Interested in another thread of the “Chronic Illness Industries” real-life saga, replete with all the sorted chicanery a novelist might conjure up? I'm trying to present this in bite-sized threads because there's so much material it's overwhelming. Please come along for the journey to a more well-rounded perspective of our “advanced” industrial development and its effect on our quality of life – it's really not as boring as you might presuppose :-)

To those in this world that drink milk, and/or soda pop, I'm posing the question: Is soda pop or milk healthier? If you think the question is a no-brainer, then maybe you haven't examined the issue in enough detail. Doing so may not reverse your opinion one hundred percent, but it might facilitate a more realistic perspective if you're interested in your health.

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A current general health "crisis" in major media is focused on the obesity epidemic, and what more convenient culprit is to be found than soda pop, the icon of junk food. One common quote in many major media pieces is "In the United States, the average kid drinks more soda pop than milk." Another common quote is "Those drinking large amounts of soda pop could be at risk for osteoporosis, especially if soda is replacing milk or other calcium-rich foods." In our daily fast-paced lives, statements like these don't usually set off any alarm bells, but they should. Such statements are actually very carefully worded bites in a marketing tactic, disguised as informative pieces, and designed to be unconsciously diversionary and associative. The primary reasons they work are because they are seemingly straightforward, and simple enough for retention and replication – pure marketing genius.

Underneath all the rhetoric is, of course, the latest effort to further increase food processing industry profits using the very problems they have created. The food processing industry is nothing if not market savvy, and have been employing the "healthier" perception for almost a century now because it works. Even the soda pop producers play the game with their incrementally enhanced offerings (e.g. Diet Coke Plus and Pepsi's Tava), ownership of once independent premium labels (e.g. Fuze Beverage owned by Coke and Naked Juice owned by Pepsi), and joint ventures with competing labels (e.g. Coke with Campbell's juice drinks and Pepsi with Lipton). While consumers are considering healthier options [still], the beverage industry is employing "going green for green" very adeptly. Profitably transitioning products is a basic skill in discretionary goods industries.

About a century ago soda pop was made at home by brewing herbs into root beer (made with bark from the roots of the sassafras tree), or birch beer (made with the bark of the birch tree and does not contain sassafras), and local soda fountains mixed a variety of fruit and herbal blends with carbonated water. These beverages began with the idea of more desirable health drinks, and transitioned into the commercial products that you see today.

Recognizing the economic impetus of big industry provides more perspective. With discretionary goods, promotional costs are substantial, and economy of scale is dependent on market population, which entails increased distribution of sales dollars in the supply chain network. The more economical the basic ingredient costs, the greater the proportion of sales dollars available for promotion, and for distribution in the supply chain. Big industry's overriding focus is profits, which are facilitated with economy of scale and minimizing raw material costs. The true health effect on the consumer really doesn't play into the cost equation, other than promotion of the perception. As an example, the promotional and supply chain costs of say Diet Coke Plus are significant components of the sales dollar, but it costs only a fraction of a penny per can to add vitamin and mineral supplements - voilà a [supposedly] "green" drink.

In the food processing industry there are the additional important considerations of shelf life and appearance, so the costs of processing and chemicals for such also compete with the quality of ingredients in the cost equation. The cost of many ingredients is "economized" by using by-products of other food processing, and nowadays an even cheaper source of raw ingredients (and even processing) is countries where there are no, even marginal, controls. Together with the FDA being reduced to little more than a propaganda machine for big industry, toxic ingredients are only "discovered" when one or more of us commoners dies for the common good ;o) Talk about being used as a canary in a coal mine :o)))

Now, the big food and beverage companies are beginning to use newly developed chemicals that trick the taste buds into sensing sugar and/or salt at palate pleasing levels when actually at much lower levels. They don't even have to list these chemical compounds separately on ingredient labels because the FDA allows them to be lumped into a broad category of artificial flavors. This new biotechnology allows a reduction of sugar and salt by one-third to one-half while retaining the same sweetness or saltiness. Wow, we can have an even "greener" [less sugar] drink, and be the guinea pigs in man's [historically disastrous] latest chemical/biological alteration of foods.

