Chapter 2
What Makes Cows So Important?
But raw milk from a Jersey cow is a totally different substance from what I’d thought of as milk. If you do not own a cow or know someone who owns a cow, I must caution you never to try raw milk straight from the teat of a Jersey cow, because it would be cruel to taste it once and not have access to it again. Only a few people in America remember this type of milk now, elderly people, mostly, who grew up with a cow.
So wrote Kristin Kimball in The Dirty Life, an account of her evolution from city girl to farmer. (In fairness, I will state here and now that other breeds are also capable of providing this transformative experience.)
• • • •
Nature’s Most Perfect Food
It still is. It has to be. Like all high-quality perishable foods, milk is best when fresh. Everyone is aware of the difference between fresh fish and fish kept for several days, even on ice. We all know the difference between fresh bread and the stale loaf. Anyone who has the opportunity to compare new-laid eggs with those kept in cold storage invariably notices the favorable difference. Few are now aware that the difference between ffresh and store-bought milk is of the same order. Home-produced milk varies in flavor due to seasonal and other factors, but you can count on a light, delicious, and fresh taste unknown in commercial milk. Store-bought milk has a cooked, lifeless taste with chemical undertones. The processing industry knows this but so far has dismissed criticism by saying, “People have gotten used to the taste of plastic.” I am not making this up.
If enough of us become reacquainted with the superior flavor and other important qualities of fresh milk, cream, and butter, processors will respond by improving quality and offering more choice in commercial dairy products, just as has occurred with bread. People in the last few decades, in open rebellion against the dismal quality of commercial bread, began baking at home. Commercial bakers quickly responded by offering better bread, and soon excellent niche bakeries sprang up.
There is now organically produced milk available commercially, and the brands I have tasted were markedly better in flavor than standard choices. At present the demand for organic milk is driven by a desire for milk from cows that have not received antibiotics, hormones, or feed supplemented with recycled waste. Surveys tell us that society’s current food goals are health and safety, the environment, animal care, and sustainability. Flavor has not so far entered the discussion. Organic dairies must perforce use harsh sanitizers, and the milk is sold in the same plastic-lined cartons as other milk. It is typically pasteurized and nearly always homogenized. The enzymes are destroyed and the fat globules cracked apart just as completely as in common commercial milk. I very much applaud the dairy farmers who produce milk organically and the families who buy it. It is a giant step forward in a renewed commitment to family health and family farms. Untreated (raw) milk in opaque glass bottles would be a logical next step to preserve both flavor and nutritive value. But unlike the consumer decision to make bread at home, there is a vast bureaucracy with beliefs chipped in stone defending the pasteurization (heat treatment) of milk. (There are no statutes requiring homogenization, but unhomogenized milk, heated or not, travels poorly. The cream gets lumpy, or even turns to butter.)
• • • •
Pasteurization
Pasteurized milk is heat-treated milk. Pasteurization is achieved by one of these three methods: heating milk to a rolling boil for one second, to 170°F (77°C) for 15 seconds, or to 150°F (66°C) for 30 minutes. The last method best preserves the flavor of the milk. Pasteurization inactivates all enzymes and destroys bacteria. Much milk is now ultrapasteurized, by heating it to 280°F for two seconds, which gives it a shelf life of at least six months.
If you serve your fresh milk to people who have not given the matter much study, you will soon encounter the prejudice against unpasteurized milk. Raw milk has been virtually unavailable in this country for three generations. Hesitancy to use it now amounts to a classic food taboo in that avoidance is both irrational and emotional.
No American child gets through school without encountering textbook material in praise of the pasteurization that “makes milk safe to drink.” No science course omits praise of Louis Pasteur, the father of bacteriology, the man who made possible modern medical practice. Those supporting pasteurization are able to take comfort in the assured approval of an important orthodoxy. Conversely, to question the necessity for this treatment is to be placed in a sometimes awkward position. One needs to understand the behavior of milk and of the bacteria that may (or may not) inhabit it in order to explain to critics the circumstances under which pasteurization is valuable and when it is destructive and unnecessary.
For the purpose of current commercial distribution of milk, pasteurization is an undoubted necessity. Not only does the dairy farmer pool milk from many cows under circumstances that make it impossible to avoid occasional contamination with fecal material, but this milk must be kept in a holding tank with milk from previous milkings, and it is warmed twice a day by the addition of new milk.
