The Great Raw Milk Debate

Clearly I read too much.

So many different ideas and opinions can be found in your local library!

I'm smack in the middle of reading Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. Some very interesting facts in there, about how high cholesterol is a fairly recent malady, and our ancestors didn't really deal with heart disease and cancer. Her main philosophy is that "industrial food" is slowly killing us.

I'm down with that.

So, we're already eating way more organic than we did, and I expect to wean out the rest of the processed foods over time (I'm way too cheap to throw away food!). I drive out into the country and buy our milk and eggs from an old order Amish farm, which almost certainly doesn't use growth hormones or antibiotics on their cows. The milk is very lightly processed, still having that beautiful cream line in it. Look at that and tell me you don't want some!

Yes, this is better than the white stuff they try to pass off as milk in the dairy aisle of the grocery store. But it's not raw.

Raw is what our forefathers drank every summer and fall. Then they supplemented their winter calcium needs with preserved milk. Cheese.

There was no low fat or skim milk. Our bodies needed (and still need) the fats and proteins and bacteria found in milk.

But wow, finding raw milk, not so easy. I contacted a local farmer about purchasing raw milk, and was told you have to be a shareholder (called a herdshare) in the cow. So you pay a monthly maintenance fee to feed/house/medicate/etc. the cow, and in return you get a share of the profits. It's expensive, too. $75 one-time contract fee, $36 monthly upkeep fee. All for a gallon of milk a week. Yowza...

I desperately want the benefits of raw milk. Planck even mentions in her book that it can help with asthma and allergies, both of which I'm really suffering with right now. But I can't justify it at that expense.

So we'll keep trekking out to the country (which I love) for our milk. We'll keep shaking up that gallon jug so we distribute the cream into the milk. And we'll hope that someday we'll be able to afford to take on a herdshare. Or to buy our own mini-farm and have a family cow.

If you're gonna dream, dream BIG!