I drank a quart of it in Amish Country last month. Very creamy, very delicious. Reminded me of being a kid at the neighbor’s dairy farm.
So I googled it and it seems to return only one of two basic ideas: 1) That you will die a horrible death from drinking raw milk, or 2) that raw milk can seriously cure all ills that a human being could ever have.
What is the real deal? Is it dangerous? Does it provide any benefits in addition to milk I get at the grocery store? Thanks.
We used to buy unpasteurized milk directly from a farmer when I was a young. My mom would sit in the car while I took glass jugs into barn and fill it up from the big vat they were sending to the dairy for processing, you would drop a dollar in the can for each gallon (or two, I can’t recall) you took. It was delicious, but you had to make sure you shook it up or you would just pour cream off of the top.
I started taking it to college with me once I moved out of the dorms and I got an apartment with friends (also took free government cheese). My one roommate purposely would not shake it up and gained 10 pounds in a couple of weeks (we also ate a lot of grilled cheese). His mom committed that she hadn’t had to shake milk since she was a small child and told him to stop sucking up the cream. So it used to be very common at one point in Ohio, we got lots of dairy farms.
There may be risk, but I believe if you keep it cold it minimizes those risk.
There are diseases that are transmitted by raw milk.
When people drank raw milk regularly in previous centuries, life expectancy was much lower than it is today.
Therefore, 1) is closer to the truth.
And yet the Amish are not dying off from milk related disease.
Whether or not raw milk is dangerous depends on the cow it comes from. If the cow is healthy and not an asymptomatic carrier of anything the milk will be safe. If the cow is carrying tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, campylobacter, listeria, brucella, pathogenic E. coli, salmonella, or strep you could catch it from the raw milk and become seriously ill or even die. Which people used to do, in the thousands, before pasteurization was a thing (also before there were vaccinations for some of the above, but we don’t have vaccinations for all of them). It sometimes still happens - if I recall there was a outbreak of milk-borne illness in Scotland in the 1980’s that resulted in some deaths and a change in laws there. Because milk is consumed by children (among others), and in large quantities, most places require pasteurization these days as a public health and safety measure. This has greatly reduced illness and death.
It’s a bit like some other foods that can be potentially hazardous. Sushi, for example - there are risks to eating raw fish, like various parasites. There are things that can reduce/minimize those risks, but they never entirely go away. Likewise, eating raw mammal flesh, like steak tartare.
Likewise, there are things that can be done to mitigate the risks of drinking raw milk. In some places where the sale of it is legal dairies producing raw milk for sale are held to higher hygiene standards. If you own your own cow you can, of course, drink her milk raw but it would be a very, very good idea to closely monitor the cow’s health.
Proponents make a lot of claims that I, personally, think are woo-woo. It’s like the pro-marijuana crowd who assert weed is good for what ails you. So far as I’ve been able to research (looking for actual scientific studies) the nutritional profile is the same for raw vs. pasteurized milk.
There might be some taste difference, but some of that might also be down to freshness - raw milk is typically sold very soon after leaving the cow, what sits on a supermarket shelf is easily a week old already by the time you buy it. It might also be down the pasteurization. Cheese is one area where the flavor profile is impacted, as there are differences between cheese made with raw vs. pasteurized milk, but the aging process for cheese also reduces some (but not all) of the risk of pathogen transmission.
Just as human mothers pass antibodies to their babies in their milk, so do cows. So there might be some tiny benefit to raw milk, perhaps if you spread it on your acne and the cow has antibodies to your skin bacteria.
But there are also risks if the cow isn’t healthy, or if the milk isn’t kept meticulously clean in processing. Udders are not naturally sterile.
Raw milk is legal in my state, so long as you buy it directly from the farmer. (state laws vary.) The best milk I’ve ever had was raw milk, but I also once bought some raw milk that didn’t taste fabulously fresh, and looking at how the cows were kept, (which was visible) I wasn’t super comfortable, so I’ve never purchased from them again.
There are several processes typically done to commercial milk.
Pasturization (quickly heating and cooling to kill pathogens) makes it safe. This also extends the shelf life.
Typically, all the cream is skimmed from the top, then the skim milk has the appropriate amount of cream added back in. Whole milk in the US is 3.25% milkfat. The raw milk straight from the cow can be higher, which can account for some of the taste difference.
Homogenization is a vigorous shaking process, which prevents the cream from separating out again.
Then it’s packaged, typically in plastic bottles.
Some or all of these processes may affect the flavor, but at least it won’t kill you.
On the other hand, a healthy young adult is likely to just get very sick but not die from most milk borne diseases. And with modern standards of cleanliness and bovine vaccination those diseases are themselves less common. On the other other hand, the farmers who advocate for and sell raw milk may be less likely to vaccinate their cows. It all depends on your source and your acceptable level of risk.
Whole milk is at least 3.25% milkfat, and yes, most is exactly that. But I buy a local brand of pasteurized milk that’s got a higher butterfat content. I think even raw milk is required to carry a nutrition label (although there is a wild patchwork of state laws regulating it, so I’m not sure) so you can check and see what you are getting, should you decide to risk it.
To be fair, people in previous centuries did not have airplanes. Today, when we do, life expectancy is much higher than it was then.
Therefore, airplanes increase life expectancy.
