Several Essential Ideas On Why 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. It was said that milk had its own healing powers and these traditional beliefs survived through society all the way up until fairly recent times, when questions were raised about tuberculosis and other diseases, believed to be passed to humans from raw milk. In truth, beginning in the 1900s, poor production processes lead to a significant deterioration in milk quality, as it was being distributed to the burgeoning 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. Not surprisingly, pasteurization was the answer, a process that heats the raw milk to extreme temperatures in order 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 causes lactose intolerance, as seen in certain parts of the population. If this wasn’t bad enough, vitamins such as B6 and B12 and minerals such as calcium are depleted or destroyed due to the pasteurization process. 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. The quality of the milk produced by the traditional factory farmer is often compromised, as these farmers feed their herds in a very unnatural way, leading to poor quality health among their animals. 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. When cows are forced to produce more milk, the relative amount of vitamins in each serving of milk is decreased proportionately. Conversely, grass fed cattle produce milk with higher concentrations of vitamin A and vitamin D, essential to our health.
Some of the latest trends have pointed toward the production of organic food and drink, but this is not all that it appears to be, either. While the USDA certifies organic milk production, some cattle are still fed grain instead of grass. When we hear that some organic brand manufacturers ultra pasteurize milk, we wonder whether this is of less value to us, as it is supposed to destroy even more nutrients than the process of pasteurizing milk!
Tags: health, nutrition, Pasteurization, Raw Milk, Vitamin D