Got FrankenMilk?

I’m an omnivore. I’ll say that right now, up front.

It’s not that I didn’t try to become a vegetarian. As a student of Buddhism, I tried my best to adhere to the Buddhist precept of “ahimsa”, non-violence. But the results were disastrous; my health plummeted. I became hypoglycemic and undernourished. I discovered that animal protein was critical to fuel my hyperactive lifestyle and high metabolism. Ever since that ill-advised dietary tangent, I have been trolling the food chain up and down; eating high, low and everywhere in between. Yes, animal products do my body good; I need them to feel balanced.

However, one of those animal products, milk, was an acquired taste. I only grew to love the taste of milk as an adult after discovering the organic version. As a child, I drank milk only to satisfy my father, who relentlessly badgered me and my three siblings, warning us that our bones would shrink to matchsticks by the age of 30 if we didn’t drink milk.

When organic milk came out (and in glass bottles no less), I was sold. Instead of the thin, bland, opaque milk-water, I now had in front of me a glass of liquid ice cream. Yum. It was sweeter, creamier with a full-bodied taste compared to hormone-fortified commercial milk. I promptly hopped on the milk-as-nectar-of-the-gods bandwagon. My dad couldn’t have been happier. Every Christmas vacation since age 18, he would ask “have you been drinking your milk?”. Finally I could say yes and mean it (and not be lying).

All was well for several years, until I started reading about commercial milk production. I discovered that even “organic” milk is problematic. After doing much research, I am now exclusively drinking unpasteurized raw milk. It’s harder to find in stores, but I feel much better knowing I’m not drinking a half-dead, Frankenstein-like version of what Mother Nature has provided. I’m drinking the real stuff – alive, nutrient-dense and whole.

Along my journey away from Frankenmilk, I’ve read various, books, articles and study abstracts. So I’ll share some of what I’ve learned and break it down into the three aspects of industrial milk production that give me the most pause – pasteurization, homogenization, and synthetic growth hormones.

Pasteurization
(Industrial milk: YES; Commercial organic milk: YES; Raw milk: NO)

Conventional-milk producing cows (including organic) eat a primary diet of grains. Raw milk-producing cows eat real feed. Cows are ruminants. Real feed for a ruminant is green grass, silage, hay and root vegetables. When dairy farmers ignore the cow’s “physiological distinctiveness” by primarily feeding them corn and soybean, the farmers go against nature. And why do they do that? The answer is very simple. To increase production and to lower costs. High-protein grains stimulate cows to produce large, unnatural quantities of milk.

But by ignoring nature, all manner of hell breaks lose. Michael Pollan in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma delves into great detail about the hazards of ignoring a cow’s predilection for grass. One problem that arises in these feedlot cows is a high rate of mastitis (infection of breast tissue), which requires antibiotics. Another problem is that grain turns a cow’s rumen in to an ideal habitat for E. coli (the bug can’t survive long in grass-fed cattle). So now we get to pasteurization. Pasteurization kills E. coli and other pathogens and bacteria, but at what cost and what are the alternatives?

Pasteurization is something I took for granted. It’s something I once thought these dairy farmers had to do. I never questioned it much like at one time in my life I never questioned the motivations of governmental agencies like the FDA and the USDA.

But then I started to do the research.

First I wanted to answer to a basic question. What benefits do commercial dairies realize from pasteurization? I found that pasteurization permits more handling, long-distance shipping and longer storage. It allows dairy farmers to be lax with cow health and milk handling. Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for milk destined for pasteurization. Salmonella and E. coli thrive under conditions typical in factory farms.

In good raw milk dairies, pathogens can’t even be found in the cow’s manure. For example, at Organic Pastures Dairy in Fresno, in more than 32 million servings, and more than five years of intensive testing, not one single pathogen has been found or detected in the milk or in the cow’s manure. Organic Pastures raw milk products are highly pathogen resistant. Tests performed by BSK labs in Fresno showed that even when these pathogens were added to Organic Pastures raw milk at extremely high levels (7 logs which is a 10 million count) they would not grow; they actually died off.

Pasteurization kills the living organisms in milk, both beneficial and pathogenic. Enzymes are one class of those living organisms inactivated by pasteurization: lipase which digests fats, lactase which digests lactose, and phosphatase which is necessary for calcium absorption. (If industrial milk contains little phosphatase, could this be a reason why osteoporosis is so prevalent?)

Beneficial bacteria (probiotics) are another class of living organisms that are destroyed in pasteurization. Beneficial bacteria crowds out harmful bacteria and helps prevent yeast overgrowth in the intestinal tract. Lactic acid is one of these bacteria that are destroyed by the pasteurization process. It’s the same bacteria that are in yogurt. You want these puppies! They are lacking in most guts today and their absence causes many ailments. (An MD right here in SF, Dr. Thomas Cowan,  treats diseases such as arthritis, eczema, diabetes with raw milk as part of an overall diet plan.)