In some areas milk is collected only once a week by the milk tanker, although the more common practice is every other day. The tank driver is required to reject milk that is above a specified temperature (usually 45°F). In practice this is not always done, since some drivers do not have the heart to tell the farmer he or she must discard his or her milk when refrigeration fails. The driver knows the dairyman is already farming on the edge.
In terms of flavor, pooled milk even before it leaves the farm does not compare favorably with what you milk into your pail by hand. When I had a commercial dairy herd, I attempted to get around this problem for my own family by having the milk from a selected cow go straight from the milking machine into the household milk can; even this was not quite up to the quality of hand-milking into a bucket. The entire milking system must be washed with powerful disinfectants daily, and a trace of this finds its way into the milk. (When milking with your own one-cow machine the flavor is better protected.)
Most dairy farmers are meticulous and conscientious, and organic farmers especially so. But a few are not, and we all know examples of the difficulty of correcting the behavior of an offender in any field. It can be slow going. Some farmers, being warned that the bacterial count in their tank is creeping up, will pour chlorine bleach directly into the milk. There are some, despite warnings, who continue practices that allow cow dung to get into the milking machine. In some states there are dairies that milk several thousand cows and employ unskilled laborers with little personal stake in milk quality. Ultimately everybody’s milk joins company in the tanker. Transporting milk for long distances alters the flavor by speeding rancidity, or the oxidization of fat, which releases a cascade of free radicals. Agitated milk also goes sour more quickly due to the breakdown of lactose. Once the milk reaches the processing plant, it is further blended with milk from other tankers, providing a new field day for whatever bacteria are present. These are intractable problems, impossible to circumvent given today’s consolidation of dairying.
The bureaucratic empire that defends milk safety is understandably sensitive to the possibility of the outbreak of any milk-borne disease. Some once-common diseases are now rare. Brucellosis (also known as undulant fever or Bang’s disease) is one. Testing programs continue, but most states have been declared brucellosis free. If you were purchasing a cow in a state that is not brucellosis free, certainly no seller could object to your obtaining a test. Few states continue to test for bovine tuberculosis, as it is now nearly unknown in this country. Those states that border Mexico are at some risk, because Mexico continues to have infected cattle. A herd right on the border could conceivably become infected. If there is doubt in your area, testing can be ordered, though in most places your vet will tell you not to bother.
Some less dangerous organisms will always remain a concern because they are dirt- or saliva-borne. The bacteria Campylobacter jejuni has been implicated in a number of outbreaks of food poisoning that were traced back to raw milk; in more than one case schoolchildren were given samples of milk from the bulk tank during a field trip to a dairy. Many became ill with gastroenteritis, though none of the farm families were affected. As the Journal of Food Protection stated in 1983: “A wide variety of warm-blooded vertebrates have been infected by C. jejuni. This organism has been isolated from the intestinal tract and feces of humans, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and some wild birds. It has also been isolated from poultry meat, salt water, and fresh water. Rapid cooling of milk should prevent growth of C. jejuni and either cooking or pasteurization can be expected to kill it” (vol. 46, p. 7). Note that the organism resides in the gut. If found in milk, it is due to contamination from manure. Its presence in poultry meat results from messy high-speed slaughtering practices.
Salmonella and many species of staphylococcus and streptococcus can contaminate milk, whether from mastitis in the cow, dirt falling into the milk, or careless coughing by the milker. They can reach dangerous levels if the milk is not promptly chilled. These contaminants can just as easily enter milk and other dairy products after they are pasteurized. In fact, the majority of disease outbreaks reported in milk and milk products originate from ice cream and fresh cheese, not raw milk. In most years reported outbreaks due to dairy products are in the single numbers, while cases attributed to chicken number in the thousands. Salmonella poisoning can have serious consequences, including death in the very young, aged, or infirm. It is usually salmonella that sends people to the hospital after they eat inadequately cooked turkey stuffing or handle commercially slaughtered raw chicken.
E. coli O157:H7, an aberrant strain of a normal gut bacterium, has been identified in some commercial dairy herds, although it is more characteristic of feedlot beef cattle. If found in milk it is due to fecal contamination. Its presence in the bovine gut is closely associated with high rates of grain feeding.
A number of other communicable diseases affect cattle and can cause severe loss of production (see chapter 16, “Diseases and Disorders”) but do not affect humans. I have not encountered them in my own cow and rarely had any reported by my readers. Bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) or mad cow disease is discussed in chapter 16. Assurance of freedom from this and other diseases may be one of the reasons you have chosen to keep a cow.
