opinion

Fresh, raw milk boasts major advantages

Do you believe that because pasteurization kills bad bugs, pasteurized milk is safer than raw? There was a time when I believed that, but records from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records prove that clean raw milk has far less risk of contamination than pasteurized milk.

How can this be? Because raw milk is a living food, while pasteurized milk is a dead food.

Living, raw milk is intended as food for newborns, providing both nourishment and immunity to both the newborn and anyone who drinks of the milk:

• Nourishment from its food component (sugars, fats, proteins) and supporting components (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, etc.)

• Immunity by living microbes (probiotics) in raw milk that can distinguish friendly from unfriendly microbes. When raw milk’s army of good microbes encounters an unfriendly microbe (pathogen), they activate their weaponry: antimicrobial substances that attack, immobilize and destroy the enemy. If it weren’t for milk’s army of good-guys, the newborn would wither and die because bad microbes are opportunists.

Dead milk (heat-treated above 145°F, the temperature known to kill microbes and enzymes) has lost its probiotic defense against bad microbes avidly looking for a safe home in pasteurized milk where they wait for an opportunity to make someone ill.

It has also lost much of its nourishing value by destruction and degradation. For example, vitamins are destroyed and proteins undergo bio-molecular change. Living proteins each have a unique shape (resulting from winding and coiling of its long chain) that gives the protein its unique ability to do its work. When the protein is heated, it begins to unwind, changing its shape to one the body doesn’t recognize, triggering an allergic response (like mucous).

But even more importantly, the protein loses its nutritional value because the body’s enzymes no longer recognize it as food — the jigsaw puzzle piece no longer fits the puzzle.

Additionally, damaged proteins harm milk’s food value. For example, milk’s casein protein binds up calcium when heated. Calcium is important for growth and support of the skeletal system, among other functions. When bound by casein, however, it cannot be absorbed and passes out of the body without being utilized. Cheese makers know this problem only too well: free calcium is required for formation of a curd (cheese), but calcium in pasteurized milk is not free; a curd will not form without adding calcium.

Support living, raw milk. It’s good for you.

Catherine Haug lives in Bigfork. She holds bachelor’s degrees in biology and chemistry from Pacific Lutheran University, and conducted five years of postgraduate work in molecular biology at the University of Oregon and in quantum chemistry at Portland State University.