“Consumption of milk per capita has gone down every year over the last 30 years,” says Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. “Actually, it’s gone down by more than 20 per cent since 2015.”
While bagged milk is often cited as a unique Canadianism, it’s actually not sold west of Ontario. Those who prefer it, however, say it’s more cost efficient and some even believe it tastes better.
I just had a shower thought, probably dumb and I am tired, but how about pipes to deliver regular liquids/fluids? 🤔
I think I read somewhere in Germany brewery would have pipes to bars delivering a continuous supply of beer.
Now let’s do that with ultrafiltered and/or ultra-high-temperature milk (less prone to spoiling).
How about adding pipes for beer (or some other alcohol or wine), cooking oil (whichever most suitable), and any other frequently used liquid I forgot?
If spoilage is well controlled, would that be a less energy intensive distribution method?
Keen for beer plumbing.
Just imagine the initial costs and maintenance costs of those pipes. It’s already expensive routing water for people’s houses. It’s much less costly to do what was done in the past and have regular deliveries for those products in a reusable glass container and regular pickups of those containers. You also wouldn’t really get a choice on the variant of the liquid you want like the type of beer, oil, or milk since everyone has their own preference or needs like with allergies.
Imagine if someone moves into a new house with a beer service line installed and they don’t drink beer. The beer in that line would go bad and get really disgusting and probably contaminate beer in the rest of the line. The same goes for milk too. Imagine how disgusting a pipe filled with months old milk would be. Even ultra high temperature pasteurization won’t save it. Imagine if you get a leak in your milk or beer pipe. Imagine if gets too cold or hot for the liquid and you get really warm beer out of the line or a slushy beer solution.
If you can guarantee those service lines will be used regularly, then I can see it being worth it since the maintenance costs and installation costs would be outweighed by the savings. Beer lines from a brewery to bars makes sense since the bars will be regularly going through a constant supply of beer. But on a regular consumer level, it’s not worth it.
Tl;dr It’s a logistical nightmare.
If we’re piping allergens straight into people’s homes, might as well have another one for peanut butter.
It’s been proposed. Do a search for “soup tubes.”
With all the price gouging happening and shrinkflation, changing consumer habits could spell the end of food.
You could always just eat the rich!
Lemmy comment
They’re rotten toxic messes, though
So is chemotherapy, but something this malignant merits extreme interventions.
You guys drink milk out of bags? We use glass, plastic, or cardboard jugs down in the States.
Some places do things a bit differently. More news at 11
It’s not even all of Canada, just Ontario, Quebec, and the maritimes
Yea, its shipped in a rectangular bag, it goes into a mulk holder that holds the bag snug and you snip the corner off so it pours like a spout. The jug that holds it provides the handle and stability for the bag. When the bag is empty, toss it, put the next bag in.
Is the bag held really well by the milk holder? I’d always worry about the bag tipping out of the milk holder, while pouring.
That sounds like a pretty good system once you have the jug, assuming those bags don’t look like jellyfish to sea turtles.
In eastern Canada. I’ve never even seen it in western Canada.
I think this is what ended it in AB. People just stopped buying it and bought jugs instead.
This isn’t a Canadian specific thing. Its common in most of the world.
But the problem isnt milk, its animal milk. Soy and oat milk should be fine.
So Canadians are giving up on milk and just drinking maple syrup now? Sweet!
I once made the mistake of telling my american coworkers that I buy over a gallon of fresh maple syrup from a local sugar shack each year and I was excited for spring because I was running low… I think I warped their perception of the canadian diet.
The crazy part is, I don’t consume maple syrup that often. But when I do, it’s always way too much.
It makes a good salad dressing when mixed with balsamic vinegar and oil. Also a decent BBQ sauce of Ketchup, Mustard, Soy Sauce, and Maple Syrup
My wife has a mean marinade using maple syrup. I love to use it with chicken thighs I throw on the barbecue for that sweet caramelization.
Nice. It is also good mixed into vodka :)
I have bottles of Sortilège (maple whiskey) and a Tomahawk maple cream (similar to Bailey’s) on the kitchen bar. I don’t even like whiskey usually, but with maple syrup everything becomes good I guess
Hmm, never tried Tomahawk. I will look for that.
Name checks out.
We know in our hearts it’s not true. But we cling to what little magic remains in our minds and hearts and enjoy the fantasy that it is true.
Then if it helps, here are a few things I use it for: crepes, pancakes, French toast, lattes, coffee, maple whipped cream, oatmeal (maple and cream make a mean porridge), I fry eggs in maple syrup and butter, use it in icing, add it to salad dressing, make a glaze from it, sugar/pecan pie tarts, instead of syrup in cocktails, I’ll use it as a topping on ice cream…
It was the primary sweetener in Canada until cane sugar took over, so anything that needs sugar or brown sugar you can substitute maple for.
I usually buy 4L which lasts a year.
As an American, I am jealous.
I tried explaining this to some Australian friends online and they thought I was trolling.
Bagged milk was available in MB in the late 80s/early 90s, but it disappeared some time after that.
Is this… Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk…?
How will our kids get their daily dose of microplastics!!!
Don’t worry, they don’t have to try, it’s likely in well water at this point. Guaranteed most of your store bought food probably has it too.
That’s how you get your daily dose of Vitamin P.
Bottled water? Most mustards and ketchups? Or well, any liquids in a plastic container? They now sell even olive oil in plastic bottles. I avoid them like the plague. We all should.
It’s funny we have no issues drinking milk from any animal, but people would be grossed out knowing it’s milk from a human breast, and wouldn’t drink it.
