agree that the whole A2 thing is lacking evidence, but just because some people are buying the product for bad reasons (e.g. virtue or affluence signalling) doesn't mean it's all bad.

As I understand it, some cows produce milk with A1 protein and some cows produce milk with A2 protein. In normal milk these two types get mixed together indiscriminately. The A2 product is simply a matter of identifying the A2 cows and only using their milk.

Most people are not gluten intolerant. But a few people are. A nice side-effect of the gluten-free bullshit is that these legitimate sufferers have many more food options available to them in shops and cafes.

I sometimes order a gluten free brownie because it looks delicious. And sometimes I walk up the ramp that was intended for wheelchairs.

>just because some people are buying the product for bad reasons (e.g. virtue or affluence signalling) doesn't mean it's all bad

It's a mixed bag on the gluten free thing, with more availability of GF foods but the GF label not meaning crap to a real Celiac sufferer anymore.

But nobody has an a1 allergy. This is just making the fad without the medical condition existing at all. So in this case, no, there is no benefit, aside from redistributing wealth from the feebleminded to the "job creators". Some people think that's a good thing.

> Preemptive edit: the stealth marketing is so so thick in this thread! Yuck!

It breaks the HN guidelines to insinuate astroturfing unless you have evidence. Please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

People having opposing views isn't evidence of 'stealth marketing', it's evidence that the community is big and, on most things, divided. Meanwhile the "astroturfer under every bed" trope is one of the toxins that poisons internet communities—if it doesn't kill, it causes brain damage. Therefore we all need to resist the temptation to go there, unless there's really evidence, in which case you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate and ban offenders.

Hopefully you guys are doing some due diligence, because there's no way for a user to have "evidence", no matter how canned and repetitive and glowing the comments above are. Obviously common sense doesn't cut the mustard here.

We sure are. You can do some too, simply by looking at the account histories of the commenters you feel might be astroturfing.

Overwhelmingly the true hypothesis is the null one: people just disagree. The assumption that no one could possibly hold opinion X in good faith, so therefore they must be shilling, is imaginary. Such accusations in the threads are toxic, so we don't allow it unless there's some indication of more than imagination at work. This has been HN policy for years now and I've posted a ton about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Big Dairy is being upped by controversial new milk shakes.

you're making a pretty low-quality joke but this headline really shouldn't have made it past the editors' desk in its current form because it's simply too confusing. (Because the term "milk shakes" makes it a garden path sentence.[1])

It's obviously "deliberate" but simply too hard to parse. Personally if I really insisted on the pun I would have put an extraneous comma that disambiguates:

>Controversial New Milk, Shakes Up Big Dairy

That still has the pun in it but at least would be readable. If people wonder why there's an unnecessary comma there they might realize the pun.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence - which includes "When read, the sentence seems ungrammatical, makes almost no sense, and often requires rereading so that its meaning may be fully understood after careful parsing." Certainly true for me.

Or maybe it’s super clever SEO.

'milkshake' is a compound noun, or at least Firefox's spell checker doesn't insist on hyphenation.

To 'shake up' is perfectly idiomatic. Using 'up' as a standalone verb is less common and should be your cue.

That's irrelevant.

Like "the old man the boat," the combination makes it hard to parse. The cue is that you get to "the boat" and realize you misinterpreted it. The point was not that it was impossible to understand.

It was a low-quality joke, I agree (most of my jokes are). But I actually was trying to point out that it’s a garden path sentence.

Sorry, I was unnecessarily harsh :)

No problem at all. Have a good day.

Does anybody get constipated drinking regular milk? If yes, why not consider A2 milk?

is there any scientific evidence to support the claim that A2 milk doesn't cause constipation?

Nice stealth marketing post.

This breaks the site guidelines. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16928460.

The parent comment may be unsubstantive, but accusing other users without evidence is poisonous, and that's worse.

You just accused the grandparent comment of being unsubstantive. That sounds like a politically correct insult to me. All I did was applaud them for doing something well.

side note: lactose intolerance means diarrhea, not constipation.

If milk is causing people problems, "drink something else" is a stunningly obvious suggestion.

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