All this makes it clear why commercial milk needs to be pasteurized. Otherwise it could be unsafe and would certainly be unusable.
When it comes to raw milk that is produced under hygienic and humane conditions, chilled promptly, and consumed shortly thereafter, pasteurization is unnecessary and, in fact, to the detriment of the consumer, who loses the benefit of beneficial bacteria, enzymes, and proteins. Milk contains a constellation of anti-microbial activities including lactoferrin, immunoglobulins (antibodies), lactoperoxidase, and lysozyme. Once soured by harmless or benign acid-loving bacteria, as during the making of yogurt or cottage cheese, or by ordinary room-temperature souring (clabbering) when exposed to air, the acidity goes to work on any harmful bacteria, which may have entered the milk during standing, knocking them out rapidly. During the aging of hard cheese they are also destroyed.
• • • •
Homogenization
As pasteurization increasingly made possible the resurrection of milk otherwise doomed, stopping bacterial growth in its tracks, a new problem evolved. Dairy economics dictated that the farmer, no longer in a position to make direct sales and stick the money in his pocket, must tool up for mass production and make it on volume. Formerly farmers, aided by wives and children, milked as many as sixteen cows twice a day by hand. Now ten times that many, nay, hundreds, can be done in the same time by machine. Unlike with hand milking, the machine does not know enough to stop when the udder is empty; overmilking predisposes to mastitis, an infectious inflammation of mammary tissue. With the best of intentions and constant rigorous preventive measures, it is nevertheless extremely difficult to completely prevent mastitis when cows are milked by machine. Mastitic milk is clotted and stringy and may contain antibiotics used to treat the infection. It is supposed to be thrown away, but sometimes it isn’t. When cows are marching through the milking parlor ten at a time, the herdsman may overlook the warning tags meant to alert him to discard the milk from that cow. The mastitic milk used to be given to pigs. Now departments of health in many areas have banned the keeping of pigs on the same farm with cows. Without pigs, the milk must be dumped. The people who inspect dairies are not well-paid public servants. Sometimes, if farmers are generous, inspectors may forget to report a high leukocyte count in the milk.
Leukocytes, or white blood cells, are part of the body’s defense system against infection. They are sacrificed in huge numbers “on site” when there is an infection. Their presence in milk is thought to cause not a health problem, but rather an aesthetic one. As described in chapter 1, after long standing, leukocytes settle down to the bottom of the milk and form a sludge that consumers not surprisingly find objectionable. Prior to the distribution of pasteurized milk in sterile containers, this was not an issue because milk went sour long before sediment developed. Moreover, the hand-milked product of a small dairy was unlikely to be mastitic. Homogenization solves the sludge problem by evenly distributing throughout the milk all the butterfat, leukocytes and other somatic cells, bacteria, and anything else. Although presented to the consumer as an improvement over old-fashioned methods because the milk is more uniform and seems creamier, homogenization, like pasteurization, is done to create an acceptable product using milk that would otherwise be rejected as undrinkable.
Homogenization has other pitfalls as well. The high pressure treatment breaks apart the fat globules exposing them to oxidation. Furthermore, the unnatural viscosity of homogenized milk leads many people to reject milk just because of the way it feels in their mouth.
Despite these objections, compared to juice, soft drinks, and soy imitations, pasteurized homogenized milk is a nutritional bonanza, especially if you can find nonhomogenized milk. And if fresh raw milk is available, there is just no comparison.
• • • •
Fat
I do not encourage the use of low-fat milk. If weight control is the objective, carbohydrate restriction is more effective. Cream is extremely valuable nutritionally. It contains all the vitamin A or beta-carotene in milk. Natural home-produced milk, particularly when the cow is on grass, is also an excellent source of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (specifically eicosapentaenoic acid). These fats are vitally important to health and are in short supply in most diets. They are essential to the integrity of the central nervous system and to normal hormone function. Cream also contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid with significant anticancer properties. CLA is found primarily in the fat of ruminants, including both meat and dairy products, and in particularly high levels in those ruminants that are grass-fed.
