Raw milk straight from the cow or goat is chock full of the benefits of wonderfully healthy bacteria, vitamins, and enzymes that you simply will not get from store-bought milk.
Milk you find on your supermarket shelf is flawed for many reasons. One reason is the big commercial dairies do not feed their cows grass and hay which is what they are supposed to eat, but rather their cows exist in small feedlots being fed large amounts of grain which is actually not something a cow was meant to eat.
As a result, these cows must be fed antibiotics which in turn are going into your milk. Bleach is also often added to make sure your carton of milk is as white as can be. Scary, isn't it?
But even if this were not the case, commercially available milk is pasteurized (heated) and homogenized (process that breaks down butterfat), and you can be sure that all those beneficial enzymes and healthy bacteria are long gone by the time it reaches the grocery shelf. What you have left is simply dead liquid which can possibly cause more harm than good due to the growth hormones and antibiotics (among other things) given to the unhealthy commercial-dairy cow.
Many people will argue that drinking milk straight from the cow is not healthy, and that pasteurization is necessary to kill off things like E coli. The fact is that milk collected hygienically from a healthy grass-fed cow on a small family-owned farm is very healthy, and the benefits far outweigh the risks. You'd be statistically much more likely to contract E coli from your local produce department than from that farmer's cow.
The source of the majority of our commercial milk is the modern Holstein dairy cow which has been bred specifically for quantity in order to produce large amounts of milk far beyond what a cow was ever meant to produce. Since she is fed so much grain (remember this is unhealthy for a cow), she requires antibiotics to keep her healthy. Growth hormones also end up in that milk you're pouring over your breakfast cereal every morning.
The most healthy and best-tasting raw milk will come from the "old" breeds of dairy cows such as the Jersey, Guernsey, Ayrshire, or Brown Swiss, or the older lines of Holstein which were not bred to produce obscene amounts of milk. The average butterfat of these old breeds of cows back at the turn of the century was 4%. Today's butterfat normally comprises less than 3%. There is also the misleading notion that skim and low-fat milk is good for you. Full-fat milk is awesomely healthy as the butterfat contains the vitamins A and D which are needed for the absorption of calcium, and is also rich in the short- and medium-chain fatty acids that protect us against disease. You get no health benefit at all from drinking low-fat or no-fat milk, and you might as well just have a glass of water instead. That would actually be far more healthy.
Many are jumping on the raw milk bandwagon, and many more will climb on board in the coming years as people educate themselves about what is actually going into our food through the commercial processes.
If you have a small dairy farm near you, drop by and sample some real milk and see what you have been missing.
About the Author:
Raw milk benefits are stupendous, and more and more people are jumping on the bandwagon. Find out more information and learn about all of the amazing health benefits of raw milk plus lots more information and facts at http://www.rawmilktruth.com
