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EDITORIAL July 31, 1999 VNN4409 Comment on this story Raw Milk: Forsaken Food BY PENNY KELLY  EDITORIAL, Jul 31 (VNN) — Originally printed in Llewellyn's 1999 Moon Sign Book and Gardening AlmanacWhen I was a young girl, the milkman used to deliver to our house two or three times a week. He put the milk, which came in one quart glass bottles, in a covered metal box on the front porch. The glass bottles had a thick lip around the top edge, and a thick layer of cream floating on the milk. I thought having a milkman was extremely modern and sophisticated compared to my grandma, who had to go out and milk her cow, then separate milk from cream before putting it in a pitcher in the refrigerator. Much later, a large modern grocery store opened in town and we began to buy milk in wax-coated cardboard cartons that declared the milk inside to be both "pasteurized" and Îhomogenized. " The milk didn't have any cream floating on the top, and at that time, I thought how wonderful it was that we didn't have to deal with that darn cream anymore! Today, I have a cow and a calf, and every day I go out to milk, just like Grandma, then bring the milk in and run it through the separator before putting it in the pitcher in the refrigerator. "Why bother when you can just go to the store and buy it?" people often ask. Why? Lots of reasons! One because I want raw milk. Pasteurized milk has been heated to high temperatures, supposedly to kill bacteria. This process got started back in the early half of the century when people were looking for answers to the unsolved mystery of Tuberculosis, and believed it could be transmitted through milk. When Louis Pasteur published his discovery of bacteria and the fact that heating could destroy bacteria, the authorities ordered the heating of milk, which came to be known as "pasteurization, " just in case TB was caused by mysterious bacteria in raw milk. Ads it turned out, it wasn't, but a whole industry had sprung up to pasteurize milk and no authority wanted to put people out of work, so the processing of milk became a law. The huge loss in this was that during the pasteurization process, the natural enzymes in milk were destroyed, enzymes that Mother Nature put there to help human bodies digest the milk and absorb the nutrients in it. Without the help of the enzymes in the milk, not only did the human pancreas have to work harder to digest it, it was much more difficult to find anything nutritionally useful in this new form of milk. Next came the process of homogenizing. Either someone didn't like dealing with the bit of leftover cream that settled on top of the milk after it went through the separator, or they figured they could skim it off and sell a pint of it for the same price as an entire quart of milk. Whatever it was "homogenization" was developed. This was a simple process of shaking or agitating the milk so violently that the large fat globules present in the milk, were shattered into tiny, irregular pieces. This shattering was so complete and so effective that the fat globules were unable to regroup and remained suspended in the milk. The result of this was that as people drank the milk, they took in those shattered fat globules, which then proceeded to slip through the bodies natural barriers and get into forbidden places in the body where a big round fat globule would never have gotten through. Thus it passed into the bloodstream to collect and harden in veins and arteries, it collected in globs on organs, or was stored as a waste material in layers of padded cells just under the skin. The fact that fat was getting into places it shouldn't be was aided by the subtle degeneration of activity in liver and gall bladder function in millions of people as a result of poor nutrition. Without plenty of bile to emulsify fats, even more of it got into the system. As time went on, other factors began to complicate the problem. Cows were fed corn and crops containing residues of seriously toxic chemicals, which had a great affinity for lodging in the fat cells of the cow's milk. Later dangerous hormones were added to animal diets. Now not only was the milk seriously lacking from both an enzyme and a nutritional angle, its structure was destroyed and the shattered pieces of the fat globule, carrying the load of toxic chemicals, were getting past the bile duct without enough emulsifying and into the cells of the body. It wasn't long before doctors and researchers were reporting all kinds of difficulties from drinking pasteurized, homogenized milk. As we here at Lily Hill farm, continued to investigate the history of milk, the store bought version began to look more and more like a source of serious trouble that we just didn't want to risk. This brought us to the point where we decided that having a good supply of milk, cream butter, yogurt, sour cream and cheeses was essential. It has forced us to answer a lot of questions from family and friends who, at first, couldn't fathom why on earth we would take the time, work, expense and the trouble of being tied to a cow and her milking schedule. "The reasons' we told them, " are simple. We have made a deep commitment to learn the truth about food and then work to bring it in to our daily lives in a real way. Since both of us like milk, and have inherited the ability to digest it, we decided to investigate, and the history, as well as the nonsense, of pasteurization and homogenization was what we uncovered. " We also learned that fat is absolutely necessary in everyone's life and without you will not be able to absorb and utilize the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Without these four vitamins in good supply and readily available in your body, you simply won't be healthy and you won't be able to heal from anything, not even the common cold. Since we were already eating a majority of fruits, steamed vegetables, salads, fresh ground whole wheat bread, and an occasional piece of meat, we didn't have much high-nutrition fat in our diet. SO WE DECIDED TO BUY A COW. (Note: With Cow's milk, there is no need to eat meat. Once again the Vedic Culture has the perfect answer. Vrn Davan) A glass of raw milk on my granola in the morning, a tablespoon of butter on my muffin at noon, a dish of homemade yogurt and a nibble of cheese now and then have done what three and a half years of intense detoxification plus a ton of vitamins and minerals did not do. They have brought smoothness to my skin, shine to may hair, firm strength to my fingernails, and a tremendous sense of well-being. The law says that we cannot sell milk that is unpasteurized, and we hope fervently that this will change as people begin to understand that many foods that are really very good for them are being rendered either useless or destructive, or both, by the government's laws and processing requirements. Gladys, my brown-eyed Holstein beauty, produces three gallons of milk a day, plus cream. This is far more than we need, and when we first started offering to give away raw, unpasteurized, unhomogenized milk, butter, and yogurt to family and friends, they were dubious. After trying a gallon or two, and a dab of butter, the reaction changed dramatically to increasing requests and exclamations of astounded pleasure in the taste, flavor, and texture of these foods in their whole, natural form. Comment on this story  Contact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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