I decided to copy my info about “raw” (unpasteurized) milk here, because I’ve turned into die hard evangelists when it comes to the stuff and am guessing I’ll be referencing it often in the future. ** Note, this was written while I was pregnant and still living in CA.

I’ll keep posting as I round up the links, but here’s a little bit of info to get started.

I should also add – raw milk isn’t cheap.  I was thrilled when I bought the milk at the farm out in Pennsylvania, because it was only $3.50 for a half gallon.  Out here in California, you’ll pay upwards of $5, sometimes $6. In Seattle, it’s just slightly cheaper.

At that price, I originally decided we can’t afford to be drinking it all the time.  Well, not “afford” – we can totally afford that.  I just decided it was too expensive.  Momentary lapse in judgment.  It’s worth it.

I’ve also stopped fussing about how much more expensive all the good, local stuff is since becoming more involved & learning about farming – small farmers are taxed heavily, sometimes fined for no damn reason, and watched like hawks by the FDA & government.  (Though… yeah, all the bad food – the ecoli, the recalls, the mad cow, has all come from LARGE, INDUSTRIAL FARMS.  Not small ones.  Again, another topic I could rant about for hours.)

Now, I’m terrible at remembering details and such, which is why it’s easier for me to just point you towards some information.  But, in a nutshell, pasteurization destroys most of what’s good in milk.  (Don’t even get me started on this low fat/skim bullshit – it has to be whole or it’s pointless to drink it at all.  All that lovely fat in milk is part of what helps your body absorb the calcium.  I can point you towards tons of information about that, and why fat isn’t bad and does not MAKE you fat, as well.)

So.  Natural, whole, unpasteurized, straight from the cow milk is one of the most nutritionally complete, healthiest things you can drink.  In the book Real Food: What to Eat and Why, Planck talks a lot about the building blocks of milk & all it’s many components.  Compare to human breast milk, which is the most perfect & nutritionally complete food you can give to babies.  There is formula out there, indeed, but they have yet to be able to completely rebuild & make a complete source of nutrition that matches breast milk.

If you’re vegan, you may say something about how we’re the only creature that drinks the milk of other species… blah blah blah.  Yeah, I guess we are.  But clearly I’m not going to convince you to drink raw milk if you won’t even drink milk, so just stop reading right now, ok?

Part of all that nutrition in milk is it’s astounding immunity-building properties.  Far from being dangerous, as the conventional medical community would have you believe – raw milk is actually a WONDERFUL thing for pregnant women to drink, because not only does it build your own immunity, but you pass that on to baby AND it’s also been shown to help strengthen & prepare your body (uterus) for birth.

Now, even if you drink whole PASTEURIZED milk, the fact is that pasteurization simply kills & lessens most of what’s in milk.  Vitamin D has to injected back into the milk after it’s pasteurized (look at the labels, sometimes you’ll see something like, “with Vitamin D” on the carton – now, why would they have to tell you that?  Wouldn’t you normally assume your milk has Vitamin D?  Nope.)  There’s also evidence to suggest that synthetic vitamins like that are toxic in large doses, as well.

On large, industrial farms, the cows are forced to go against nature, giving milk far more than they normally would.  With or without the hormones, this isn’t good.  This often causes mastitis, a painful, gross condition that causes their udders to produce pus, which gets into your milk.  “Luckily,” pasteurization gets rid of those germs, but I, for one, would rather have milk that pus was not removed from.

If you look at government Agriculture websites, they’ll tell you that it’s a myth that pasteurization causes lactose intolerance.  However, my friend Jeanine has always been lactose intolerant.  Since she started drinking raw milk – no problems.  She makes her own yogurt & ice cream and eats as much as she wants without getting sick.  (Pasteurization destroys milk at a cellular level, exploding enzymes and releasing them – the very ones which cause intolerance.)    I’ve read about quite a few people experience this – their lactose intolerance magically disappears when drinking raw.

You may have also sometimes seen the label “ultra pasteurized” – avoid that like the plague.  It is what it sounds like, super pasteurization, and it ruins your milk even more so than regular pasteurization.

Then there’s homogenization.  I suppose homogenization itself isn’t so horrible, but I like my creamy goodness.  Homogenization forces milk through micro-fine mesh, forcing all the molecules to blend together for one uniform consistency in your dairy products.  Milk that is NOT homogenized will have that lovely cream that rises to the top.  I love that cream.  It sticks to the cap of my raw milk bottles and I lick it off every time.

Taste?  Fabulous.  I was never a big milk drinker, but since drinking raw milk, I happily chug a big glass of it every day.  It’s wonderful on cereal, my mom loved it in her chai tea.  My Dad commented that it tasted like it had substance.  And mom even said that it didn’t leave that disgusting film in your mouth like pasteurized milk does.  It is DELICIOUS.

