California dairies are bristling under regulations that limit the amount of yucky coliform bacteria allowed in raw milk. The new health standards set a maximum of 10 coliforms per milliliter, which upsets Mark McAfee, the founder of California’s largest raw milk dairy. According to McAfee, “There’s quite a ruckus right now.” Let’s see how he frames the issue.
“This is a huge issue and it goes directly to consumer choice. Consumers are fed up with the government being in their kitchens and they want to be able to make their independent choices about food they want to eat.”
Consumer choice is good, right? But doesn’t raw milk make people sick? The helpful folks at BarfBlog point out: “before widespread adoption of milk pasteurization, an estimated 25 per cent of all foodborne and waterborne outbreaks of disease were associated with milk.”
What does California, that kitchen-occupier of a state, have to say for itself?
“We found that coliform count is indicative of a healthy and clean and wholesome production process for raw milk,” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Raw milk may contain salmonella, E. coli, campylobacter and listeria. If you want to guzzle a tall fresh glass of bacteria, go for it, proud American. But please offer pasteurized milk to your kids.
Raw milk producers soured on new rules [AP]
(Photo: foxypar4)
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You know what you get when you mix 10 coliforms into a milliliter of raw milk?
A milliliter of coliforms.
@TechnoDestructo: a shit shake!
@Antediluvian: Because while raw milk is only a health issue, alcohol is a traffic safety issue, an acute poisoning issue, a criminal and violence issue, and for some people a moral issue.
People. From the AP article:
“Coliforms are a group of bacteria commonly found in the environment, most of which *do not cause disease.* … We found that coliform count is *indicative* of a healthy and clean and wholesome production process for raw milk,” said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture.”
Coliforms do not cause disease. And just because a lower coliform count is associated with a clean production process, that doesn’t mean it is the result of, or responsible for, a clean production process. This is an example of regulating something just to make us feel better about it.
There’s no science behind this decision.
@darkened: How about preventing permanent injury/disfigurement/death? Chicken Pox can be quite dangerous if you get it as an adult, hell, in some cases even if you aren’t. How about Polio? Should we have kept people from getting polio vaccines because there was a potential side effect? How about being crippled because you didn’t take it at all?
What about the societal effects on the large scale? What if your son passes Rubella on to a pregnant woman? Measles especially is only dangerous because it is insanely contagious, and because of the large number of complications that result from a huge outbreak, which would overwhelm health care resources.
You may be on lone crank who feels it’s in your own best interest not to use these vaccines, but what right do you have to expose other people and society at large by not preventing your children from spreading these diseases to others?
Frack, man. Everybody got their britches in a bunch about this stuff. I don’t even drink milk (I crunch my granola down with soy, thank you very much burgundyyears), but I do believe people should be permitted to purchased raw milk. At the very least, those producers of raw milk who amount to a percent of a percent of a percent of the total milk produced in this country should not be subjected to intentionally malicious and deceptive regulation. It’s true that once in a while someone could get sick. It’s also true that pasteurized milk can have immuno-depressive effects and, along with all the other processed garbage we eat, all sorts of long-term impacts that are not as neatly alarmist as coliform in the baby’s bottle.
The issues are bigger, and have less to do with raw milk specifically than commercial scale food production at large. After all, feedlot beef–something most consumers never think twice about eating–was the source of the e. coli that contaminated bagged spinach back in summer and resulted in more deaths than raw milk ever has. Have there been any substantial changes in regulation or consumption of either the beef or the spinach since?
It’s a lot easier to pick on those little hippy-dippy raw milkers, no?
One communicable disease you can get from raw milk is TB. And you can’t really tell if a cow is tubercular until it’s almost dead–there aren’t a lot of symptoms. There were people who died of milk related TB when my mom was a kid, and that wasn’t so long ago–she was born in 1946.
@ancientsociety: Are YOU blind? You apparently don’t learn from the very website you quote!
But just to hammer in my point that you’re wrong, here are more links that took me 5 minutes to find:
Communicable disease associated with milk and dair…[J Infect. 1986] – PubMed Result
Campylobacteriosis
News Release
Communicable
E. coli 0157:H7 Infection
Salmonellosis
And in case you’re missing my point and going to whine that it’s none of my business, it is considering what “communicable” means:
communicable – Definitions from Dictionary.com
You DID know that E. coli and Salmonella, both of which are a danger of raw milk, ARE COMMUNICABLE DISEASES? The very site I quoted lists those as hazards, and yet you called me blind!