The fat in milk is valuable for another reason. In a country obsessed with weight control, it is easily forgotten that our first and most indispensable dietary requirement is for plain old calories. After that comes protein. In all babies and most of the ill or elderly, it is a physical impossibility to meet caloric requirements with carbohydrates and still have enough appetite to meet the protein requirement. The mere act of chewing can be fatiguing to those whose teeth haven’t all come in yet or have been carried off by age. On a diet of milk alone, as in infancy, milkfat (butterfat) efficiently meets the caloric requirement. With skim milk the intractable caloric requirement will be partially met by lactose (milk sugar, a carbohydrate) and then fulfilled by protein; the protein will be broken down for its calories and consequently will not be available for growth and body building. Whole milk, on the other hand, contains sufficient fat to efficiently meet the caloric requirement of the nursling, thus sparing protein for its role as body builder.
The vulnerability of babies to a low-fat diet is extreme. In a less dramatic fashion all of us, but especially those with special needs, face the same situation. Those of us with freedom to visit the kitchen and the supermarket rarely deny our bodies the fat for which it clamors. Let us be sure we eat and serve our families fat from natural sources such as cream and butter.
Another fat factor that is almost universally overlooked is the role of fat in calcium absorption. In the absence of fat, calcium cannot be absorbed.
Taking these facts into account, in my opinion low-fat and skim (fat-free) milk come close to being worthless. Well, not quite worthless; diluted 3-to-1 they make fantastic fertilizer. Your rose bushes will salute you.
• • • •
Lactose Intolerance
One reason many adults don’t get along well with milk is due to a lack of the enzyme lactase, which is necessary for its proper digestion. It has been seriously suggested that this is proof that nature never intended humans to consume milk after infancy.
Nutrient requirements at the level of cell metabolism are virtually the same for all living things, and cells are not known to make inquiries into the origin of the molecules they receive. In all traditional cultures, past or present, people ate whatever was at hand where they lived. In some instances the menu was mostly fatty meat, in some instances mostly fruits or vegetables; in no case has it been devoid of animal protein. The keeping of animals for milk was common practice north and south of the equator thousands of years before the beginning of arable farming (grain). As a result, many breeds of animals have a symbiotic or mutual relationship with humans. This is because they can eat tough, inedible (to us) vegetation and convert it into milk and meat. We in turn smooth the path of life for them. Goats and cattle are at least as important in human history as dogs and horses. To assert that the nutritious fluid known as milk, the basic ingredient of life-sustaining foods used around the world, is somehow an inappropriate food not “meant” to be eaten is a shallow view of humans and one that ignores universal reality.
The absence of lactase in adults is a phenomenon primarily associated with people whose ancestors lived in warm climates, such as those of Africa and South Asia. People from northern populations usually remain equipped with this enzyme throughout life. People in warm climates kept (and still keep) many breeds of animals for milk. Before refrigeration, milk in warm climates was commonly made into fermented milk products using a controlled population of benign bacteria. When milk is fermented, the consumer has no need to produce lactase, because the bacteria do the job of splitting lactose, or milk sugar, the culprit that causes gas. Consequently there was no need for these populations to retain an adaptation for splitting lactose. Fermented or cultured milk products are properly highly valued for nutrition and flavor. People who find fresh milk troublesome should use these cultured milk products, which include yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, and cheese. The great majority of lactose-intolerant people have no difficulty digesting raw milk because, cultured or not, it contains plenty of the appropriate beneficial bacteria.
• • • •
Calcium
No other food commonly available in the American diet adequately takes the place of milk as a source of calcium. Vegetable and cereal sources are simply not reliable in providing calcium, because the calcium they contain is chelated (combined into indigestible form) and passes on through. Because of this fact, charts showing the calcium content of plant foods are essentially meaningless. Charts report the presence of the mineral, not its availability. Such charts have encouraged many people to trust, for instance, broccoli as a calcium source. No vegetables readily give up their calcium, and many actually grab additional calcium from the human gut. Further, fat is necessary for the uptake of calcium. Fat occurs naturally in whole milk but is often absent from vegetable and cereal preparations. The calcium in whole milk is readily absorbed, having been put there expressly to build bone. Yes, in the case of cow’s milk it was put there to build calf bone. But any milk will do a pretty fair job of building bone for any other species. The similarities in milk from various species are more significant than the differences. Calcium is best absorbed from whole raw milk.
The diet of every successful human group has included some generous source of available calcium: for the Japanese, it was small fish eaten whole; for the Eskimo, little birds pickled and eaten whole and the stomach contents of large fish-eating animals; for the Indians of central California, flour made of dried grasshoppers. Persons with allergies to milk for whom such choices are unavailable or unappetizing need to find some other calcium source. Bone broth, especially if made with something acidic like wine, which dissolves calcium, is a good choice. And persons who tend not to tolerate milk often find that they do not have such difficulty with raw milk.