Now.  Let’s talk about safety.  “But unpasteurized milk is dangerous!  You’re pregnant, you shouldn’t be drinking it!”

No.  Pasteurized milk is perfectly safe – even more so – so long as, with any food, you get it from a reputable farm.  Just like sushi.  Would you buy sushi that’s been sitting out from some skeevy looking guy on a dirty street?  No.  Would you buy unwrapped cookies from some woman sneezing into her hands & wiping her nose as she hands you said cookies?  No.  There are many farms out there that are certified to sell raw milk – I had the pleasure of going to that one in Pennsylvania and said hello to the Jersey cow (the best ones for raw milk) that produced it.  While the farmer poured the milk into jugs for me, she cut off a piece of mozzarella cheese that they’d just finished making the night before.  AND offered me some fresh goat cheese with basil and sea salt.  Out in CA, I can either drive out to Glendale every Saturday, where a Organic Pastures comes out with a truck load of raw milk, raw cheddar cheese, and raw butter.  I hear tell there’s a guy who sells it at the Market on 3rd Street Promenade, on Wednesdays – I’ve yet to check him out because I don’t like getting up early or fighting crowds, unfortunately.  So usually, for convenience sake, I pick up glass bottles of it from Whole Foods – from a Claravale Farms.

As you can see on Claravale’s website:

It’s high quality, Jersey milk. Claravale Farm milk comes from Jersey cows. This breed is world renowned for the quality of its milk, which contains higher concentrations of proteins, solids, butterfat, and beta-caroteen than other breeds. Milk sold in supermarkets comes mostly from Holsteins, which produce larger quantities of more watery milk. Due to their breeding, Holstein milk also contains higher levels of Bovine Growth Hormone than Jersey milk.

I’ve read A LOT about milk lately, and it’s true – Jersey cows are the best.  I’ve tasted the difference, as well.  My mom’s been teasing me lately that she could see me winding up working on a farm, or having us buy an old farmhouse with me going out to milk cows while Mr Nikki goes off to work.  I’m kinda in love with Jersey cows.  Are you kidding?  I’d LOVE to have one in my back yard.

The Claravale milk is quite good and I drink it every day.  Admittedly, though, there’s just something less thrilling about getting my milk from a grocery store, versus the farm itself.  But, can’t be helped.  Though their milk comes in these wonderful glass bottles, which I keep & wash after the milk is gone & I have row upon row of them in my kitchen, for storing beans, rice, pasta, etc.

Now, as I was saying – safety.  There have been more illnesses & recalls on pasteurized milk than ever on raw milk.  Pasteurization is a holdover from the dark ages.  People were getting sick from milk – and many other foods – due to extremely poor conditions everywhere.  Dirty farms, plague, sickly cows.  So they started pasteurizing the milk and people stopped getting sick from it.

Farming conditions have changed today.  Vastly.  If you know anything about real farmers & whole foods, you’ll know that those people take what they do very seriously.  They love what they do.  They love the foods they produce.  The farms are clean, their cows healthier (far more so than the cows on industrial farms kept standing in their own waste & dripping pus into your milk as they’re forced to produce milk 24/7.)

I drank raw milk throughout my pregnancy and I’m FINE.  Better than fine.  I also intend to raise Nugget on raw milk – it is SO GOOD for children.  It helps build their little immune systems as well as giving them so much more nutrition than any of the pasteurized stuff you could give them.  (And never, ever, ever give your children skim or low fat milk.)  There’s also been a LOT of evidence and many testimonials from people who’ve eased or erased their digestion problems, allergies, and gluten allergies after drinking raw milk.

Raw milk is also in serious jeopardy.  It’s illegal in 13 states.  There are legislatures constantly cropping up that could make the production of raw milk absolutely impossible.  There’s actually quite a bit of legislature out there that makes zero sense, in regards to organic farms, small farms, etc.

In any case.  That’s a very long post and a bit of information, but a few links and resources to continue on with:

He doesn’t talk about raw milk, per se, however, both of Michael Pollan’s books are fabulous resources in regard to food & what you’re eating.  In particular, In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I just finished Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck & I’m flabbergasted.  She’s why I want to start cooking with marrow and organ meats.  She talks A LOT about milk – raw & whole, and it’s benefits.

Some links:

A blurb about another article in Forbes Magazine, in which raw milk is listed as one of the healthiest foods on earth.

RawMilk.org – all about this liquid gold

Organic Pastures – a page of information about “Why raw?”

The Complete Patient – all about farming & health, with a lot of info about milk & dairy farms

SaveRawMilk.org – information about the legal battles & how to help save raw milk

Food Renegade article about raw milk

Article about addition of disgusting milk proteins to milk you buy in stores