Raw Dairy and Grass-fed Beef

"What are your thoughts on organic grass-fed raw milk and grass-fed beef?"

Cows were designed to eat grass, so grass is the ideal diet for them, and it is also their most humane diet. We have little to write about this because it ought to be common sense. We wondered how long it would be before someone asked the raw milk question. We do not drink unpasteurized milk, and we feel that it would be irresponsible to encourage our readers to drink it. Many of the people who write about alternative medicine encourage their readers to drink only so-called "raw" (unpasteurized and unhomogenized) milk. They believe that the "raw milk" is considerably more nutritious than the standard varieties, is absolutely safe, and that the detrimental effects of milk come from the way that pasteurization alters it. They are well-intentioned, but wrong. The nutritional difference between milk which is pasteurized and that which is not is negligible. The end product of pasteurization is practically identical nutritionally, and the biggest difference between the two is that the pasteurized version is sterile. That's usually a good thing for foods, and the benefits of sterilization are why we cook most foods. While most people can safely drink the "raw" milk most of the time, there are rare cases wherein a dangerous pathogen has breed inside of it, and these cases can be fatal. Is it worth risking the life of your child or spouse? It is important to note that the risks associated with raw milk are growing rapidly now, because there is a new disease in town. People are getting Lyme disease from milk, from cows which were infected with Lyme, and that changes the rules of the game totally. That's because Lyme can become life-long, debilitating, and agonizing. In these cases, the doctors refuse to treat it because of the politics of this bio-weapon, and they subsequently treat such patients as people with mental illness. Of course, it is misdiagnosed about half of the time too, which leads to the same hopeless scenario.

Thus, we feel ethically bound to discourage the drinking of unpasteurized milk. The people promoting unpasteurized milk are a perfect example of what happens with just a little bit of knowledge. They are correct in that most pasteurized milk is dangerous to health, but it is not actually the pasteurization that is the problem. The problem is that pasteurized milk is virtually always homogenized too, and it is the homogenization which makes milk so destructive. The homogenization of commercial milk is probably the single biggest cause of heart disease, and we covered the details in our heart disease article called, The Big One. Feel free to get your milk straight from the cow all you want, but please boil it prior to use for the sake of protecting your loved ones. If you have to drink an 1/8th more of a cup of the milk to get the same nutrition, then that is a very small price to pay to ensure that something does not shut down your child's liver. Doing what is right begins with first doing no harm.

We support everyone's right to drink milk "raw", but that does not mean that it is the wisest thing for a person to do. Unhomogenized (but pasteurized) milk is available at some health food stores. It is usually called creamline milk. It is what we recommend. We discussed the details of this topic in the aforementioned heart disease article.