Homo-phobia
OK. Before you call out the P.C. Police, I’m talking about milk. Nearly every day I get calls from people asking me to buy raw milk from our organic farm.
When I tell them that it’s illegal to sell raw milk in Florida for human consumption, they start with their “wink, wink, why don’t you sell it to me as pet food?” talk. We even hear about “ cow-sharing” and other ways to circumvent the raw mik laws.
Not only do I not advocate breaking the law, I’m just not so sure how safe raw milk is or if I would want to drink it, let alone sell it to humans. The real and concrete good science still makes me err on the side of caution, which includes pasteurization.
Raw milk is frequently promoted as a “health food,” by highly publicized raw milk advocates, especially to those who are already ill or have compromised immune systems, such as patients with cancer or AIDS. Real science shows that the added stress piled onto the immune system from bacteria that can be in raw milk can be too much for an already compromised human being, let alone a healthy one. Moreover, salmonella dublin often found in raw milk can be enough to put someone who is already ill into a critical health state.
The real truth is that the farmer’s wife was boiling her milk long before agribusiness started pasturizing the stuff. In fact, farmer’s wives were often labeled lazy when their children ended up sick from milk that had not been boiled. Countries without agribusiness as enormous as the USA still boil their milk today recognizing the need for safety.
What the farmer’s wife didn’t do is create a fatty amalgamate by homogenization that had a long shelf life, hence a larger profit. Dr. Kurt A. Oster’s studies from the 1960s to the 1980s suggest that homogenized milk is a major factor in plaque formation, causing heart disease. Atherosclerosis begins with a small wound or lesion in the wall of the artery. Oster reasoned that the initial lesion was caused by the loss of plasmalogen from the cells lining the artery, leading to the development of plaque. He believed that the enzyme xanthine oxidase (XO) has the capacity to oxidize, or change, plasmalogen into a different substance, making it appear that the plasmalogen had disappeared. Heart disease didn’t skyrocket until they started messing with the fat. Oster theorized that the homogenization of milk somehow increased the biological availability of xanthine oxidase. Oster asserted that XO is found on the membrane of the fat globules in milk. Homogenization, on the other hand, would encapsulate the XO, so that it would not be digested in the stomach and intestines, but would enter the bloodstream through the intestinal wall where it causes its damage.
Surprised? Call me pragmatic but I’m just not shocked. I do recognize the benefits of a non-homogenized milk product pasteurized slowly at a very low temperature, which I happily and legally sell to customers. In my opinion, there is a happy medium, one where clean milk meets healthy milk; all grass fed milk without homogenization suits our very Pragmatic Organic lifestyle just fine.
Why am I afraid of homogenization? It’s very simple. I have cream on top of my milk in little glass bottles at my house. Remember that? Milk straight from the cow contains cream, which rises to the top. Homogenization breaks up the fat globules and evenly distributes them throughout the milk so that they do not rise. Again, it’s our palate for creamy long shelf life products that has landed us in trouble.
While the jury is still out for most people on homogenization, I will continue to drink and cook with non-homogenized pasteurized milk. Non-homogenized milk is milk that is closer to its natural state while still being relatively free of the bacteria that low heat pasteurization eliminates. To me, that’s less to be afraid of.
