Yeah well, where I grew up one of the families down the road had a dairy operation that ran 24/7/365 and gave a tour to my middle school. They were proud of their pioneer roots and all, and also quite proud of how their homogenization and pasteurization machines worked. They showed a comparison between the old "milk in a bucket" method vs hooking the cow up to the machine and watching the milk go through the tubes to the processing machine. When blizzards shut the county down and trucks could not get in to pick up the milk, they kept the processing machines running (the cows had to circulate through the barn anyway to warm up) and the jug filling machines going or I guess it would all jam up and freeze up, so instead of putting the stuff totally to waste, the teenagers in the family were just hauling it around on snowmobiles and putting gallons of milk on people's porches for free, although on longer range trips they appreciated donations of gas. I remember one good day where schools were closed for snow, we had gas for the snow machines, I slept in, got up, found my favorite cereal, checked the fridge - NO MILK, OMG SHTF. I bundled up, opened the front door wondering if I could get to the convenience store five miles away, or if they were even open, or if mom would let me ride the snow machine that far. I was small and weak at the time and could barely start the machine if it stalled, so the family was not letting me take it far from the yard. Then I spotted them, colored caps sticking out of the snowdrift that formed on the front steps, kicked the snow, the jugs still jiggled from not being frozen solid. Heell yeaaah, pulled them inside got the snowsuit off and a few minutes later was alternating between bites of Capn crunch and killing aliens on the Atari. All was well and the world was not ending, and I knew it was good because that outfit always ran the milk through their machines to make it safe.

I rate the squeezed milk in the bucket thing right down there with handling wild toads and eating crickets, and naturalist hippie chicks with hairy legs.

My preference for white protein-fluid is processed soy milk at this point anyway, and I only get the cow excrement stuff because I am too cheap to go full time soy. The give-back is I buy the well processed cow stuff, although I wholeheartedly support other people's right to pick what they want to eat.

I personally prefer fresh ocean salmon raw, and I don't care how well you cook it, cooking fresh ocean salmon brings it down several notches in my book, so I guess some other people view milk that way.

Having lived on a farm where bugs and slugs and weird shit from the garden somehow made it into the dinner plate from time to time or having to tend pig stalls I really have an appreciation for preparing and eating food that someone else processed, and you know personally, I even prefer GMO food for my garden instead of the sickly "natural" vegetables that always seem to have twice the bugs and rot on the vine before they even fully ripen. My only reasons for having non-GMO food on part of my garden are purely political.

Now whatever it is they do to make vegetables in Europe is definitely better than here and you can taste the difference right away, but I understand that while it is non-GMO, the treat the stuff with radiation in order to kill germs and bacteria to stave off that accelerated rot you get with "all natural" stuff.

Maybe part of the reason I was so skinny when I was that age living on a farm for a little while is I was so grossed out by the food and where it came from.