I cited that site for a reason. Too bad you failed to do your research and see why.
@Antediluvian: Choice is OK — until you put other peoples’ health and life in danger. Read up on the links I posted above. Do you remember the E. coli spinach outbreak that was killing people a while back? THAT is why the opinion is anti-choice.
“Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”.
Once again, Consumerist.com fails to give both sides of the story and appears to be quite biased against raw milk. Stories like these may get you more hits, but only further distinguish you guys from a reliable and trustworthy news source.
I personally don’t drink raw milk. In fact, I drink ultra-pasteurized milk. However, I have nothing against those who drink raw milk.
Did you know when you drink expired pasteurized milk, YOU WILL GET SICK. However, raw milk will only turn sour after some time and is STILL perfectly drinkable.
For those who know nothing about raw milk besides what Consumerist and what this article claims, please read: [www.realmilk.com]
I personally don’t drink raw milk. In fact, I usually drink ultra-pasteurized milk. However, I have nothing against raw milk and if people prefer raw milk, I say give them that choice.
For those who only know of what raw milk based on what Consumerist and this article tells you, I implore you to straighten your facts before continue this debate: [www.realmilk.com]
Did you know that if you drink expired pasteurized milk, YOU WILL GET SICK. Raw milk does not expire, it just turns sour and even drinking sour raw milk will not get you sick.
@krunk4ever: Jesus. I was about to yell “PLANT” until I checked your post history. Instead, you’re just… Calling The Consumerist biased against raw milk (?) and advocating for an unpasteurized milk website. Aight…
[I ask why all the fuss over raw milk when not over alcohol which has similar health consequences]
@asherchang2:
@Antediluvian: Because while raw milk is only a health issue, alcohol is a traffic safety issue, an acute poisoning issue, a criminal and violence issue, and for some people a moral issue.
And my further reply:
All those issues you raise boil down to health issues. Traffic safety: health. Acute poisoning: health. Criminal: huh…. maybe not that one. Violence: health, big-time. Moral: back at health, much like people with various diseases or conditions are considered by some to be immoral (think AIDS, leprosy, depression, etc).
Alcohol kills and injures bazillions of people each year, costs the economy katillions of dollars in lost productivity, and yet we’re still allowed to drink ourselves into oblivion if we want to. Hell, you can even make your own at home (up to a certain amount, and don’t you dare distill anything).
And don’t get me started about how alcohol spreads disease: think of all those STI’s transmitted due to drunken indiscretions and beer goggles.
The tone of my comments in this post are light-hearted, but the facts are real (not the made-up number words, obviously).
But suddenly with raw milk, the parallels get tossed aside.
I disagree. I think they should be compared, and that the personal freedom we extend to alcohol drinkers should be extended to those who wish to consume raw milk.
You cannot claim raw milk is going to be responsible for chaos and while ignoring the accepted reality that is alcohol.
I’m willing to bet that alcohol spreads more disease in a single night than raw milk does all year.
And here we go:
From Buran’s link to the FDA website:
[www.fda.gov]
From 1998 to May 2005 CDC identified 45 outbreaks of foodborne illness that implicated unpasteurized milk, or cheese made from unpasteurized milk. These outbreaks accounted for 1,007 illnesses, 104 hospitalizations, and two deaths. This is based on information in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for the week of March 2, 2007. The actual number of illnesses was almost certainly higher because not all cases of illness are recognized and reported.
That’s a little over 1000 illnesses and a hundred hospitalizations over 7 years, and two deaths.
Seven years. Call it six because the text is imprecise. Even tripling the number (since the FDA suggests it’s actually higher), we get
3000 illnesses in 6 years = 2000 illnesses per year
300 hospitalizations in 6 years = 50 per year
6 deaths in six years = 1 death per year.
Alcohol: in the year 2000 alone:
85,000 deaths due to alcohol consumption, including
16,653 deaths due to alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes
Source:
“Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000″ by Ali H. Mokdad, PhD, et al.
JAMA, March 10, 2004 – Vol 291, No 10
Clarification issued January 10, 2005.