• • • •
Food Allergies
Food allergies are caused by microscopically small particles of incompletely digested proteins passing through the gut wall and entering the bloodstream, where they trigger an allergic response in a previously sensitized individual. The response can take many forms, and its intensity is unpredictable, varying with the nutritional state of the victim and often worsening under conditions of stress. In the case of milk, the nutrients of which are difficult to replace with other foods, every effort should be made to overcome the allergy. Often the switch to untreated (raw) milk is effective; if not, then buttermilk, yogurt, or other cultured dairy products can often be tolerated.
Some allergy sufferers are so exquisitely sensitive that components in foods such as soy (a common allergen) in the diet of the cow will affect them by passing through into the milk. By controlling the diet of your cow, you can provide such individuals with “designer” milk. Many people who believe themselves to be allergic to milk or lactose intolerant actually are responding to accidental inclusions in commercial milk. Besides items in dairy feed, iodophors used to clean milk pipelines or chemicals leached from plastic milk containers may be the real culprits behind dairy intolerance. (You can’t escape plastic by switching to cardboard containers; they are lined with it.)
Keith Woodford, author of Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk, makes a persuasive case that a recently identified casein protein in the milk of many modern cows is the cause of milk intolerance (see here for more discussion). Many disorders attributed to allergies may be a reaction to this casein fragment, and it is common in commercial milk. So don’t give up on milk forever just because you or a member of your family has had trouble with it in the past. You can test yourself (or your family member) for sensitivity to this particular protein, and you can test any cow you’re thinking of raising to make sure it does not produce milk with this casein.
Historic accounts make it clear that there have always been people with allergies. However, the presence now in our population of large numbers of people with cow’s milk and other allergies is thought to be due, at least in part, to the practice of formula feeding of infants. This is a modern phenomenon. Formerly almost all babies were fed mother’s milk. When this is done, allergies are rare.
• • • •
The Question of Atherosclerosis
What about the belief that milk drinking predisposes to atherosclerosis? This artery-clogging disease was little known before the twentieth century; its incidence has risen in concert with increased consumption of sugar and vegetable oils, progressive depletion of vitamin E and omega-3 fatty acids in foods, and the creation of artificial fats by hydrogenation (trans fats). The per capita consumption of milk, butterfat, and animal fat from all sources dropped steadily throughout this period. This fact can be confirmed by consulting the clear graphs printed in the annual yearbooks published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is thus highly illogical to place the blame for heart disease on milk or any other animal product. An increasing number of researchers and clinicians recognize this. The role of sugar as villain now has many adherents. Among the first to make the case against sugar was the noted British scientist John Yudkin, who repeatedly complained that sugar interests blocked publication of his remarks. Strong support for dairy products also comes from important sources in the United States. Dr. Roger Williams, discoverer of the vitamin pantothenic acid, considered that avoidance of dairy products as a defense against heart disease was foolish indeed. In his book Nutrition Against Disease, he presented an extensive review and analysis of current theory on the causes of heart disease. This is no simple matter, since many nutrients are involved. A few factors emerge clearly, and perhaps of foremost interest to the consumer of dairy products is that despite enormous publicity regarding the avoidance of animal fat and concern over exogenous cholesterol (that which is obtained from food), heart disease has not been controlled by the avoidance of dairy foods.
Vegetable Oils
The substitution of vegetable oils for animal fats brings its own hazards while being useless in the control of heart disease. According to Williams, except in the presence of adequate vitamin B6, vegetable oils have been shown to actually predispose to atherosclerotic lesions. Clarified and deodorized oils, as they are commonly sold, are heated to a high temperature for several hours and are probably dangerous to use.
Nutrition authorities have ceased to recommend most oils due to their propensity to develop free radicals, long recognized as carcinogens. When hardened into margarine or shortening, oils are altered into an unnatural form of saturated fat. When only partially hardened, they form trans fats. Trans fats have been proven to interfere with important metabolic functions and are harmful. These chemically altered fats are preferred by processors because at room temperature they are not runny and greasy like oil, when cold they are not hard like real butter, and they are cheap to manufacture.
