It is my belief that milk from grass-fed cows that has not been pasteurized (raw milk) is healthy for the vast majority of people. It is the pasteurization process that causes most of the problems with commercially-sold milk.

To understand why this is, it helps to understand exactly what the pasteurization does. The first element to understand is that proteins are composed of approximately 20 different amino acid building blocks.

The amino acids are connected in long strands and each of them has a unique three-dimensional shape. When they are linked together they have a very specific orientation in space. The bonds that connect the amino acids are relatively fragile and when they are heated they become broken or distorted. This distortion changes its unique structure.

Depending on the amount of heating, the change can result in a variety of different shapes of molecules that the body was never designed to encounter. Many of them are highly allergenic, which is why so many people are allergic to milk.

Once you become allergic to heated milk, the allergy may become very difficult to resolve, and you may not be able to tolerate raw milk due to sensitization and antibody development.

A similar process occurs in eggs when they are heated, which is why I recommend eating eggs raw. I also advise avoiding irradiated foods for similar reasons (see links below).

Milk is pasteurized to protect us from infections like salmonella, tuberculosis and brucellosis, which can be transferred from sick cows. The selling of raw milk is currently only legal in California.

No one wants to get sick from contaminated milk, so the problem causing this, sick animals, needs to be addressed at its source, or in other words, at the farms raising the animals. If cows are raised in a way so they are healthy, it is unlikely that their milk will be contaminated.

Pasteurization is bad enough, but this new process described in the above article that allows milk to sit on the shelf for six months will cause even more problems as it damages the milk even further.

I highly recommend avoiding products that are processed with this technology.

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