Cited by [www.drugwarfacts.org]
Retrieved 2007-12-28
I’m going to stop there and leave the illness and hospitalization stats research as an exercise for the reader.
The gist of my above (long) post:
Alcohol kills more people, injures more people, and spreads more disease EACH DAY than raw milk does all year.
@supersally: Wonderful. And with the drug-resistant strains of TB coming up, all we have to do is quarantine raw milk drinkers and we can rid society of the worst of the Luddite fascists.
And frankly, with better (easier) regulations and oversight for the raw milk producers:
- illness and disease could be tracked back to certain producers
- consumers could be alerted of outbreaks
- outbreaks could be prevented (pull sick animals out of production and not sell known-contaminated product)
Prohibition didn’t work well with alcohol, it’s not working well with drugs, and it’s not a good idea for raw milk either.
BTW, as I said before, I personally would not likely choose to drink raw milk, but I support that right for others. I also choose not to do drugs (other than alcohol), but support that right for others.
@Antediluvian: Even though your treatment of all of alcohol’s sociological ramifications as health-related is very suspect, the raw milk/alcohol comparison is a false analogy anyways. Alcohol is a drug.
Raw milk is a food, which potentially harvests more pathogens than anything else tolerated by the FDA. California’s regulations aren’t banning the stuff anyways, they’re just making sure that raw milk doesn’t harbor too much potentially harmful bacteria. What’s wrong with that? There’s a set limit to mouse hairs and insect parts in our peanut butter. Don’t consumers have the right to be assured that there’s a cap to impurities in the products that they buy?
oops, “harbors”, not “harvests”
@j-bird: Where have I seen that list of ailments before? Oh yeah, in PETA’s scare tactics campaign against any and all milk consumption whatsoever. Great. Way to borrow from the pro lunatics.
Everyone! The milk you’re drinking right now causes CANCER!!!!
(btw, very few people have allergies to milk. Were you talking about lactose intolerance?)
@asherchang2:
@Antediluvian: Even though your treatment of all of alcohol’s sociological ramifications as health-related is very suspect, the raw milk/alcohol comparison is a false analogy anyways. Alcohol is a drug.
I will vehemently defend the issues surrounding alcohol (ab)use as health-related, but I do agree with you that alcohol is a drug, and (raw) milk is a food. I disagree that this difference invalidates the comparison. I also started the analogy with a disclaimer about a strawman argument.
(Oddly enough, the FDA is the Food AND Drug Administration — who knew?.)
I’m not informed enough to comment on the validity of your statement that “raw milk … potentially [harbors] more pathogens than anything else tolerated by the FDA.” But let’s assume it’s correct on its face.
Well, SOMETHING has to have the most “potential” pathogens if we’re ranking products, right? And the word “potential” give a lot of room to wiggle. But say we’re talking about only dairy products. Given that ALL other dairy products have been pasteurized, the sole unpasteurized product OF COURSE could “potentially harbor” more of EVERYTHING (helpful wee beasties as well as pathogenic ones) than the pasteurized products.
And as I said above, I don’t have problems with regulations that actually allow for the sale of raw milk. I’m concerned about policies that effectively regulate the product out of existence.
Of course consumers have a right to KNOW what “impurities” are in their products, and to make a choice based on that information. At some level, the free market will settle some of these questions, provided there’s enough opportunity.
Think back to the issue of rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone). In New England, many consumers and dairies wanted milk produced without rBGH, and now some brands carry labels stating “no artificial growth hormone.” Informed consumers can choose which products to purchase.
I can’t believe I just used a pro-capitalist approach to support milk freedom. Didn’t see that one coming.
@Buran: Welcome, are you a US citizen? Didn’t you realize this country is about an individuals rights not the controls put in place by the nanny state? Or at least it was when it was founded.
And regarding my right to swing, if you choose to not participate in certain issues don’t put your nose in the business. From the articles you have quoted good sanitation practices will prevent the communicability of every disease. If you want to live in a bubble then go get in one, leave those of us willing to take a risk alone.
