Here is a nicely detailed discussion in defense of raw milk. What
comes home though is that the original solution needs to be put back
in place. Certifying raw milk is completely feasible in the modern
world. Such milk can be produced, packaged properly and delivered to
outlets inside a twelve hour window allowing customer pick up in the
evening or direct delivery of a fully chilled product overnight.
Chilled raw milk is certainly good for forty eight hours and much
more. It will then go sour and that surely inhibits any plausible
pathogens. This needs to be carefully reviewed actually because it
could be most of the natural solution. There is plenty of use for
sour milk and while you are at it help it along by turning it into a
quality yogurt.
I grew up on raw milk. I know the difference and today almost never
drink an actual glass of milk. The product we presently get is only
good for cooking in my world.
The reality is that raw milk would increase the actual market for
dairy products which is now contracting in various ways, often by
stealth substitution. The return of organic farming will drive these
changes as we progress.
In Defense of (Raw)
Milk
May 24, 2013
Eleni
Roumeliotou, Green Med Info
There is plenty of
clinical and nutritional evidence that milk, this hailed “natural”
drink, is the source of numerous immunological, gastrointestinal and
perhaps neurological disorders. While it is important to acknowledge
these facts, it is equally necessary to remember that the milk
we are talking about is a highly processed industrial product that
only remotely resembles the natural variety.
Depending on the
pasteurization method, raw milk can be heated at 161 F up to 212 F
for a few seconds (HTST, HHST protocols). The milk (or other liquid)
is forced through narrow pipes or between metal plates, which are
heated externally by hot water. Most pasteurization methods kill
99.99% of the microorganisms present in the milk, but not their
spores. These products still require refrigeration, although they
have significantly extended shelf life. On the contrary, ultra
pasteurized products ( heated at 2750 F for 2 seconds) are
basically sterilized and packaged (hermetically sealed) under aseptic
conditions, which is why they can last for up to 6-9 months.
Unlike the health
problems that commercial milk is causing, raw milk coming from
pastured animals used to be widely accepted as an excellent natural
therapy by medical doctors for a variety of diseases, such as
diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease and even cancer. The
“milk diet” prescribed by doctors in the beginning of 20th
century involved drinking exclusively up to 4 quarts of certified
medicinal raw milk.
Naturopathic doctor
Ron Schmidt in his incredible book “The Untold Story of Milk”
presents extensive medical reports, according to which patients
responded splendidly in raw milk from exclusively pastured cows, but
it had to be raw and untreated; milk became unsuitable for human use
if it was pasteurized. “Certified raw milk” was endorsed by
numerous physicians and supported by legislators and the public and
the American Association of Medical Milk Commissions to protect and
regulate the careful production and distribution of certified raw
milk.
The certified milk
movement was considered a critical component of raising the standards
of the entire dairy industry. Unfortunately this never happened and
low production standards are the industrial norm now, which
perpetuates the need for pasteurization. Although until the late
1920s both certified milk and pasteurized milk co-existed, from the
1930s onwards, commercial dairy interests, corrupted public health
officials and prominent individuals of the medical community managed
to enforce pasteurization to all milks, regardless of the production
standards. At the same time, raw milk was demonized as an agent
of infectious diseases and a danger for public health. In reality it
was the low production standards, inflammatory feed (grain products)
and the unsanitary and inhumane conditions that dairy cattle were
living at that caused the contamination of milk with pathogens and
imposed the necessity of pasteurization in the first place.
Unlike the medicinal
properties of naturally produced raw milk, modern pasteurized milk
is highly allergenic and inflammatory in its nature.
Frank Oski, MD, ex-director of Paediatrics in John Hopkins University
and Physician-in-chief in Johns Hopkins Children’s Center insists
that commercial milk is responsible for most of the gastrointestinal
problems in infants and children and causes, among others, chronic
low-level intestinal bleeding, leaky gut, tooth decay and tension
fatigue syndrome, while increasing the risk for developing diseases
such as multiple sclerosis.
From a nutritional
point of view, pasteurized milk is also very different from raw milk
as well. Almost all the beneficial bacteria present in the milk
are killed, which creates the perfect medium for opportunistic
pathogens to thrive. All raw milks contain beneficial bacteria. We
know that because human breast milk also contains a variety of
bacterial strains, which surprisingly respond to mother’s diet and
even mode of delivery! Perhaps the unnatural grain-based diet of
dairy cattle affects the quality of milk in a profound, yet currently
unsuspected manner.
Raw milk is very rich
in enzymes, which are highly functional heat-sensitive proteins. raw
milk also contains natural antimicrobial compounds, such as
lactoferrin, which is now being investigated as novel antimicrobial
agent in neonatal departments. All these important substances are
partially or entirely destroyed during pasteurization. The same is
true for water – (B complex, C) and fat – soluble (D, A)
vitamins. This renders the milk particularly hard to digest,
partially due to the presence of large, indigestible, heat-resistant
proteins, such as casein, which dominate pasteurized milk in the
absence of the myriad other balancing compounds. Dr Yvonne Anderson
and her colleagues from Sweden further report that even the
pasteurization of mother’s own milk reduces fat absorption and
growth in preterm infants.
Raw milk contains
lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose. People who suffer from
lactose intolerance do not synthesize this enzyme and therefore
cannot digest adequately milk and milk products. This happens rarely
with raw milk, because of the natural presence of lactase in it.
According to Ron Schmidt many people who cannot tolerate raw milk
tolerate very well fermented raw milk products, which have
significantly lower lactose content. Although the lactose intolerance
argument has been used as evidence that milk is an inherently bad
drink that not even our genes are adapted to, this is simply not
valid.
If this was ever true,
breast milk could never be the new-born’s first available food
source and the critical factor that promotes immunological and
metabolic maturation, among numerous other benefits for the baby. It
is important to understand that raw milk is a whole food, which
industrial processing transforms in a completely unbalanced, hence
unhealthy, commercial product. Proclaiming the malevolence of an
isolated milk compound (i.e. casein) when all the other beneficial /
regulatory compounds it naturally comes with are destroyed is simply
out of context.
Finally, let us
consider the environment that commercial milk is produced.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) is where most of the
milk is coming from. All vets now know that the diet and way the cow
lives heavily influence the quality of the produced milk, which is
also true for all animals and all the products they kindly provide to
us.
Packed in tiny spaces,
chronically sick cows that rarely see the light of the day, injected
with genetically modified growth hormones (rBGH), fed inflammatory
genetically modified grains and injected antibiotics to keep the
extensive inflammation (mastitis) under control, are producing the
milk that the vast majority of the people drink. Is it really a
surprise that this milk contains pathogens, pus, blood, antibiotics
and hormones? It is only a natural consequence of the way these
animals are tortured on a daily basis.
These documented
differences between raw milk, coming from pastured cows and the
commercial, pasteurized milk coming from cows in CAFOs show that
these two products are misleadingly similar in their name only. High
quality raw milk is a whole, perfect, balanced and nutritious food
with extensive medicinal properties, which are entirely absent in the
industrial milk.
About the Author
Eleni Roumeliotou has
trained as a geneticist, gaining a Master degree in Human Molecular
Genetics by Imperial College London, UK. She left the academic
research environment to focus on her true passion, which is
evidence-based natural health and alternative medicine. She is
currently working as a freelance writer.
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