I have been doing reading on milk drinking. Most people are ether lactose intolerant or milk is difficult to digest completely resulting in problems. The minority is milk tolarent. If you have this gene milk is a real food. The milk tolerance regions to Switzerland which is my heritage. There is a small group in Africa, and a number of area's were dairy farming goes back century's. Most people can drink milk for the first couple of years, then lose the ability to digest it.
I love milke, as a kid I did not drink pop/soda. But I would drink easly glass after glase of milk. I remember my mom putting a limit on my milk consumption. I have hard bones. The last test I had I was 55, I had no bone loss. It is believed that children are bracking more bones to day is do to soda drinking. I just lucky. There is also a condition of to much calcium. I have not looked into that as of yet.
I find it very interesting also, that Goat Milk is not drunk in the USA as it is in other parts of the world. I love Goat Milk even more then Cow Milk. I think is is because I grow up with yellow milk not blue milk that we get today. All the Yellow Milk cows milk hoses to cheese.
I have another question, I know property's of many things change by heat. Pasturizing milk is heating it high enough to kill the bugs in it. Is it Possable the heat could also change the nutrition or the way it is digested? I use boiled milk or eat cheese if I pig out on some fruits that I do not eat very often to prevent the inevitable side affect of sudden fiber.
Just to many questions.
Dang it! I hate our work computers sometimes. I had a great answer almost entirely typed up and it crashed. So we’ll start over.
You bring up an important question and it’s one that I can answer very well. I did some fairly extensive research in to raw milk when we thought we were going to have to switch our baby to formula. Commercial formula is absolutely unacceptable to me, so I was looking for a natural replacement. I found the Weston A. Price Foundations recipe for baby formula. It has raw milk as it’s foundation.
Firstly, those labeled “lactose intolerant” are not affected by a genetic trait or anything problematic with them. The entire problem lays within the processing of our commercial dairy. Over 70% of those who are “lactose intolerant” can drink raw milk without a problem. The two main steps to commercial milk form the problem with it: homogenization and pasteurization.
Homogenization is the process of separating the milk in to three parts: heavy cream, milkfat and milk water. The heavy cream is sent to a separate area where they pasteurize and package it. Meanwhile, the milk fat is sent through a fine mesh screen that breaks it down to much smaller particle sizes. This allows them to perfectly control the amount reintroduced to the milk water depending on whether they are producing skim milk or whole milk, etc.
This homogenization introduces to major problems with commercial milk. First and foremost, some of the vitamins we require are fat-soluble, such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin D. When these molecules are broken down and/or removed, it prevents them from properly attaching to the vitamin molecules. With the non-existence of milk fat in skim milk and low fat milk, it’s impossible for those vitamins to be absorbed by the body. The entire “enriched milk” advertisement is a farce.
The second problem is that the micro-particles reintroduced to the processed milk are readily absorbed in to the body. Once there, they are able to be adequately suspended in the body are significantly less-usable. Current research is indicating this may be a major cause of childhood obesity and the surge of “spare tires.” One such study followed children at a series over daycare centers and found that the infants and toddlers given skim or low fat milk were four times more likely to be obese than those given whole milk. The reduced fat milk drinkers were still twice as likely to be obese by the age of four. In public schools, only skim or low fat milk can be served, severely exacerbating this problem!
Pasteurization is the second half the commercial process. Once the appropriate levels of milk fat are reintroduced to the milk water, the product is sent through a system to complete the pasteurization. There are two main types: high-temperature, short time and ultra-heat treating. In the high-temperature method, the dairy is heated to sub-boiling temperatures for a period of time to kill the microbial life and then immediately chilled to standard refrigeration levels for packaging. This product remains refrigeration-stable for between two and three weeks before it starts going rancid. Make a mental note of the rancid comment, which I’ll get to later. In ultra-heat treating, it is heated to a temperature exceeding boiling point for a shorter amount of time and then packaged. Theoretically, the entire process in UHT pasteurizing is thoroughly sanitized, creating a shelf-stable product that remains usable for about a year.
This part of the process is where the milk is changed so significantly that the “lactose intolerant” people cannot drink it. Raw milk has numerous types of beneficial bacteria that helps stabilize the gastro-intestinal tract, like acidophilus and lactobacillus. Others continue to process and break down the milkfat and protein to make it easier to digest. All of these microbes are killed in the pasteurization process, making it more difficult for the human body to process. That’s why lactose intolerant people often feel a very heavy or bloated feeling. That milk is sitting indigestible, in their stomachs until it is forcefully passed through mostly undigested.
If you’ve taken antibiotics and had seen a great doctor, or had experienced anything similar to irritable bowel syndrome, you were most likely told to take some probiotics to help stabilize and reintroduce the gut flora. This is usually done by either drinking acidophilus milk or taking it in pill form. Ironically, these probiotics are the regular bacterium that is available in raw milk. The difference is that the commercial versions of the probiotics contain lab-grade, sanitized strains as opposed to wild, “contaminated” strains. By killing these bacteria, the dairy industry was able to create a new product and market it at a highly inflated price.
Now, the next amazing thing about raw milk is that it does not go rancid. You won’t get sick from older raw milk. Instead, it goes sour, which is a perfectly natural process that we replicate today by artificially making kefir, sour cream, sour milk and yogurt. Kefir is fermented milk that is left at room temperature and has a specific strain of yeast added to it. As with our fermented feed, it causes all of the nutrients to become more readily available to the body. If you’ve ever had real sour cream or real yogurt, you know it tastes nothing like the commercial versions. This is because they use a modified, lab-grade strain to change the products. Using raw milk, both can be made naturally. By leaving the heavy cream in the refrigerator for an extended period of time, it will eventually turn in to sour cream. Leaving the remainder of the milk in the refrigerator for an extended period of time will result in sour milk, which is actually used in certain whole food recipes, like mesquite pancakes. Neither have the sweet taste of the commercial version, though, so much of America wouldn’t like it. Similarly, yogurt is made with the raw milk by keeping it at an elevated temperature just over 100*F. Again, it has a bit more of a tart bite to it because it isn’t a sugary mockery.
Because it does not have the proper bacteria to encourage lacto-fermentation, commercial milk actually spoils or goes rancid. Rancid milk causes severe health problems, up to and including death. The truth behind the CDC’s statistics is quite alarming, too. They did a ten-year study of milk-related illnesses, but there was not a single report of listeria or even death from raw milk. The truth eventually came out that the two deaths they often reference were from the consumption of queso fresco. Unfortunately, they did list over 50 illnesses and 10 deaths from pasteurized dairy products, not to mention the high amounts of recalls and illnesses from the meat and produce industry. Remember the very recent case where nearly three dozen people died from eating cantaloupe contaminated with listeria? Or the salmonella outbreak in commercial chicken products?
So yes, we drink an average of six gallons of raw milk every month at my house. My baby has been drinking it for well over a year and even the pediatrician agrees that she is one of the most perfectly developed babies she’s ever seen. She has absolutely bright, beautiful, perfectly straight teeth, with excellent skeletal development, only one brief reaction to foods since she was born and no known allergies yet. Her only reaction was from a single batch of peaches when she was around six months old.
In comparison, our other two grew up on more commercial products. They are both severely allergic to cats, one is severely allergic to mesquite, the eldest has allergy shiners all the time but we haven’t been able to find out the cause, and they have horrible teeth. Both have had numerous fillings and will need braces.
I know I can’t claim raw milk was the entire reason for the differences, but I think it is a major player for the reasons above.
