The Incredible Benefits of Raw Milk!

The Incredible Benefits of Raw Milk!

Lets start things by explaining what you probably are drinking but really shouldn’t be drinking. Skimmed milk and semi skimmed milk. A study that followed 12,829 children ages 9 to 14 years found that weight gain was associated with drinking reduced fat milk but that drinking full fat milk was not associated with weight gain. The great increase in childhood obesity in this country has occurred during the period when parents have been counselled to give their children reduced fat milk, and when schools have encouraged the consumption of skim and low fat milk instead of whole milk. Butter fat in the whole milk, particularly butter fat in milk from cows that graze outside on green pasture, provides unique nutrients that support thyroid function and help the body put on muscle rather than fat. Plus the fat in whole milk slows down the release of the carbohydrates your consuming with it, which makes you feel fuller for longer.

So if you put skimmed milk rather than whole milk on your cereal the carbohydrates from the cereal will get released faster into the blood as glucose and your blood sugar levels will shoot up. Your pancreas will release lots of insulin to bring this blood sugar level down and then you start to store the glucose as fat! And finally without fat in your diet you wont be getting the fat soluble vitamins that are vital for the use of protein, minerals and water soluble vitamins. Powdered milk is often added to skimmed and semi skimmed milk to give it some body. To make this powdered milk, liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidized. You do not want to be eating oxidized cholesterol. It contributes to the build up of plaque in the arteries to atherosclerosis. So the reduced fat milk will not help you avoid heart disease but increase your risk of getting it!

So now we know that we need to be drinking whole milk what choices can we make from here to dramatically improve our health? We can drink milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized, this is called raw milk. Raw milk is nature’s perfect food and is extremely important for the developing brains and nervous systems of infants and children. Furthermore, in many children not fortunate enough to have started life on raw milk, raw milk given later in childhood has cured autism, behaviour problems, frequent infections, deafness, asthma, allergies and other serious health conditions.

Pasteurization is not necessary, the modern machine and stainless steel tank, along with efficient packaging and distribution make pasteurization totally unnecessary for the purpose of sanitation. Pasteurization is not even a sure bet to cleanliness. Over the past decade’s salmonella outbreaks from milk have all come from pasteurized milk. This is because pasteurization destroys all of the positive bacteria and helpful organisms that protect it against pathogens, leaving it defenceless.

Milk made to sell raw is not the same as milk made to be pasteurized. Not only are the cows of better health but the testing for cleanliness is far more regular in the raw milk. The cows bread for pasteurization produce huge quantities of milk, almost three times as much as they should. Because they are generally not as healthy and happy they have to be injected with antibiotics and other things to keep them from getting ill. There living conditions are mostly confined, most milk (even most milk labeled organic) comes from dairy cows that are kept in confinement most of their lives and rarely eat green grass!

They eat soy meal, cottonseed meal, citrus peel cake laced with pesticides or other commercial feeds. Soy meal has the wrong protein profile for the dairy cow, resulting in a short burst of high milk production followed my premature death, their lift span is about 3.5 years. The cows bread for raw milk production have green grass, stored dry hay and silage for their diet and live mostly on pasture. Their life span is 12 plus years. Even before pasteurization the milk meant for pasteurization has 5 to 6 times less CLA and a lower vitamin content.

Another example of how a cow is looked after directly reflect the quality of milk is that in 1950 a famous British farmer called Friend Sykes was singled out by the British Council of Milk Marketing Board for producing exceedingly nutritious milk. They investigated Sykes farm to find out how his milk was at such a high standard. It was found that the quantity the cows ate was lower than traditionally fed cows. This was because when consuming organic feed the increased nutrients satisfied the cows nutrient needs and the cow didn’t have to keep eating to get more nutrients. Research has shown a direct correlation between feed quality and animal health.

So without getting too in depth lets look at the nutritional pros and cons of going for pasteurized and raw milk. In the raw milk the Enzymes are all present, these help the body to digest the milk. Some examples of this is the enzyme lactase helping the digestion of lactose and the enzyme phosphatase which is essential for the utilization of calcium.

The process of pasteurization destroys all of the vitamin A; destroys about 38% of the vitamin B complex; the vitamin C is weakened or destroyed (infants served pasteurized milk exclusively will develop scurvy which is a sign of vitamin C deficiency); the total soluble calcium is very much diminished; the fat content is harmed and the proteins digestibility is reduced by 4% with the biological value reduced by 17%.

Super market milk is also homogenized, this is the process that forces the fat particles through tiny strainers under great pressure so as to make them small enough that they remain suspended and thus, do not rise to the top. Because homogenized fats are much more susceptible to rancidity and oxidation, they have recently been linked to heart disease and atherosclerosis. Homogenization has also been found to cause incomplete protein digestion in the intestine, leading to milk allergy and intolerance.

After all this are you going to switch to raw milk and reap the benefits? If so raw milk can be found at farmers markets or ordered off the internet.