Milk is marketed as a healthy, wholesome food that is good for our teeth and bones. We are encouraged to enjoy it as part of our daily diet.
The truth is that milk used to be a healthy, wholesome food...
Almost all of today's milk has been pasteurised, which involves heating the milk then rapidly cooling it, to kill bacteria. Unfortunately, it also kills the living enzymes that allow us to digest the milk, and absorb the calcium.
Pasteurisation also destroys vitamins and alters the proteins.
Contrary to the fancy advertising, pasteurised milk is actually a poor source of calcium. Our bodies simply cannot digest it properly.
Consider the two examples below:
In the 1930's, Dr. Francis M Pottinger conducted a 10-year study on the effects of pasteurised and raw (untreated) milk on 900 cats.
Both groups of cats were fed milk from the same source, but one lot was pasteurised the other was raw.
The cats fed raw milk remained healthy and active throughout their lives. Those fed pasteurised milk became confused and listless, and vulnerable to a host of degenerative diseases like heart disease, liver disease and kidney failure.
But wait. The first generation got off lightly. It was their children and grandchildren who REALLY suffered....
The second generation of cats fed pasteurised milk were all born with poor teeth, and small bones - signs of calcium deficiency.
The second generation of cats fed raw milk remained as healthy as their parents.
By the third generation, many of the babies of the pasteurised group were born stillborn, and of those that survived, ALL were infertile and unable to reproduce. The study ground to a halt, because, quite simply, there was no fourth generation to continue the pasteurised part of the study.
The third generation of cats fed raw milk continued to thrive and reproduce indefinately...
The second example is not very scientific, but shows the differences in a very graphic way. One farmer conducted his own experiments using two calves. One fed raw mik, the other pasteurised milk. Read the results here -
A Tale of Two Calves (Warning: The photos are quite graphic.)
Unfortunately, the powerful dairy lobbyists like the idea of pasteurisation, because it extends the shelf-life of milk, and means that growers do not have to be as scrupulous about the health and hygiene of their cattle. The sale of raw milk has been banned in many parts of the world.
Here in Australia, raw milk is allowed to be sold "for cosmetic use only". (insert sly smile, here...)
And then there's homogenisation.
This process involves pumping the milk through small tubes under very high pressure to break up the fat globules. This process has nothing to do with the safety of the milk, it just means that the milk does not develop a layer of cream on top.
(We cannot entirely blame the manufacturers for doing this. If consumers happily bought milk with a layer of cream on top, manufacturers would, no doubt happily supply it...
The trouble is that consumers, in general, have become fussy. We don't want bits of "stuff" floating around in our juice, or cream on top of our milk, or residue gathered at the bottom of our oil.
And so...we are subjected to pasteurisation, homogenisation, hydrogenation, refining, bleaching, conditioning, emulsifying...)
It has been widely acknowledged that higher consumption of dairy products is linked to increased cancer rates.
I would propose that these rates are not linked to dairy products at all, but rather, the processing of dairy products. Our ancestors who enjoyed raw milk straight from the cow, certainly didn't suffer the kind of cancer rates we are seeing today...
If you live in America, and some other parts of the world, you need to also consider the use of Recombinant Growth Hormone (rBGH). According to Wikipedia, rBGH is produced from genetically engineered E.Coli bacteria...Apparently it makes cows produce more milk. (More tainted milk that is, but I guess that's just a minor inconvenience when there are massive profits to be made...)
The ONLY cow's milk I can possibly recommend in good conscience, is organic, unpasteurised, unhomogenised milk, (sometimes referred to as raw milk) - if you can possibly get hold of some.
A very distant second, is organic milk that has been pasteurised but not homogenised.
It is a terrible shame that something that once fed and nourished the population, has been meddled and tampered with, until it no longer resembles the wholesome product it once was.
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