"Playing Russian roulette with your health": my encounter with LA's raw-milk, powdered-meat smoothie | The Guardian

One of Erewhon's featured drinks over the past year is not another raw vegan concoction named after a supermodel: it's a "raw, animal-based" drink created by one of America's most famous male "meatfluencers". For $19, you can drink a smoothie made with powdered beef organs and unpasteurized milk, as part of the influencer Paul Saladino's attempt to introduce Angelenos to his much-touted "carnivore diet".

[...]

Saladino, who once called himself "CarnivoreMD", rose to prominence alongside Jordan Peterson and other meat diet influencers. On his website, Saladino warns his followers against eating plants, saying they are likely to be harmful, and calling vegetables from kale and broccoli to tomatoes and soybeans "bullshit foods" that may do more harm than good. (Saladino did not respond to a request for comment.)

[...]

The smoothie's ingredients include a supplement powder made from uncooked, freeze-dried beef liver, heart, kidney, spleen and pancreas, blended with more typical smoothie ingredients, including blueberries, banana and honey. It's topped with whipped coconut cream blended with powdered cow colostrum, the nutrient-rich milk cows produce after giving birth.

"The name is giving cruelty. Like, should I call Peta?" one aspiring TikTok influencer quipped, dubbing it "the most un-LA smoothie ever". [...] "Dr Paul's Raw Animal Smoothie" has gone minorly viral on TikTok.

[...]

Erewhon (a rearrangement of the word "nowhere") has been a gathering place for devotees of countercultural diet trends since its founding in Boston in the 1960s, where it reportedly survived an early raid by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Today, it is a California grocery store so luxurious it has inspired a Louis Vuitton fragrance and a collaboration with Balenciaga.

The grocery store has long sold raw milk, a controversial product with passionate defenders, particularly in California, where it can be sold legally in retail stores. Wellness entrepreneurs including Gwyneth Paltrow have endorsed it, even as parents whose children have become seriously ill after drinking raw milk campaign against it. Twenty other states prohibit the sale of raw milk within state borders, though a handful of them are now moving to legalize it for commercial sale.

  • D61 [any]
    ·
    6 months ago

    People stop being weird about food challenge: Impossible.

    Also... I'm... gonna take an unpopular opinion on the raw milk thing and be okay with it.

    But I'm not a fan of the idea of it being sold third party.

    • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
      ·
      6 months ago

      Ninja edit

      I finally realized you might be joking. In any case - I'll leave this here...

      ---

      What the FDA has to say.

      The Dangers of Raw Milk: Unpasteurized Milk Can Pose a Serious Health Risk | FDA

      Raw milk can carry dangerous germs such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, Campylobacter, and others that cause foodborne illness, often called “food poisoning.” These germs can seriously injure the health of anyone who drinks raw milk or eats products made from raw milk.

      What the CDC has to say about this new potential "bonus" health worry.

      Unpasteurized (Raw) Milk and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Advice for Healthcare Providers | Avian Influenza (Flu)

      There is concern that consumption of unpasteurized milk and products made from unpasteurized milk contaminated with HPAI A(H5N1) virus could transmit HPAI A(H5N1) virus to people; however, the risk of human infection is unknown at this time.

      • D61 [any]
        ·
        6 months ago

        im very slow at checking replies

        Not actually joking, I'm a bit of a weirdo on this topic. Not in the "food is magic" way, just that for a long time there wasn't industrial agriculture and humans were able to produce food that didn't immediately kill themselves.

        I'm not a fan of mass distribution of raw milk through third parties. There's just too much that can go wrong and it always seems like its "just a matter of time" before the pressure to meet demand or cut corners to keep the bills paid winds up causing a bunch of people to get sick.

        I, personally, have less of an issue with direct sales between the producer and end customer where everybody can actually see what is going on whenever they want. My preference would be extremely local producer/customer interactions with a pretty low volume of customers/milk produced/minimal equipment used.

        But all of the previous statements are just "in general" the bird flu thing its pretty bad.