The truth about milk - the Rodale Institute

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http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20080515/n1

The truth about milk

“Raw” milk proponent and dairyman Mark McAfee sheds light on pasteurization, the

benefits of consuming unadulterated food, and the war on bacteria.

By Loren Muldowney

Editor’s note: The following article is the first of a four-part series that

will appear monthly in the nutrition section of our website. It is based on the

first of four recent lectures in a Seminar Series on Raw Milk hosted by Rutgers

University Agriculture Experiment Station.

Mark and Blaine McAfee.

Mark McAfee is owner of Organic Pastures Dairy Co. (www.organicpastures.com) in

Fresno, California. His high-energy talk February 6 was entitled “Raw Milk:

Mother Nature's Inconvenient Truth.” “Raw milk” is milk in its natural state,

McAfee explained, as it comes from the cow, without heat treatment or

pasteurization. Pasteurization is used to extend shelf life and to immobilize

certain bacteria, he said, and public health authorities generally appear

convinced that this process is highly desirable.

McAfee's overarching theme can be summarized as the coexistence of people and

milk and bacteria. Even when produced under the most sanitary conditions, he

said, it is normal for milk to contain some bacteria, and human societies have

been coexisting and benefiting from these bacteria in the milk for thousands of

years. Fermented milks are and have been important foods in many cultures for

their nutrient value, McAfee informed the crowd, for their superior

digestibility, and for the preservation that fermentation, a bacterial process,

provides. Today products are marketed as containing “probiotics,” as if this is

something brand new. Of course, McAfee said, various active bacteria have always

been in these foods—only the standardization and taxonomy are new. Some of what

he termed “Mother Nature’s truths about bacteria” follow. Bacteria...

....are earth’s oldest life forms.

....are everywhere.

....are essential for human survival.

....comprise more than 90 percent of the cells in the human

body...........................................