I just love weekly pickups for grassfed raw milk. The inspiration and information exchange between folks who are making it happen each and every day with nutrient dense food preparation in their home kitchens is something you just can’t get anywhere else.
At our local pickup earlier this week, my dairy farmer relayed an interesting story to me about one of his 12 grandchildren and her very first experience with cow milk.
This little gal was presented for the very first time with a sippy cup of grassfed low temp pasteurized, nonhomogenized milk to drink as her Mom was in the process of weaning her off breastmilk. The child was already adept at drinking out of a sippy cup herself and so handling a sippy cup was not a new experience.
Without hesitation, she refused to drink from the sippy cup after an initial taste and turned her head away in rejection.
Undaunted, her mother next presented her with a sippy cup filled with raw, grassfed milk. It is important to note that the milk was from the very same dairy farm. The only difference is that one sippy cup had low temp pasteurized, nonhomogenized (cream top) milk in it and the other sippy cup had raw grassfed milk.
Same cows, same pasture, same everything except one sippy cup had milk that was low temp pasteurized and nonhomogenized.
Again, without hesitation, the little toddler grasped the sippy cup full of raw milk and happily began to drink!
My dairy farmer continued to explain that pets will make the same choice if you give them the option of lapping up low temp pasteurized/nonhomogenized milk versus raw milk.
Livestock exhibit similar instincts when it comes to feed as I’ve had many a farmer explain that animals always prefer the natural grain to any mix with GMOs in it. Of course, if GMO feed is all that you offer, they will eat that, but given the choice, the healthier option is chosen with no hesitation.
We can learn a lot by observing how healthy children and animals make their food choices. Their instincts for what is best for them nutritionally and developmentally haven’t been lost and those virgin taste buds and sense of smell are highly sensitive to the food choices presented.
Microphotography of Low Temp Pasteurized Milk and Raw Milk
Scientific examination of the molecular structure of low temp pasteurized/nonhomogenized milk and raw milk provides evidence as to why children and animals will instinctively prefer raw milk. In an article written by Beverly Rubik Phd entitled Microphotography of Raw and Processed Milk she shows in visual form the striking differences between raw milk and milk that is processed at low temperatures and not homogenized. Note that frozen raw milk that has been thawed has the same beneficial properties with little loss in nutrition.
Clearly, even low temp pasteurization with no homogenization is a very damaging process!
I found this research by Dr. Rubik to be very helpful as I have always recommended to people who have the choice between low temp pasteurized, nonhomogenized milk that is 100% grassfed and raw milk where the primarily grassfed cows get a small ration of grain each day to always choose the raw milk. The overall health of children on raw milk will beat the health of children drinking 100% grassfed low temp pasteurized/nonhomogenized milk in every instance I have observed.
Let’s take a lesson from the children. They are so much wiser than we think. Raw milk beats low temp pasteurized/nonhomogenized milk every single time.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
I am in the process of switching over to whole foods and getting rid of the processed foods out of my home. I am wanting to switch to raw milk, but have not been able to locate any farmers in Iowa who sell raw milk. I am new to all of this so I don’t even know where to start. Would someone be able to help me in showing me where to start in finding raw milk somewhere in Iowa?
Thank you
Jen
http://www.westonaprice.org/local-chapters/find-local-chapter#ia
We’ve had raw for 2 1/2 years. Only one of my children really likes drinking it straight, but they all like it if I make raw ice cream out of it. 🙂 And my boys (who have never had anything but real food) really like plan yogurt and kefir.
If you don’t have access to raw, homemade coconut milk is a good option.
While I agree that raw milk is nutritionally superior to any kind of milk (except breast obviously) I think it is important to note the that people who choose bot to drink it have valid reasons. I recently stopped giving it to my children, one of which loved it while the other one refused it (he doesn’t like milk of any type). I chose the “safest” farm I could find and was happy with them but I was losing sleep over the (although remote) chance it could be contaminated. I know that it’s not likely but it can and does happen. There was a recent outbreak at a nearby farm and the damage was significant. I support our right to choose and wish we COULD have more of a choice but the stress and worry is not worth it for me. I just rarely give my children milk now and they are fine with that.
According to the CDC reports (if you have any faith in them at all) it’s pasteurized milk that is usually far more problematic than raw milk. You were losing sleep over this? People have been drinking raw milk for hundreds of years with little trouble, until the gubment got its hands into the “regulating” of it. I still firmly believe that small, local dairies are the best even if they have to be under the radar.
In my State they are now in the process of making raw milk illegal to purchase at all. We have started using low temp pasteurized (Kalona brand) because we will soon have no choice anyway. When you have State workers who tell people they’d rather drink gasoline than raw milk, it’s pretty much all over but the crying.
A lot of people are very sad and upset by this upcoming move, and it will literally destroy the businesses of quite a few families. This is also going to include the ban of raw goat milk, as well. What a pity. We are being regulated to death, and that’s not a stretch. There seems to be no legal way to stop it and if there is, no one is much interested in pursuing the possibilities.