Research on cholesterol and animal fat as factors in heart disease has now been abandoned as a dry well. Reluctant to admit error, around 1990 diet gurus switched to counseling against all fats, thus avoiding uncomfortable discussion of the rapidly emerging evidence against fats of vegetable origin.
Williams cites numerous studies of human groups subsisting on diets extremely high in animal fats (including butterfat) and protein. These groups are virtually free of heart disease. They include the inhabitants of the Loetschental Valley in the Valaisian Alps of Switzerland, the primitive Eskimo, and the African herdsman tribes (Masai, Somali, Samburu), who live almost entirely on milk and meat.
The reader interested in further details and an outstanding bibliography is urged to obtain a copy of Nutrition Against Disease. Williams was a scientist with a lifetime of research in nutrition. His books and work have been the inspiration for many other scientists, including Linus Pauling. He is but one of many who never subscribed to the theory that dietary cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease.
Applying Logic to Nutritional Claims
Except for olive oil, I rarely use vegetable oils. The use of vegetable oils in the quantities found in modern foods is unprecedented in human history. Their use constitutes a major dietary experiment carried out on a public now badly confused by false advertising. A few facts are indisputable:
1. The consumption of sugar increased steadily throughout the twentieth century and remains at an all-time high in the twenty-first century. It is augmented by the use of high-fructose corn syrup.
2. Our consumption of fats of vegetable origin is the most rapid change in human diet ever known. The average intake now stands at about one cup per day for each American. The processing received by milk is gnat’s breath compared to what vegetable oils endure, yet oils and oil products are permitted to be labeled “all natural.”
3. The incidence of heart disease and cancer has risen in a matching curve with the use of vegetable oils.
4. The consumption of fats of animal origin has fallen steadily since about 1890. Use of animal fats follows an inverse curve to the incidence of heart disease and cancer; animal fats down, disease up.
5. The argument that we are now seeing more degenerative disease because of increased longevity, rather than dietary and other changes, doesn’t hold up. This belief is due to widespread misunderstanding of where those numbers come from. Life expectancy is normally figured based on the total population of people born. In previous times, infant and childhood mortality rates were high, and these numbers skewed life expectancy figures downward. Yet a person who survived childhood was likely to live a good long while. The twentieth century produced a notable drop in infant mortality. When you correct life expectancy figures for this, using only deaths of people past early childhood, at most we see a couple of years, if any, added to modern life expectancy rates. Think of it this way: If I turn in ten spelling tests to my third-grade teacher and get 100 percent on each, my average score is 100. But if she refuses to count five of them because she can’t read my writing—in other words, five of them die in infancy—my average score drops to 50. I’m not a great hand at math (or spelling), but I’m astonished at how many people are confused by this. Last Christmas our vicar declared that the Virgin Mary was already middle-aged, her life half over, when she conceived at age fourteen because she lived in an era when the life expectancy was thirty years.
6. The incidence of obesity bears virtually no relationship to the consumption of animal fats. It is, in fact, related to the consumption of carbohydrates. This fact was never lost upon farmers, who have always used grains to fatten animals. The fact that obesity results from overconsumption of carbohydrates is increasingly being recognized by the general public as a result of several popular books by nutrition writers with grounding in biochemistry and endocrinology.
The campaign against dairy foods and other animal products is motivated by something other than fact.
The remaining critics of fresh dairy products are certain to fade before the mounting evidence, not just of their safety, but also of their positive importance as a source of available calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, long-chain fatty acids, essential amino acids, anti-stress factors and enzymes, fat-soluble vitamins, and undegraded (undamaged) protein. And let’s not overlook flavor.
Babies Require Cholesterol, and Some Other Interesting Facts
Babies and children require cholesterol. Without it they don’t thrive and their central nervous system is imperiled. If fed a low-cholesterol diet, their bodies respond by rapidly generating cholesterol. Animal studies have shown that this results in the body’s cholesterol handling system becoming permanently deranged. Studies of older people have revealed greater longevity among those who did not avoid cholesterol; avoiders had a disproportionately high incidence of cancer.
The naturally occurring fatty acid CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) found in the milk and fat of grazing ruminants, and to a limited extent in products from confined cows, has been shown to act as an anticarcinogen in animal studies. It is speculated that CLA may be the agent responsible for the lower incidence of breast cancer in women who are habitual milk drinkers.
• • • •
Why Doesn’t the Dairy Industry Tell Us Any of This?
