Heat-treated food isn't sterile — it might still carry resistance genes to your gut

Pasteurization kills bacteria in milk, but leaves behind their ghost DNA and membrane fragments that could potentially slip antibiotic-resistance instructions to your gut bacteria, like a courier delivering a secret message long after the messenger is gone.

This means we need to understand whether processed food is a silent highway for spreading antibiotic resistance through human populations — a question that's never been directly tested in real people.