To switch to Raw milk?

[eggybreadyy]

What are your thoughts on Raw milk?

With the current hot topic of ultra-processed food, and trying to reduce this. Mainly for healthy reasons. I am considering switching to raw milk.
Upon googling lots of advice why not to do this, especially for children.
I have seen that it can have lots of health benefits if sourced from a reputable raw milk farmer.

Unless you are literally milking the cow yourself, I wouldn’t do this. I grew up on raw milk because my dad was a dairy farmer. People who came to stay with us would sometimes get ill from the milk that they weren’t used to. And, frankly, pasteurization is not ultra-processing!

Because the other half are such morons?

I have seen that it can have lots of health benefits

No it can't. There's no evidence that raw milk is any better for your health than pasteurised milk.

You know pasteurised milk doesn't have anything added to it, right? It's literally just been heated up and then cooled down again. It's just to kill off dangerous bacteria - things like tuberculosis, salmonella, e-coli and the myriad other diseases you'd find knocking around in a) a farmyard and b) a cow.

Assuming that pasteurised milk is less healthy than raw milk is equivalent to assuming a cooked and chilled chicken breast is less healthy than a raw one. It's the same process - heating the food for a certain amount of time and then rapidly cooling it down again to kill harmful bacteria and to slightly prolong its shelf life. That's all. It's not ultra-processed or anything. Just heated and cooled.

If you've some bee in your bonnet about healthy gut bacteria or something, there are plenty of other sources of probiotics that won't also give you a life-threatening illness.

I usually think I’m of average intelligence and then threads like this come along and make me feel like some kind of genius.

Look at the Nova food categories for an idea of what makes something ultra-processed. Pasteurising is not ultra-processing. A lot of misinformation about processed v ultra-processed. Homemade bread is category 3, processed food, salted nuts, smoked meat. Pasteurised milk is category 1, unprocessed/minimally processed.

Only category 4 is UPF.

Out of interest, did he say why not?

Presumably because it gives you shits that would go through the eye of a needle

Watching in horror and fascination as an Insta figure turned tradwife is guzzling raw milk as a pregnancy craving 😳

Just buy organic

I buy organic pasteurised milk.
No antibiotics given to cow but it's safe.
I get why you're thinking about it op, lots of ultra processing, healthy eating type people promote it but personally it's not worth the risk.

What exactly are the health benefits?

There's one a mile from us, over my dead body would I drink it ...

Yes. He quoted studies of serious harmful bacteria found in samples of raw milk. I don’t remember the details, but I remember being shocked at quite how high it was. I’m very into health and nutrition but what he said was definitely enough to put me off raw milk!

No way
cows are covered in shit and flies

No scientific evidence of any health benefits, as yet. However there is definitely a small chance it can kill you. Up to you, I wouldn't.

Interesting thankyou. A school friend used to bring in milk fresh from her family's dairy herd but she rarely shared so maybe I escaped lightly!

Go for it, it's your digestive system.

Udders too close to the bumhole of a cow for my liking, personally.

Don’t do it, for all the reasons above.

I grew up drinking unpasturised milk - but I also grew up playing regularly (ie, most days - touching cattle bedding and cows) on a variety of dairy farms, so my immune system was used to it.

I haven't drunk it for 35 years, I would not drink it now, and funnily enough it is only some of my dairy farmer friends who live on farms and work with dairy cattle who would. None of my other farming friends will touch it, as they don't think they have the immune system for it.

It is a silly fad and it's one of those things thats fine... until it isn't. When it's not fine you will really regret your choices.

Muppets do truly walk among us.

Tbf you are right to be concerned about drinking cows milk,its full of mad hormones and antibiotics,but the pasteurisation is the at least the sensible bit.id have to say that I've felt so much better since giving it up so maybe try non dairy alternatives for abit instead of trying raw milk and see if that's better for you too.

This illustrates the problem with ' a little bit of knowledge'. Pasteurisation makes milk much, much safer to drink and is a good thing. It's not an 'ultra-processing method.' So many people get any sort of food processing (often done for safety reasons) confused with UFP (done to make the food more palatable/addictive/easier to get through the machines and produce on a large, industrialised scale) It doesn't matter whether you 'know' the farmer, or the cows(!), on a statistical and population level, raw milk is nor a good idea.

Absolutely not.

This is what happens when history is forgotten

I have used it, and it does taste so much better than pasturised, but there is a risk from contamination in the best regulated farms. You can get salmonella, e-coli etc. It's a risk. I use it in cooking, and I use it for myself in hot drinks, but mostly because I'm supporting a calf at foot dairy. I wouldn't give it to children unless it was boiled.

Actually the best thing you could do is switch to organic milk, Raw milk isn't necessary organic and its the hormones and antibiotics they feed the cows you don't want in your milk. The other thing that makes the milk taste different is the fact that most supermarket milk is homogenised, this breaks up the fat molecules and means it doesn't separate out unlike non-homogenised milk. It really effects the taste 😔.

Trust me raw milk on its own doesn't make a difference in taste. We always got our milk from a local farm when I was a kid, I remember him having to install pasteurisation equipment. It really didn't chance the taste of the milk, its just the homogenisation that does this.

I've heard that boiling my kettle is ultra processing my food , therefore I've decided that instead I'll take my water from a local river with a sewer works upstream and drink that instead. I'm sure there are health benefits from this natural product. What does anyone think?