One may well ask why the National Dairy Council (a promotional organization) or the Dairy Farmers of America (a marketing group) does not arm itself with some of this evidence and fight back against the processed food industry that has flooded the market with fake foods under the specious anticholesterol banner. This question has puzzled me for years. Some people apparently assume that dairymen have fought back, for in health magazines and trendy books on diet the authors often encourage readers to forget the “dire threats by the dairy industry.” I’ve been waiting for just such a show of indignation by dairymen for years but have seen only vapid pictures of apple-cheeked children or celebrities drinking skim milk in their generic advertisements. Dairy farming has been a captive industry since the 1930s, when the first great wave of regulations and subsidies began. The processors soon had dairy farmers in their grip. Now major processors of milk products also market imitation dairy foods. These fake products are advertised right on their butter wrappers.
Processors lack motivation to provide the facts on the poor nutritional value of low-fat (skim) milk because the absent cream is directed to the manufacture of ice cream, a value-added product. Casein (a milk protein extracted from Grade B milk), surplus Grade A milk, and whey solids are found in countless processed foods. Casein and whey have escaped their identity as dairy products and are now “commodities,” thus freeing them for unrestricted use in processed foods. They are freed also from restrictions imposed on real dairy products. Unlike brand-name products, real foods such as milk, meat, fruits, and vegetables can only be advertised generically. The real money is in processed foods.
Dairy farmers themselves have virtually no influence on what is done with milk once it leaves the farm. They have no influence on claims made for or against milk. They have never successfully organized. Many seem oblivious to the larger issues. They do their best in their fourteen-hour day.
• • • •
Jersey and Holstein Milk Compared
Jersey milk is creamier than that of most other cows; it is also better endowed with every ingredient except water. Ah, yes, water. I once read that when state restrictions in the early part of the twentieth century made it illegal for farmers to water down their milk, they reacted by breeding a cow that would do it for them. The cow they developed was the Holstein-Friesian, the familiar black and white. Her milk is 3.0 to 3.9 percent butterfat (now referred to as milkfat), close to the legal minimum for whole milk, compared with 6.0 percent for many Jerseys. The ratios for protein, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and all the other minerals track fairly closely with fat. This means that if for every two cups of Jersey milk you were to add one cup of water, you’d get Holstein milk. Without partial skimming, Jersey milk is actually too creamy for the taste of some people. So if you have a Jersey cow, you’ll have plenty of cream left over for making butter.
I have used the Jersey here for purposes of comparison. The Guernsey, Devon, Dexter, and a number of other breeds and crosses approximate and sometimes exceed the Jersey in milk solids.
• • • •
Value of Raw (Untreated) Milk
Once your household becomes accustomed to the fresh dairy products you will be serving them, no further recommendation than the delicious flavors will be necessary. But there are more advantages to raw milk. The bone-building nutrients in raw (unheated) milk are more fully absorbed in the gut. Several very important nutrients, including pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and vitamin C, are damaged or destroyed by heating. Fresh milk is a significant source of vitamin C, whereas store-bought milk has virtually none. Riboflavin, a B vitamin essential to growth and eyesight, is found in few foods besides milk. It is extremely fugitive, being quickly destroyed by light and heat, and so it is present only at greatly reduced levels in commercial supplies stored in lighted cases.
Heat changes protein in a way that causes it to be less valuable to the human body. Several important amino acids, including tryptophan, lysine, and methionine, are progressively broken down when milk is heated.
Even though pasteurization does not cause complete loss of nutrients, why lose any if not necessary? Fresh milk as it comes from the cow has vitality. It contains useful enzymes. One of these enzymes, called the Wulzen antistiffness factor, is entirely destroyed by pasteurization. When I returned last spring to my farm after a winter away I was stiff in every joint. After three months on fresh milk I noted scarcely a twinge. I’m inclined to give much of the credit to Wulzen. Following heat treatment (pasteurization), milk contains few of these active principles, even when organically produced.
If the cow is on good pasture, milk also contains an array of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, those essential fats otherwise available in high-priced capsules. These fats, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), are also available from deep-sea fish such as salmon. Omega-3 fatty acids are believed to be capable of dramatically lowering the risk of heart disease. Yet their absence from dairy products, beef, and eggs is often cited as a reason to avoid these foods. Nevertheless, like CLA, omega-3s are absent from animals raised primarily on grains; they are not absent from animals raised on a natural outdoor diet. (Some EPA survives the heating of milk, meat, and eggs from grazing animals but it is unlikely that any survives homogenization.) Critics of animal foods including dairy products would be better advised to campaign for more natural feeding practices, not avoidance of vital foods.