If you're waiting for me to note any health benefits of soda pop, don't hold your breath :o) Even with questionably bioavailable nutrient supplementation, excess sugar consumption is not healthy (e.g. suppresses the immune system, upsets the body's mineral balance, promotes kidney damage, feeds cancer cells), and artificial sweeteners have proved to be even less healthy (many toxic metabolic side effects). Additionally it’s the acid (lower PH commonly from phosphoric acid) in diet and regular soda that can damage tooth enamel and cause tooth decay. The acidity leaches calcium from bones and is a major contributor to the increase in osteoporosis, and can begin to harm tooth enamel in as little as 20 minutes.

Kudos if you knew all that, but do you see a correlation with the dairy industry's products today? It's a little more involved, but let's back up in time and follow milk to its current state to see if a correlation is evident.

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As a starting point, bear in mind that physically civilization is rooted in the soil, because the soil produces the nutrients for plants that feed people and the grasses that feed the animals that feed people. Naturally fertile soil is essential for healthy foodstuffs, upon which civilization is quite literally built. This naturally fertile soil is what industrial agriculture is destroying at an unprecedented rate with their monocropping, chemicals, and GMOs. More specifically herein, healthy milk depends on healthy cows, which in turn depend on being pasture fed nutrient rich grasses, which in turn depend on nutrient rich soils, as with all our foodstuffs.

At least since man first began settling into an agricultural based lifestyle, eight or more millennia ago, dairy products have been consumed and we have thrived (aside from other detrimental human activities that is :o) Even in the tropics, centuries before refrigeration, raw milk was an important food source for many cultures. By exploiting the preservative benefits of fermentation, primitive peoples had access to a nutrient-laden food from their animals which gave them a distinct advantage over their hunter-gatherer contemporaries. With a more readily available food supply, people were freed up to pursue more productive things like making babies, building permanent communities, waging war, and everything else that comes with not having to expend significant energy hunting for food. Here in America, in 1611 the arrival of a hundred cows for the Jamestown colony marked the beginning of dairying in America, and a much needed upturn for the Jamestown settlers.

Our early American settlers lived in a farm-based economy, but as the Industrial Revolution reached our shores, the cities swelled with job seekers lured from their farms by the factories and mills. By 1810, there were many dozens of water-powered operations lining the rivers of southern New England, all staffed by thirsty workers. The main beverages consumed were milk and whiskey, and demand for both grew along with the cities.

The distilled spirits were mostly imported, but with the war of 1812 sourcing essentially dried up. The conflict lasted only a few years, but initiated a ruinous chain of events on the milk Americans drank. To meet the soaring demand for spirits, distilleries soon sprang up in most major cities, and in a brilliant stroke of industrial ingenuity to increase profitability, milk cows were confined adjacent to distilleries and fed the swill left over from the spirit-making process. This slop was not a natural food for cows and made them diseased and emaciated, but when fed plentifully the cows yielded an abundance of [questionable] milk in there shortened life spans. Confined to filthy, manure-filled pens, the unfortunate cows gave a pale, bluish milk so poor in quality it couldn't even be used for making butter or cheese. Add the unsanitary milking practices, and the effects of distillery dairy milk were abominable. This unhealthy milk was so poor in quality that it's usual ability to protect itself was greatly diminished, and with a basic understanding of germs or microbes decades away, the easily contaminated "pseudo-milk" was fed to babies by their unwitting mothers. In New York City alone, infant mortality rocketed to around 50% and stayed there well into the 1890's.

This unhealthy situation persisted for years until two men, having the death of a child in common, but with differing solutions, set about to remedy the problem. One, a New Jersey doctor named Henry Coit urged the creation of a Medical Milk Commission to oversee or "certify" production of milk, which was eventually formed in 1893. With the help of select dairy experts, Coit and his team of physicians (unpaid for their work) were able to enlist dairy farmers willing to meet their strict standards of hygiene in the production of clean, fresh milk from healthy, pastured, grass-fed animals. The other, New York philanthropist Nathan Straus believed the only safe milk was that which had been pasteurized. Using his considerable finances, he set up and subsidized the first of many "milk depots" in New York City to provide low-cost pasteurized milk.

