This is sure to be a contraversial one but here goes anyway...I am wondering about incorporating raw milk into my family's diet and am looking for anyone out there who has done this successfully. I know it's a subject many are passionate about on both sides of the issue and i have read alot of the naysayer info on bacteria, poor farming practices etc. but i know there are farms out there that grass feed their cows and have sanitary milking practices so they can sell raw milk safely. If you've incorporated raw milk into your life and have benefited from it i would love to hear from you.
Ok. Here is my view point. I am 31 years old.
I was born and raised on a small family dairy
farm. So I was raised on "raw" milk. So was
my sister and 3 bothers. Wish I was still on
the farm. We still drink it. As does my kids
and nieces and nephews. Non of us have
any health issues. I just don't understand
what the issue is.
A good friend of mine has been using organic raw milk for years. She even used it to make homemade "formula" when her daughter was a baby. She gets it through organic coop.It is REALLY good:)She has NEVER had problems with it.
After reading Nina Planck's real food, we started drinking raw milk. It's been several years and I say just go for it. I'm in California and there are a few farms that provide the milk - and deliver to several stores, your home, and have a weekend sale in the city (LA).
You can visit the farm, call them about their practices, etc. I'd probably stay away from a dairy that also sells to large milk producers as I've found their standards to be lower. Also you may want to visit a few raw milk sites (google real, raw milk) to see about availability, farming practices in your area. We love it (I'm drinking it with my breakfast right now). Good luck!
If you have access to it, go for it! There are 2 types of raw milk - raw milk intended for pasturization and raw milk intended to be drunk without processing. You are right about grass fed. Visit your farm and see how they deal with their milk. How often do they clean the lines? How do the prepare the cow for milking (how do they clean the teat, etc). How is a sick cow handled? Do they test their milk, and how often? We bought our own bottles and filled them from a spigot underneath the cold tank. We drink it cold. We make dairy kefir from it and also yogurt. And cheese! We use it in baked goods (of course when it is heated, it loses part of its benefits).
If you have friends visit, you may want to give them a choice on whether to drink raw milk. I had one friend who wouldn't, so I would buy milk when they came to visit. You may want to start slow, ie drink 1 cup a day then work up to 3 cups (or whatever your consumption is...). I get kind of grossed out thinking about drinking pasturized milk...thinking about all those dead bacteria cells in the milk carton.
i grew up on it. and my husband used to be "lactose intolerant" until he drank raw milk (which didn't bother him) for almost a year. now he can eat and drink any milk product. that being said though, it is wonderful, we were getting it from my family farm so we knew EVERYTHING that happened to that milk. i would never drink raw milk from someone else's cows unless i knew everything about their practices. so if you do it i suggest you spend a good amount of time investigating the farm you are getting it from. Store milk has good and bad bacterias taken out of it so you have to decide if it is worth the risk of getting milk from a bad place. you could also look for organic milk that has been pasteurized but that the cows are not given hormones as that is what seems to be the main concern in milk these days. most store bought milk is FULL of hormones because the cows producing it are full of hormones. you can get hormone free milk without going totally raw. you main question for to raw milk providers should be "do you inject your cows with hormones, or do you feed them hormone feed"
I grew up on a dairy farm and never had pastarized milk unless I was in school until I left for college. Now I don't live near my family so I buy milk...the raw milk was soo much better. I've read great things about health benefits of it as well. My parents had four children and not a single one of us ever got sick from the raw milk.
I really do believe in the health benefits of following a mostly raw food diet but haven't dealt with raw milk yet since I have food intollerance issues with dairy. I don't know if this will help but here's a link where you can find a farmer's market in your area or a local farmer where you may be able to obtain your raw milk products:
I grew up on raw milk from a local farmer. My folks would go over twice a week with big glass jars and dip them in the tank and bring them home. They would let the cream rise, skim it off for butter, and then we would drink the rest. How "fat" the milk was depended on how much butter we needed that week. I didn't drink "processed" milk until I was in school and got it with lunch and no one bought milk for home drinking until I was in my late teens.
I don't know that there was actual benefit (healthwise) from drinking raw milk, but it didn't hurt us and saved money of course. None of us are obese and none of us had health issues growing up (in fact, I don't remember any of us getting sick other than like chicken pox, etc). My mom is a marathon runner and, at the age of 63, is getting ready to run her 100th marathon - not attributing that to raw milk, but just as a point a reference to her current health after drinking raw milk for 20+ years.
I would say go for it. If I had access to it here, I would be doing it without a second thought :)
My cousin owns a dairy in Virgina and her family drinks raw milk. Her family is never sick. Last 4 years, the only time they've seen a doctor is for well-checks. I would do it if I could.
in all reality you can do without milk altogether.
the only concern that i have about raw milk is the fat content.
we must remember; cows milk is made for an infant cow which typically gains 80 lbs in its first year. so when you drink cows milk, especially raw, you are technically getting liquid meant to support an 80 lb growth rate.
i dont know exactly how much a baby cow drinks, so that could be a big factor too; if you are using milk in cereal and cooking, its probably not a big deal. but if you drink a lot of milk, its not a good thing to have all that fat. research is starting to show that the proteins in animal products and meat actually turn to acid in your body and eat away at your bones, instead of making them stronger. (this explains why despite increased milk use there is still increasing osteoperosis and other misc calcium deficiencies).
so whatever you decide, be careful, and i would skim as much of the fat off the milk as you can! :)
good luck!@
L.,
I have not done it personally, but do have a friend who successfully did it after extensive research. You just have to do your homework and make sure you have a farmer who knows what they are doing. It's the mass production and national distribution that made pasteurization of milk necessary and if you are getting yours from a small, local farm, you can drink it raw and get the health benefits destroyed in the pasteurization process.