The active principles in raw foods such as milk are mostly destroyed following heat treatment. So it is important that a significant part of the diet of both people and animals be raw foods. Ideally, every meal should include something raw. This can be difficult to achieve—unless you have a cow. Experiments with animals observed over several generations have demonstrated the impossibility of even keeping the subjects alive without the inclusion of raw food in the diet. Such experiments have had to be terminated because of reproductive failure or cannibalism.
There are few recent studies on the comparative performance in the diet of heated (pasteurized) versus unheated (raw) milk. The bright graduate student interested in carving a place for him- or herself among the scientific archives prefers to write his or her thesis on something that has assured support. And the choice of a research subject is guided by the professor under whom the student is working. The choice will usually be an ancillary aspect of the professor’s own work, and something for which grant money is available. There is hardly any grant money available in departments of dairy industry for work on the classic dairy products, let alone raw milk. A lot of money is available for food technology in its various aspects, such as the control of off flavors of food sold in aerosol cans. If we require further proof of the virtues of untreated milk, we shall probably have to rely upon fallout from research in other areas of study. For instance, there is new scientific awareness of the significance of enzymes in food, especially in conditions of stress. Fresh raw milk is a rich enzyme source.
Probiotics may be another field in which research money is to be found. Support for the immune system is provided by benign bacteria found in raw milk, particularly milk soon after it comes from the cow. Some of these friendly bacteria, known as probiotics, have remarkable disease-fighting properties. They line the gut wall and induce the production of cytokines such as gamma interferon, which has potent defense capabilities. Research interest in probiotics is intense. To date it appears to be focused on isolated strains of lactobacillus, which are added to juice or milk formulas intended to provide protection against yeast infections. Interest in raw milk itself has not so far been a theme of this research, although hatcheries are now misting baby chicks with whey, which has been found to protect them against coccidiosis.
The active factors in raw milk no doubt help account for the “bloom” that distinguishes the cow-fed calf from the artificially fed calf, and which is also to be seen in the complexions of the fresh-milk family. This bloom is the glow of health.
I once knew a family with eleven children that lived eighty years ago in an isolated area of Maine long before convenience foods. They seemed to live most of the year on nothing but home-baked beans and the milk from their cow. They were all magnificently healthy and had excellent teeth. I wonder if their descendants look as good.
• • • •
Good Bone Structure Is No Accident
Within the strident propaganda against animal fat and other animal products, all of which focuses on degenerative disease, the importance of growth and development has been ignored. Evaluation of bone structure and muscular development among young people seems a forgotten art. No amount of tooth brushing will straighten children’s teeth, yet the teeth of children raised on the milk from their family cow are always straight. I’m making this rather sweeping statement because I have never run into any exceptions. I have had letters from readers describing the freedom from decay their family enjoys now that they keep a cow. And I have raised a large family with straight teeth, legs, and shoulders.
• • • •
Environmental Impact of the Dairy Cow
The belief that cattle have an adverse environmental impact and compete with humanity for food—first introduced by Frances Moore Lappé in her book Diet for a Small Planet—is without foundation. Nonetheless, this belief has now assumed almost mythic status and has resulted in compromised health among caring people attempting to do their part for the planet by avoiding beef and dairy products. Chapter 9, “Feeding Your Cow,” should make clear the irrational basis of this belief.
Lappé also set forth the attractive but equally unsubstantiated theory that combinations of plant foods called “complementary proteins” are the nutritional equivalent of animal products. My search of the literature and queries to researchers have so far failed to discover any valid source for this attractive but overly facile theory. The bibliography in Diet for a Small Planet lists two books as research sources for the complementary protein concept. Neither reference actually contains the least corroboration for the idea. Yet the presumed adequacy of a plant-based diet remains the ultimate fallback position for every anti-animal-product argument.
Feedlot fattening of cattle, a man-made evil, has been used to condemn the entire bovine species. It is not the fault of cattle if they are bunched together, they are fed a lot of grain, and their manure is allowed to contaminate the environment. Our environment and family health are both best served by small farms or individually owned animals. The efficiency of this model withstands any analysis that compares energy in versus energy out.
There is a Chinese proverb that says:
I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.
If you still have doubting friends, invite them over to share a day with you and your family cow. They’ll begin to understand.