Dairy

Problem: To pasteurize milk, workers heat it to 160 degrees for 45 minutes. This heating process not only kills bad bacteria, it also kills good bacteria, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. and alters the milk proteins, fatty acids, and amino acids. It destroys 50% of calcium, 50% of magnesium, 66% of vitamin A, 60% of vitamin B-complex (including folic acid), 50% of vitamin C, 66% of vitamin D, 90% of enzymes, and 95% of amino acids, altering the remaining 5% of amino acids. The resulting lack of enzymes means that those people whose bodies don't produce lactase (the digestive enzyme necessary to digest the milk sugar lactose) on their own cannot consume dairy products (termed lactose intolerance). Furthermore, the altered milk proteins cause dairy allergies in many people.

Problem: Homogenization breaks up whole milk's large butterfat globules into tiny particles that are easily suspended in the milk. This results in milk that doesn't need to be stirred and has a longer shelf life. However, because the resulting fat molecules are so small, they easily pass through the intestinal wall directly into the blood stream, where they build up as plaque inside arteries.

Problem: Today's dairy farmers inject their cows with antibiotics and growth hormones that unnaturally raise milk production from 500 pounds a year to 3,000 pounds a year. The milk produced by these cows is itself laced with hormones, which are often blamed for early onset of puberty, and antibiotics.

Solution: Organic raw milk. Modern sanitation standards, sterile holding tanks, milking technology, and bovine health standards have made pasteurization unnecessary in today's world. (At the time pasteurization was discovered, approximately 65% of cows had tuberculosis and 15% of cows had brucellosis.) Pasteurization typically drops the bacteria count to about 25,000 per cubic centimeter, but the count starts to rise as soon as the milk is cooled. (Because pasteurization also kills the good bacteria, they are less able to keep the bad bacteria count in check.) The FDA only requires the bacteria count be less than 75,000 at the time of sale. Certified raw milk, on the other hand, is required to have a bacteria count of less than 10,000. Therefore, raw milk is virtually guaranteed to have less bacteria than pasteurized milk. In fact, in the past several decades, all salmonella outbreaks and most listeria outbreaks traced to contaminated milk actually came from pasteurized milk.

Raw goat's milk is also a great alternative to cow's milk because it is significantly easier for humans to digest. While cow's milk digests in approximately 3 hours, goat's milk digests in only 20 minutes.

In What the Bible Says About Healthy Living, author Rex Russell, M.D., lists his milk preferences (from most preferable to least preferable) as follows:

• Organic raw milk
• Non-homogenized pasteurized milk
• Pasteurized nonfat milk
• Pasteurized homogenized milk

For local raw milk sources, visit www.RealMilk.com.