Raw milk is like playing russian roulette. Most of the time it is entirely safe and nutritious, but all you need is that one bad dairy experience and your child could die. It just isn’t worth it.
However, I do agree you can’t trust what is considered mainstream food these days. One should absolutely buy organic, local, hormone-free pasteurized (low or high temp) milk, if you are going to buy it at all. The truth is most people (other than Scandinavians) are lactose intolerant and should never be consuming dairy at all! There is no secret magical ingredient in raw milk that our ancestors consumed that we are lacking.
This is so not true … I’ve been drinking raw milk for 12 years as have all my kids and hundreds of other families I know, and I know not of one single instance of illness from it. Russian roulette? Hardly. Check the CDC records … not a single death from raw milk in over 13 years. Even cantaloupes can’t claim that!
Well, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree when it comes to raw milk. (And for the record, there’s no way in heck I’d eat conventional veggies/fruit for precisely those types of risks).
For the most part though, I really am impressed with your site. I notice that not only do you constantly write new articles, but you respond to many comments personally, which is very time consuming. Overall, I think you do a great job!
I would be really interested in seeing an article on BPAs and endocrine disrupters that are in, well, practically every food product packaging. I’ve personally seen non-obese, very young girls develop precocious puberty, and then when plastics were completely eliminated from the diet, the premature breast tissue completely regressed and they went on to have a normal onset of puberty years later. This has completely freaked me out – especially when you look at the studies done on the adverse effects of premature puberty (social problems, lower education, cancer) as well as the clear statistics that girls in our country are going through puberty at an earlier and earlier rate. Anyway, I’ll stop there! But I would love to see you write an article on this!
Your second to last sentence makes no sense. Scandinavians have some magical way of digesting milk?
Also, from my research, most people who are “lactose intolerant” don’t have any issues with raw milk.
So cool! I’ve just recently found this to be true as well. My 5 yr old has never liked milk of any kind. Ever. We recently started buying raw milk and now she asks for a cup of milk to drink! Isn’t it something that children instinctually know that something isn’t right?!
Whenever I read about people getting sick from raw milk, it causes me to second-guess my beliefs about it’s safety and our choosing it over other forms, and then I read something like this that confirms my conviction. Read and be enlightened. (From the interview on churnyourown.com with Mark McAfee.)
“We’ve had around 5 recalls in the past 13 years, but only 2 of them were associated with any illnesses. The first was in 2006 when 4 kids, each of whom said they had consumed raw milk, were sickened by E. coli 0157:H7. This happened at the height of the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak, where 200 people were sickened and 3 people died. We had to stop operations while the CDFA and CA PDH investigated. Two of the kids were hospitalized and two were not. Of the two that were hospitalized, they never found any E. coli 0157:H7 in their stools that matched. One of them didn’t actually have any E. coli in their stool. So there was never any connection between our products, which by the way have always tested negative for E. coli. It was later determined that these two kids also ate spinach, which was implicated in that recall. The state of California wrote us a big fat check to cover our losses and asked us to sign a settlement agreement saying ‘please don’t sue us’ and we were back in business in 7 days. But it was a huge media event and our sales actually jumped 25% within 90 days of resuming operations, thanks to all the publicity!
You see, recalls in this country are based on epidemiological evidence. They don’t do a big investigation and then come in and shut you down. No. They shut you down at the first hint of a problem. Then they do an investigation, which typically takes 2 or 3 months. So it’s shoot first, ask questions later. But here’s the problem. Pathogens are all over the place. Read The Packer and you’ll see that there are 4 or 5 vegetable recalls a week! Pathogens in vegetables killed 34 people last year. Contrast that with raw milk, which hasn’t caused a single death since the CDC started collecting data in 1972.
Our scariest recall event was in 2007 when Listeria was found in some cream we were going to use for butter. Now you have to remember that there are 4 classes of milk in California: class 1 through 4, where 4 is the designation for manufacturing-grade milk, intended to be used for products like cheese and butter. Because of their chemistry and low moisture content, they’re not tested for pathogens, since the risk of illness from these products is so low. Nevertheless, when this cream tested positive for Listeria, we were worried and frankly very shocked because Listeria loves pasteurized milk but hates raw milk. This particular batch of cream was purchased from Clover Stornetta. We bought it because we were having trouble keeping up with demand for butter. It was supposedly organic and raw. What we found out later was that the cream was not actually raw, but had been thermalized to over 135 degrees in their creamery. Thankfully no one got sick and we figured out what happened, but that was an interesting outsourcing headache we had. We decided not to do that again.
In December of 2011 we had another recall, which was initiated because the CDC’s PulseNet database showed that 5 people over a 5 month period had been sickened by the same strain of E. coli 0157:H7 and they all had consumed our milk. Now bear in mind that we produce 5 cap dates a week and about 70,000 people drink our milk every week. Nevertheless, I felt horrible for making these kids sick. That was, until I learned the rest of the story. You see, the mom with the two kids that were hospitalized called me saying she felt terrible because she later realized that what she fed her kids was a kefir made by mixing our milk with a store-bought culture.
