Milk. Friend or foe for your children and grandchildren?

I’ve found Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, PhD, to be a helpful book on many food fronts, especially on the subject of milk. Here’s a short summary of my recent reading in Nourishing Traditions.

Certified raw milk, from grass-fed, unconfined Jersey or Guernsey cows, is an excellent but hard-to-find source of cancer-fighting conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and many vitamins and minerals. Pasteurized milk, on the other hand, is a highly degraded food source. Modern milking standards often make pasteurization unnecessary in terms of sanitization. In fact, as Fallon notes, “All outbreaks of salmonella from contaminated milk in recent decades … have occurred in pasteurized milk.” She writes that “pasteurization destroys helpful organisms, leaving the finished product devoid of any protective mechanism should undesirable bacteria inadvertently contaminate the milk.”

Fallon contends that “Heat alters milk’s amino acids, lysine and tyrosine, making the whole complex of proteins less available; it promotes rancidity and unsaturated fatty acids and destruction of vitamins.” Pasteurization also destroys all the enzymes in milk.

Nourishing Traditions lists California, New Mexico, and Connecticut as states where certified raw milk is available in health food stores. We will shortly be on our way to a certified raw milk farm in Connecticut, and I’ll write a milk follow-up at the end of the trip. In the interim, I know you and your family will benefit from my Essential Reading staple, Nourishing Traditions.