by gazaah on Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:33 pm
I wouldn't call pasteurized milk synthetic. The process involves briefly heating milk then sealing it, it's pretty much light duty canning.
Yogurt is great because the culture should, in theory, out compete any disease bacteria in unpasteurized milk but that ain't how it always goes.
This is coming from someone who crosses state lines to buy unpasteurized cheddar for the more complex flavor in my truffled mac and cheese, so no judgement -- I just like precision in language.
That unpasteurized milk has all the things that can exist in animals that crap and carry diseases as well as every nasty living microbe the product contacted during handling and storage. For example, Listeria is comprised of bacteria that really like growing at cold temperature. So your culture might be loaded with safe bacteria, but in the fridge the Listeria out-competes and you could become extremely ill. Heating the milk briefly to kill microbes means we have a safe and clean start for home fermentation. That's not a bad thing.
Sometimes, pregnant women lose their babies due to listeria. It's a shame when people try to do something to help themselves be more healthy when they feel their health is vulnerable but in reality they are exposing themselves to disease while vulnerable. I.e., elderly, compromised immunity due to illness, pregnant, or compromised liver from drinking too much... sometime these folks will seek out unpasteurized products because they believe the "good bacteria" will "strengthen" them but just end up with the disease listeriosis or more likely diarrhea that can become HUS (kidney failure due to bacterial toxins.)
With that consideration, I suggest that referring to briefly heated milk as "synthetic" or yogurt made from briefly heated milk as "not real" is a bit silly because it furthers harmful notions that exposure to disease is somehow good or better than encouraging people to be safe and healthy. Wild fermented yogurt from raw milk and culture fermented yogurt from pasteurized or powdered milk are equally real but one has a greater chance of inducing abortion and killing the elderly.
When I make my mac and cheese I don't feed it to kids and I tell my dinner guests it is unpasteurized. It has some more complex flavor for sure but it's not more real than other mac and cheese.