Bit'O'Gristle: It tastes allot different when you suck it right out of a cows pulsing warm pink TEAT.

/just saying..thats what i've heard.

Trust me on this one; just make sure it's a cow and not a bull. The taste is completely different.

Yes. Milk used to taste a whole lot different. Better, actually.

I was a kid when the milkmen still delivered door to door from the local dairy and yes, the milk was in glass bottles, sealed with a pressed tinfoil cap and often, the cream separated and floated on the top

That was around 1958.

The dairy had their cows in the fields. They also used to let local folks drive in and take all the fresh cow manure they wanted for free. It was GREAT for lawns and gardens. You just had to walk around with a bucket and shove and scoop it off the field.

The dairy is still there, but it's been closed for decades. It was either bought out or forced out of business by a then expanding dairy company here in Florida --Mac Author's.

That diary company is still around, but the milk has changed radically. Every major chain grocery store now carried it's own brand of milk along with every convenience store. NONE taste as rich as the milk from the old dairy.

Mac Author's butter milk has nothing resembling butter in it, with the 'butter' chunks being tapioca. Why butter MILK needs added dry milk products also, I don't know.

The tons of low fat milk, to me, anyhow, taste like krap.

I wasn't aware of the major changes in tending dairy herds, but it doesn't surprise me, though I have known of the major Dairy Group that pushes small dairies out of business and works to regulate prices.

In the 50's milk was dirt cheap and heavily pushed by the government because kids still got rickets -- a bone disease caused by too little calcium. The leg bones bent. The kids were bow-legged, like the cowboys in those old movies. The government was determined to get the kids healthier, so they provided massive amounts of rich, whole milk and later added vitamin D.

There was a major advertising push lauding the health benefits of good, whole milk.

So, around 25 years later, it came as a nasty surprise to me when suddenly, everyone was claiming whole milk was a killer, caused heart disease, low fat was best and milk vanished from the standard Food Pyramid to be replaced by bottled water.

I stayed with whole milk, but over the years, it got increasing difficult to find that good, rich flavor and nearly impossible to find REAL buttermilk.

This is called progress. Faster, cheaper, 'healthier' and less taste.

I haven't had a good, American grown, NATURALLY vine ripened tomato in decades. Most are picked nearly green and gas ripened to tolerate shipping. Plus, US tomatoes jumped so much in cost that the majority of tomatoes come from Mexico, Brazil and other nations, also picked early for transport, often gas ripened and just not as tasty.

Progress?

Far too many things are being changed and not necessarily for the good.

Oberweis tastes pretty good, but a gallon of it doesn't go as far, somehow, and I have to drive twice as far to get it.

milk thread!

Rik01: I haven't had a good, American grown, NATURALLY vine ripened tomato in decades. Most are picked nearly green and gas ripened to tolerate shipping. Plus, US tomatoes jumped so much in cost that the majority of tomatoes come from Mexico, Brazil and other nations, also picked early for transport, often gas ripened and just not as tasty.

Nice post. I don't know where you live but where I live, you can grow your own tomatoes. The ones I grew haven't been good but I realize now it was a problem with the fertilizer. I've had a few vine ripened over the years, they are far better.