Don't Believe The Hype - Pasteurized Milk Is Dangerous

The presence of milk in our diet can be traced back more than 20 centuries to the time of Hippocrates, the father of medicine. He firmly believed in the healing powers of milk and this tradition was carried down through society over all those years until fairly recent times, when many questions were raised about the presence of diseases such as tuberculosis, believed to be passed through raw milk to humans. Poor milk production facilities beginning in the 1900s caused a significant deterioration in the quality of milk being distributed to the growing population. Cows were kept in very poor conditions and fed an even poorer quality of grain, often a byproduct of alcohol distillery. The milk produced as a result of eating this slop was very poor in quality and had few other nutrients that would help our immune system to attain good health. As tuberculosis was becoming increasingly evident and infant mortality was on the rise, it was believed that the poor quality milk was the culprit. This prompted the need for pasteurization, a process that exposes raw milk to high temperatures to destroy pathogens. At that time, and continuing into the 20th century, pasteurization was indicated for milk produced from cows that were not "certified." Raw milk from healthy cattle was still deemed to be safe, so long as the farms had the all important certification.

The major problem with pasteurization is that it destroys many of the nutrients and microorganisms that give milk its undoubted health benefits, as initially revealed by Hippocrates all that time ago. Pasteurization destroys many of the enzymes needed to digest and reveal milk's nutrients and this enzyme destruction cause lactose intolerance, as seen in certain parts of the population. Important minerals such as calcium and vitamins such as B6 and B12 are altered or destroyed during this process of pasteurization. In summary of what is essentially a very complicated issue, excessive sterilization of the food and drink that we consume can often eliminate far too many of the important elements of bacteria beneficial to our digestion, detoxification and immunity.

Grass fed milk is generally far superior in quality than grain fed or soy fed. Factory farming has a very bad reputation, as farmers feed cattle very unnatural and unhealthy diets that compromise the health of the animals and the quality of the milk that is produced. These poor practices include the introduction of antibiotics into the diet of the cattle, as well as hormones in many cases to increase the amount of milk they produce. As each cow is forced to produce more milk, the amount of vitamins that are included in the milk is proportionally decreased. Conversely, grass fed cattle produce milk with higher concentrations of vitamin A and vitamin D, essential to our health.

There has been a trend in recent times toward the production of organic food and drink, but that is not necessarily the answer either. While the USDA certifies organic milk production, some cattle are still fed grain instead of grass. Many organic brand manufacturers seek to ultra pasteurize milk, which destroys even more nutrients than processes that pasteurize milk, and is thus of even less value to us!