Infant mortality fell dramatically, but together with other sanitation advances (e.g. chlorination of water supplies, the ice box, and automobiles replacing horses) occurring in the same time frame it is difficult to say which changes were the more responsible. Pasteurized milk was much more abundant in the cities where the infant mortality epidemic had occurred, but the cities were also where the major sanitation advances occurred, and there was no common infant mortality epidemic in the rural communities where healthy raw whole milk was consumed. Not surprisingly, the media has since hailed pasteurization as the miraculous answer, but as you'll see the media is little more than a propaganda machine for big industry. Incidentally, the last distillery dairy did not close until 1930. Even though reformers and medical groups called for an end to the practice of selling milk not fit for human consumption, the government did nothing. The more things change the more they remain the same :o)

From the early 1890s until about 1910, the movements for certified raw milk and pasteurization coexisted and in many ways even complemented one another. From about 1910 until the 1940s, an uneasy truce existed. Certified raw milk was available for those who wanted it, while the influence of the pasteurization lobby saw to it that most states and municipalities adopted regulations that required all milk other than certified milk be pasteurized. The end of this truce led to the subsequent outlawing of all retail sales of raw milk in most states and even of on-farm sales in many.

I find scientific studies of milk done before 1950, of which there are a great many, to be interesting reading. For example as a sampling, in 1916 and 1917, the American Journal of Diseases in Children reported that raw milk prevents scurvy and other infectious diseases such as the flu in babies. That's probably because vitamin C is destroyed by pasteurization. In the 1920s, the Mayo Foundation, forerunner of the prestigious Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, prescribed a healthy whole raw milk diet known as “The Milk Cure.” In a 1929 article, Raw Milk Cures Many Diseases, a Mayo doctor described milk as an easily digestible food, rich in enzymes, vitamins, and minerals, with a perfect balance of protein, fat, and carbohydrate. Mayo doctors and other practitioners found milk was effective not only for weight loss, but also for ailments including poor digestion, inflammation, rheumatism, asthma, skin conditions, bronchitis, heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney disease. In 1933 the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin reported that raw milk promotes growth and calcium absorption, no doubt because raw milk contains the enzyme phosphatase. In 1937, The Lancet reported that children who drank raw milk had greater resistance to tooth decay and tuberculosis. In 1938, The Drug and Cosmetic Industry reported that certain pathogens do not grow in raw milk but proliferate in pasteurized milk. The beneficial bacteria in raw milk fight off pathogens. The authors called these “natural antiseptics.” There are also many studies noting the problems with milk pasteurization.

An even more interesting and telling point to this is since then unbiased scientific studies comparing pasteurized to clean, healthy whole raw milk have all but dried up. Considering that clean, healthy raw milk and the stuff in most stores are two very different products, it is virtually impossible to extrapolate from studies on the industrial stuff to fresh, clean, unmolested milk. Where there is a distinction between pasteurized and unpasteurized milk, they are, as far as I can tell in their intentional vagueness, comparing milk from the same unhealthy industrial sources or the like.

The drawback of certified raw milk was that it was resource and labor intensive. It was sourced from many small family farms, required significant pasture acreage, required meeting strenuous cleanliness standards, and was expensive to transport. Pasteurization, on the other hand, facilitated a much more profitable industrial model because pasture could be mostly eliminated, dairy farms could be consolidated and streamlined to produce more milk at less cost, inexpensive industrial by-products could be used to minimize the cost of cow fodder, and fewer sources with greater supplies shipped in bulk reduced transport costs. Of course, pasteurization didn't have to clean up the act at the farm end either.

From an April 2008 Harper's Magazine article “The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized” things haven't changed much in general on the industrial farm [pardon their language]:

“After a century of pasteurization, modern dairies, to put it bluntly, are covered in shit. Most have a viscous lagoon full of it. Cows lie in it. Wastewater is recycled to flush out their stalls. Farmers do dip cows’ teats in iodine, but standards mandate only that the number of germs swimming around their bulk tanks be below 100,000 per milliliter.”

With certified raw milk the cost to the consumer was higher, but nobody, including the family farms, was significantly profiting financially. However, with the industrial model the consumer cost was less and there were considerable profits to be made by those in power. In our ethics deprived capitalistic economy the latter was a win-win opportunity.