She told me she was sure it was the culture that caused the problem. But what about the other kids? I was still unsure until about a month after we had been shut down, when it was determined that there were actually 47 other cases entered into PulseNet that had the exact same strain of E. coli in the same time period. None of those people had consumed our milk. But rather than trying to find the common thread that all 52 people shared, they decided to single out the 5 people who mentioned that they drank raw milk (only of two of whom were hospitalized). As you can see, they pick on raw milk as a specialized, politically hot topic in order to indict the product.
Finally, in May of this year we had another recall due to reports logged in PulseNet. Ten people who drunk our milk tested positive for Campylobacter. Nobody was hospitalized. It was simple diarrhea and everyone recovered at home. This lasted for 6 days. The database also showed 18 other cases of Campylobacter, which were entered during the same time period, but these people were associated with drinking milk from Claravale Dairy (the other large raw milk dairy in California). That might sound like a lot, but compare that to the 4 million cases of Campylobacter that are submitted to PulseNet every year. Of that, there are 1000 cases per day in California alone. Also consider that 75% of all chicken on retail shelves test positive for Campylobacter. It’s the most common foodborne pathogen in America and it doesn’t kill people. It causes diarrhea, then you recover from it and then you never get it again because of the immunity that’s left behind. So once again, you have a case of heightened surveillance against raw milk without considering other foods.
My pediatrician recommends freezing raw milk and then thawing it and feeding it to my one-year-old. Do you think this is still harmful? Does it kill Ecoli? But perhaps keep other good things alive?
anything that’s been frozen for 2 weeks or more is GRAS (generally regarded as safe) by the FDA.
So is glyphosate, that was’t her question.
Unfortunately I do not have access to raw milk where I live in Texas. It is banned. I have been signing petitions and e-mailing my senators to try to get raw milk legal here. So I go with the next best option, which is a local farm that has low-temp. pasteurization, because that is all I have access to 🙁
We lived in Texas for many, many years and were able to get raw milk directly from the farm. You can not get it at the store or farmers market, but you can drive to the farm to get it. Unless something has changed in the last 4 years, that is how it was for at least 15 years prior. Maybe that helps? We used Lavon Farms, Jersey Girls and Texas Daily Harvest for our dairy (from what I remember) near the Dallas area. And, yes, from our home, we drove 1 1/2 or so to get our food…but it was worth it!
In Texas it is still legal to buy directly from the licensed raw milk farmer. Check out http://www.realmilk.com for farms near you. I live in Houston and there are several good licensed raw milk farms in our area; there’s a listing at http://www.wapf-houston.org on the Local Food & Milk page. I’ve heard that Texas Daily Harvest near Dallas has stopped producing raw milk. The best milk available in retail stores in Texas is low temp pasteurized, unhomogenized.
We are in Texas and we get raw milk from a farm through a co-op. I have to go pick it up at someone else’s house about 25 minutes away and I pay a $5 fee each time and also a small yearly fee. There are several drop points and several farms that do this. I know of several in the DFW area if you are interested.
Google diagnostics warns me that the Microphotography link takes me to a site with malware. Please check this link.
Yes, this has been happening and should probably be fixed soon. It’s likely due to hackers hired by the industrial food and medical industry intent on suppressing opposing viewpoints.
I cannot get raw milk right now. The farmer only delivers during the day and I work. Right now I only use the milk to make kefir so I don’t think it’s an option. Neither of my children is a milk drinker – they prefer yogurt or cheese or kefir. My almost 3 year old is still nursing anyway…
I think if you are culturing this milk (yogurt, kefir, etc.) then it’s a good (not best but still good) choice. Raw is best but for some of us we have to go with the ‘good’ option vs the ‘best’…
Can you set out a cooler for the raw milk delivery? My delivery service will leave the milk in a cooler if I’m not home.
Nope – the delivery happens in a parking lot, it’s not a door-to-door delivery.
I low heat pastuerized to make yogurt. Is this good? I believe it’s necessary or the yogurt bacteria will be overrun by the dw milk bacteria. Should I rethink yogurt then?
Hi Nancy
If you are starting with raw milk, you only need to take the temperature up to 120 degrees F. The reason is that most of the pathogens are mesophyilic bacteria which thrive at the same temperature as our own bodies. Once you get to 116 you have created an environment they cannot survive in. If you want a full bodied thicker yogurt take the temperature up to 180 degrees and cool back down to incubation temperature and add the culture. taking the milk up past 165 creates a phosphatais bond that seems to allow the bacterial growth to maintain a more stable curd matrix (without having to add milk powder or any of the other gums guars and stabilizers).
If you are making yogurt for the probiotic properties I would suggest kefir as a viable alternative as it contains 3 times the probiotic bacteria as yogurt in the same volume. I just use the powdered kefir from the health food store, I have tried the grains but they are very unpredictible (for me any ways) and making consecutive batches back to back using the same grains puts you in line for post pasteurization contaminataion