CERIPHIM re:Chicken pox During 2003 and the first half of 2004, CDC received
reports of eight varicella-related deaths. The age of the decedents
ranged from 1 to 40 years. Six of the eight deaths
occurred among children and adolescents aged Between March 1995 and July 1998, the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) received 6, 574 reports of health problems after chickenpox vaccination. That translates into 67.5 adverse events per 100,000 doses of vaccine or one in 1,481 vaccinations. About four percent of cases (about 1 in 33,000 doses) were serious including shock, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia (blood disorder) and 14 deaths.
Lets see 14 deaths from the vaccine, over 3 years versus 8 in one year for the disease. Of course the 8 were spread over the entire population which is much larger than the vaccination group in those 3 years. Keep in mind though that the two numbers will be cumulative, some will die from disease and some will die from vaccine so while we may have prevented some natural infections we may be causing more deaths.
@Red_Eye: You can take a risk all you want when it doesn’t affect anyone else. Not when you put other peoples’ lives in danger. I’m not going to allow that risk to happen when it can and will harm other people who didn’t choose to undertake that risk. I’m already handicapped once for life from someone else’s stupid choices. I’ve been there. How about I rip out your ears and see how you like it, and tell you that there’s no treatment to make you whole and probably won’t be til after you (and I) die?
I suppose you’re also the sort who puffs away on cigarettes in public places, fuck anyone who doesn’t want to get lung cancer from the crap you spew back out into the air other people have to breathe.
So if you want to get drunk in the privacy of your own home, or smoke in your own home, or do whatever stupid shit you want that won’t do a damn thing to other people, fine.
The second you do something that can and will harm other people (and yes, even the most well-intentioned of people can and do spread disease when they’re sick) you have crossed the line.
Individual rights? Seems like all you give a damn about are yours, not anyone else’s right to good health and absence of harm.
@Buran:
@Red_Eye: You can take a risk all you want when it doesn’t affect anyone else. Not when you put other peoples’ lives in danger. I’m not going to allow that risk to happen when it can and will harm other people who didn’t choose to undertake that risk.
And this is how my posts comparing raw milk to alcohol lose strawman status and become real.
—–
Buran, I feel for your situation (and as I stated, I’m pro-vaccine) but your argument doesn’t hold water here. In addition, you consistently attack the person, not the person’s argument, losing credibility in the process.
Raw milk doesn’t cause disease. Poor sanitation — anywhere — allows disease to spread. Proper sanitation — all along the processing chain, including the consumer — prevents disease.
I’m also okay with people eating their steaks rare, and their eggs runny (two things I personally don’t care for). Poached eggs? Traditional Caesar salad dressing? Chocolate mousse made with egg whites? Raw eggs in protein shakes?
All have potential for serious illness, but none of those are illegal, nor should they be.
I don’t think there’s been research that has shown a _causal_ relationship between raw milk consumption and lowered asthma/allergy rates and off the top of my head I can probably think dozens other factors that could be at play here. Why put yourself at risk? Pasteurization is one the biggest public health advances we’ve made. Sure, not that many people die now from drinking raw milk, but how large is the pool of people drinking raw milk??
That said, I firmly believe in the individual’s right to put themselves at whatever risk they want to. However, before a person puts themselves in harm’s way they need to be aware of the risks and benefits of what they’re doing. And here’s the problem: most people that drink raw milk probably don’t understand the risks or benefits very well.
Just going on my personal experience with raw milk consumers, I’d say there aren’t many of them that understand or trust clinical or epidemiological research. Mostly they’re drinking raw milk because some HIGHLY unreliable source told them it’s good for ‘em. These are the sort of people who ignore good public health research because it’s a tool of the corporatocracy, but put tons of faith in ‘research’ that’s really just conjecture and/or marketing put out by a skeezy ‘healthy living’ industry.
Read the comments above about raw milk’s alleged benefits. I don’t see too many sources cited. Mostly it’s a lot of wild statements about raw milk’s magical healing properties that send up instant BS detector flags for me. Just because some raw milk special interest group tells you it’s healthy, doesn’t make it so. Just because you want/need to believe something is true doesn’t make it so, either.
When in doubt, search Pub Med.
@PatrickAustin: I’m not a fan of homeopathy either, but there are tons of people who swear by it, scientific method be damned.
Lots of wild statements, BS flags and all. But if people want to do it, I say go ahead, but be mindful.
Same with raw milk.