The drawback to furthering the industrial model, however, was that up to the 1940's support of raw milk among physicians was widespread, and many people understood its health values. As noted previously, there was a substantial body of scientific studies during the period that provided compelling evidence of the superiority of healthy, clean whole raw milk. Worse yet, from the earliest days of pasteurization, scientists demonstrated that heat treatment had a profound negative effect on the health-giving and self-protecting properties of milk.

The power of industry is the money behind it and they had an investment to protect and further. Industry could muster no credible scientific evidence to challenge the many studies attesting to the superior nutritional value of healthy raw versus pasteurized milk, so in 1944 a concerted media smear campaign was launched with a series of completely bogus magazine articles designed to spark fear at the very thought of consuming raw milk (um, does this sound vaguely familiar today?).

Ladies’ Home Journal began the campaign with the article “Undulant Fever,” falsely claiming that tens of thousands of people in the US were suffering from fever and illness because of exposure to raw milk. The next year, Coronet magazine followed up with “Raw Milk Can Kill You,” by Robert Harris, MD, in which a town and an epidemic were both fabricated. The outright lies in this article were then repeated in similar articles that appeared in The Progressive and The Reader’s Digest the following year.

These claims and many others like them were repeated in subsequent magazine articles read by tens of millions of people, as well as in countless newspaper articles in the ensuing years. Writing in The Rural New Yorker in 1947, Jean Bullitt Darlington made a particularly fine effort to set the record straight with an article titled “Why Milk Pasteurization? Sowing the Seeds of Fear.” Darlington exposed the lies and distortions in the magazine articles, but the message was drowned out in the onslaught by big industry. Present day claims against raw milk, while usually slightly more subtle, are no less vicious. Where there are big profits to be made, money rules over health considerations, and consumers are easily manipulated.

As an example of current day claims - From the Weston A. Price Foundation:

WASHINGTON, March 12, 2007 – The FDA and CDC provided no facts to back up claims of widespread illness from raw milk in a recent press release, "FDA and CDC Remind Consumers of the Dangers of Drinking Raw Milk."

The joint FDA /CDC reminder claims that between 1998 and 2005, raw milk was implicated in 45 outbreaks, 1007 cases, 104 hospitalizations and 2 deaths. Yet the reference cited, the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for the week of March 2, 2006 (MMWR for 03-02-07), provides no such information; nor is any such information found in any other FDA or CDC document. Numerous requests to the FDA for clarification have not been answered.

As I previously mentioned, very little research was done after about 1950 on the relative nutrient content of clean, healthy raw versus pasteurized milk. The move toward universal pasteurization was in full swing and interest in raw milk was waning in agricultural colleges increasingly supported by dairy industry and agribusiness funding. Of course, government officials and medical professionals were also swayed by corporate dollars, lies, and peer pressure, and quickly fell in line.

At the end of World War II, 3.7 million of America’s 5.4 million farms had milk cows. Most still sold raw milk directly to neighbors and through local distribution channels, but this changed drastically and quickly under relentless official pressure for compulsory pasteurization of all milk. Today the total number of farms has shrunk to less than 2 million, and less than 100,000 have milk cows. Most of these cows spend much, if not all, of their time in confinement facilities, and according to the textbook Dairy Cattle Science, “Nearly 40 percent of all dairy cows have some form of mastitis.” [Mastitis is inflammation of the mammary glands, indicating that these are not healthy cows.] Another study indicated that cows injected with rBGH suffer a 34-76% increase in incidences of mastitis. The modern commercial Holstein, bred for greater milk production, also has a much shorter life span than its progenitors (another clue).

Just since 1991, the number of total U.S. dairies has dropped 55%, while the number of dairies with a herd of 100 or more cows has increased 94%. These are large corporate operations, so acreage has also been reduced. Facility acreage size per cow is typically as low as 0.02 acres on these large corporate operations today. Today, dairy cows are sent to slaughter after only three to four lactation cycles, when disease develops or milk production decreases. A dairy cow's average life expectancy, should she be allowed to thrive in a healthy environment, would be in excess of 20 years. While scientists in Europe have led the way to studying how to improve dairy cow welfare, U.S. scientists have led the way in researching milk production efficiency.

