I wonder how many of these Birkenstock-wearing Subaru-driving raw milk drinkers who shout about “food freedom” would be absolutely delighted if the FDA banned meat.
Also, on the page linked by the OP: they seem to believe that homeopathy works.
Concepts may be ageless, but knowledge about all science, including medicine, changes drastically over time. (Do you want to defend our factual knowledge of the planets from 1543?) In this thread we’re talking about facts, which can be shown to be right or wrong.
And here’s a wrong one. Raw milk does not contain any significant amount of acidophilus. Not even raw proponents make this claim that I can find. Where are you getting it from? (There is such a thing as acidophilus milk, but that’s created by adding the acidophilus later on.)
Chronological snobbery. Still, I’d prefer to see more recent peer-reviewed cites too.
That’s right. Acidophilus is a bacteria, which would need to get/be put into the milk.
What I think he meant (because, as with acidophilus, it has potential relevance to digestability) was that raw milk proponents point to multiple enzymes (a protein (not a live organism) that can serve as a catalyst, to use my ninth grade definition) that they say are present in raw milk, destroyed/denatured by pasteurization, and that have great efficacy in . . . I forget exactly what, but it is good for digestion, nutrient uptake, auto-immune, etc., in their version of things.
The book people are talking about is probably:
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html
He and his followers (who, interestingly, included some of the earliest competitive weightlifters, strongmen, and bodybuilders) were indeed somewhat fanatical about raw milk as the key to . . . just about everything.
I would dispute the contention that it is only homogenization, not pasteurization, that affects taste/mouth-feel in milk. Pasteurized, unhomogenized milk did taste different (and I would say, not as good) as the unpasteurized. Pasteurization employs really pretty high heat! For those unwilling to risk e. coli, try this: buy some shelf-stable milk (more available in Europe than N. Am., but you should be able to find it – the kind they sell in big juice-box type sealed boxes at room temp.). That stuff has been ultra-pasteurized (hotter and longer than what’s in your dairy case). It definitely tastes a lot different than just regular pasteurized. Id roughly analogize that to the difference between raw and pasteurized.
They wouldn’t. Perhaps you don’t understand how that milk gets to your table? I’ll treat it as a serious question.
Big Dairy really consists of two groups. The first is the processors, like Borden. These processors don’t own cows, or if they do they’re symbolic; instead they arrange long-term contracts with farmers, as (for example) Tyson’s does with chicken farmers. So after buying milk from farmers, companies like Borden pasteurize it, and then they package it and distribute it. Both of these are value-added; doing that kind of processing and distributing in an efficient way takes a lot of scale. Also, that pasteurization not only extends the shelf life so that it can be shipped and stored, but it cleans up any nasty creatures left in the milk by the farmers. So, Sage Rat - how are you picturing this first group benefiting from raw milk becoming more accepted/legal? The pasteurization isn’t needed for raw milk, and their wide distribution networks just lost most of their value. Oh noes indeed.
The second part of Big Dairy is the large, process-oriented farms. These are the farms that have embraced efficiency by cramming cows into close quarters, pumping them full of hormones and antibiotics, and feeding them the cheapest food available, usually some mix of corn silage and other grains and hay. I’m not one of those people who gets upset about this sort of production, by the way - given how much milk Americans drink, it’s probably the only way to produce that much. But it does have one consequence, which is that diseases like e coli O157 and listeria can occur more easily [note to RealityChuck: Google is your friend…there have been outbreaks, though uncommon, from unpasteurized milk as well]. The good news? With rare exceptions, those diseases get pasteurized out and reduced to small concentrations of pus and blood that mostly get removed through inspection. In other words, we have a symbiotic relationship here: Big Dairy farms can afford to use practices that increase the odds of disease, but the processors take care of that for them. So, Sage Rat: these combine milk producers are really going to retool their facilities or free-range their cows to produce safe raw milk? Seriously? Oh noes again.
There’s a third group you should also consider, which is the small and mid-level farmers. Those farmers are almost incapable of making money producing milk, but they’ll still sell to the big producers because it covers their fixed expenses (though google dairy farmers and bankruptcy and you’ll get an ugly picture). Those are the ones that would benefit from selling raw milk, assuming they were running healthy farms.
So I’m not really defending the Big Dairy conspirators, because I don’t know whether raw milk makes a dent in their profits…but it’s silly to say they’d benefit from the relaxation of regulations.
One question I haven’t had answered in all this, by the way, is whether there are health benefits to raw milk, like the rBGH or antibiotics issue. The only research I can find seems to be supported by raw milkers or dairy associations, which makes some sense…it just isn’t helpful, since I don’t really trust either group.