What I’m wondering is, we have made strides to synthetically make milk with the use of yeast to make the proteins. So theoretically, we could make any milk. Why are we making cows milk this way?
It’s funny we have no issues drinking milk from any animal
Bruh we definitely have issues drinking milk from other animals.
Have you ever seen anyone drink Dog Milk? Cat Milk? Possum Milk? Pangolin Milk? Motherfuckin… Platypus Milk? They all mammals.
Oh yeah hit me with that shot of platypus milk. 🤤
bagged milk is a pretty wild concept to me, but obviously there are a lot of facets of american life that are fucking bonkers to everyone else (and lots of us) so I cant really speak to it
I prefer kegged milk myself
You don’t take your milk with an IV while you sleep? Weirdo!
Milk on tap? Sign me up!
Ooohh… With a nitro dispense system, yes please.
Don’t make me try this … Carbonated milk was inexplicably revolting but nitrogen may actually work.
You’d need a creamer nozzle (like used for Guinness Draft) and a very cold line chiller, but it just might work. Kegging the milk would be the hard part, but it could be done.
I’ve always wondered about the bagged milk… Don’t they get broken a lot? I’m genuinely curious
The plastic feels a bit like a heavy duty ziplock bag, or piping bag material, made as a tube (so strong shape, structurally) then flat sealed on both ends. Quite thick so not that easy to puncture by accident. Once in a while there’s one that leaks but they get removed at the grocery store by stockers, mostly. It’s easy to spot, it just looks flat and at worst (if the hole is on the bottom), there’s a liter and some of milk all over in their fridge.
How do you store it once it is opened? How do you pour it?
Thanks. Someone else described it, but the picture helps. This is a completely different method for milk distribution than we have where I live.
Stores sell sturdy plastic jugs that the milk bags fit into snugly, so it basically pours like a pitcher. You just snip a small corner off the top of the bag once it’s inserted into The jug. The jug lasts forever, though it does get funky over time with any dribbles of milk that make it between the bag and jug.
I’m in my 40s and I can only remember one bag breakingon me, but that’s because my dumb ass dropped it.
That’s why you should always use your hands to carry things!
I’m also in my 40s and I can remember a lot of busted milk jugs over the years… Maybe we should be using the bags instead lol
My mom busted a 4L jug on the stairs. The cap popped off. It’s never the same after.
They’re super tough. Never seen one break.
It happens, but not very often. I used to work dairy in a grocery store, so you’d see it, fairly often, but usually we the workers would catch it (because the bag would be leaking).
I’ve never seen a bag pop, or puncture outside of that.
Are these changing consumer habits mostly being driven by how insanely expensive and low quality milk products are becoming? Canadian cheese and butter are trash and cost an arm and a leg - especially when you get into goat and sheep cheeses that a lot of lactose intolerant west coasters prefer.
Having had the cheese available in America, I have to say better grasses makes better cheese.
I refute your assessment of Canadian cheese, my good man, and I shall be available by the flagpole after recess. It’s a duel.
Oh we’re definitely better than America but we should be able to match up against Europe.
Source on Canadian cheese being better.
Have you ever tried Beacher’s cheese? You should try some good quality cheese before dismissing all American made cheese.
I’ve actually had some splendid American cheese but it’s quite the rarity. Grafton is a solid brand and some of their aged cheddars are amazing.
Why are you getting down voted so much? You are absolutely right. Canadian milk products (including milk) are complete garbage. We can thank our milk cartels for that, plus the really stupid regulations put into place over concerns of germs that basically limits the amount of raw or non-homogenized milk on the market.
How come most of Europe can produce far superior tasting cheeses and also consume fresh milk from milk vending machines, but there’s an inane control on it in North America?
“lactose intolerant West coasters”
Checks out, I’m from the west coast and I’m intolerant of lactose products of poor quality.
But fuck thoese milk drinkers back east.
As a lactose intolerant west coaster I’m really confused if that’s setting people off. We’ve got a huge Asian population out here and lactose intolerance is much higher among them. Personally, while we’re not of Asian descent both me and my partner are lactose intolerant so finding reasonable dairy products that don’t give us diarrhea is a priority - and we’re not shy of making our own stovetop cheese if all we can get is milk.
Shit bro getting downvoted by the dairy industry 😂
We’re talking about milk here, not milk products.
Is milk somehow not a milk product? I think my point stands for milk products in general - goat milk is insanely expensive in Canada and it’s not significantly more expensive to produce than cow’s milk.
How is the quality of cheese relevant to the sale of bagged milk?
You’re not making cheese with dirt and flowers.
Nor are most people making cheese with bagged milk from the grocery stores.
Do you usually make the cheeses you buy in the grocery store?
Your argument makes no sense.
I don’t. That’s my point.
There are probably some slight differences between milk used for further processing and milk sold directly to consumers but it’s of a very similar quality. A lot of cheese in Canada is made from third party milk rather than milk produced on premises.
You can make the argument that the quality of milk in general is dropping, and that’s reflected in the quality of milk products. But to say that poor quality of milk products themselves are driving the decrease in milk consumption? I don’t see how the logic follows.
I grew up with bagged milk but don’t have it where I live now. With my two kids and I enjoying breakfast cereal regularly, our recycling bin fills up fast. I miss milk bags. So low waste. I remember we’d slit the end and use them for sandwich bags in our lunch bags. Or use them to wrap blocks of cheese.
I swear I remember my mum freezing sealed bags of milk for the cooler to keep meat cold on the way to the cabin.