It must also be noted herein that the recent trend of “organic” milk on store shelves is only marginally better. It simply means the cows were administered no antibiotics or hormones, and were fed organic feeds, typically grains which are not a species appropriate diet. The milk is still pasteurized and homogenized, and typically ultra high temperature pasteurized, especially for their individual serving offerings. It's just another twist of the industrial model.

The story of what’s happened to quality milk is the same as the story of what’s happened to America’s farmers. Both have been mostly eliminated, marginalized by a culture that has allowed corporations to promote the big lie that the processing of natural foods has nothing to do with the epidemic of disease that cripples our society. Corporate spokespersons for the food, drug and medical industries have used billions of dollars (a drop in the bucket compared to their profits) to convince most of us that this scam has been carried out for our own good. The corporations and their media and government lackeys proclaim "food safety," while in truth allowing our food supply to be nutritionally depleted, further contaminated, and fostering unsustainability of food sourcing.

The above paragraph isn't raw milk advocates blowing smoke, but rather the reality of the matter which is the point herein. The chicanery of government (for the benefit of big industry profits) here, as elsewhere I've noted, is immense, and, to further industry's obese profits, is carried out with our tax dollars. Talk about adding insult to injury! There are endless attacks by government against raw milk that you can find, and many independent investigations refuting them. Research on your part will easily show the pattern.

An example of what you might find in your research is a response by Sally Fallon [author of Nourishing Traditions] to a public health official, that is available as a downloadable pdf. In it you can get a good idea of both government chicanery, and government documented outbreaks of food-borne illness from pasteurized milk. Another example is the Weston A. Price Foundation 2007 prepared rebuttal to the FDA anti-raw presentation available as a downloadable pdf. Other examples are also available on realmilk.com and elsewhere.

Even the government's own data [a real pain to interpret] and actions are contradictory. For example, from a September 2003 FDA/USDA/CDC Quantitative Assessment of Relative Risk to Public Health from Foodborne Listeria monocytogenes, from Summary Table 4 Relative Risk Ranking and Predicted Median Cases of Listeriosis for the Total United States Population (Per Annum Basis), Deli Meats show 1598.7 cases, Pasteurized Fluid Milk show 90.8 cases, and Unpasteurized Fluid Milk show 3.1 cases. And I can't find any differentiation between industrial raw milk (or the like) and clean, healthy raw milk. Of course, as you know, the FDAs position is that “Raw milk is inherently dangerous and should not be consumed,” which I agree with if they mean industrial raw milk or the like. But even though they indicate deli meats are 515 times more dangerous than raw milk, they don't say the same about deli meats, or try their upmost to prevent the sale of deli meats to consumers? Can you explain this in some rational manner other than industry bias at the consumer's expense? And yet we blindly follow, which isn't very complimentary of our collective reasoning, or reassuring of our future ;o)

To understand what industry has done to milk, you might try a little experiment. Set two glasses of milk out on your kitchen counter for several days, one glass of store bought pasteurized milk, and the other of clean, healthy whole raw milk if you can find a good source. The raw milk will “sour” and is still usable (typically used for nourishment of invalids), and eventually you'll get sour cream. On the other hand, the pasteurized milk will go putrid, and the neighbors will be calling the cops because of the smell of a dead body emanating from your house.

There's a good reason for the above results, and it boils down simply to the fact that clean, healthy whole raw milk is a living nutritious food with inherent robust protective properties, as opposed to industrial pasteurized milk which is a dead food, mostly devoid of balanced nutrition, and a magnet for pathogens. Clean, healthy whole raw milk is a problem for big industry though because of costs, which in part require greater shelf life before it develops a sour taste. Pasteurized and sealed milk has a much longer shelf life during which the [supposedly] fresh taste is retained. Ultra high temperature pasteurized milk doesn't even need to be kept in the milk cooler at the grocery store. Industry's economy of scale means larger and fewer sources, which in turn necessitates longer distribution times to the consumer. The greater profits from reduced costs is why the dairy industry and their government lackeys are pushing pasteurization so hard. The real health concern is industry's substandard dairy farming practices.