Right, though to be fair this is kind of a subtle point. We tend to think “business hates regulation,” and it makes sense. But big business is better-equipped to deal with added costs, regulation, bureaucracy, barriers to entry. A typical fact pattern will see a particular industry reflexively saying “no more regulation,” then gradually realizing (the big boys, at least) that they are much more likely to be able to clear any incremental (or existing) regulatory hurdle (through economies of scale, existing compliance departments, etc.) than are small/upstart competitors. Once again we think of businessmen as pro-competition but even as staunch a capitalist as I acknowledge the human proclivity to do things that tend to benefit an entrenched monopoly/oligopoly. You’ll note how the big banks put up, at best, Brer’ Rabbit type protestations to the recent financial reform bill. Most inside the industry think big banks will only get bigger/richer in the long run due to the regulation.
Well, the government is either a neutral source or in the pocket of industry, so depending on which you think, it either will or won’t help you decide to know that the FDA’s official position is that there is no difference to human health as between milk from BGH/BST treated cows and those w/o such treatment. You’ll see that statement on cartons of organic milk (but of course it is almost certainly the case that non-organic producers played a large role in mandating such label to avoid any implication that their product was less healthy, so again, impartiality is hard to define).
There was a thread on here a few years ago and reading this one reminds me of it and makes me sad. One of my favorite posters lived in a rural setting with a cow or two of her own from which she drank raw milk. The way she was treated in that thread was disgusting and I don’t believe she has posted since. 
Anyhoo - I’ve never had the pleasure of raw milk as I’ve never known a cow well enough to partake. I think the posters in this thread that are indicating that an excellent knowledge of the cow/farmer is necessary to make raw milk safe (ish) are correct. I don’t think large producers could offer such a product.
I’ve never seen any convincing evidence that raw milk is healthier than the pasteurized kind. For instance, those wonderful enzymes that get denatured by pasteurization? Enzymes are proteins that get denatured in your digestive tract (by your stomach acids, in particular), so they’re not going to get absorbed into your blood anyway if you drink raw milk. It’s about as nutty as the claims made for foods that contain “DNA” - it’s broken down by your metabolism.
More on nonsensical raw milk health claims here.
My big reasons for not drinking the stuff are Campylobacter, E. coli and Salmonella. I’d sooner listen to infectious disease experts at places like the World Health Organization than to raw milk proponents.
Here’s a story about an organic milk cooperative that decided it didn’t want any part of its members producing raw milk (as one farmer notes, he isn’t going to bet his business on every raw milk producer doing things just exactly right so that the final product is always safe). Leaving aside the fact that it’s not possible to control for every harmful bug via “safe” raw milk production practices, I’m not going to bet my health on such farms’ operations either.
What’s next in food production nostalgia? Maybe we should eat rare pork from farms that raise their pigs the old-fashioned way, without those silly Agriculture Dept. rules. I mean, it’s not like everybody got sick or even died from trichinosis. There are probably people who think that pork tastes better when pigs ate a bigger variety of stuff, like uncooked garbage, or when the meat didn’t have to be preserved at very cold temperatures. Take a stand against Big Pork and the F.D.A! :dubious:
Yeah that’s the thread I mentioned. I can’t find it but yeah, talking about milk sends some people off the deep end.
To be “fair”, the Weston Price Foundation is involved in a lot more than just promoting bad information about raw milk. They’re into many different forms of health quackery, including propagandizing about the horrors of soy-based foods and the alleged benefits of high saturated fat coconut oil (one of the foundation’s big guns is Mary Enig, PhD, who is connected to the coconut oil industry and is cited on industry websites as an authority). Weston Price also has an MD advisor, Thomas Cowan, whose articles on various health problems include an impressive array of quackery, such as the “Iscador” treatment for cancer. His logic for using this stuff is, well, interesting…
“An alternative and nontoxic therapy now widely used in Europe is Iscador, a medicine made from the lacto-fermented extract of fresh sap of the plant known as mistletoe (viscum album). Mistletoe has been used in folk medicine for hundreds of years, especially by the Druids. Its first use as a cancer medicine came from the indications of Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s. Steiner pointed out the remarkable similarity between the life and growth patterns of mistletoe and cancer. Both are characterized by very primitive and undifferentiated cell types.”
Yep, a great reason for taking this drug - it’s derived from a plant that grows like cancer! Impeccable logic.
This doc also promotes escharotic therapy for skin cancers, where you treat your lesions at home using an agent (bloodroot salve is the popular one) that burns off the tumor (and healthy tissue too, sometimes causing horrific scarring). You can’t tell if this caustic salve has gotten all the tumor, so there’ve been cases where it recurred later or metastasized.
