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Why Our Family Chooses Raw Over Pasteurized Milk

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If you are still wondering about raw milk, now’s the time to give it a try! It is one of the most complete, healthy foods you can consume and provides many critical nutrients we are missing in our modern diets.

Our family has been drinking it for 4 years and it’s been one of the best investments we’ve made in our health. For years, my husband had respiratory allergies and took medications. Before I knew about raw milk, I heard that dairy can cause a lot of allergies in many people, so I suggested he stop eating dairy. This was very hard for him and he wasn’t able to completely avoid it.

Then we discovered raw milk. I started ordering milk from Organic Pastures Dairy in 2007 before the laws changed and CA disallowed raw dairy to go beyond state borders. It was so fabulous and creamy, we were all impressed. My son had recently been told by a practitioner that he had an allergy to dairy as well. Both my husband and son did just fine with the milk and cream we were buying.

When CA laws changed and we could no longer order it, raw milk started to become available in our area – Boise, ID. Now I’m on the GAPS diet and I make kefir and yogurt weekly. It’s been instrumental in getting my health back on track, as I experienced some sort of a crash in the beginning of this year due to stress and depletion in my body, and started having severe anxiety and panic symptoms. I was not sleeping for nearly 3 months and I thought I was going to lose my mind.

I had been eating a very healthy, traditional diet for 6 years and have done many different detox strategies. But what I found out was that I had not fully addressed healing my digestive tract and detoxification. Plus, I’ll never underestimate the power of stress to destroy health again, as the financial stress our family has been under for the last 2 years has been oppressive and stifling. I was desperate and tried many different things to end my anxiety episodes, but what worked the best was to eliminate most of my supplements, eat a nutrient-dense diet, and go on the Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride’s GAPS protocol, which includes regular consumption of cultured dairy products if they are tolerated in the beginning, and adding more in as digestion heals.

What’s the difference between pasteurized and raw milk?

A lot.  Most pasteurized milk comes from cows in confinement operations (including a great deal of “organic” dairies), where they cannot graze on green pastures and stand around in their own excrement all day. Those cows sole purpose in life is to produce milk, and lots of it. Cattle are administered a lot of cheap feed like grain, soy, and corn which are not their natural diet and create an acidic environment in their digestive tracts, which is capable of producing pathogenic strains of bacteria such as E. coli. Cattle are also given preventative doses of antibiotics to counteract these conditions. Some dairies administer hormones (rBGH) to artificially increase the milk production of lactating cows.

Clean, healthy, raw milk comes from happy cows grazing on green grass, without hormones, antibiotics, exposure to pesticides, grain or other artificial feed, and spend time roaming and moving around in the sunshine.

What if I am allergic to dairy or have lactose intolerance?

There are far fewer “lactose intolerant” people than the medical establishment would have us believe. You may be reacting to the casein in milk, which can cause digestive symptoms and other issues. When milk is pasteurized, the fragile enzymes and proteins that are necessary for digestion are destroyed. You may also have a compromised digestive tract from eating a lot of processed foods, which makes digesting most foods properly difficult (which is the case for many people). In any case, you won’t know until you try it to find out. Everyone in our family was either diagnosed as “dairy intolerant” or had noticeable issues to pasteurized dairy when we were consuming it. Those issues all went away when we started drinking raw milk.

I don’t like milk or drink it. Why would I want to start drinking raw milk?

You might change your mind if you had clean, healthy raw milk from cows grazing on green pastures.  But, if you try it and still find you don’t care for it, put it in a smoothie with some fruit, a bit of raw honey, a raw egg yolk, coconut oil, and an avocado and you’ll have a nutrient-dense, delicious, “fast food” breakfast that will blow any breakfast you’ve eaten out of the water. You can also make yogurt, kefir, sour cream, buttermilk, cream cheese, and many other dairy foods that are delicious and healthy.

Watch this informative video interview with Mark McAfee from Organic Pastures Dairy in Fresno, CA. Mark’s dairy is the largest raw dairy in the country and they go the extra mile to make sure you are getting a fresh, clean, and wholesome product from healthy cows on organic green pasture. This interview was done last year, but it’s one of the most well-done and comprehensive videos on the subject.