There is the argument that because so few in America use unpasteurized dairy products, any statistical comparison of food borne illnesses with pasteurized dairy products is meaningless. I would grudgingly agree, but if one removes the "in America" from this argument, then it's a whole different ball-game. Let's take France for example where dairy products like say Camembert de Normandie are not allowed to be made from pasteurized milk. [I chose a soft cheese here because there are many more opportunities for contamination, and short term aging where contamination would not be obvious.] Though these soft cheeses from unpasteurized milk are very common in French diets, and consumed throughout the world where there is no ban as there is in America, do you hear of mass outbreaks of food borne illnesses from such? It's considerably more risky to consume most any pasteurized products here in America, were around 70% of food contamination outbreaks are from pasteurized foods. The difference is just how painstaking these quality unpasteurized dairy products are produced, and how well they care for their animals, as compared to the pasteurized dairy products industry where the emphasis is on reducing costs to the bare minimum to increase profits.

Advertisers promise that consumers can have the healthiest possible food from happy animals in idyllic settings at low prices. This is obviously a lie, on all counts, but it’s a lie that most people accept. People don't stop to understand that this cheap food makes for expensive health care, which is the whole vicious chronic illness industries cycle. Did it ever occur to you that you might be getting hoodwinked by the cheap prices - in light of industry's enormous profits and obscenely compensated executives, mightn't you be getting shortchanged? Ethics aside, chronic illness is a profitable short term economic model, but unsustainable as a foundation of advancing society.

So what's so unhealthy about industrial milk?

To begin with, the healthiest, and arguably best-tasting, raw whole milk comes from the "old" breeds of dairy cows such as the Jersey, Guernsey, Ayrshire, or Brown Swiss, or the older lines of Holstein which were not bred to produce obscene amounts of milk. These cows are pastured on healthy land. They eat only organic green grasses in Spring, Summer and Fall; stored dry hay, silage, and hay and root vegetables in winter. They do not eat soy meal, cottonseed meal, corn meal or other commercial feeds, nor bakery waste, chicken manure or citrus peel cake, laced with pesticides. [Many healthy aspects of milk are diminished or disappear when milk cows are fed commercial feed. For example, soy meal has the wrong protein profile for the dairy cow, resulting in a short burst of high milk production followed by premature death, and a potential source of the new strains of virulent E. coli is genetically engineered soy. Another example is the use of rendered livestock byproducts (for a herbivore?) in commercial feeds which has been implicated in the spread of mad cow disease. (It did not occur in cows on a natural diet, even where farms were adjacent.) The bulk of commercial feeds consist of corn and soy, which contain 80% of all herbicides used in the U.S. and potentially passed on to you as a gift of industry.] Most milk (even milk labeled "organic") comes from dairy cows that are kept in confinement their entire lives and never see green grass! The modern commercial Holstein was bred to produce huge quantities of milk - three times as much as the old-fashioned cow. She needs special feed and antibiotics to keep her well enough to produce, albeit for a much shorter life span. Her milk contains high levels of detrimental growth hormone from her pituitary gland, even when she is spared the indignities of genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone to push her to the udder limits of milk production. [An example of big industry ridding roughshod over our food sourcing is Monsanto suing companies that declare that their source cows are raised without artificial growth hormones. Monsanto, the only producer of rBGH, doesn’t want consumers to know what’s in the products they’re consuming, nor how the source of their food was treated.]

Average butterfat content from properly pastured old-fashioned cows at the turn of the century was over 4%. Today industrial milk butterfat comprises less than 3% and consumers have been duped into believing that low-fat and skim milk products are good for them. Only by marketing low-fat and skim milk as a health food can the modern dairy industry get rid of its excess poor-quality, low-fat milk from modern high-production herds. Butterfat contains vitamins A and D needed for assimilation of calcium and protein in the water fraction of the milk. Without them protein and calcium are more difficult to utilize and possibly detrimental. Butterfat is rich in short and medium chain fatty acids which protect against disease and stimulate the immune system. It contains glycospingolipids which prevent intestinal distress and conjugated linoleic acid which has strong anticancer properties. Without the butterfat component the body cannot absorb and utilize the fat soluble vitamins and minerals in the water fraction of the milk. Along with valuable trace minerals and short chain fatty acids, butterfat is the best source of preformed vitamin A. Industry adds the inferior synthetic vitamin D (ergocalciferol), to replace the natural vitamin D complex in butterfat.