@Antediluvian: How exactly is “when you do something that harms other people, it crosses the line” a personal attack? Wow, now you’re attacking ME for having a belief that I apply to everyone and everything. How is THAT not a personal attack?
If I individually call you stupid, that’s a personal attack. I didn’t call anyone stupid in the post, just stated my (from personal experience no less) belief.
@Buran: The part I quoted wasn’t the personal attack. This was the your personal attack in that post:
I suppose you’re also the sort who puffs away on cigarettes in public places, fuck anyone who doesn’t want to get lung cancer from the crap you spew back out into the air other people have to breathe.
Well, actually, it continues to the end of your post, but that’s where it started.
—-
You continue,
Wow, now you’re attacking ME for having a belief that I apply to everyone and everything. How is THAT not a personal attack?
Here are two sources that might help clear that up for you:
Personal Attack from Wikipedia: [en.wikipedia.org]
Ad Hominem from Wikipedia:
[en.wikipedia.org]
Obviously I’m not attacking you for holding opinions. I’m attacking your ARGUMENT (thus my phrase, “your argument doesn’t hold water here”). I’ve also said you were “100% wrong” but none of my statements was a PERSONAL ATTACK. At no point in this thread did I EVER personally attack you, your misinterpretation @Buran here notwithstanding.
But here are some others FROM you in this thread:
——–
Put yourself in others’ shoes for a change. Will drinking pasteurized milk hurt you? no. Will it taste different? A bit. Will it help others? Hell yes. But today it’s all about me, me, me, screw anyone else no matter how serious the consequences.
——–
It’s easy to mouth off when you (likely) haven’t personally been literally scarred for life because of someone else’s unthinking/uncaring choices.
——–
Fine. You want me to do the search you’re too damn lazy to do? 5 lousy minutes? Here’s the answers your high horse is too high for you to look down and see.
——–
Are YOU blind? You apparently don’t learn from the very website you quote! But just to hammer in my point that you’re wrong, here are more links that took me 5 minutes to find:
@Antediluvian: Wow, you really must have nothing to do if you’re going to bitch about other peoples’ posts.
The first one was not a personal attack. It was an “I’m speaking from experience here, are you? Try to look at it from that point of view” request.
The second one said “likely”, to avoid actually making an attack, and pointed out a truth that if you aren’t speaking from experience, it’s easy to think that what you are doing is no big deal. Again, not an attack.
The third one is the truth. Five minutes looking into the dangerous organisms the page I cited would have drawn the same conclusion that I was forced to plainly lay out when the evidence was right there. It really did only take me five minutes to be able to find specific examples of the danger. If you’re going to make claims in a discussion, you should be able to back them up. I found the evidence and quoted it.
The fourth one was a direct response to me being insulted. I didn’t pull that line out until it was used as a direct attack on me, like the “is reading comprehension not your thing?” insult I see flying all over the place. You know, that “do unto others as you’d have done unto you” thing. You fling it at me, I fling it at you.
But whatever, it seems that if you’re going to accuse ME of misunderstanding, you certainly did misread me.
Maybe I need to start putting “THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK ON YOU” disclaimer on everything I post that is not actually an attack. You certainly can attack someone’s beliefs or their (lack of) bothering to actually inform themself on an issue without insulting the person.
@Buran:
Wow.
Oh, and so people don’t just think all pasteurized milk is home-free on the problems front:
—–
DPH Issues Consumer Warning for Milk Products Sold at Whittier Farms in Shrewsbury
[www.mass.gov]
Boston – The Department of Public Health (DPH) is issuing a warning to consumers not to drink any milk products from Whittier Farms in Shrewsbury because of listeria bacteria contamination.
Four cases of listeriosis infection have been identified by DPH. The cases occurred in June, October and two in November. DNA fingerprinting conducted by the State Laboratory Institute showed that the bacteria causing these infections came from a common source. Samples collected showed product contamination.
—-
Health authorities inundated with calls about tainted milk
[www.boston.com]
@Antediluvian: What? You asked. If you don’t believe me, I’m sorry. That’s the truth of the matter.
@asherchang2: You said, “What if parents give raw milk to their kids? Do those people have the right to impose on them a dangerous product just because the government should stay out of our kitchens?”