What about nutrient content? Compared to grain-fed milk, grass-fed dairy foods contain more omega-3 fats, more vitamins, and more beta carotene and other antioxidants. It makes sense that pastured cows would produce much higher nutrient milk. Sun and chlorophyll are working to the cow’s advantage creating more vitamins A and D. Folic acid, Vitamins A, B6 and C are heat sensitive- they are either fully or partially destroyed in the pasteurization process. (Go here for abstracts on the effect of pasteurization on the nutritional value of milk.)

Grass-fed dairy foods contain conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a polyunsaturated, omega-6 fat which fights cancer and prevents heart disease. CLA disappears when dairy cows are fed grain. According to this study, grass-fed butterfat is 500% greater than the butterfat of cows eating a typical dairy diet. More raw milk related CLA studies can be found here and here .

Homogenization
(Industrial milk: YES; Commercial organic milk: Sometimes; Raw milk: NO)

Most commercial milk is homogenized. Homogenization is a process that breaks down butterfat globules so they don’t rise to the top. A high-pressure machine pumps milk through a fine mesh reducing the fat to tiny particles. It evens the distribution of fat in a milk vat so that there is consistency in every bottle.

But that’s not all homogenization does. According to Nina Planck’s chapter on milk in her very excellent book Real Food, after pasteurization, dead white blood cells and bacteria form a sludge that sinks to the bottom of the milk. Homogenization spreads this unsightly mass through the milk and makes it disappear. We’re talking pus here, folks. All of a sudden homogenization is making more sense from the perspective of the unscrupulous industrial dairy producer. But does it make more sense for you and me, the consumer?

From what I can tell, homogenization is completely unnecessary. In fact, some studies have shown that it may contribute to heart disease and arterial plaque. One study postulates that homogenization allows the enzyme xanthine oxidase to pass intact into the bloodstream, where it attacks tissue in the artery walls and heart muscle. This causes lesions that the body tries to heal with a protective layer of cholesterol. The result is scar tissue, calcified plaques, and a buildup of cholesterol and other fatty deposits known as arteriosclerosis and atherosclerosis. Neither opponents nor proponents of the xanthine oxidase hypothesis have presented convincing evidence in all of their writings, so the debate goes on.

Synthetic Growth Hormones
(Industrial milk: YES; Commercial organic milk: NO; Raw milk: NO)

This doesn’t apply to organic milk but I’d like to mention this in case any of you, my dear friends, are drinking industrial milk treated with the Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH or rBST). Such milk contains high levels of the naturally occurring growth hormone IGF-1, which is linked to breast cancer and other reproductive cancers. IGF-1 is identical in cows and humans. If you have to drink industrial milk, which I hope you don’t, at the very minimum get milk not treated with rBGH/rBST.

In my interest to see what the other side had to say, I also visited www.milkismilk.com. This site is against raw and even organic milk accusing both industries of making false and misleading claims. Interestingly enough, I found that MilkIsMilk is a front for the Center for Global Food Issues, which, in turn, is a front for the Hudson Institute, a staunchly conservative think tank in Washington DC. According to SourceWatch,The Hudson Institute’s 2002 annual report lists funders like Monsanto, DuPont, ConAgra, Cargill and other huge agrichemical and agribusiness corporations. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether these organizations represent you or big industry and big government.

And meanwhile, I’ll be sipping on my raw milk.

 

 

Comments

[C. Barrows]

Thank you for your research and a very consice article. I hope many more people read your message.

[brittni]

Hi,

I have one question... I drink raw milk (won't drink it if it isn't raw) and every once and awhile I've noticed a change in the taste... the only way I can explain it is sometimes its sweet and yummy and other times it has a more "game-y" taste that isn't very pleasant. I'm not sure as to what causes this change of taste.. but I know its not the change in feed.. as the people we get the milk from only grass or pasture feeds there cows.. I faintly remember reading somewhere to take the cows off the pasture for a hour before milking or there milk will taste bad.. I don't know if thats true and if thats whats what would be causing the change in taste or if its something else.

do you know?
p.s I get my milk from organic pastures.

thanks.. hope I made sense! :-)

[Lila]

I must admit to being a little perplexed at how you became undernourished not eating meat. I have been vegetarian for twenty years, and am raising two healthy, tall, extremely active children on a vegetarian diet. You obviously didn't know a thing about eating vegetarian, or you would have remained just as robust and energetic as a meat eater!

[Lila]

Wow. I must admit to being happy on this one to be living in The Netherlands, where cows are free to roam the fields, eating grass all day long! I'll have to double check to be sure those cows produce the milk we drink! Thanks, and happy drinking....

[Qiana]

Not all people are genetically designed to be vegetarians. Try reading the book "The Metabolic Typing Diet: Customize Your Diet To Your Own Unique Body Chemistry" by William Wolcott. It will give you some insight as to why vegetarian diets work for some and not others.