2008 Woodie Awards
The raw deal with raw milk
Stephen Middleton
Issue date: 10/10/07 Section: Focus
The Argosy (Mount Allison University)
SACKVILLE (CUP) -- Milk is a very idiosyncratic thing. Whether you prefer skim milk, homogenized milk or something in between is up to personal preference, sometimes fierce personal preference.
One thing all milk varieties have in common however, is pasteurization. Perfected by Louis Pasteur in 1862, pasteurization involves heating milk to high temperatures very rapidly and subsequently refrigerating it in order to kill off pathogenic bacteria. Pasteurization does not kill off all microbes, just most. What this does is buy consumers a few days before there's enough bacteria to make you sick. That is why milk still has a rather short expiry date.
With the dramatic rise of the organic food movement, some have begun calling for a return to natural milk. Un-pasteurized milk, or raw milk, they argue is healthier because heating destroys many nutrients and denatures many of milk's important proteins. Look at the nutrient label next time you're having a glass and notice the lack of vitamin C. Per ounce, raw milk has more vitamin C than orange juice but because of the heat in pasteurization, very little of it remains useful. As healthy as milk is today, raw milk advocates claim it would pale in comparison to unaltered milk.
Health Canada says otherwise. Pasteurization is an effective way to prevent infection from a number of bacteria, including Salmonella, E Coli, Listeria and Tuberculosis.
According to John Sheehan, director of the FDA Egg and Dairy division, drinking raw milk is "like playing Russian roulette with your health." Based on the number of infections every year from un-pasteurized milk, Canada has criminalized the sale of raw milk.
Raw milk does have more nutritional value than pasteurized milk. Caseins, as most protein savvy athletes can attest, are powerful nutrients and pasteurization gives them a real beating. A wide variety of vitamins are also destroyed in pasteurization and have to be added artificially afterwards.
SACKVILLE (CUP) -- Milk is a very idiosyncratic thing. Whether you prefer skim milk, homogenized milk or something in between is up to personal preference, sometimes fierce personal preference.
One thing all milk varieties have in common however, is pasteurization. Perfected by Louis Pasteur in 1862, pasteurization involves heating milk to high temperatures very rapidly and subsequently refrigerating it in order to kill off pathogenic bacteria. Pasteurization does not kill off all microbes, just most. What this does is buy consumers a few days before there's enough bacteria to make you sick. That is why milk still has a rather short expiry date.
With the dramatic rise of the organic food movement, some have begun calling for a return to natural milk. Un-pasteurized milk, or raw milk, they argue is healthier because heating destroys many nutrients and denatures many of milk's important proteins. Look at the nutrient label next time you're having a glass and notice the lack of vitamin C. Per ounce, raw milk has more vitamin C than orange juice but because of the heat in pasteurization, very little of it remains useful. As healthy as milk is today, raw milk advocates claim it would pale in comparison to unaltered milk.
Health Canada says otherwise. Pasteurization is an effective way to prevent infection from a number of bacteria, including Salmonella, E Coli, Listeria and Tuberculosis.
According to John Sheehan, director of the FDA Egg and Dairy division, drinking raw milk is "like playing Russian roulette with your health." Based on the number of infections every year from un-pasteurized milk, Canada has criminalized the sale of raw milk.
Raw milk does have more nutritional value than pasteurized milk. Caseins, as most protein savvy athletes can attest, are powerful nutrients and pasteurization gives them a real beating. A wide variety of vitamins are also destroyed in pasteurization and have to be added artificially afterwards.
Viewing Comments 1 - 4 of 4
L
posted 10/16/07 @ 1:49 PM EST
Paranoia has gotten
to the author
Middleton. Raw milk
taste is better than
the change
pasteurized milk.
Yeah. Raw milk.
Middleton has no tum
tum. (Continued…)
Livia
posted 8/13/08 @ 9:13 PM EST
If raw milk were not perfectly fine, we would not have survived as a species all these years. So many key studies and historical and epidemiological information is ignored by the medical and governmental and pharmaceutical industries. (Continued…)
dario
posted 8/14/08 @ 10:55 AM EST
Have you traveled to a place on holiday only to find out that you were violently sick for a day or so? Only to find that locals have no problem with what you just ate?
It's different fauna, true. (Continued…)
Glenn
posted 8/24/08 @ 1:25 PM EST
Apparently lactose-intolerant people are ok with raw milk as the pasterization doesn't kill the enzymes that lets them digest the lactose.
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