Q: Why are people allergic to milk?

A: That's the big important piece of information that the public doesn't know. In general, there isn't anything in milk that a large percentage of the population is allergic to...until we start changing it and altering it, otherwise known as homogenization and pasteurization.

Raw milk shouldn't be called raw milk, it should only be called milk . Nobody ever calls the broccoli that they buy in the store raw broccoli, or cauliflower, raw cauliflower. They just say broccoli and cauliflower, and if you cook it, you say it's cooked . Well, we shouldn't say raw milk, we should say milk if it's raw and cooked milk instead of pasteurized (because you are basically bringing up the temperature that is starting to cook it). When you do that you destroy all the enzymes that are in the milk, and you also denature some of the proteins.

Pasteurization alters the milk. A lot of people are intolerant of some of the changes that have occurred in this food that otherwise wouldn't have bothered them. From my own impromptu research with a couple of thousand students and patients over many years, approximately 8 out of every 10 people who have a problem with milk or dairy, do not have the problem when it is consumed RAW. Pasteurized dairy causes one of a variety of problems depending on the person, and people do not realize that they do not have a problem with raw milk, they only have a problem after it's been pasteurized and homogenized. So milk is not necessarily the issue. A lot of people know that they are lactose intolerant which is the sugar that occurs in milk. Lactose intolerance is not a milk allergy. It doesn't mean milk is not good for them. It simply means that the milk sugar, which is called lactose, can't be properly assimilated by the body because the lactase enzyme is either not there or is in an insufficient amount and therefore causes a problem. Lo and behold Mother Nature knows that the human body generally doesn't do well with lactose. So she put plenty of lactase into the milk so it wouldn't cause a problem, but we kill it all by pasteurizing the milk. Most people who are lactose intolerant can handle raw milk (as long as they don't use it to cook with). When you cook with raw milk, you are raising the temperature even higher than the heat of pasteurization, so obviously, it is no longer RAW.

Other people have a problem with denaturing of the protein in the milk, which, of course, does not occur until it is heated. This is another reason why people who otherwise could handle raw milk have a problem with pasteurized milk.

Raw milk, in general, is much higher in quality than pasteurized milk because the cows are much healthier. What the public also doesn't realize is that the bacteria is still in the pasteurized milk, it's just dead bacteria, and, of course, that's not good for us either. It's toxic. Killing something (bacteria) doesn't make it go away, it just makes it dead.

I interviewed the owners of 3 dairies that have their milk pasturized. They agree that raw milk is much healthier and that is what they feed their own families!

The two raw milk dairies that I know of in California , Organic Pastures and Claravale, predominantly grass feed their animals, which mean that the animals are feeding on more of what nature wanted them to eat. They're not being given grain, such as corn or other grains. Dairies feed their animals grain because it makes the cows produce more milk and it's far too expensive to have sufficient land to enable the cows to be herded around to new pastures every few weeks for new grass. It also costs a great deal of money to be irrigating enough to grow adequate grass in dry areas like California. When the cows eat up all the grass in one pasture, you have to move them to another pasture and keep rotating them. It's simply very expensive. It's much easier to keep them in one place and feed them corn or some other grain twice a day. That's not what cows were meant to eat so they're not as healthy. A good quality, raw dairy will have them eating mostly grass and will supplement the grass with maybe some alfalfa hay, but not grains. Grass fed cows don't have many health problems. Generally, if you have a good quality, raw milk, I believe it is a very healthy food (unless somebody truly has a milk allergy and it causes a problem). I don't want anybody to eat a food that they think is causing them a problem no matter what it is...even if it is the best food in the world.

I do recommend raw dairy products to my patients and to my students, unless they tell me even the raw milk causes them a problem, which is not too often. So the big issue with milk is not whether milk is good for us or milk is bad for us, but the public doesn't understand milk is not milk is not milk. There are all sorts of different types of milk and a lot of varieties of cows out there. Almost all of them in the dairy farms that are not organic are given B.S.T. hormones to make them produce milk for a longer period of time than they're naturally supposed to.

In general, I think most people would probably benefit by adding some good quality, raw dairy to their diet. A lot of people don't get enough protein, but I don't require it.

The other big argument that I often hear is somebody will say that cow's milk was meant for little cows just like human milk was meant for humans . We've decided all sorts of fruits, vegetables, and meats are good for us. Some people selectively pull milk out and say it is obvious that milk was made for baby calves because it comes out of cows and it's not meant for humans. I could just as easily say it's obvious that we are not supposed to fly or we would have been given wings and we're not supposed to use electricity or it would have been put on this planet long before we would have figured it out, so it's a very poor argument that milk from cows was meant only for calves. Maybe fruits and vegetables are really meant for birds and insects but not for humans?

This was an interview with David Getoff , Traditional Naturopath, Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist and Vice President of Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation

http://www.price-pottenger.org/health_tips.htm

(Note: I culture my milk because it has less milk sugar. The sugar in milk, like any sugar, feeds yeast/candida. —Bev)

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