My response: You’re damn right people have that right. The government has no business telling me how to raise my children. Raw milk is not a “dangerous product” and people catch the same diseases every day eating supposedly “safe” food bought at the local grocery store. So, yes, if I want to feed my children raw milk, that is my business. Period.
Now, if my children are constantly sick because I’m feeding them poorly handled raw milk all the time, that’s a different story, but you go talk to some families who drink raw milk and find out how often they or their kids get sick. This is not a big scary dangerous thing like some would have you believe.
@Buran: Many cases, studies, and facts all show that pasteurized milk has a very dirty track record. Raw milk has a trail as well. But where did this raw milk come from? Small-scale farmers? Conveniently this is all swept out of view from public attention. Why does such information remain shrouded?
Could it relate to the inherent power of the dairy industry or even how much the FDA and USDA have tied up in such an empire? Should we be careful of enveloping ourselves so tightly in defense of something that we don’t fully understand or comprehend?
This is not to say that we aren’t correct in many respects, but drawing conclusions based on surface analysis and strengthening a sense of self in order to uphold a conceptual belief in the mind doesn’t support reality. Nor does it help others by rigidly drawing conclusions. One must be prepared to relinquish deep seated beliefs.
I feel it is very powerful to question the motive or motivation behind the groups attempting to subjugate or usurp the power of small groups of individuals. At times it seems we place far too much faith in establishments w/o a true understanding of what they are defending, who they are profiting, or how much they have invested in what they defend. And even much less into understanding what these establishments are comprised of.
The deep seated belief here is that pasteurized milk is a safer substance; that essentially through means of pasteurization a much safer product is fashioned. Oftentimes what follows this assumption is that perhaps pasteurized milk is somehow better, and healthier. The obvious pressed ‘belief’ is that raw milk is an inherently dangerous substance unfit for consumption due to a high risk of harm. Notice the fear involved. Where did we first encounter these ‘conditioned’ beliefs? Was it in school? The young mind is easy to mold and establish foundations within. This is where we adopt the concepts of what we mistakenly accept as truth. The unconscious depths are teeming and riddled with this sort of information. The FDA, USDA and dairy industry have certainly taken hold of this opportunity in conditioning, have they not?
Why has pasteurization only been in effect for the past century? What diseases and health issues have we seen an incredible & dramatic increase in over the past century? Who or what industries benefit from disease and degeneration? Who benefits from producing synthetic chemicals as an advertised means of cure? Who would reap gains from educating the people on the reversal of health through natural substances such as raw milk? Who benefits from asking such questions, wisely, openly, earnestly, and with a compassionate view? We can be honest.
Cows raised in confinement, injected with an endless array of antibiotics, laden with hormones and fed absolutely unnatural diets might lead one to assume that perhaps the milk coming from such a living creature would not be very safe for consumption. But certainly the aforementioned scheme is the method used to produce milk on a mass-scale. This is certain, is it not? The profits involved with sales of agro-chemicals, hormones, antibiotics are reaped heavily for the corporations that can indulge the assumed necessity of raising animals in this fashion. And it is at this stage we see pasteurization, homogenization, and irradiation setting up shop.
Could you imagine the tragedy involved with consumption of these denatured, destroyed and ultimately diseased foods in their raw state?
Yet it seems even with this ‘sweep it under the rug, worry about it later’ approach we still run into a gamut of problems and consequences. Who would of thought?
Who is to blame? The only answer that can truly be assumed is that I am. We’re all in this together.
The majority of the limited number of raw milk outbreaks (many unconfirmed) stemmed from commercial dairy industries. I don’t include them here. I do however include a few links showing the harmful track record of pasteurization:
[content.nejm.org]
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
[www.realmilk.com]
[www.marlerblog.com]
[www.cdc.gov]
[www.journals.uchicago.edu]
[jama.ama-assn.org]
[findarticles.com]
If individual human-beings are unable to look deeply into the nature of their own mundane daily life-situation and contemplatively seek the truth of their own nature without distraction, than why ever would we assume a collective harmony? We look at pixels amid a grand-interconnected interrelated flow of interactions that produce results which we then attempt to freeze and assume for truth, as though what we were seeing was somehow static, something separate. It seems that mindfulness is key.
Enjoy yourselves.