Homogenization is a means of hiding the low butterfat content of commercial milk by reducing and uniformly suspending fat globules in the water base so they do not rise to the top. During homogenization the fat droplets become finely subdivided and there is a tremendous increase in surface area of the fat globules. The original fat globule membrane is lost and a new one is formed that incorporates a much greater portion of casein and whey proteins. This may account for the increased allergenicity of modern processed milk, and it has been linked to heart disease. I wont get into the yuckies this process may hide.

We've already touched on the cleanliness (or rather the lack thereof) aspect of the industrial dairy. Clean healthy whole raw milk necessitates a naturally healthy environment for the cows, and strict hygienic practices in milking. Modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization unnecessary for public protection. However, the shelf life of fresh tasting milk is limited, which is one of the real reasons for industrial pasteurization. Clean healthy whole raw milk must be used within about a week, unless it is intentionally left to sour in preparation for other dairy products.

Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer. [You might find it interesting that, as demonstrated in numerous studies, calves fed pasteurized milk die within 60 days.] Modern pasteurized milk, and especially the new ultra-pasteurized milk, devoid of its enzyme content, puts an enormous strain on the body's digestive mechanism, and can pass through not fully digested to clog the tiny villi of the small intestine, preventing the absorption of vital nutrients and promoting uptake of toxic substances. Many drink industry's low-fat milk primarily as a source of calcium, and are unaware (thanks to industry's tactics) that pasteurization makes insoluble the major part of the calcium contained in raw milk [phosphatase enzyme in milk necessary for the absorption of calcium is destroyed by pasteurization]. Of course the incongruity of the whole less-fat-is-good marketing tactic of the food processing industry is exemplified in the fortifying of low-fat and skim milk with fat-soluble vitamins??? Clean, healthy whole raw milk is a living food that naturally turns pleasantly sour providing additional dairy foods, but pasteurized milk is a dead food that only turns putrid. Outbreaks of salmonella from contaminated milk in recent decades (and there have been many) have verifiably occurred in pasteurized milk. This includes a 1985 outbreak in Illinois that struck 14,316 people causing at least one death. The salmonella strain in that batch of pasteurized milk was found to be genetically resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. Another is an extensive 2003 outbreak of staphylococcal food poisoning from pasteurized low-fat milk that occurred in the Kansai district in Japan. Of the far fewer actual incidents that have been attributed to raw milk, aside from the many proven fabrications, the vast majority either didn't differentiate between industrial raw milk (or the like) and clean healthy whole raw milk, or have been found by independent investigations to be lacking in conclusive evidence (i.e. industry biased health officials arriving at conclusions to support their stance). If you're familiar with the Hygiene Hypothesis, you might understand why we're losing the "war on bugs" in believing we can get a leg up on nature, and in this case why pasteurization is a ruse for greater corporate profits at the expense of our health. Healthy whole raw milk contains lactic-acid-producing bacteria that protect against pathogens. Pasteurization destroys these helpful organisms, leaving the finished product devoid of any protective mechanism should undesirable bacteria inadvertently contaminate the supply. To put it another way, the expressed purpose of pasteurization is to kill "germs," but the real purpose, in part, is to kill off the lactic acid bacilli to prevent natural souring and thus greatly extend the shelf-life of "fresh" milk, which in turn changes the whole health profile of milk. The other real purpose of pasteurization is to sidestep the costs of proper sanitation, and maintaining healthy dairy cows. Pasteurization is a poor substitute for good dairy farming.

Again, from the response by Sally Fallon [author of Nourishing Traditions] to a public health official:

The intrinsic safety of raw milk has been proven in several published reports showing that raw milk passes the “challenge test.” That is, when pathogenic bacteria are introduced to raw milk, their numbers rapidly decline; subsequent testing reveals no pathogens even though they were introduced in large numbers. For example, Lactoperoxidase in raw milk has been shown to kill added fungal and bacterial agents (Life Science 2000 66(25):2433-9; Indian Journal of Experimental Biology 1998;36:808-11).

The intrinsic safety components of raw milk are inactivated by pasteurization (Scientific American, December 1995; The Lancet, Nov 17, 1984), making pasteurized milk highly susceptible to contamination.

