Monday, January 15, 2007

Pasteurized milk, gut ecology, and google scholar

I left the milk out a bit long yesterday. It's still good, but the wee ones are at work, we'd better drink it quickly.

Which led me to think about how the pasteurization or irradiation of milk has altered the ecology of the human gut. Now that we think of ourselves as a superorganism, a walking ecology, it's obvious that altering gut ecology is not necessarily a good thing. It could impact obesity rates, bowel disorders, etc.

Now, of course, whacky ideas like this can be quickly researched. I didn't see an obvious directly relevant article, but it looks like the domain is being reasonably well explored. I also see that Google has quietly done some nice work with Google Scholar...

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