Is it OK to Admit that Raw Milk Scares Me?
Is your head spinning with claims and counter-claims about the world's most complete food? Yeah, mine too. Let's sort it out together.
We’re a two-and-a-half-gallon-per-week family, and climbing. Four little boys, no identified lactose issues, and a Wisconsin zip code — it is GAME ON.
We’re thisclose to getting a milk fridge.
So, for anything we’re consuming THAT much of as a family, I’d better make sure it’s truly nourishing, right? I could go on and on about the benefits of milk, but someone else has done that for me quite well, so go check this out and come right back:
What’s In My Milk?
That article covers the myriad options we have when buying milk well beyond choosing between whole and 2%. It’s a whole universe of different sourcing and processing options. Grass-fed cows vs conventional cows, A2 vs A1 casein, low/high/ultra-high temp pasteurization — these all strongly affect the nutritional content of the milk we drink.
Said another way, the cow inputs matter, and the way the milk is handled on its way from the farm to the milk jug matters as well. And, wouldn’t you know, raw milk from grass-fed cows has a much better nutritional profile than any other milk, and it’s not even close.
Pasteurization destroys many nutrients, and worse, the ones that are retained become less bioavailable due to the destruction of enzymes like lipase, lactase, and phosphatase — all of which help us digest, absorb, and utilize things like Calcium, Vitamin D, whey, and casein.
Remember the orchestra analogy from the flour article? Post-pasteurization milk is a few kindergartener recorders discordantly tooting together compared to raw milk’s orchestra.
Where Raw Milk Loses Me
And here’s the rub. I want the best for my family, but there are two substantial things in my way:
Raw milk is illegal in Wisconsin (I know, right?). There ARE ways of getting it, but only if I’m willing to seek it out and, in my case, pay $14/gallon.
Raw milk scares me.
Now, I realize some of this fear is rational and some of this is not.
Reading the FDA page on raw milk is the stuff of nightmares. Lots of death and diarrhea and generally dunking (:snerk:) on the nutritional benefits of raw milk.
Let’s just say I don’t take the FDA at face value. Much more to be said about that, obviously, but I’m not exactly looking to them or the CDC to give me unbiased information about anything relating to health.
The “Real Milk” brigade has a rebuttal of that FDA page on their website. I have to admit: though I’m 100% convinced of the nutritional superiority, I’m not as convinced of the safety.
While my head’s spinning with statistics and counter-statistics from both sides, I’m reminded of this quote I first read in a delightful little parody book called Life’s Little Destruction Book:
If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bull***.
…And I’m feeling baffled. I can’t follow all the numbers, read between the lines to see what’s honest reporting and what’s skewed, or know where the flaws were in the studies. What’s that quote about lies, damned lies, and statistics?
Making Sense of It All
How much do I trust that one farm where I’d be sourcing my milk? What should it take to establish that trust? Anecdotes? A tour? Some report from some “trusted” agency? A pinky swear?? I just don’t know.
And that is unsettling.
It’s one thing to try something myself that might make me sick — but it’s another thing entirely to feed it to my kids.
My two options:
Feed my family something I know is nutritionally deficient but almost certainly won’t harm them… and is something we can afford
Feed my family something incredibly nourishing but constantly worry whether I’m rolling the dice with their health
No surprise, I’ve chosen option 1. For now.
Admittedly, the range of sub-options within Option 1 are myriad. The post I linked above does a brilliant job of outlining these. I asked my robot friend, Grok, for a summary of the effects of pasteurization on milk vs raw milk:
Is Grok right? It passes the smell test for me. Unsaturated fats, enzymes, proteins, and vitamins are affected by heat — it’s the degree to which they’re affected that’s disputed.
My Compromise
Trader Joe’s sells whole organic pasteurized milk for $6.79/gal (up from $6.49 just a few weeks ago, ugh) and that’s what we’ve been getting since I had my initial shock the system last summer:
Is it the best milk available to us? In some ways, yes. It’s relatively affordable (still twice as expensive as conventional) and it’s not actively nutritionally harmful. To my knowledge.
Are the cows living their best lives? Probably not. The “organic” label probably gives me more confidence in the product than it should. I’m not going to poke that bear right now.
All the organic grass-fed milk available to me here is UHT, so regular ol’ pasteurized organic whole milk seems like a good middle ground. Decent fat profile (omega 3:6 ratio is not as good as grass-fed but better than conventional), and the pasteurization preserves more of the nutrition than UHT would.
So, that’s us. For now.
I might email our local farm some questions. Maybe go on a field trip. Who knows — maybe I’ll become a raw milk convert. Or maybe I’ll just keep wrestling.
If you’ve made it this far, it’s safe to assume that you, too, care about making the best food choices for your family. God has called us to care for our families, to use wisdom and discernment for their flourishing. This kind of decision is so personal and necessarily looks different for everyone in every season of life.
I’d love to hear — what milk are you buying these days? Are you team Raw Milk? Organic? Grass-fed? UHT? Let me know in the comments!!
A resource to consider in helping to deconstruct this issue is the Raw Milk Institute - rawmilkinstitute.org. The Institute has developed a "Common Standards" framework for raw milk producers, which includes guidelines for herd health, cleanliness, testing for pathogens, and milk handling. They also offer a "Listed Farmer" program where producers can voluntarily submit to regular testing and audits to demonstrate compliance with safety standards.
Hi Grace. Dairy and milk especially can be such a polarizing topic as some also believe that we should not be consuming the milk of another mammal. But raw milk is a whole other thing...let me just say, I have never been a milk fan just because I never liked the flavor of it although it was something that I craved when I was pregnant with my son..And being from Canada, raw milk is illegal. When we moved to Texas a couple years ago, and I found out I could get raw milk, I thought why not give it a try. Raw milk is full of great bacteria for our gut as well as enzymes and nutrients that are not erased in the heating process. We get ours from a local farm that does test for a low coliform count. So we tried it and I liked it. It just had more flavor and was thicker, which I liked..Raw milk has shown although anecdotally, to help with allergies and skin issues by healing the gut. Obviously if raw milk is not available, my suggestion is to opt for whole milk with more fat content for easier digestion. All cows are grass fed at some point so that is just a marketing ploy and organic is hard to determine if the farm beside you sprays their crops. I always like to try to source local, ask questions to help ease your mind and just go with what serves you and your family best.