I also had two college roommates who grew up on dairy farms. They drank raw, whole milk daily and never had an issue with it. Interestingly enough, both girls (and all of their sisters) didn't start menstruating until age 14-15, and I believe it is partly because their milk and meat didn't contain hormones. It's one of the things that led me to buy hormone free milk and meat for my family as puberty/menstruation seems to keep happening earlier with each generation. (My mom's generation was 13-14, mine was 11-13, my daughter's is 9-12.)
Good luck,
S.
It sounds great. I know they are not allowed to advertise to sell, so it is great that you are seeking them out, it's a definite boost to the industry. In any case, I haven't tried it, but I have had raw goat's milk, and it was pretty good. My sister lived with a family for a while that drank it, and they never had any problems.
I grew up on it and survived... Go for it! Just remember to shake the container it's in so you don't end up with a lump of cream on your cereal in the morning (unless you like that)
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/04/raw-milk-website-la...
http://www.realrawmilkfacts.com/
I'm reading the stories below about the people who always drink raw milk and they're really healthy and/or not obese, I'd just like to say my family never drinks raw milk and we're healthy and thin.
I'm a veterinarian and I've been on more dairy farms than the average consumer, and I can tell you that there are MANY opportunities for bacteria to contaminate a milk product on a dairy farm. I'm also a microbiologist, and I can tell you that milk is a perfect multiplying medium for bacteria. I am on a food safety mailing list and I get email newsletters all the time regarding outbreaks of food-borne disease all over the country associated with raw milk and raw milk products. I'd be happy to share if you're interested. I can see NO good enough reason to drink raw milk to outweigh the risks- it's like playing russian roulette with your children's health.
People who grew up on dairy farms may have "self-vaccinated" over the years and are thus more resistant to the bacteria commonly in raw milk. That is not the case for you or your children. Please reconsider exposing them to this risky product.
My son-in-law is a dairy farmer and everytime my son or we went to visit, we always brought back fresh milk, right out of the bulk tank. We never had any problems at all, and that includes my two little granddaughters, my children or my sons younguns. In fact, my daughter and son-in-law gave and give their kids raw milk. It might have a bit more fat than pasteurized, but I find nothing wrong with it. In fact, I wish I could find someone living nearby to us to get more. I do feel the kids get a better grade of milk and healthier. Comparing to what WIC allows now (1%) I really feel the raw milk is much healthier. Good luck
I'm not sure what you're looking to hear or what you mean by doing it successfully, but we absolutely drank up and otherwise used all of the raw milk we could get our hands on for as long as the cow was milking. We love it for many reasons and would be tickled to find a source again. We drove about 35 miles round trip every week or so to get it and were ever-so-happy to do so. I am completely convinced that it is by far the healthiest way to get milk into our bodies. In fact, I get a little uncomfortable when I fill up a cup of pasteurized homogenized milk for my 20-month-old. I really hate that the cow dried up when we were just getting to the place that baby didn't need to drink ALL of the milk and some of the rest of us could use it. I was LOVING the cream in my coffee or to make some other food more scrumptious. I was really looking forward to making yogurt. I even used the milk that had soured for the most delicious biscuits. Did you know that sour raw milk is not at all bad for you--it just tastes nasty. I never worried about the safety of the milk for that reason. It was too old to drink when baby wouldn't drink it--no other worries. And then it was super for baking. Not so with store milk. We watch it very closely. I hope you and your family get the opportunity to enjoy this awesome stuff.
My son is adopted and I wasn't able to breastfeed so I seeked out all other options because I didn't want him on formula... I went to this website (below), read up on it and then started purchasing raw milk and followed their recipe for home-made formula using the raw milk. He loved it, thrived on it and was hardly ever sick!!
When I was a teeager I had a chance to live on a farm with my family. My dad rented an apartment they had over their house. We had the same raw milk the farmer's family drank.
When we lived in rural Arkansas, we bought 1/4th of a cow. We got 1/4 of the milk the cow produced. It gave about 25% cream. We loved the butter and the homemade ice cream. We suffered no ill effects. The farmer used no hormones and told us when he had to vaccinate the cow. Then we chose to drink or not to drink the milk. The first time we didn't drink the milk, but the farmer did and the other two people that had the other half of the cow drank the milk and nothing happened. After that we drank the milk anyway.
Back then I had 8 kids to drink the milk. Now there is just my wife and me so our milk consumption is way down. If I had access to good raw milk, I'd do it again.
If it were me, I would just buy Organic Milk from either a health food store or get it delevered to your house. Good luck
We farm and have been drinking our own milk for years! (Bought the place from my husbands parents in 2003.) Our kids prefer it. When our daughter was about 2, she wouldn't even drink store milk! She could taste the difference because she would take a sip and then not drink anymore when we were at others' houses.
I don't think you have to "build up" to it. Just start drinking it! I've heard of many lactose intolerant people that CAN drink raw milk!
The biggest thing I would ask the farmer is what their somatic cell count is. They have milk quality awards that they give out. We've gotten one every year for the past 7 years. And definitely SEE the farm. SEE how they treat the cows.
All farms are state inspected minimum of twice a year.