Want more information about raw milk and the health benefits? Check out these posts:

The Truth About Raw Milk, Part I
The Truth About Raw Milk, Part II

Testimonials:

I drink real milk, fresh, raw, local and full of fat– Nourished Kitchen

I don’t drink raw milk…but if you took it away from me, I’d be pissed – Kat’s Food Blog

Why we drink raw milk – Life As A Plate

Top ten reasons to drink raw milk – Cheeseslave

Three facts you should know about raw milk – Real Food Digest

Fresh milk: Part 1: Why raw milk is better than pasteurized – Health, Home, Happiness

My kids health depends on raw milk – Divine Health

Why drink raw milk?Dr. Joseph Mercola

4 replies on “Why Our Family Chooses Raw Over Pasteurized Milk”

Raine,

There is one clarification I would like to make in your post: “Cattle are also given preventative doses of antibiotics to counteract these conditions.” is an inaccurate.

No milk in the United States can be sold that does not pass a test for antibiotics thus it is illegal for dairies to do so. In addition there are no antibiotics on the market that I am aware of that can be used in dairy cattle for preventative purposes. Every tanker of milk that leaves any dairy farm whether conventional or organic must pass an antibiotic test prior to being unloaded at the processing plant. All of the milk that does come from cows treated with antibiotics has to be diverted from the food stream.

Thanks for sharing your passion!

Ray

Hi Ray –

According to this document, “It’s important to know that by law, no meat or milk sold in the U.S. is allowed to contain antibiotic residues that violate FDA standards, he adds.” So it does not specifically say that residues aren’t allowed period. It merely says “residues that violate FDA standards”. This means that farmers can use antibiotics, but that during testing to find antibiotics in the milk, up to a certain level is acceptable, while above that level is not (and we aren’t told what those levels are). In my book, no levels are acceptable, so this violates my standards.

This document from Born Free talks about therapeutic doses being used as well (see the heading “Do the medications used to treat livestock disease enter the human food chain?”):

http://www.bornfreeusa.org/facts.php?p=373&more=1

So, if therapeutic doses of antibiotics are illegal, it certainly seems to happen anyway…and fairly often, I’m sorry to report:

http://www.rense.com/general48/found.htm

Big surprise, Monsanto’s involved in this one. 🙁

and then there’s this one:

http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2011/07/21/story-columbus-milk-not-tested-for-all-chemicals.html

and this one:

http://www.wthr.com/story/14656493/whats-in-your-milk?clienttype=printable

and this one:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/17/33353.htm

and this one from food safety news:

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/06/antibiotics-being-misused-by-dairy-farms/

and this one:

http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/2010/09/27/dairy-cattle-antibiotic-residue-review/

Second paragraph in this article, last sentence reads: “The issue in question is antibiotic residue in meat and it appears that the dairy sector is the biggest offender.”

There are many others. And these are just those being reported. I also know that one of the reasons cattle have to be administered antibiotics in the first place is due to their forced diet of grains, soy, and corn, which make their bodies and digestive tracts acidic, and cause illness which causes further need for antibiotics. Most milk comes from feedlots where this occurs. So while I want more than anything for antibiotic residue in meat and milk to be a fairy tale, it is unfortunately all too real and occurs all the time.

I think what this tells us is that while there may be so-called “laws” stating that antibiotic residue are allowed in milk or meat, these laws are pretty shaky and are not preventing this issue from happening. Either the laws are not being enforced, or the laws aren’t there to begin with. Either way, it’s a big issue that’s been reported in the news over and over again for the last number of years.

I was definitely having bad allergic reactions to pasteurized dairy products (milk, cheese and yogurt) which is one of the reasons I stopped. Then I went on a raw milk fast/diet and at first, it really sucked. I mean, literally within the first 30 minutes of drinking raw goat and cow milk, my head felt weird, throat started to swell, stomach started to rumble. For the first couple days, those symptoms were prominent. When I would wake up in the morning, my stomach hurt, felt sore and ‘raw.’ But as the days went on, all these side effects subsided. The lump or swelling feeling in my through has gone down. I also had pins and needles, numbness in my arms and legs that I was battled for a long time and those symptoms also went away. They say raw dairy improves circulation. The reason I am sharing this all is that others that read this and have symptoms the first few days of consuming raw dairy, don’t worry, it passes. You have to keep at it. Your body will adjust, more than likely, unless you have really damaged your body and organs to the point of no return. But if you don’t force it into your body and deal with the side effects, you won’t detox and feel the greatness after those symptoms pass. Raw milk is a mircle – you have to allow it enough time to work. We are all different and some of us have stored toxins for years longer than others.

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