There is also mounting evidence that pasteurization is not in any way a foolproof means of eliminating pathogens. For example, in 1999, Czechoslovakian researchers Binderova and Rysanek showed that if pre‐pasteurization contamination is high, dangerous levels of L. monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 can survive high‐temperature, short‐time pasteurization. Various Bacillus and Clostridium species and Mycobacterium paratuberculosis may also survive pasteurization. Heat‐treatment can cause bacteria to enter into a state of dormancy from which they can potentially recover in the human intestine. This state of dormancy can cause typical laboratory culture techniques to underestimate the actual presence of E. coli in heat‐treated milk 100‐fold. These and other organisms can also contaminate milk after pasteurization. The production of cheese or other processed dairy products allows additional opportunities for contamination. So what's next, are we going to “nuke” our foodstuffs until they have absolutely no nutritional value?

Buttermilk was once the liquid left after butter was churned. Today, buttermilk is made commercially by adding special bacteria to nonfat or low-fat milk, giving it a slightly thickened texture and tangy flavor.

If you believe that drinking skim milk will help you lose weight, then you might ask a farmer why they use skim milk to fatten up livestock.

Industrial dairy products also contain many additives. To make their inferior skim and low fat milk more palatable, powdered skim milk, a source of dangerous oxidized cholesterol and neurotoxic amino acids, is added. When you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidized cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease. Low-fat yogurts and sour creams contain mucopolysaccharide slime to give them body. Butter from commercial fed cows contains colorings to make it look like vitamin-rich butter from grass-fed cows. Bioengineered enzymes are used in large-scale cheese production, and many mass produced cheeses contain additives and colorings. Imitation cheese products contain vegetable oils, and margarine is but one molecule from being plastic. Then, besides what is added in food processing, you are potentially consuming a small amount of antibiotic residues (albeit within FDA "safe levels"), because they are in most commercial cow fodder to fight off the high rate of diseases these cattle are susceptible to due to their treatment. [And to make matters worse science is now discovering that milk may help prevent potentially dangerous bacteria like Staphylococcus from being killed by antibiotics used to treat animals. Put this together with the evidence of pasteurization not in any way being foolproof, and you might begin to appreciate the argument that there is a big difference between healthy naturally pastured cows and industrial dairy cows.]

Doesn't it seem odd to you that the US has one of the highest intakes of dairy in the world, yet also has one of the highest rates of osteoporosis (and other degenerative problems)? Something doesn’t compute, and that something is in good part the milk most of us drink. The U.S. has one of the lowest intakes of clean, healthy whole raw milk, and dairy products from such, in the milk drinking world. Other food and life-style issues also contribute to our current chronic illness epidemic, but have you noticed that it began in the last century along with modern industry? Rest assured though, that modern industry will continue to offer new products to address the problems they created, or should I have said perpetuate the problems?

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Recalling the original question (i.e. Is Soda Pop or Milk healthier?), and having an appreciation for the use of language, you might be wondering by now if the unqualified word "Milk" isn't ambiguous, and possibly a bit deceptive ;o) Actually, the ambiguousness was intentional [that's all I'll admit to] to underscore what many today believe is milk with all the healthful qualities of the real thing (oops, those words belong to Coke).

It should be clear by now that industrial whole milk is only marginally more healthy than soda pop, albeit also more dangerous. As far as the dairy industry's "low-fat" product offerings versus diet soda pop, or sugary dairy concoctions versus soda pop, there is no clear winner as it's more of a matter of which is more harmful in differing ways. If one really wants a healthy body, then it might be best to avoid both soda pop and industrial milk ;o) In fact, there is substantial evidence that avoiding all industrial processed foods as much as possible, and pharmaceutical concoctions, is a major factor in promoting healthy bodies, but your doctor probably wont tell you that :o)))

Whether one drinks milk at all is a personal choice. The point herein is not to convince anyone to drink clean, healthy raw milk, but rather, as with my related articles, that true health can only be facilitated by getting beyond the industrial agenda based manipulation that permeates our society. Only with sufficient unbiased information, and free choice, can we begin to dig ourselves out of the destructive chronic illness plaguing our quality of life.


“Success, like war and like charity in religion, covers a multitude of sins.” -- Sir Charles Napier

 

I for one do drink milk, but after all I've said not industrial milk. The source of my milk is Klare, a happy, heallthy 3 year old purebred Guernsey as you can see. Say hello Klare :o)