This goes well beyond concerns about raw milk, but seeing the comprehensive list of quackery Weston Price supports, I’d view their milk claims very dubiously as well.
I would not buy raw milk, it sounds as if the chances of getting a contaminated batch are much higher than with pasteurized milk.
Around here(Iowa) we can get some very tasty milk which comes from a creamery down in Missouri. Heartland creamery I think its called, it is pasteurized of course, but contains no rBST or rbGH, and is non homogenized (is that redundant?). All of their milk comes from a single farm, I’ve heard this can affect flavor greatly. I don’t know much about milk, but it is definitely worth the price over Roberts/A&E/etc.
I find it at the local Hy Vee, others may be able to as well if they live in/around Missouri.
*edit
I forgot to mention, the heartland milk comes in a glass bottle which does increase the price somewhat. My local store will accept bottles back after use for a refund of the increased price, or at least they did a while back (I normally keep the bottle).
No, believe it or not, the source is much worse than a book from The Weston A. Price hisself.
It’s Raw Milk Vs. Pasteurized Milk.
At the bottom of that page, the idiot poster says:
Armchair Science is not a “British Medical Journal.” It was a British popular science magazine, about the same level as Popular Mechanics.
It’s the source for many of the so-called “facts” that people post about raw milk. Probably including the misunderstanding that raw milk has acidophilus bacteria, although the actual line is “after pasteurization, the lactic acid bacilli are killed.”
The article is full of statements about raw milk that can’t be believed. (“Pasteurization turns the sugar of milk, known as lactose, into beta-lactose.” No, it doesn’t.) Yet they are quoted over and over today.
BTW, Chronos. Do you have a term for when somebody in the past was dead wrong about the facts and yet is held up as a source? :rolleyes:
Not at all. Growing up you could buy milk either homogenized or non-homogenized. Both were pasteurized (usually, saying “pasteurized” meant “non-homogenized”; homogenized milk was always pasteurized, too).
People preferred homogenized milk because the cream didn’t separate and rise to the top. You had to shake up your bottle of pasteurized milk our you’d get a glassful of cream.
I used to drink raw milk occasionally and it’s much better tasting than pasteurized. I recently read that there are 2 major processes for pasteurizing milk. One involves a continuous intake system at much higher temperatures over a shorter period of time, and one has a non-continuous system at lower temperatures over a longer period of time (which costs more to do, but tastes better, I believe it said). I’d be willing to pay more for the better-tasting pasteurization process if it’s closer to the taste of raw milk.
Quoth Jackmannii:
Some enzymes are denatured in the stomach, certainly, but not all of them. If they were, then how would products like Bean-o work?
Quoth Exapno:
I’m not sure why you’re asking me that.
Saying that information in a book is wrong because it’s from 80 years ago isn’t a fact, it’s a fallacious argument… even if the book is wrong.
Yes, my mistake. My apologies. There’s a very long and understandable chain of events that lead to it, but let’s just say my breakfast was ready.
Plant-based enzymes don’t get denatured in the stomach.
Okay, breakfast and seeing this on Wikipedia without fact checking: “Pasteurization … kills some of milk’s naturally-occurring bacteria, such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, useful for the culturing of yogurt.”
My apologies. I have no idea why I confused you with elmwood.
Always fact check. Always.
A better question is, does Beano work? Its advertised active ingredient, an enzyme derived from an Aspergillus fungus species, supposedly breaks down complex plant sugars in the human body to relieve gas and bloating. There’s some preliminary findings suggesting that happens, but I haven’t seen convincing evidence demonstrating it.
As to the idea that plant enzymes are somehow uniquely exempted from breakdown by the human digestive tract - that’s news to me, Maserschmidt. Any sources for that claim other than the say-so of alternative medicine websites? Enzymes present in raw milk, whatever their form, are not going to be able to produce beneficial health effects in the human body due to metabolic inactivation. As a previous link notes:
“Enzymes are proteins. They are denatured in stomach acid and rapidly reduced to their constituent amino acids by the proximal small intestine, with the help of enzymes secreted by the pancreas. Leaving these “beneficial” enzymes intact by not pasteurizing them is not going to allow them magically to bypass the digestive system and be absorbed into the bloodstream.”
Oral enzyme therapy exists (as in pancreatic enzyme replacement), but to my knowledge this requires some form of protective coating to enable the enzymes to survive passage through the stomach and remain around long enough to help digest foods.
More here on enzyme therapy quackery.