If the claim I was refuting was “raw milk has health benefits” then you’d be right that my argument had a flaw. But the claim I’m contesting is the ridiculous one that “raw milk can seriously cure all ills that a human being could ever have” - a claim so strong that merely pointing out that disease was more prevalent when raw milk use was common is sufficient to refute it.
I thought it was obvious that I was using hyperbole in my #1 and #2 examples. The search results typically are one or the other of, “Raw milk is untested and can cause sickness or in some cases death, so be very cautious or do not drink it at all” or “Raw milk contains essential vitamins which are lost in the pasteurization process and provide many health benefits.”
In that case, there’s no conflict - both those statements could be true at the same time.
Well, so I understated the difference in my last one. 
The first group says that the raw milk farmers are just offering woo…no benefit to raw milk versus the milk you get at Walmart, and it just might kill you. The second group says that this is pure, healthy milk and that good farming standards make it every bit as safe as store milk and that you get many added benefits from drinking the real stuff instead of that fake stuff at the store. Nature, or God, wants you to have this pure, creamy delight here.
Corroborated here — Fat content of milk - Wikipedia
I did not realize this. And I’ve been buying 2% and thinking that was good because it was a low percentage. I will try 1% next.
Thank you for this, @tofor.
Your post used a single feature of raw milk, correlated it to life expectancy and made the causation jump from that alone.
The following possibilities, among an infinite number of other options, show the problem with your claim:
Raw milk has vitamins that enhance life expectancy, but are removed during the various production processes.
Raw milk causes diseases that have no negative effect on life expectancy.
Raw milk causes life threating diseases that remove 100 million man-years from our combined life expectancy, but life enhancing agents that add 120 million man-years to our combined life expectancy.
Raw milk has less waste, thus requires fewer cows than modern methods, thus reducing methane output, which would have a positive effect on anthropogenic climate change, thus reducing the hurricane strength in the SE US, thus increasing life expectancy.
The aliens who oversee us had a beef with Louis Pasteur and therefore randomly kidnap and probe one processed milk drinker per day, killing us once done.
Any, all, or none of those could be true, but perhaps this will demonstrate the flaw.
I will share that my daughter visited and stayed at a farm in western Montana for a few weeks when she was traveling. It was one of those places where you did farm chores in exchange for a free place to stay. My wife and I visited her and she gave us a tour of the place. She said they drink whole milk straight from the cow, and she said it is good. I asked to try some, but they were out just then. So I never got to try it. They kept it in the refrigerator, so at least that’s good.
The claim is “raw milk can seriously cure all ills that a human being could ever have” - a claim that would surely result in a positive correlation between life expectancy and raw milk usage. But there’s a negative correlation between the two. Thus the claim is tentatively refuted, at least until someone suggests a reason why such an apparently contradictory result has occurred.
The FSA in the UK says this:
Our advice on raw drinking milk and cream
We advise that raw or unpasteurised milk and cream may contain harmful bacteria that can cause food poisoning. People with a weaker immune system are particularly vulnerable to food poisoning and should not consume it.
These include:
- pregnant women
- infants and small children
- elderly people
- people with compromised immune system such as cancer patients
Raw drinking milk and the law
The sale of raw drinking milk is legal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It can only be sold directly to the consumer by:
- registered milk production farms (Opens in a new window)at the farm gate or farmhouse catering operation
- farmers at registered farmers’ markets
- distributors using a vehicle as a shop such as a milk round
- direct online sales
- vending machines at the farm
It’s illegal to sell raw milk in any other setting.
Sales of raw milk and cream are completely banned in Scotland.
How we’re protecting people who choose to drink raw milk
Hygiene regulations are in place to protect consumers. Raw drinking milk offered for sale must be:
- from animals that are healthy and free from brucellosis and tuberculosis
- from a farm that complies with hygiene rules and is routinely inspected twice a year
- labelled with the appropriate health warning
The bottom line is that pasteurization doesn’t make milk less nutritious. It does eliminate potentially dangerous pathogens, which have repeatedly made raw milk enthusiasts sick in modern times.
“During pasteurization, there is no significant change in the nutritional quality of milk. Pasteurization does not cause any change in protein quality; minor levels (<7%) of denaturation of whey proteins have been reported due to pasteurization, but protein denaturation has no impact on protein nutritional quality. Pasteurization does not cause any change in the concentrations of minerals; minerals are very heat stable. Pasteurization may cause very minor losses (<10%) of vitamin C, folate (vitamin B9), vitamin B12, vitamin B6, and thiamine (vitamin B1). Of these vitamins, milk is an excellent source of only vitamin B12; milk has only low concentrations of most of the vitamins listed previously, which might show some minor losses on pasteurization. Pasteurization does not change the concentration of riboflavin (B2) (which is very heat stable) or fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A or E.”
Note that there’s no convincing evidence that drinking raw milk makes allergies less likely to develop (one of the main claims of raw milk promoters).*
As for taste, maybe it’s better coming straight from the cow. On the other hand, if you did double-blinded taste tests of raw whole milk and pasteurized whole milk at the same (warmish) temperature, I’m not convinced that most people could distinguish the two.
*one company’s unpasteurized fruit juice was said to be healthier for consumers. It did not end well.
Perhaps it wasn’t obvious to everyone.